burrin political religion, the relevance of a concept

7/28/2019 Burrin Political Religion, The Relevance of a Concept

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Political Religion

The R elevance of a Concept *

PHILIPPEBURRIN

When a phenomenon arises for which existing notions are no long

adequate, a new concept may simultaneously emerge from sevesources. I t also happens, albeit less frequently, that several conceemerge to represent the same phenomenon. This occurred, in the periobetween the two world wars, when the concepts of totalitarianism political religion came to be applied to the regimes of the Soviet U niFascist Italy and Nazi Germany, regimes to which previous notionsdictatorship and tyranny no longer seemed appropriate.1

These concepts, which referred to the same historical reality, hdifferent fates. While the term to talitarianism ourished in everydlanguage as well as in academic research, that of political religion little impact, even though it was used by distinguished scholars. Tformer term seemed more attractive due to its inclusive character, whthe latter, with its paradoxical formulation, most likely suffered from

lack of interest in religion in the largely secular academic milieu. D urthe last few decades, it has been mostly employed by scholars in


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is applied without any other form of explanation, or when it is justionly by a supercial comparison. Even when simply charting

territory, it is important to determine what a certain concept stands and to locate the directions in which research may be protably carrout . We shall therefore commence by choosing two of the most detaiinterpretations in order to clarify the contents of this concept anddistinguish between its advantages and its limitations. Secondly, we sattempt to show its signicance to the study of Nazism, which more tany other political phenomenon resorted to forms and discourse oreligious tinge. We shall further consider whether this concept cprovide a means to enriching our understanding of Nazisms natumental universe, actions and its crimes.

I

A short genealogy of the term political religion not surprisingly taus back to the French Revolution on both sides of the Rhine. In 179Christoph Martin Wieland used the term to describe the indoctrinatioof the revolutionary armies.3 Two years earlier, C ondorcet had denounced the idea of teaching children the constitution by arousingthem blind enthusiasm : if we tell them: here is what you showorship and believe in, we are attempting to create a kind of politreligion; this is a chain that we are preparing for the minds, and we violating libertys most sacred rights, under the pretext of learning hto cherish it. The objective of teaching is not to make men admire already established legislation, but to make them capable of evaluatand correcting it.4

After 1917, the establishment of regimes in Russia, I taly aG ermany whose novelty struck many contemporaries engendered on


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appearance in the writings of the young French sociologist RaymoAron, the G erman theologist H ans-Joachim Schoeps and the Austri

historian Lucie Varga.6 Although the term political religion was usualapplied to a specic regime, most often Nazism, its increasing revealed that contemporaries felt the limits of conventional approachwith regard to the new phenomena.

When Eric Voegelin publishedD ie poli ti schen Religionen in Viennain 1938, on the eve of theA nschluss , he condensed an entireZeitgeist inthe title of his book and established a term which he applied equallycommunism, fascism and Nazism. H is approach is, at rst sigdisconcerting because he included in his subject both the reign of tEgyptian pharaoh, Akhenaton, as well as the development of tEuropean states since the Renaissance. At one end he placed tEgyptian case as an example of political religion of a traditional typtheocracy in which the political and the religious merge in the person

the pharaoh, who is at one and the same the same time king, god ahigh priest of an exclusive cult, and thus the sole mediator between supernatural order and human society. At the other end, he placed thevolution of Europe over the last few centuries, which was marked byseparation of the political and the religious and the rejection of tdivine basis of secular power, but which also witnessed the emergencea sacralization of the collectivity that culminated in the modpolitical religions.7

Voegelin located the origin of modern political religions in tbreakdown of the Christian community at the end of the Middle Aand in the emergence, on its ruins, of political communities that ceasreferring to the divinity and gradually centered on their own sovereigna development marked by mans claim to nd meaning in the eart

world alone and to conquer unlimited knowledge through science. Bhe stressed that while these intramundane collectivities rejected div


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and resulted in the foundation of collective life on the belief in a higreality, whether humanity, a people, a class, a race or the state.

For Voegelin, communism, fascism and National-Socialism were tpeak of this plurisecular development. In a certain way, the gureAkhenaton was resurrected by the leaders of these regimes when thsaw themselves as the incarnation of a political community, imposedexclusive faith and acted as interpreters of the collective destinythe odifference being that they adorned themselves with the language science (natural, historical or social).

This concept of political religion is closely linked to a philosophyhistory. According to Voegelin, modern political religions constitute tinevitable end result of a secularization which he considers to bedecadence. The idea of Man and H umanity, he writes, created the son which anti-C hristian religious movements such as Nat ional Socialwere able to emerge and grow.8 This hostility to the Enlightenment

should not deter us from an interest in his analysis and certainly does invalidate it. As the case of Raymond Aron demonstrates, the conceppolitical religion does not belong to a single philosophy or politics, evif it was far from being universally accepted.

Some forty years later, the concept of political religion was takenin a study in political sociology, which focused only on communism Nazism.9 Instead of Voegelins genetic and philosophical approach, JeaPierre Sironneaus approach is systematic and typological. Accordingthe denition he proposes, political religion is a revolutionary phenomnon of a millenarian nature which appears at moments of upheaval inera of secularization and which is characterized by a transfer of the safrom the established religions to politics. According to Sironneau, reference to religion is justied since it can be argued that bo

communism and Nazism have an affinity with the traditional dimensiof religious experience: the existence of mythical structures (even if th


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The perspective opened up by the works of Voegelin and Sironneais interesting because it takes the world of representations seriously

constructing reality, and not merely as reecting another level of reathat is regarded as the only real or true one. It offers a long-teperspective by examining the relationship of modern phenomena withe world of representations that preceded them, and in particular theritage of C hristian culture. I t draws attention to the symbolic toolthe nation-state and political organizations, from the workers movemto fascist parties, as well as to the anthropological substructure of poli

Still, does the interest of this perspective dispel the incertitude, aperhaps also the malaise, which are attached to the word religion? Ashown by the recurring debate in the sociology of religions, especiaregarding the modern forms of religion, the crux of the problem is hreligion itself is dened.10 It is clear that if this denition is based osubstantial criteria such as the supernatural and the hereafter, which a

at the heart of the salvation religions, the comparison with politiphenomena that are more or less overtly anti-C hristian is soon exhausteWhat remains is to adopt either a phenomenological denition, whrelates to the religious rather than to a specic religion, or a functiodenition, in the wake of Durkheim.

