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On the Heuristic Value of the Concept of Political Religion and its Application

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14690760500181537

1743-9647

Stanley G. Payne,

Chinese history and philosophy

Abstract The thesis here is that the concept of political religion (PR) is useful as a heuristic device or model to explore certain unique features of modern secular revolutionary and/or ultra‐nationalist movements and regimes which develop elaborate ideologies and public rituals. It depends on a broad or 'Durkheimian' definition of religion and is not to be confused with the politicisation of traditional religion, which can be found in varying forms in nearly all historic polities. The differences between modern civil religion (CR) and PR are examined, and some of the principal regimes and movements for whom PR may be a useful concept are analysed with regard to their similarities and differences. The conclusion is that both the politicisation of religion and the cultic forms of PR continue to characterise in varying ways some of the major radical new forces of the twentieth century, while much of the Western world tends toward an inchoate kind of incipient, not fully coded PR most simply characterised as Multicultural Political Correctness. Notes 1. R. Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism led to Reformations, Witch‐Hunts and the End of Slavery (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), pp.4–5. 2. Ibid., pp.4–6, 367–76. 3. E. Gentile, Le religioni della politica: Fra democrazie e totalitarismi (Rome and Bari: Laterza, 2001); idem, 'The Sacralisation of Politics: Definitions, Interpretations and Reflections on the Question of Secular Religion and Totalitarianism', Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 1 (2000), pp.18–55; and idem, 'Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political Religion: Definitions and Critical Reflections on Criciticism of an Interpretation', Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions 5/3 (Winter 2004), pp.326–75. 4. For one of the most recent discussions, see R.P. Kraynak, Christian Faith and Modern Democracy: God and Politics in the Fallen World (South Bend: Notre Dame, 2001). 5. The best approach to the broad phenomenon of 'chosen peoples' and sacred mission is A.D. Smith, Chosen Peoples: Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 6. M. Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1961), pp.205–6. 7. J.H. Hutson (ed.), Religion and the New Republic: Faith in the Founding of America (Lanham, MD and Oxford: University Press of America, 2000). 8. R. Gamble, The War for Righteousness (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2003). 9. There is a long literature on this. Among recent publications, see R.T. Hughes, Myths America Lives By (Champaign and Urbana, IL: Illinois University Press, 2004); S. Webb, American Providence: A Nation with a Mission (New York: Continuum, 2004); and D. Gelernter, 'Americanism – and its enemies', Commentary (January 2005), pp.41–8. 10. The basic study is P. Hamburger, Separation of Church and State (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2002). 11. J.H. Billington, Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Basic Books, 1980), reminds us that for most of the nineteenth century nationalism, not social revolutionism, was the more dominant revolutionary creed. 12. H. Buchheim, 'Despotie, Ersatzreligion, Religionsersatz', in H. Maier (ed.), 'Totalitarismus' und 'Politische Religionen': Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs (Paderborn and Munich: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1996), pp.260–63. 13. This is only part of the argument of R. Steigmann‐Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), which argues overly broadly for the existence of a 'Christian Nazism'. 14. Hitler had earlier shown considerable interest in reading about religion (something not to be confused with Stalin's brief seminary education), and was acutely aware of the ideological indefinition of nationalism on the level of formal philosophy. On his religious readings and speculations, which may have led him to belief in a sort of immanentist theism, revealed in and through himself, see T.W. Ryback, 'Hitler's Forgotten Library: The man, his books, and his search for God', Atlantic Monthly (May 2003), pp.76–90. 15. See especially K. Vondung, Magie und Manipulation: Ideologischer Kult und politische Religion des Nationalsozialismus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), as well as his The Apocalypse in Germany (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2000). The literature in this area is, of course, quite extensive. 16. D.‐S. Suh, 'The Juche Idea and Political Religion in Korea', unpublished conference paper. 17. H.S. Park, North Korea: The Politics of Unconventional Wisdom (Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Riener, 2002). 18. On the Kim Il‐Sung cult, see D.‐S. Suh, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988). 19. See D. Apter, 'Political Religion in the New Nations', in C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States (New York: Free Press, 1963); as well as idem, Ghana in Transition (New York: Athenaeum, 1963); L. Binder, The Ideological Revolution in the Middle East (New York: John Wiley, 1964); and M. Halpern, The Politics of Social Change in the Middle East and North Africa (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963). 20. Smith (note 5), pp.11–14. 21. I. Esquerra, ETA pro nobis: El pecado original de la Iglesia vasca (Barcelona: Planeta, 2000); J. Bastante, Los curas de ETA: La Iglesia vasca entre la cruz y la ikurriña (Madrid: La Esfera de los Libros, 2004); and N. Blázquez, El nacional clericalismo vasco (Madrid: Edibesa, 2004). 22. I. Sáez de la Fuente Aldama, El Movimiento de Liberación Nacional Vasco, una religión de sustitución (Bilbao: Instituto Diocesano de Teología y Pastoral, Desclé, 2002). In his Nacional clericalismo vasco, pp.12–13, Niceto Blázquez summarises this study as follows: 'Those who consider themselves the legitimate representatives of the "people" have the right to demand of the faithful that they kill in the name of the nationalist cause and, if necessary, become martyrs by immolating themselves like kamikazes. And not for reasons of faith in God but of faith in a sacred entity that transcends us and is worthy of any sacrifice. The God for whom the nationalist is to immolate himself is none other but "the people". Here there is no other God than the people as directed by the nationalist leaders. This study dissects the religious model of the Basque National Liberation Movement in doctrinal, ethical, symbolic, ritual and communitarian terms attempting to demonstrate how, by means of the transference of sacralisation, the nationalist Left abandons the laic concept of politics typical of modern civil societies in favour of a new cultic object, the People, whose persistence is made visible through daily combat. Similarly, it points out how violence fuels a community of endogamy and endows it with a strong component of martyrdom on the principle that, before the altar of the Fatherland, any salvific sacrifice is acceptable: its vision of reality and its normative apparatus separate two categories of people divided by an uncrossable barrier between those in contact with the truth and the uninitiated who, having not received and internalised the revealed message or having renounced the faith, belong to the sphere of the profane and heretical … The call to the supposed primeval national unity or foundational myth pretends, in addition to justifying the recourse to violence, to develop mobilising liturgies on behalf of a singular Exodus to the Promised Land of a believing community led by the orthodoxy of a military group and its corresponding political arm'. 23. Probably the best single exposition is P.E. Gottfried, Multiculturalism and the Politics of Guilt: Toward a Secular Theocracy (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 2002).