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Emilio Gentile. Political Religion - A Concept and Its Critics - A Critical Survey
Emilio Gentile. Political Religion - A Concept and Its Critics - A Critical Survey
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EMILIO GENTILE
Professor of Contemporary History, University of Rome
EmilioGentile
Totalitarian
1469-0764
Original
Taylor
6102005
emigent@tin.it
00000Summer
&
Article
Francis
(print)/1743-9647
Movements
2005
Group
Ltd Political
(online)Religions
10.1080/14690760500099770
FTMP109960.sgm
and
Francis
Ltd and
It is not necessary to have the gift of prophecy to predict that the question of
political religion is the one which will never be resolved to the satisfaction of all
scholars. Unanimity is rare in scientific research, but it is even rarer when the
topic under discussion involves fundamental concepts, related to the essential
aspects of human existence, such as religion and politics. In the case of civil religion, the diversity of opinions extends between two opposite poles: some scholars
reject these concepts for they deny the very existence of any phenomenon which
could be defined as such, while other scholars have made use of it to define the
variety of historical experiences in the relationship between religion and politics
without any conceptual distinction. Thus it is that some scholars use the concept
of civil religion to define historical phenomena which are defined by others as
political religion. The term political religion is often used as a synonym for civil
religion, secular religion, public religion, politicised religion, religious politics
and so on. Furthermore, there is a tendency to confuse the problem of political
religion with the problem of the aesthetics of politics, especially in the study of
the rituals and symbols of fascism, or to put these two problems as an alternative,
Correspondence Address: Professor Emilio Gentile, Clivio di Cinna 204, 00136 Roma, Italy. Email:
emigent@tin.it.
ISSN 1469-0764 Print/1743-9647 Online/05/010019-14 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/14690760500099770
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E. Gentile
as if the problem of political religion were exclusively limited to the ritual and
symbolic aspects of their aesthetic expressions.
Semantic and conceptual confusion of what indeed civil or political religion is
and what it means, often results in superficial and misleading interpretations, into
false and badly formulated problems, or into prejudicial denial of the problem
itself, generated in such cases by the arrogance of those who ignore the real terms
of the question and present them in a distorted, burlesque or simply false form.
After the end of the Soviet system, a renewed interest in the question of totalitarianism immediately resulted in an increase in scholars interest in political
religion, which is proved by the growing number of the studies dedicated to this
topic, above all after 1991, as we will see later. However, the problem of political
religion does not refer exclusively to totalitarianism; nowadays it has acquired the
character of a topical question, as the result of new manifestations of religious
nationalism and of theocratic fundamentalism, which gave rise to a new wave of
studies and considerations on the relationship between religion and politics;
between secularisation and sacralisation in the modern world, between the
politicisation of religion and religionisation of politics.
A noticeable contribution to the increase of the current interest in the problem of
political religion has probably been made by the resumption of the dispute on civil
religion, which was particularly animated between the mid-1970s and the end of
the 1980s, especially in the United States, where this heated discussion originated
in 1967 with the publication of an essay by sociologist Robert Bellah concerning
civil American religion: few have realized, he wrote, that there actually exists
alongside of, and rather clearly differentiated from the churches an elaborate and
well-institutionalized civil religion in America.1 For more than 30 years sociologists, historians, philosophers, theologians and political scientists had lively
discussions about the existence of a civil American religion in the sense defined by
Bellah, that is, a religious dimension to politics, which stands separately, and
autonomously, from traditional religions. At the end of the 1980s, after surveying
the different phases of the long debate, James A. Mathisen concluded that the
latter was already exhausted.2 At a conference on American civil religion, in 1986,
the theologian Richard John Neuhaus declared:
I come, then, both to praise and to bury civil religion. I praise it because it
has helped to fix our minds on the moral meanings by which we might
order our common life. And I would gladly assist at the burial of the conceptual confusion created by the claim that civil religion is in fact a religion.3
However, the question of civil religion was not in the least closed. In fact, not
only did it remain under study, but became topical once more, in both academic
circles and the daily press, following the reactions provoked by the religious rhetoric of President George W. Bush and the terrorist attack of 11 September 2001,
and resulting in the reawakening of American patriotism, as well as the effect of
what has recently been defined as the return of the religion to the public square.4
In the case of political religion there has not been such a long and intense
dispute as that on civil religion. Nor has the term found much fortune either, for,
as I mentioned at the beginning, many scholars still apply the definition of civil
religion to totalitarianism, for which other scholars employ the term political religion, establishing a clear conceptual distinction between the two terms. There has
been, and still persists a confusion or an identification between civil religion and
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this attitude was the theologian Jrgen Moltmann, who considered political religion not just a concept to discuss but an existing danger which must be combated.
For me, he wrote in 1986,
political religion is not a neutral scientific phenomenon which I research
and want to describe, but a power I have to deal with. Political religion
challenges me not only to sound knowledge but also to a confession of faith.
Following our experience in Germany, every militant political religion
unavoidably leads to a struggle between church and state [Kirchenkampf].