A phenomenological denition brings together attitudes behaviors considered as characteristic of religious experience in gene(the fascinans and the tremendum , the penetration into the privatesphere, festivals and rituals, the ctional construction of reality, etc11

This is the approach that Voegelin implicitly adheres to. H e regards treligious as an anthropological constant, rooted in the desire completion innate in human beings, despite or because of their ncondition, a desire that can be expressed in all spheres of reality. It is

denition that enables him to call Nazism an anti-Christian religimovement.


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and G ustave Le Bon compared political-ideological beliefs, andparticular socialism, to religious beliefs. It is this approach that Sironn

adopts when, at the end of his analysis, he concludes that one should speak so much of religion as of a functional equivalent of religion.13

Both approaches lay themselves open to criticism. The latter becauit must postulate the nonspecicity of religious belief and its objec14

and because it deduces an identity in nature from a similarity in functiso that religion is identied with everything that produces meaning aconnection. In this case, there is no social fact, including sports, thanot of a religious nature or that does not have at least a religiodimension.15 The rst approach denes its subject more precisely, but also problematic because it has to take into consideration the entrange of humanitys religious experiences, although the historibreeding-ground of the political phenomena that interest us wChristianity. A wide denition may extend the scope beyond the sph

of a specic religion, but also fails to do justice to the contemporarperception, however vague, that their political involvement was not oreligious nature.

The question whether political religion can be dened asfunctional equivalent to religion (Sironneau) or as a full religion iphenomenological sense, even though this would be idolatry in termsC hristian theology (Voegelin), could lead to endless debate. H owevit seems to me that the interest of the concept does not depend on ocapacity to determine, according to phenomenological or functiocriteria, the existence of something that could be q ualied as religionreligious.16 It would be better to start with the metaphorical nature the term political religion and to recognize that the adjective is mimportant than the noun. Fascism, Nazism and communism are pu

products of that secularization process which turned the political intsphere of human action that recognizes no legitimate criteria


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secularization. In the trajectory leading from the religion that is at heart of t raditional societies ( the great transcendencies ) to the pres

situation of invisible religion, characterized by the dissemination ofreligious and the construction by individuals of a universe of meaninwithout the mediation of an institution ( mini-transcendencies ), thmark an intermediary stage (that of medium-range transcendenciesthat paralleled the separation of church and state.18

Contrary to what this outline may suggest, political religions obviously only one possible construction of the relationship betwepolitics and religion during that intermediary stage.19 In addition to themanifold ways in which religion was instrumentalized by the rulpower, and the intervention of religious institutions in the eld politics, that period saw the emergence of another phenomenon that wat least as important as political religion: civil religion. In its classic fowhich can be seen in countries such as the United States where t

separation of church and state was carried out amicably, this tedesignates the process by which a minimal religious reference wincorporated into the political culture, without the exclusive patronaof the state or a particular religion. In a wider denition, which is besuited to the kind of separation o f church and state based on rivalry toccurred in France, the term refers to a civil ideology, in this cRepublicanism, that seeks to shape the collective identity by totaexcluding any participation or even any contribution on the part of church.

If political religions are only one modality in the intermediary streferred to by Luckmann, they nevertheless constitute a signicant aspof it. The rationalization of social life which brought about the demof religion was accompanied by the achievement of autonomy by var

spheres of social life (art, hedonism, politics, science). H owever, evthough it was waning, religion still wielded a strong inuence


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arrogated, and feelings and attitudes of exaltation, fascination reverence, typical of the religious experience, were transposed to secu

objects.21The fact that politics was particularly subject to this intoxication

the absolute is hardly surprising since politics and religion share macommon features. Both are concerned with providing an identity angoal for the collectivity and for the individuals who compose it, and bencounter the problem of death.22 H ence the resort to beliefs andemotions, to ritual and symbolic translations of togetherness, which particularly important in conditions of change, instability and crisisthis regard it is hardly necessary to recall that the rst era of seculartion coincided with the advent of the masses. As George Mosse emphasized, the encounter between democracy and nationalisengendered a new politics, in which rituals held an important plairrespective of whether we are speaking of nationalism or socialism.23

By comparison with civil religion and other modalities of relationship between politics and religion in the era of secularization, specic nature of political religions lies in the fact that they utterly dthe legitimacy of the liberal idea of separate spheres in social life and they replace the liberal distrust of politics with an absolutization of latter. Their goal is not to return to a state religion, much less totheocracy or Caesar-Papism, but to realize the historically new wilencompass the entire life of society in the political. This goal can onlyachieved by using forms and means reminiscent of those employed religion in order to ensure its hold over traditional societies. Trejection of liberal culture leads logically to the organization of enthuasm, to the supervision of the economy, to the prescription of artisnorms, even to the control of sexuality. Tightening the communal bo

requires suppressing as much as possible the free display of tastpreferences and behavior. At the same time, this omni-politic


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term wrongly suggests that the aim of these political phenomena canreduced to the struggle against religion.24 Nonetheless, it is true that

they inevitably collide with religion and that the antagonism, declaredveiled, engendered by their politics by far exceeds the classic dispuover the distribution o f the respective powers of G od and C aesar. I n fthey can only regard institutionalized religion as a disturbing force, only because it obstructs their goal of conquering minds, but also, aespecially, because, unlike political parties, which were so easily swaside in Russia, Italy and Germany, religion is an internalized traditthat engages the human being more profoundly than political opinionChristianity, which was one of the most formidable forces for reducheterogeneity that has been known in Western histo ry, now emergedan element of heterogeneity intolerable to political phenomena that wno less obsessed than itself with unity and homogeneity.

