"an enemy of ideologies"

Notes taken from a Wim Reitkerk lecture:
(link to mp3)

Destutt de Tracy originally used the term ideology to mean the study of ideas. Napoleon I hated university ideologists because they criticised his political ideals for being tools used by him to retain power. They were in turn criticised for using their ideological studies for a practical goal - seeking the fall of the French government. Ideology then came to mean a system of ideas, surrounded by metaphysical and moral truth, created for a highly practical goal. This could be done subconsciously or consciously.

Later Marx spoke about man's desire to be better (an ideal); God was created as an ideology in order to achieve it. He suggested that this particularly helped the ruling classes to keep the working class quiet. Marx believed in no absolute truth (which is itself a truth claim), so any ideologies are created by human society, and cannot contain absolute truth. Rather than arriving at relativism though, he says that the best ideology should be followed by society to arrive at  his goal - for him the freedom of man, and the delivery of the working class. So Marx (and Lenin) acknowledged that their thinking was ideology, an instrument to reach a practical goal.

However to acknowledge Christianity is an ideology, you would be saying that faith in God is only useful as far as it helps you to get somewhere. Rietkirk notes that using the bible to defend or attack an economic system, or political systems, is highly risky because you start you transform Christianity into an ideology - one that supports our own views, or own nation. Our ideals would become idols - something that comes in place of God. Christianity is weak where it has the same form as an ideology; where people use scriptures as 'medical prescriptions' to feel OK, where people go to church just to make themselves feel better.

The goal of any ideology becomes the absolute, even if absolute truth is denied. So Christianity cannot be an ideology, because it would require subordinating God to a practical goal, which contradicts core Christian belief. He gives examples in the bible of people trying to use God for power to achieve something, apparently good, but failing because they were subordinating him to their own desires and purposes.