In any case, he did not think it possible to find a distinction between civil religion
and political religion.
This distinction is indeed difficult to find because a civil religion as a religion of the republic can include many different political religions by
emphasizing their commonality and linkage. However, it can, of course,
at any time become a uniform political religion as is seen, for example, in
the new patriotism.14
It must be said hereby that discussing civil religion as a historical problem, and
a theoretical concept, does not necessarily mean taking part in the controversy
between supporters and adversaries of the idea of civil religion as a project of
civic education. Such an attitude does not imply a moral or political neutrality
but a need for intellectual clearness. This attitude has to be present while discussing the subjects closely connected to the dramas and dilemmas of our modern
existence.
However, the concepts of civil religion and political religion have not been
generated by mere intellectual ingenuity, but have arisen almost spontaneously,
I would say, from the comparison to the real phenomena of new experiences of
the relationship between religion and politics, which manifested itself in the
modern world. It has been the novelty of these phenomena that incited the
scholars to coin new concepts to define them. The deep political and moral
crises of American society had been the origin of Robert Bellahs meditations on
the beliefs, ideals and fundamental rites of the American nation, for which he
considered it necessary to bring again to use the concept of civil religion
conceived by Rousseau. It was precisely the success of totalitarian movements
of the twentieth century which induced some scholars to avail themselves of
such expressions as lay religion, secular religion and political religion in
order to define the political ideas, organisation and policy of these new mass
movements, for which the traditional concepts of ideology and party seemed to
be insufficient and inadequate. I have mentioned that some Christian theologians were the most resolute critics of the concept of civil religion, but it must
be additionally mentioned that the first scholars who used the concept of political religion (or any of its synonyms, such as secular religion and lay religion) in
order to interpret totalitarian movements, were Protestant and Catholic intellectuals and theologians, such as Luigi Sturzo, Adolf Keller, Paul Tillich, Gerhard
Leibholz, Waldemar Gurian and Eric Voegelin. Even if I do not share their religious presuppositions, I do recognise my intellectual debt to these religious
thinkers for the development of my own interpretation of totalitarianism and
political religion.15
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It was the enemies of totalitarianism who first elaborated the concept of political religion. Therefore, this concept was not only an intellectual one but it was, so
to say, imposed on anti-totalitarian scholars by the vital need to define a new
phenomenon which was real and threatening, and for which the terms of traditional political language, such as, for instance, ideology, dictatorship, tyranny or
despotism, appeared inadequate.
This is the fact that must be taken into consideration in the present dispute in
order to understand the nature and the meaning of political religion, and in order
to reply to some of the main criticisms which are addressed today to the scholars
who study political religions. In fact, the anti-totalitarian origin of the concept of
political religion shows there are no grounds to the criticisms which affirm that
this concept does not have any validity, because it is but a duplication of the
image that totalitarian movements built of themselves. Tracing back to the origins
of the concept of political religion may also be useful to answer to those who
believe that the scholars who treat political religions have no idea of what religion
is and, consequently, mistake a metaphor for reality.
Actually, the first scholars who used this concept were religious people with
a deep knowledge of what religion is. They were intellectuals, theologians and
clergymen, both Protestant and Catholic, who opposed totalitarianism. Furthermore, it must be specified that, using the expression political religion, these
scholars did not refer exclusively to the ritual or symbolic aspects, or to the usage
of religious metaphors by totalitarian movements, but to their own nature of
political movements, that is, to their ideology, their practice, the enthusiasm they
provoked, and the actions performed in order to reach the goals which were
proposed. Political religion was viewed as a modern phenomenon, the climax of
the rebellion against the religion of God, started by humanism which aspired to
render man sacred but which instead emptied out into the sacralisation of the
state, of the nation and of race, degrading man to a mere instrument of politics.
Political religions were an extreme consequence of secular humanism, which
renounced the religion of God but were afterwards compelled to invent new religions in order to satisfy the need for faith of the masses, as well as to legitimate
the power of new chiefs.
Even if each of these scholars came up with their own interpretation of the
religious nature of totalitarianism, the main principle common to all of them,
except for Voegelin, is a genetic connection between political religions and
modernity, secularisation, mass society and mythical thought. Consequently, we
can define political religion as a new collective idolatry, as it was determined
by Sturzo in 1933; that is, an effective but perverted religiosity intent on adoring
false gods. In this sense political religions were called pseudo-religions,
substitute religions, surrogate religions, religions manipulated by man and
anti-religions.27
The topics and problems raised by the scholars who first treated totalitarian
movements as political religions are to be found also in the new theories of totalitarianism elaborated after the Second World War. However, these theoreticians
did not always use the concept of political or secular religion. Aron and Gurian
continued to use this concept, acknowledged and developed mainly by Jules
Monnerot in an essay on communism published in 1949.28 Whereas new theoreticians of totalitarianism, such as Hannah Arendt, refused it and preferred to
employ the traditional concept of ideology or the neologism ideocracy,
proposed by Gurian,29 Voegelin himself renounced the use of the term religion
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differences between civil religion and political religion, in terms of their content
and their attitude toward both traditional religion and other political movements.