In the end, the value of a concept is determined rst and forem

by its ability to stimulate research. Indeed, the concept we are concernwith here turns our attention in at least three directions that can followed separately or simultaneously. One direction is the link betwethe emergence and institutionalization o f the so-called political religioand the religious culture and process of secularization of the sociwithin which they operated.25 For instance, the fact that the process osecularization was relatively weak in G ermany, I taly and Russia entaa lesser degree of tolerance for pluralism and thus a preference fauthoritarian options. On the other hand, the fact that these societpossessed a vital religious culture presented a challenge to the neregimes which may have induced them to stress their political religiodimension. Such a development depended, in turn, on the interactiobetween the regimes will for transformation, the nature of its anta

nism to the religious institut ion, and societys receptivity to change ato the authorities style of communication.


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such as priesthood, proselytism, catechism and inquisition have begenerously applied. O ther studies have explored the affinity betwe

totalitarian regimes and millenarian and G nostic movements, whibecause of their dissident or heretic nature, seemed to lend themselvmore easily to a comparison with political phenomena that had theselves broken away from Christianity.

The comparative approach deserves attention so long as it remaia methodological device aware of its limitations. B ut most of the exisstudies, however stimulating, give rise to reservations. On the one hathey do not convincingly explain the asserted affinity between phenomna that are so far apart in time, since tradition is hardly an adequexplanation. In fact, they are reduced to postulating an imagincontinuity (Norman Cohn) or similar psychological tendencies (AlaBesanon on Leninism and G nosis), or even more bo ldly an identityessence (Eric Voegelin).26 On the other hand, these studies do no

question to what extent these comparisons are valid and ignore whatedoes not t them or contradicts them. Nor do they examine the waywhich the elements that justify such comparisons are themselves integred into a largely new conguration. Not to mention the substanchanges that occurred in the structure and the functioning of thesocieties, the comparison with religious phenomenon of the old regimshould at least make room for a constitutive element of modepoliticsthe tension between belief and manipulation. This tension wnoted by Voegelin when he wrote, in regard to the militancy so typof the political religions, that although he was willing to acknowlthe psychological technique of the generation, propagation and socaffirmation of myths, [he] does not allow this knowledge to interfwith his faith.27

The third direction of research suggested by the notion of politireligion, which will be followed below with regard to Nazism, is the


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other. As we have seen, he himself described the product of this duprocess as religion, but it seems more relevant to view the notion

political religion as a limit-concept or an ideal type and to consiVoegelins approach as a heuristic proposition. Rather than claiminguncover an essence shared by diverse historical phenomena, we shouapproach them from a common perspective that will also enable usunderstand the differences between them.28

This perspective is the way in which political phenomena attemto form a link of exclusive, total belonging and to raise themselves abcontestation by mobilizing, either consciously or unconsciously, butany case in a fragmentary and perverted way, patterns, symbols, rituattitudes and kinds of behavior molded by their societys religioculture.29 These elements are particularly prominent along three axewhere the proximity between the political and the religious is, nfortuitously, the greatest.30

The rst axis is the construction of a tradition, a system of affiliathat binds together the past and the present by authenticating a narratof foundation and tribulations, by honoring heroes and martyrs andplacing the communitys dead at the center of a remembrance designto perpetuate the collective identity. The second is the attribution exceptional value to a person or group of people embodying a woview that offers a system of nal causes, denes good and evil, contains the promise of a better society. The third is an invasiritualization that seeks to enclose the members of the community innetwork of gestures and signs, intended to create a complete aexclusive membership, thereby making the group a kind of emotioncommunity in the Weberian sense and surrounding it with a halo transcendence or an aura of the sacred.

This process of sacralizing a mission or an authority by recuperatiand amalgamating fragments of the religious culture in the melting


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residues, or imitating facets, of traditional religious culture. In trespect, a political religion dimension tends to increase in a polit

group along with its propensity to form a kind of counter-society. Bit is only with the conquest and monopolization of power that it its fullest expression, when coercion and intimidation are coupled wthe organization of enthusiasm.

II

From the outset Nazism elicited religious comparisons, especially wIslam, because of its glorication of war.32 Nevertheless, the notion ofpolitical religion was rarely accepted in the historiography, even thoua few researchers showed the contribution it could make.33

When considering Nazisms relation to religion, it is useful to de

its differences from communism and fascism because the notion political religion is of interest only insofar as it sheds light, not onlya dimension existing in a number of political phenomena, but also on specic tinge it takes in each of them. This requires understanding tway in which each phenomenon conceives of the religious dimensionlife and the religious institution, determining what it selects from religious culture and how it incorporates these residues and, napaying attention to the syncretism resulting from the amalgam of thresidues with elements originating from other sources.

