Abstract
Many studies of political religion today reserve the term for the phenomenon of Europe’s totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. Part of the phenomenon, then, is secularisation; that is its setting in cultures that were previously Christian in character. More or less distinct from related conceptual approaches focussing upon on such phenomena as nationalism, totalitarianism or modern dictatorship, and in some tension with the tenets of the secularisation hypothesis, the paradigm of political religion is used better to illuminate what the other approaches have such difficulty in explaining: the unquestionable popular support for and devotion to political programmes that were intensely violent and plainly irrational. Political religion, as a concept, explains the force behind the psycho-social dispositions and political mechanisms of totalitarian rule as quasi-religious in character. In particular, it detects mythologies and liturgies, sacred texts and doctrines, orthodoxies and heresies, and holy wars and inquisitions. An even wider interpretation of this concept takes us beyond the limitations of twentieth-century Europe. Accordingly, political religion is a trans-historical and trans-religious or transcultural conceptual device to explore, in principle at least, all attempts to sacralise the political sphere. This raises much wider questions: do political religions require a secular context in which to develop?
A bibliography of political religion as a concept and as an object of research is contained in Hans Maier and M. Schäfer (eds), Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen: Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2003) and Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann, Diktaturen im Vergleich (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 2002).
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Notes
A bibliography of political religion as a concept and as an object of research is contained in Hans Maier and M. Schäfer (eds), Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen: Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs (Paderborn: F. Schöningh, 2003)
and Detlef Schmiechen-Ackermann, Diktaturen im Vergleich (Darmstadt: Wiss. Buchgesellschaft, 2002).
Erik Peterson, Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem (Leipzig, 1935).
This study is discussed by Jan Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2002), 21 f.; and by Maier, Totalitarismus 3, p. 369. Peterson’s thesis was that the doctrine of Trinity disabled the mutual relationship between other-worldly and this-worldly order, because Trinity could not be represented on the political level.
Another mutation is the term ‘civil religion’, which, since the 1960s (Robert N. Bellah), is used to describe sacralisation phenomena in democratic states ruled by a constitution; in America, for example, some presidencies from George Washington on have been analysed in terms of civil religion. See Richard V. Pierard and Robert D. Linder, Civil Religion and the Presidency (Grand Rapids: Academy Books, 1988). It is, however, important to note the conceptual difference here: civil religion, though it is like political religion not legitimated by institutionalised religion, does not make exclusivist claims — political religions do.
H. McLeod and W. Ustorf (eds), The Decline of Christendom in Western Europe, 1750–2000 (Cambridge: CUP, 2003); in particular the Introduction by
McLeod; also H. McLeod, Secularisation in Western Europe 1848–1914 (London: Macmillan, 2000). It is a rather broad, but fair generalisation to say that secularisation (following Durkheim and Weber) is a teleological concept: sketching a future world that is free from the Church or religion in general.
The secular bias of the Western academy leaves little room for religion, it works on the basis of what Jeff Cox called ‘the presumption of marginality’. Jeffrey Cox, Imperial Fault Lines: Christianity and Colonial Power in India, 1818–1940 (Stanford CA: Stanford UP, 2002), p. 8.
In Michael Ignatieff, Blood & Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism (London: Vintage, 1994), for example, the term religion is hardly mentioned at all. Already at an earlier stage Carlton Hayes used the term ‘nationalism’ to analyse the driving forces of his time. ‘Integral nationalism’ in particular is the term that describes what others called totalitarianism or political religion; see his Essays on Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1928) and The Historical Evolution of Modern Nationalism (New York: Macmillan, 1931).
