Abstract
Cultural analysis is a product of its time. The concept of political religion acquired its current meaning in studies of totalitarian politics in the interwar period. Its perhaps most classic text is Politische Religionen by Eric Voegelin (1938). Voegelin offered a number of historical examples of political religion but would not have written his essay had he not experienced Hitler’s Germany: in 1938, the Anschluss caused Voegelin to flee from Vienna where he worked and to emigrate to the United States. In this sense the concept of political religion originated as a weapon in the fight against National Socialism. Even were it part of a scholarly analysis, it had a clear political message: the religious aspect of Nazi politics was perhaps the most prominent sign of its dangerous nature.
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Notes
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[Hans-Joachim Schoeps,] ‘Der Nationalsozialismus als verkappte Religion’, Eltheto 93 (1939), 93–8 (93, 94). Unless indicated otherwise, all translations are mine.
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Voegelin’s concept of political religion has been discussed extensively. See, e.g., Dietmar Herz, ‘Der Begriff der “politischen Religionen” im Denken Eric Voegelins’, in Maier (ed.), ‘Totalitarismus’ und ‘Politische Religionen’, vol. 1, 191–209; Hans Otto Seitschek, ‘Die Deutung des Totalitarismus als Religion’, in Maier (ed.), ‘Totalitarismus’ und ‘politische Religionen’, vol. 3, 129–77 (129–49); Michael Ley, ‘Zur Theorie des politischen Religionen: Der Nationalismus als Paradigma politischer Religiosität’, in Michael Ley, Heinrich Neisser and Gilbert Weiss (eds), Politische Religion? Politik, Religion und Anthropologie im Werk von Eric Voegelin (Munich, 2003), 77–85.
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I borrow the expression ‘religion-making characteristics’ from William P. Alston, ‘Religion’, in Paul Edwards (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, vol. 7 (New York, 1967), 140–5.
John Bowker, ‘Religion’, in idem (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (Oxford, 1997), xv–xxiv (xxiv).
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A variety of problems associated with Wittgenstein’s approach are discussed in Benson Saler, Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1993), esp. 158–96.
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Stanley Stowers, ‘The Concepts of “Religion“, “Political Religion” and the Study of Nazism’, Journal of Contemporary History 42/1 (2007), 9–24 (11).
If Christianity in ancient Rome had served merely as a meaning-providing system of rituals and myths, then Diocletian would surely not have taken the trouble to persecute the Christians, to sack their churches and to burn their holy books. Diocletian’s edicts against the Christians make sense only if we recognize, as did the emperor, that a twofold political claim was inherent to Christian religion. First, Christians professed God, rather than the Roman emperor, as their real dominus. Their claim that God rules the world and that accordingly all worldly power must be derived from God was a straightforward political statement. Second, by welcoming women, slaves and foreigners into their congregations, Christians created political communities of their own. Their rituals and symbols constituted communities that were political in so far as they posed a threat or offered an alternative to the existing political order. Such political aspects of religion are easily overlooked as long as religion is treated merely as a source of meaning. See, among other titles, Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology (Cambridge, 1996)
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Christoph Stumpf and Holger Zaborowski (eds), Church as Politeia: The Political Self-Understanding of Christianity (Berlin, New York, 2004).
In practice, these two forms are often intermingled, especially in what is nowadays called ‘entangled histories’. See Michael Werner and Bénédicte Zimmermann, ‘Beyond Comparison: Histoire Croisée and the Challenge of Reflexivity’, History and Theory 45/1 (2006), 30–50.
Henk te Velde, ‘Political Transfer: An Introduction’, European Review of History 12/2 (2005), 205–21.
Chris Lorenz, ‘Comparative Historiography: Problems and Perspectives’, History and Theory 38/1 (1999), 25–39
Stefan Berger, ‘Comparative History’, in Stefan Berger, Heiko Feldner and Kevin Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (London, 2003), 161–79.
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Velde, H.t. (2013). The Religious Side of Democracy: Early Socialism, Twenty-first-century Populism and the Sacralization of Politics. In: Augusteijn, J., Dassen, P., Janse, M. (eds) Political Religion beyond Totalitarianism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137291721_3
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