Even communism, whose rejection of religion is radical and takthe form of militant atheism, incorporated fragments of C hristian cultuThese fragments however, were mainly selected from the univerdimension of C hristianity, whether in regard to ecclesiastic structure

eschatology. Moreover, they exist in what can be called a coded foand have to be decoded, since they are used in a discourse that claims


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in distinction to fascist phenomena, where it was prominent almost frtheir inception as political movements.34

Fascism and Nazism indeed demonstrated a great proximity to treligious, as revealed by their leaders frequent invocations of GodProvidence, by Mussolinis religious practice and H itlers decisionremain within the Catholic church, along with their constant denunction of atheism, which evidently involved the desire to distinguthemselves from communism, and their insistence upon the religiocharacter of their movements and their ideology. Fascism, for instanused from the 1920s on the expressions fascist religion, political civilian religion, and Italys religion.35 The Nazi leaders also referredto themselves in religious terms, even appealing to C hristianity, positive Christianity, in the 1920s. InMein Kampf,H itler praised theCatholic church, offering it as a model for his party; and in 1926,called the NSD APs program the founding text of our religion.36

This religious self-designation deserves to be emphasized, even ifwas accompanied by an overt rivalry with institutionalized religion a veiled rejection of the principal Christian dogmasthe God of lothe equality of all men and the belief in the hereafter and the immortaof the soul. Four elements can hence be distinguished: mistrust and evhostility toward institutionalized religion, perceived as a rival andobstacle; a break with the dogmas of Christianity; the incorporatiosubstantial fragments of Christian culture into discourse and practice; anally, a recognition of the benecial character of a religious attitudthe world, religion being understood not as a dogma or an institutbut rather as a universe of experience and sensibility.

The tactical reason for this proximity to the religious obviously lin the plebiscite nature of fascist regimes and their alliance w

conservative forces which made it necessary to deal gently with churches and to make themselves more acceptable to a public imbu


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for centuries, the rigidity of its dogmas, the effectiveness of its rituals symbols. But even stronger affinities can be discerned in their aspirat

to dene a political faith that would not be inferior to religious in its capacity to mobilize hearts and minds and in their g loricationvalues and attitudes typical of the Christian religion such as obedieand sacrice. D etached from C hristian dogma, these latter were to sthe fascist regimes ideology combined with values taken from military sphere of combat and force. It is therefore hardly surprising tan appreciation for the religious as a universe of feelings and experienis constantly projected in H itlers and Mussolinis discourse; it wasintegral part of the deep irrationalism of their world view.

Basically, this proximity is connected with the palingenetic visionfascist-type movements,37 the transposition of the C hristian idea oresurrection to a certain nation. Moreover, as D anile H ervieu-Lgstresses, there is a privileged attraction between the ethnic and t

religious because both of them create a social bond on the basis postulated genealogy: on the one hand, a naturalized genealogy (relato blood and soil), and on the other, a symbolic genealogy (consistin a belief in a founding myth or narrative).38 By referring to fascismand Nazism, as opposed to communism, as radically intramundaecclesi ae, Voegelin described precisely these phenomena in which thabsolutization of the nationwhether dened in terms of race cultureended in overthrowing the idea of humanity and enthroning tlaw of the survival of the ttest.39

Nazism, however, differed from fascism in its much more compand profound relation to religion, as demonstrated by the unequalchallenge that it presented for German Christians. That challenge wnot like the frontal assault made by communism, since there was n

enough time for that, nor was it like themodus vivendi agreed to byfascism. The challenge of Nazism consisted in its enormous but decept


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both of whom, as symbols of a popular community founded on bland oriented to power, rejected the Tablets of the Law.41 Even a social-

democrat like Franz Neumann felt the need to appeal to the Bib(admittedly via Hobbes). He used the gure of Behemoth, the monsof Jewish apocalyptic tradition, born of chaos and spreading terror oneve of the end of time, in his attempt to symbolize the reign of anarand lawlessness that he saw the Nazi regime leading toward. H e thercame close to dening what was so deeply excessive and destructivthis phenomenon, without fully developing his intuition, as attested the difficulty he experienced in grasping the radical nature of Nazi aSemitism.42

Two components can be discerned in Nazisms attitude towareligion. While attempting to inculcate a racist and anti-Semitic woview as an exclusive and all-embracing faith,43 the Nazi leaders, especiallyH itler, elaborated in public a kind of civil religion that may have b

supercial and manipulative but was certainly attractive: the invocaof G ods protection, the representation of H itler as a man o f providenand of the G erman people as the bearers of a divine mission.44 In Italyby contrast, the preponderance of the Catholic church and the presenof the Vatican induced Mussolini to refrain from stressing this dimensiof civil religion in which fascism risked losing its identity. H ithowever, saw an advantage in emphasizing it, precisely becauseG ermanys denominational divisions.

Behind the ornaments of this civil religion, Nazismin distinctito fascism, let alone communismaspired to found an ethno-religiintended to ll the vacuum that the disappearance of Christianity woeventually create and to serve as the basis for its political religionshould be emphasized that the idea of an ethno-religion follows t

tradition of thevlki sch movement, with its twin ambition of politicrenewal and religious reform, the latter taking the form of eith


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Bormann, H immlercontinued to be marked by thevlki sch tradition.In this respect H itler was very different from Mussolini, with

skepticism and his instrumental vision, since he appreciated religion nonly for its social utility but also for its intrinsic value, adheringrevealed by statements he made in private, to a belief that blended two versions of thevlkisch religious reformG ermanic pantheism andG ermanic C hristianity.

The divinity to which he referred was not the personal god Christians, but an impersonal god that had been present at the creatiof the world and determined the eternal laws of nature the strugfor life, the law of the survival of the ttest, the danger of racrossbreedinglaws that each people was free to observe or not, atown risk. For him, this divinity represented the unknown in a univerwhere man, no longer created in the image of a C hristian G od, had his individual dignity. Subject to the laws of nature like all liv

creatures, all man had was a promise of immortality, which he assuthrough his descendants and the survival of his race.46

Hitler added elements of Germanic Christianity to this naturalpantheism, without much concern for coherence, and in particular tidea of an Aryan Christ killed by the Jews. His familiarity with notion can explain his hope, until about 1937, that the churches wouprogressively dejudaize their doctrine.47 At least it explains the easewith which he spoke C hristian and assumed roles bequeathed Christian tradition. Thus, on several occasions he presented himself a prophet, and we know what solemnity he att ributed to this role whon 30 January 1939, he announced to the Reichstag the possibextermination of the Jews.