I am aware that the discipline of philosophy is also fully able to make such distinctions. A philosophical treatment of our subject area is John E. Smith, Quasi-Religion: Humanism, Marxism and Nationalism (London: Macmillan, 1994). Smith occupied the Clark Chair of Philosophy at Yale until his retirement in 1991. His study points to the historical connection between what he calls ‘the secular void’ (8 f.) and the rise of quasi-religions. Being a philosopher, he is quite explicit in his assumptions about human nature: different from the historical religious traditions and the quasi-religions is ‘the human religious need’, p. 10. This need, and this is the crux, can be served in different ways. Smith distinguishes between ‘religions proper’ (traditional scriptural religions such as Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism — tribal or primal religions are not mentioned) and ‘quasi-religions’ by insisting upon the following observation: proper religions are responses to the sacred or the transcendent — and their respective Ultimate can be nothing finite; quasi-religions do also offer a supreme object, but their ultimate is finite and conditioned (1 f., 7 f., pp. 121–23). They are religions because they perform some of the functions associated with ‘proper’ religions, but they are quasi only, because their ultimates are subject to corruption and idolatry. It is interesting that a philosopher uses terms taken from the Judeo-Christian tradition such as ‘idolatry’, ‘idols’, ‘demonic distortions’ and, on the other side, ‘unmasking’, ‘prophetic criticism’ or ‘truly divine love, beauty and creativity’ (pp. 121, 132, 134) in order to qualify this distinction even further. In fact, Smith is indebted to Paul Tillich, even in the choice of the term ‘quasi-religions’: see
Paul Tillich, ‘The Significance of the History of Religions for the Systematic Theologian’, in J. C. Brauer (ed.), The Future of Religions: Paul Tillich (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), p. 90.
I have used Zwischen Nil und Kaukasus. Ein Reisebericht zur religionspolitischen Lage im Orient, 4th edn (Moers: Brendow, 1991), which also contains Schütz’ introduction for the 3rd edn of 1953. For Schütz, see H.-W. Gensichen, Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, G. H. Anderson (ed.), (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 605;
also Gensichen’s apologetic ‘Zur Orient- und Missionserfahrung von Paul Schütz’, Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft 77 (1993), pp. 152–59. A critical biography still needs to be written. First steps are Rudolf Kremers, Paul Schütz — Auf der Suche nach der Wirklichkeit (Moers: Brendow, 1989), and shorter, but more critical pieces by
Rainer Hering, ‘Der Theologe Paul Schütz im “Dritten Reich”’, Mitteilungen des Oberhessischen Geschichtsvereins 84 (1999), pp. 1–39, and his ‘Das Judentum bei Paul Schütz’, Jahrbuch der Hessischen Kirchengeschichtlichen Vereinigung 52 (2001), pp. 143–65. This important publication uses, among other primary materials, an unpublished manuscript by Schütz on political religion (see note 15).
Karl Barth, ‘Fragen and das Christentum’, Zofinger Centralblatt (December 1931); reprinted in idem, Theologische Fragen und Antworten 3 (Zürich: Theol. Verlag, 1957), pp. 93–99. I have been alerted to this by Kristian Hungar, emeritus professor in Heidelberg’s theological faculty. Hungar is currently working on related issues, and I have used his unpublished 2004 paper on Theologische Diagnose des Nationalsozialismus: Karl Barth.
See also W. Ustorf, ‘German Missiology and Anti-Americanism’, Mission Studies VI/1, 11 (1989), pp. 23–34.
Rufus M. Jones, ‘Secular Civilization and the Christian Task’, Report of the Jerusalem Meeting of the International Missionary Council 1 (London: OUP, 1928), pp. 284–338.
See also the discussion in W. Ustorf, Sailing on the Next Tide. Missions, Missiology, and the Third Reich (Frankfurt am Main: P. Lang, 2000), 97 f.
Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World (London: Edinburgh House Press, 1938), p. 15. Kraemer says here: In their political and economic aspects they are gigantic efforts, inspired by universalist or nationalist ideas, to master the anarchy of our social and political world. Their particular characteristic, however, is that they are primarily creeds, philosophies of life and religions of an extremely intolerant and absolutist type. They consequently develop mythologies, doctrinal systems, catechisms, ‘churches’, ‘priests’, ‘prophets’, ‘saints’, and ‘mediators’. All the paraphernalia of a full-fledged religion are virtually present. They even make gods — for the race, the ideal communist society, and the State assume a distinctly God-like position. Absolute allegiance to these gods is demanded with religious fervour. Absolute devotion to their service is the ultimate standard of moral life, and releases in many individuals, as all ultimates do, marvellous manifestations of self-sacrifice, discipline and creativeness. These ‘religions’ impetuously claim dominion over life in all its ramifications. They intolerantly persecute other religions that do not subordinate their specific allegiance to the absolute one that is only due to their ‘god’. Tillich justly remarks that the disintegrated masses, sensing the meaninglessness of life, hunger for ‘new authorities and symbols’. The totalitarian systems satisfy this hunger, and millions of men gladly sacrifice their political, economic and spiritual autonomy. If we still need evidence that man, even de-religionised modern man, is a religious and metaphysical animal, here it is.