Civil religion is a form of sacralisation of a collective political entity that is not
identified with the ideology of a particular political movement, affirms separation
of Church and state, and, though postulating the existence of a deistically
conceived supernatural being, coexists with traditional religious institutions
without identifying itself with any one particular religious confession, presenting
itself as a common civic creed above parties and confessions. It recognises broad
autonomy for the individual with regard to the sanctified collectivity, and generally appeals to spontaneous consensus for observing the commandments of
public ethics and the collective liturgy.
Political religion is a form of the sacralisation of politics of an exclusive and
integralist character. It rejects coexistence with other political ideologies and
movements, denies the autonomy of the individual with respect to the collective,
prescribes the obligatory observance of its commandments and participation in
its political cult, and sanctifies violence as a legitimate arm of the struggle against
enemies, and as an instrument of regeneration. It adopts a hostile attitude toward
traditional institutionalised religions, seeking to eliminate them, or seeking to
establish with them a relationship of symbiotic coexistence, in the sense that the
political religion seeks to incorporate traditional religion within its own system of
beliefs and myths, assigning it a subordinate and auxiliary role.
Clearly, historical reality demonstrates that this distinction is not always clear
and precise, and it is not possible to deny the fact that common elements exist
between them. Both civil religion and political religion consecrate a collective
entity, formalise a code of commandments, consider their members a community of
the elect with a messianic role, and institute a political liturgy which represents a
sacred history. The difference between civil religion and political religion can
appear total if we compare the US with Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. But even
civil religion can, in certain circumstances, become transformed into a political
religion, thereby becoming integralist and intolerant, as happened during the
French Revolution.
As closing remarks on the general characteristic of the sacralisation of politics, I
retain that the majority of civil and political religions are transient in nature, or at
least have appeared so up to now, even though for certain periods of time some of
them appear to have had a very lively existence. This transient nature is what
makes the new secular religions so different from traditional metaphysical
religions. Metaphysical religions have endured for centuries, indeed millennia,
while the existence of the majority of political religions can be expressed in
decades. However, the fragility of political religions does not mean that the
source from which they derive has dried up forever.
The dispute on civil and political religion remains open. This happens not only
for theoretical reasons but also because of the effect of new and often tragic experiences of symbiosis between religion and politics, which marked the beginning
of the third millennium. Long before these events, the studies on civil religions
and political religions gave birth to a new consideration of the relationship
between religion and politics in the modern age. These studies referred back to
the theory of secularisation intended as an irreversible process of the disenchantment of the world, accompanied by the progressive disappearance of the sacred
in modern society along with the withdrawal of religion from within the private
sphere. As a matter of fact this has not happened. Instead of the disappearance of
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20. C. Strout, The New Heaven and New Earth: Political Religion in America (New York: Harper & Row,
1974).
21. C. Marvin and D.W. Ingle, Blood Sacrifice and the Nation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1999).
22. D.H. Davis, Law, Morals, and Civil Religion in America, Journal of Church and State 39 (1997),
p.411.
23. In J.D. Schultz, J.G. West and I. MacLean (eds.), Encyclopedia of Religion in American Politics (Phoenix:
Onyx Press, 1999), p.53.
24. L. Settembrini, Ricordanze della mia vita (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1961), p.96.
25. J. Lewis, K. Polanyi and D.K. Kitchin (eds.), Christianity and the Social Revolution (London: Victor
Gollancz Ltd., 1935), pp.385, 460.
26. R. Rocker, Nationalism and Culture (Los Angeles: Rocker Publications Committee, 1937).
27. L. Sturzo, Idolatria collettiva (1933), in idem, Miscellanea Londinese, II (Bologna, 1967), p.286.
28. J. Monnerot, Sociologie du Communisme (Paris, 1949).
29. C.J. Friederich (ed.), Totalitarianism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954), pp.11937.
30. E. Voegelin, Autobiographical Reflections (Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University
Press, 1989).
31. J. Talmon, Political Messianism: The Romantic Phase (London: Secker & Warburg, 1960); D.E. Apter,
Political Religion in the New Nations, in C. Geertz (ed.), Old Societies and New States: The Quest for
Modernity in Asia and Africa (London: Collier & MacMillan, 1963).
32. U. Tal, Political Faith of Nazism Prior to the Holocaust, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1978; Id,
Structures of German Political Theology in the Nazi Era, Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press, 1979.
33. E. Gentile, Fascism as Political Religion, Journal of Contemporary History 25 (1990), pp.22951.
34. E. Gentile, The Sacralization of Politics in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, MA: Haward University Press,
1996).
35. H. Maier and M. Schfer (eds.), Totalitarismus und politiche Religionen: Konzepte des Diktaturvergleichs (Padeborn: F. Schning, 1996; 1997; 2003).
36. Maier and Schfer (note 35, 1996), p.168.
37. A. Piette, Les religiosits sculires (Paris: PUF, 1993).
38. Maier and Schfer (note 35, 1996), p.169.
39. O. Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press , 1976).