H owever his attitude to the churches evolved, what is important

that, throughout his life, H itler remained devoted to the idea oreligious reform of the Germans.48 And if he himself abstained from


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reckoning with a C hristianity that had perverted the G ermanic racethis shows to what extent Nazism invented its tradition through a k

of destructive mimesis of Christianity.In comparison with the biblical model, what is worth not ing is

importance att ributed to the cosmos. H itler and his men were uttefascinated by the history of the universe, and they satised thfascination through speculative theories that they considered scientsuch as the glaciation cosmogony (Welteislehre ), which explained theorigins and the development of the universe and established tsuperiority of the G ermanic race.55 The primacy of nature, the insignicance of man, the sense of mystery shifted from creator to creation: amalgam of speculative scientism and biblical reminiscence reect aspiration of certain occult and esoteric movements of the end of nineteenth century to unite science and religion.56

The second pattern derives from demonology. Totalitarian regim

(but not only theselet us recall the French Revolution) believe in tubiquity of malecent adversaries. It is often said that they persecgroups or individuals for what they are rather than for what they do. this distinction, which is valid from the point of view of the persecuthas no meaning for the persecuto rs. In their view, the adversaries cannsimply be but must inevitably act, if not in broad daylight, then at lin the shadows, and any lack of evidence for such action is meradditional proof of the menace they represent. I t is for this reason tthese regimes, in their search for an objective enemy, replace,H annah Arendt said, the suspected offense by the possible crime.57

Nor is it surprising that they believe in one form or another of univerconspiracy.58

Arendt has also compared communism and Nazism, especially th

political police, to secret societies established in broad daylight .59

Thismay be more valid with regard to Nazism than Stalinism. On the


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H immler referred to the extermination of the Jews in a speech to thighest ranks of the Nazi Party and spoke of taking our secret with

to our grave, what was he doing if not tightening the ranks of a sesociety whose acts were justied by a superior morality that could include ordinary G ermans?60

A third pattern can be dubbed apocalyptic. Klaus Vondung hemphasized the place held by the theme of the apocalypse in Germculture throughout the last two centuries (a rarely evokedSonder weg ),both on the left and, especially, on the right wing of German politic61

This theme is particularly striking in Nazism: the vision of an eradecadence and catastrophe, the nal strugg le between good and evil, promise of complete renewal. The apocalyptic theme is so evident thit has long attracted the attention of historians, in particular those ware interested in the notion of political religion.62 While Mussoliniregarded the world as a relentless struggle for power and dominat

between peoples, and while communists linked the idea of a struggle with capitalism to the conviction that the movement of histwas on their side, the Nazis were simply fascinated by the apocalypsa cosmic, relentless, ultimateand undecidedordeal.

They adopted this pattern of thought from Christianity becausesymbolized their state of mind and their vision of themselves and thstruggle. However, in doing so, they remodeled it in a way thatexceeded a mere process of secularization. Not only was there no lona G od to vanquish the Antichrist, but, more critically, this wasapocalypse without a guarantee that the righteous would be victorioat the end o f time. Indeed, in Nazism, and certainly for H itler, there a clear awareness of the possibility of ultimate defeat.63 Mein Kampfprovides a gloomy vision of a planet where life has been destroy

following the victory of the Jews. The result of the combat cotherefore be disastrous: but is this not what the lurid G ermanic mytho


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decadence.64 The fact that H itler was keenly aware that he was growolder and that he invoked this fact to justify increasing the pace of

projects is well known and implies a romantic conception of the hevery far from the millenarian universe. H e also manifested this awarento Albert Speer when he envisaged the disappearance of the thousanyear Reich and worried whether his monuments would be able to lebehind beautiful ruins.65 There are numerous indications that Nazism waa w ill for power undermined by a sense of its own fragility, or accorto J. P. Sterns elegant formulation: the death wish at the center ofwill for power.66

At the intersection of these three patterns is anti-Semitism. Naziswas engaged in an apocalyptic struggle with the Jew, the gure of in which the whole o f C hristian demonology is condensedfalsehoseduction, power concealed behind a set of masksa struggle that wto determine the future once and for all. H ere again, we can discern

continuity with thevlki sch movement, with the idea of a struggle untdeath between a positive principlethe Aryan raceand a negatprinciplethe Jewwhose elimination was a condition of both religireform as well as of political revival.67 U nlike fascism, Nazism saw in thgure of the Jew an embodiment of the heterogeneity of the woreverything that endangered the Aryan race and had to be eliminatedorder to ensure its future, including, once the Jew had disappeareC hristianity, his posthumous poison. Other political religions provide equivalent to this attribution of a purely metaphysical value toparticular group of human beings.

But if this is the case, could it not be said that Nazism, for alanti-Christianity, was in certain respects at least an authentic kindChristianity? This is a position adopted by historians such as Claus

Brsch and Michael Ley. Ley, for instance, links the genocide to central importance attached to sacrice in C hristianity, unlike in


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understood without considering the purifying, restorative and expiatovalue it had in the Nazis mental universeall of these elemen

originating in Christianityit seems dubious to argue for such a strorelationship between Christian sacrice and Nazi genocide. On the hand, the argument contains a cont radiction: if the Jew is the Antichrhe cannot be the victim of a sacrice; he is the mortal enemy who habe exterminated.69 On the other hand, this would be to ignore thplurality of Nazisms sources of inspiration, and in particular two southat merge with these fragments of Christian culture.

