Political Religion: a Concept and its Limitations
This article presents political religion as a concept for studying Communism, Fascism and National Socialism, which display significant elements of traditional religion, such as rites of purgation, penitence and renewal, cultic patterns of behaviour, and heresy. It then considers the history of the...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
2007
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| In: |
Totalitarian movements and political religions
Year: 2007, Volume: 8, Issue: 1, Pages: 5-16 |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | This article presents political religion as a concept for studying Communism, Fascism and National Socialism, which display significant elements of traditional religion, such as rites of purgation, penitence and renewal, cultic patterns of behaviour, and heresy. It then considers the history of the concept, paying particular attention to the light thrown on the phenomenon by the analysis of Nazism offered by the writer Franz Werfel in 1932. This argued that the roots of its appeal lay in the solution it seemed to offer to the contemporary socio‐political crisis of Weimar, which was widely experienced as a personal crisis of meaning and identity. For believers this imparted a redemptive, religious aura to the entire Nazi movement. Finally, it questions the legitimacy of ‘political religion’ as a concept, asking whether it can truly be used to explain or illuminate political phenomena without distorting the basic idea of religion in the process. †Translated by Jodi Bruhn. |
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| ISSN: | 1743-9647 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Totalitarian movements and political religions
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/14690760601121614 |