The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics : Essays in Honour of Professor Stanley G. Payne

The emerging shape of the post Cold War world provides evidence that rather than diminishing, the profound intersection of political ideology and religious forms of belief is an ever more potent force in world affairs. This volume offers both theoretic underpinnings, and a comparative analysis that elucidates this potent and dangerous phenomenon. September 11th 2001 brought the entire question of religion's place in modern political ideology into sharp focus. Yet in effect this dysfunctional symbiosis had already been a feature of the international landscape for many decades. Scholars such as Eric Voeglin and Raymond Aron, to name but a few, delineated and assessed the way in which regime types such as Stalin's Soviet Union, Mussolini's fascist Italy and Hitler's Nazi Germany assumed quasi religious forms, substituting an omnipotent divine being with a corporeal and illuminated leader, as early as the 1920s and 1930s. But it is only recently that academic attention has returned with a vengeance to examine the manner in which revolutionary movements frequently adopt a religious form, or even hijack existing mainstream faiths in order to pursue a frequently brutal and violent political agenda based on sweeping social and individual transformation along the lines of official dogma and doctrine. This volume, dedicated to the great scholar of fascism and the Iberian world, Professor Stanley G. Payne, aims to emulate his spirit of enquiry by offering a new series of theoretical and case study analyses of the 'sacred' dimension of politics in the modern era. An international team of highly respected scholars examines the political religion and politicised religion concepts on a truly global basis, bringing together considerable knowledge and experience in one volume. Both the 'totalitarian' regimes of the mid-twentieth century and other political forms such as Castroism, Hindutva, Missiology and American Apocalypticism are all discussed in provocative and detailed essays. Together they offer readers the first ever comprehensive judgement on the continuing importance of the sacred within the political in the modern era Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction: The Evolutions and Convolutions of Political Religion....Pages 1-18 Front Matter....Pages 19-19 On the Heuristic Value of the Concept of Political Religion and Its Application....Pages 21-35 The Missiological Roots of the Concept of ‘Political Religion’....Pages 36-50 Is Castroism a Political Religion?....Pages 51-85 Front Matter....Pages 87-87 Fascism as the Expression of a Spiritual Revolution in Italy....Pages 89-106 What Insights Do We Gain from Interpreting National Socialism as a Political Religion?....Pages 107-118 Marxism—Leninism as a Secular Religion....Pages 119-142 Maoism in the Cultural Revolution: A Political Religion?....Pages 143-165 Front Matter....Pages 167-167 An Islamist Turkish Party’s Journey to Democracy and Modernity....Pages 169-177 Hindutva as a Political Religion: An Historical Perspective....Pages 178-220 The United States: Messianism, Apocalypticism, and Political Religion....Pages 221-257 Back Matter....Pages 258-291