The rst is the neo-G ermanism of thevlki sch movement, accompa-nied by an archaic type of morality, of which Hitler gave us a strikexample when he invoked, as he did on several occasions, the lawretaliationan eye for an eye, a tooth for a toothin order to justifyextermination of the Jews.70 H e had a no less archaic conception of wathe enemy had to be destroyed, its population reduced to slavery, tra

ferred, exterminated. The second source is the b iological naturalism thserved as the substructure for Nazi racism, a scientic racism, accordto the Nazis, including H itler, who held science in high esteem.71

Nazi syncretism thus brought together several elements designed achieve both political and religious reform: an apocalyptic anti-Semitia radical racism and an archaic morality, to which we should addcomplex of resentment generated by the defeat of 1918. In thsyncretism, the Christian source of inspiration, in the sense of pervertresidues of that culture, seems to take pride o f place. But we should underestimate the dynamism provided by the other sources. Thdiscourse of Nazi leaders concerning the genocide is laden wapocalyptic prophetism, but it also includes the vocabulary of getting of parasites and performing a surgical operation.72

In conclusion, it seems difficult to agree with Voegelins approaaccording to which Nazism was the offspring of humanism. Nazism


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religion on an ethno-religion.73 Its rejection not only of the Enlightenment but also of the entire Judeo-C hristian heritage led it, quite logic

ly, to commit the worst mass crimes of the modern era.But was it really possible to reenchant a society in the clutches

modernity? Beyond the issue of Nazism, which was engulfed by storm it unleashed, sweeping away along with it millions of innocpeople, the frailty of political religions should be considered. The tyof political, moral and spiritual unity that they aim to create can onlythwarted by the massive movement toward rationalization of societythe institutional segmentation and the technical specialization thcontinuously engender the splitting of social life into autonomospheres. Even on their own privileged level of beliefs, symbols arituals, the limits of political religions are soon evident, whether thibecause of the necessity to yield to the incessant adjustments moderndemands, or because of their inability to give adequate answers

ultimate questions, which is what traditional religions do, at leproviding consolation in the form of a promise of individual immorta

This frailty, which became an obvious truth as the decades passewas already perceived by a contemporary. In 1939, in response tosurvey on the return of tribal religions (the term referred to commnism, fascism and Nazism), the French H ellenist Ren G uastaestimated that this renewal of social myths seems likely to last onlya very short period of time, if we measure it through the eyes of histoThe rst reason was that unlike the natural myths of the past, todmyths are myths of novelists, in the sense that each of them could naits author. In o ther words, they are threatened by o ther stories andthe refusal to believe, while the natural myths were beyond discussfor the members of a given political community, who had no interest

their neighbors myths. The second reason was that, for centuries, European had litt le by litt le taken to the habit of being an individ


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NOTES

* This article elaborates and enlarges upon a rst and very tentative reecon the theme of political religion which has been published in Michael Ley Julius H . Schoeps, eds., D er N ati onalsozi ali zmus als poli ti sche Reli gio(Bodenheim b. Mainz, 1997), 16885.

1. See H ans Maier, Totalitarismus und Politische Religionen : KonzepteD iktaturvergleichs,Vier teljahrshefte fr Zei tgeschichte 43, no. 3 (July 1995):387405; reprinted in Maier,Poli ti sche Reli gionen: D ie totali tren R egime und

das Chri stentum (Freiburg i. Breisgau, 1995). Neither the notion of tyrannproposed by Elie H alvy,Lre des tyrannies (Paris, 1938) nor the termC aesarism, proposed by C alvin H oover,Dictatorships and Democracies (New York, 1937) became prevalent.

2. For a recent discussion of political religions, see H ermann Lbbe, eH eilserwartung und Terror: Politische Religionen des 20. Jahrhunderts (D ssel-dorf, 1995); H ans Maier, ed.,Totali tar i smus und Poli t i sche Religionen

K onzepte des D iktat ur verglei chs (Paderborn, 1996).3. C hristoph Martin Wieland, Betrachtungen ber die gegenwrtige Lage

Vaterlandes, Politische Schriften (Nrdlingen), 3 (1988): 59, quoted by Maier Totalitarismus und P olitische Religionen, 396 n. 44.

4. C ondorcet,Cinq mmoi res sur li nstruct ion publi que (Paris, 1994), 93. (Iam indebted to Bronislaw Baczko for this valuable reference). Tocquevillecourse, was one of the rst to attempt to apply a religious analogy to the Fr

Revolution. H ow the French Revolution was a political revolution wproceeded in the manner of religious revolutions and why is the title of chathree of the rst book ofLA ncien Rgime et la R volution (Paris, 1952), whereTocqueville also outlines a comparison to Islam (89).

5. Jules Monnerot was one of the few earlier researchers to take Islam as a of comparison: Totalitarianisms originality in comparison with tyranny, sacralization of the political; it presents itself as a secular and conquering reliof the Islamic type: lack o f distinction between the political, religiouseconomic concentrated and above all undened power Sociologie du


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Phi li ppe Burr in

Varga, La gense du national-socialisme,A nnales dhistoi re conomique et soci ale 9 (1937): 52946; cf. Peter Schttler,LucieVar ga: LesA utor i tsi nvi sibles:

U ne histor i enne au tr i chienne aux A nnales dans les annes tr ente (Paris, 1991);and D as Konzept der politischen Religionen bei Lucie Varga und FrBorkenau, in Ley and Schoeps, eds.,D er N ationalsoziali smus als poli t i scheReligion , 186205. An alternative concept that persisted was that of crypreligion. See C arl C hristian Bry,Verkappte Religionen (Gotha and Stuttgart,1924), who applied this term to Bolshevism, fascism andvlki sch anti-Semitism,along with theosophy, vegetarianism etc. Schoeps also used this expression al

with that of political religion.7. For Voegelin, this movement toward sacralization did not concern poli

alone. In fact, he called intramundane religion any aspect of worldly realwhich the value of a superior reality, aRealissimum is attributed (he wasprobably thinking of the sacralization of other domains of social life sucscience or art). Political religion is therefore just one case of its kind: a usdistinction that is overshadowed by the notion of temporal religion or se

religion preferred by Raymond Aron. See D ietmar H erz, D ie politiscReligionen im Werk Eric Voegelins, in Maier, ed.,Total i tar i smus und Poli -t i sche Religionen, 191210.