See my Sailing on the Next Tide, pp. 113–28, and my ‘Kairos 1933 — Occidentosis, Christofascism, and Mission’, U. van der Heyden and H. Stoecker (eds), Mission und Macht. Europäische Missionsgesellschaften in politischen Spannungsfeldern in Afrika und Asien zwischen 1800 und 1945 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005), pp. 621–32.
Kirche oder Sekte (April 1937). This anonymous text offers a concise description of National Socialism as a ‘political religion’ (religion ‘in the full sense’). Nazi religion is presented as a ‘state-church’, different from and in no need of the ‘pseudo-religion’ of Hauer’s neopaganism, engaged in a ‘hidden religious war’ against the Christian tradition and well described in its absolutist claims. Extracts in Klaus Behnken (ed.), Deutschland-Berichte der Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands 1934–1940 (Salzhausen: P. Nettelbeck, Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 1980), vol. 4, pp. 494–99. It is interesting that Michael Burleigh quotes this text without acknowledging that it was written by theologians, The Third Reich: A New History (London: Macmillan, 2000), 252 f.
Eric Voegelin, Die politischen Religionen, Peter J. Opitz (ed.), 2nd edn (Munich: Fink, 1996). Voegelin offered a political theory from a Christian perspective, though it must be said that the interwar years were awash with similar attempts to extend the religious terminology to phenomena outside the established religions. In fact Lucie Varga in 1937, Frederick A. Voigt in 1938, and, later, Raymond Aron also used the term. Voegelin was steadfast in his opinion that the modern mass movements of Communism and Fascism were religious in origin and both the result and symptom of the modern crisis of Western civilisation. The crisis consisted in the departure of this civilisation from its religious moorings, in the ‘secularization of the mind’ and, theologically, in the ‘apostasy from God’. Overcoming the crisis, meant for Voegelin, working towards a ‘religious renewal’ or, as he later so succinctly put it, to move from ‘the certainty of untruth’ to the ‘uncertain truth’ of God.
See Voegelin, Der Gottesmord. Zur Genese und Gestalt der modernen politischen Gnosis, Peter J. Opitz (ed.), (Munich: Fink, 1999), pp. 105–28. At the same time, however, he sketched the broad outlines of a more general theory of the relationship between the state and religion, from the Egyptian Pharaoh and ‘Son of God’, Tutankhamun, via certain thought patterns of late antiquity and the heretical movements of medieval Christianity, to Nazism. This theory suggested that the main problem of political religion was its misunderstanding of God’s transcendence and the analogical nature of religious symbolic language. Its translation, as it were, into blueprints for immanent historical progress created a new type of religiosity: an inner-worldly or political religion that tried to put into the reality of this life what revelation had promised for the hereafter. Some critics felt that Voegelin simply blamed modern Western culture and the Enlightenment for Nazism and Communism. (See note 17).
‘The Nazi Religion and the Christian Mission’, International Review of Missions 30 (1941), pp. 363–73. I am also using his Autobiography of a German Pastor (London: SCM, 1943). For Ehrenberg see Ulrike Lange, ‘Ehrenberg’, Metzler Lexikon Christlicher Denker, M. Vinzent (ed.), (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000), p. 224. Lange has also written a monograph about Ehrenberg’s thought structures. See Constancy and Change: Hans Ehrenberg’s Three-Dimensional Methodology and the ‘Jewish Question’ (1932–1954), (PhD thesis, University of Birmingham UK, 2004). The official biography is
Günter Brakelmann, Hans Ehrenberg. Vol. 1: Leben, Denken und Wirken, 1883–1932; Vol. 2: Widerstand, Verfolgung, Emigration, 1933–1939 (Waltrop: Spenner, 1997 and 1999).
Berdyaev, The Beginning & the End (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), p. 155. He describes this encounter as a disruptive event, as an irruption into commonplace daily life. This communion would inevitably lead to a critique of the historical sanctities.
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Ustorf, W. (2008). The Missiological Roots of the Concept of ‘Political Religion’. In: Griffin, R., Mallett, R., Tortorice, J. (eds) The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230241633_3
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