8. I quote from the French translation:Les reli gions poli ti ques (Paris, 1994),26. Before Voegelin, Carl Schmitt had expressed the idea that the conceptsmodern politics were actually secularized theological concepts ; seePolitische Theologie: Vier K api tel zur Lehre der Souverni tt (Berlin, 1922).

9. Jean-Pierre Sironneau,Scular i sat i on et r eli gionspoli t i ques (La H aye, 1982).10. See Danile H ervieu-Lger,La r eli gion pour mmoi re (Paris, 1993), chaps.

1 and 2.11. Some of these elements are mentioned by Maier, Totalitarismus u

Politische Religionen, 398ff.12. Lavenir des religions sculires,La France Libre, JulyAug. 1944,

reprinted in Raymond Aron,H istoi re et poli t ique: Textes et tmoignages (Paris,

1985), 370.13 Sironneau Scular i sat ion et reli gions poli t i ques 521


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Political Religion

16. I t is even more important to avoid speaking of a transfer or dispment of the sacred, as if the sacred were a xed substance that attaches itse

different objects in different epochs.17. Between an approach that can be summed up as stating that all is relig

or able to contain the religious, and another according to which religion is what society considers as such, H ervieu-Lger proposes a third way whconsists of dening the religious in an ideal-type fashion. This is an intellectusatisfying approach, but it is too general to be meaningful. If we can desigas religion all ideological, practical and symbolic disposition, by which

(individual and collective) consciousness of belonging to a specic line of bis constituted, maintained, developed and controlled, would nationalism then be a religion? SeeLa reli gion pour mmoi re, 119.

18. Thomas Luckmann, Shrinking Transcendence, Expanding ReligionSociological A nalysi s 50, no. 2 (Summer 1990): 12738.

19. See Juan Linz, D er religise G ebrauch der Politik und/oder dpolitische G ebrauch der Religion: Ersatzideologie gegen Ersatzreligion,

Maier, ed.,Totalitarismus und politische Religionen, 12954.20. We know that for Max Weber the rationalization of the world can evo

a new demand for prophetic meaning. See Jean Sguy, Rationalisatmodernit et avenir de la religion chez Max Weber,A rchivesdesSci encessoci al es des R eligions 61, no. 1 (Jan.Mar. 1986): 12738.

21. See in particular D . G . C harlton,Secular R eligions in France, 18151870 (London, 1963).

22. C f. D avid E. Apter, Political Religion in the N ew Nations, in C lGeertz, ed.,Old Societi es and N ew States (Glencoe, 1963), 87ff.

23. George Mosse,The N at ional i zati on of t heM asses: Poli t i cal Symboli sm anM ass M ovement s in Germany fr om the N apoleoni c Wars through the Third Rei(New York, 1975).

24. Maier, ed.,Totalitarismus und politische Religionen, 16768.25. For the Russian case see, for example, the vastly different studies of Nic

Berdiaev, Les sources et le sens du communi sme r usse (Paris, 1951), and MosheLewin La formation du systme sovi ti que (Paris 1987)


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Phi li ppe Burr in

28. This in no way implies having to choose between political religion totalitarianism. Totalitarianism sheds light on the mechanisms of power

forms of domination, while political religion aims at the system of beliefs, riand symbols that establish and articulate this domination. Totalitarianemphasizes the modernity of phenomena, particularly the techniques of powwhile political religion draws attention to a long-term perspective and historical sediment and modern reapplication of fragments of a religious cultfor political purposes.

29. This discussion is limited to political phenomena in the realm

C hristianity. For Maoist C hina, see Jiping Zuo, Political Religion: The C athe Cultural Revolution in China,Sociological A nalysi s 52 (Spring 1991):99110.

30. C f. Marc Lazars stimulating article, C ommunisme et religion,Stphane Courtois, Marc Lazar and Shmuel Trigano, eds.,R igueur et passion: M langes offer ts en hommage A nnie K r i egel (Paris, 1994), 13973. WhereasLazar, fo llow ing H ervieu-Lger, ut ilizes these axes to construct an ideal typ

religion that will enable him to discern the religious dimension of communiI consider them as elements that shape, q uite independently, the political no than the religious.

31. C laude Lefort, Permanence du thologico-politique? inEssai s sur le poli t i que (X I X eX X e sicles) (Paris, 1986), 251300. For Lefort, as opposed toSchmitt and Voegelin, the political-theological appears only in situations whdemocracy fails. For an example of borrowing and recycling, see Ernst

Kantorowicz, Mourir pour la patrie (Pro Patrio Mori) dans la pense politmdivale, inMourir pour la patrie et autrestextes (Paris, 1984) 10541.

32. As Carl Jung said in London in April 1939: We do not know whetHitler is going to found a new Islam. (He is already on the way; he is Mohammed. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They all drunk with a wild god.)The collected Worksof C. G. Jung,vol. 10, Civiliza- ti on i n Tr ansi ti on (Princeton, 1970), 281.

33. Some of these researchers were Voegelins students (Klaus Vondung aC laus-E Brsch) or cite him (U riel Tal Michael Ley)


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Political Religion

37. See Roger Griffin,The N ature of Fasci sm (London, 1991).38. H ervieu-Lger,R eligion pour mmoi re , 228.

39. Voegelin, Lesreligionspolitiques , 95.40. See Wolfgang Phlmann, Beobachtungen zur jdisch-christlich

Apokalyptik und zur apokalyptischen G eschichtsdeutung im D ritten ReichK erygma und D ogma 37, no. 2 (Apr. 1991): 16072.

41. [Schoeps], D er Nationalsoz ialismus als verkappte Religion.42. Estimating that the Jew served as an integrating element for the pop

community of the Nazis, Neumann wrote in 1942: The internal polit

function will therefore always prohibit the total extermination of the Jews. enemy cannot and should not disappear. Franz Neumann,Bhmoth: Structure et pratique du national-socialisme (Paris, 1987), 129.

43. As some Christian observers perceived: cf. Richard Karwehl, a disciplKarl Barth, Politisches Messiastum: Zur Auseinandersetzung zwischen Kirund Nat ionalsozialismus,Zwi schen den Zei ten (1931): 256; and RomanoGuardini,D er H ei lbri nger : I n M ythos, Of fenbarung und Poli ti k (Zrich, 1946),

39.44. With regard to H itlers religiosity, see the small collection of quotati

by Manfred Ach and C lemens Pentrop,H i tler s R eligion: Pseudoreli giseElementeim nat ionalsozial i sti schen Sprachgebrauch (Munich, 1977); and FriedrichH eer, D er Glaube des A dolf H i tl er : A natomi e einer poli ti schen Reli giosi(Munich, 1968). On the relationship between men of the church(es) anNazism, see Gary Lease,Odd Fellows in the Politics of Religion, Modernism

N ational Soci ali sm and German Judai sm (Berlin and New York, 1995).45. See U riel Tal, Chri sti ans and Jews in Germany: R eli gion, Poli ti cs an

I deology i n the Second R eich, 18701914 (Ithaca and London, 1975); KlauScholder, D ie K i rchen und das D r i tt e R ei ch,vol. 1, Vorgeschichte und Zeit der I l lusionen 19181934 (Frankfurt/Main, 1977).

46. See Robert A. Pois,N ational Sociali sm and the Reli gion of N atur(London and Sydney, 1986); and Josef Ackermann,H einr i ch H immler alI deologe (G tt ingen, 1970).

47 See Klaus Scholder Judaism and Christianity in the Ideology and Pol


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Phi li ppe Burr in

49. See U riel Tal, Aspects of C onsecration of Politics in the Nazi Era,Kulka and Mendes-Flor, eds.,Judai sm and Chri sti ani ty under the I mpact o

N ational Soci ali sm,6365; and On Structures of P olitical Theology and Myin G ermany Prior to the H olocaust, in Yehuda Bauer and N athan Rotenstreds., The H olocaust as H istor i cal Exper i ence (New York, 1981): 4374.

50. See in particular Klaus Vondung,M agie und M anipulat i on: I deologischeK ul t und poli ti sche R eli gion des N ati onal sozi ali smus (Gttingen, 1971); and foran example of an analysis of H itlers discourse, see H ubert C ancik, Wir jetzt eins: Rhetorik und Mystik in einer Rede H itlers (Nrnberg, 11.9.1936)

in Gnter Kehrer, ed.,Zur Religionsgeschichte der Bundesrepubli k D eutschland(Munich, 1980), 1348.

51. See, for example, the importance H immler attributes to this inDiscours secrets (Paris, 1978), 70, 142.

52. As noted by Richard Karwehl, Politisches Messiastum, 540.53. See H immlers guidelines for the education of the SS, in Ackerma

H einr i ch H immler als I deologe , doc. 14, pp. 259ff.

54. For example, in the Posen speech of 6 Oct 1943 before theR eichslei ter and the Gauleiter , in H immler,D iscours secrets , 168.

55. See Brigitte Nagel,D ie Welt ei slehre: I hre Geschi chte und ihre R oll e i mD r i tt en Reich (Stuttgart, 1991).

56. See Jackson Spielvogel and D avid Redles, H itlers Racial IdeolC ontent and Occult Sources,Simon Wi esenthal Center A nnual 3 (1986):22746.

57. Hannah Arendt,The Or igins of Total i tar i ani sm (New York, 1958), 426.58. See Raoul Girardet,M ythes et mythologies poli t i ques (Paris, 1986).59. Arendt, Origins , 376 (citing Alexandre Koyr), and 435ff.60. H immler, D iscours secrets , 169.61. Klaus Vondung,D ie Apokalypse in D eutschland (Munich, 1988).62. See in particular the works of Claus-E. Brsch, esp. his article A

judaismus, Apokalyptik und Satanologie: D ie religisen Elemente des nation

sozialistischen Antisemitismus,Zei tschri ft fr Religions- und Geistesgeschichte , no.2 (1988): 11333 See also Robert S WistrichH i tler s A pocalypse: Jews and t he


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Political Religion

James M. Rhodes,TheH itler Movement: A Modern Millenarian Revolution (PaloAlto, 1980).

65. Albert Speer, A u coeur du Troi si me Reich (Paris, 1971), 79.66. Stern, H itler , 34.67. See Ekkehard H ieronimus, D ualismus und G nosis in der vlkisch

Bewegung, in Jacob Taubes, ed.,R eligionstheor i e und poli t i sche Theologie , vol.2, Gnosi s und Poli ti k (Munich, 1984), 8289.

68. Michael Ley,Genozid und H ei lserwar tung: Zum nat ionalsoziali sti scheM ord am europi schen Judentum (Vienna, 1993).

69. C f. Manfred Voigts, H itler als Messias,Zei tschr i ft fr R eligions- undGei stesgeschichte 48, no. 2 (1996): 17278.

70. See in particular the speech of 30 Jan. 1942, inD er gr odeutsche Freihei tskampf: Reden A dolf H i t ler s (Munich, 1943), 3:204.

71. See, for example,M onologe , 67 (23 Sept. 1941), and 84 (14 Oct. 1941).I t is true that H itler never praises science so much as when he evokes the futdestruction of C hristianity. H owever, the opposition he establishes betw

science and religion has to be integrated into the analysis.72. See ibid., 22829 (25 Jan. 1942).73. The high percentage of religious people in the SS, especially in the un

that played a decisive role in the genocide, suggests the hypothesis of a dynalink between political ideology and religious faith.

74. Reprinted in D enis H ollier,Le collge de sociologie (19371939) (Paris,1979), 11819.


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burrin political religion, the relevance of a concept

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