Talk:Political religion

Statist religion

I agreed with the previous suggestion to rename this article "Statist religion", so I implemented it. I also agreed that the article needed attention, so I gave it some.

I have adjusted the article to make it more "political" than "statist" in nature. A political religion need not have the power of the state on its side. It can also be extreme adherence to any political dogma or group.Dogface 14:37, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

While the text is probably reads more like an encyclopedia article should, and while I've added some facts, I think there are still some serious problems. First of all, I think the article has lost track of the distinction statist religion and totalitarianism in general. Religion or statist indoctrination are certainly a tool of totalitarianism, but I think a lot of other totalitarian-related things have gotten mixed in here. Or maybe they are not really separable. In short, I guess some or all of the material here should be merged with totalitarianism and/or authoritarianism.

I suspect that it will probably require a subject expert or a substantial literature search to have an entire article's worth of information on the religious/dogmatic aspects of totalitarianism.

I also feel that this article, including the text I've written, makes statist religion and totalitarianism sound like a bad thing. Which of course, I think it is - but if so this runs afoul of Wikipedia's NPOV policy. It may also be that I'm describing the subject relatively objectively, but it's just so nasty I can't help feeling the article shows it in a bad light.

I agree with you. The biggest problem is smashing together the moralistic sentiments of the evils some regimes WITH a political religion did, and the actual substance and an object of academic research of the religious aspect in their politics. Scientific objectivity requires analytic precision on that. I intend to make a few changes on that (the small moralistic parts without any reference). FINginga (talk) 12:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Some input from people who have actually lived under one of the regimes named in the stubby case studies section would be incredibly helpful. -- Beland 05:20, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Let's be careful in fixing links to the civic religion redirect page. Some of them should point at statist religion, some at civil religion, and perhaps some elsewhere. And maybe some should be replaced by two links, one to each article. Michael Hardy 22:15, 7 Mar 2005 (UTC)

This article needs a mountain of work - at least it's under the right name now. ("Statist religion" is a neologism, as the tiny number of Google hits shows.) Rd232 13:31, 6 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wow

"Iraq (historical) [edit]

China [edit]

North Korea [edit]

Nazi Germany [edit]

Soviet Union (historical) [edit]

Japan (historical)"

Glad to know the only statist religions that ever existed were enemies of the glorious United States, whose current leader doesn't blend religion with his identity at all.

Genius, the leader of the glorious United States doesn't persecute people who disagree with him. And I'm not saying the U.S. doesn't promote an uber-patriotic culture, it's just not in the same way as say, oh, North Korea.--User:naryathegreat | (talk) 00:24, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

Arguably, it is much worse. Are you aware of the USA PATRIOT Act, for instance? Surely you have heard of the Religious right as well. Also, see the article on Dispensationalism. Luis Dantas 03:04, 23 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's an argument you can't win. We don't say the lotus blossoms bloomed better (oh but they do in North Korea) the year George Bush was elected in our country, and we don't force people to be Christian, or else we wouldn't even be hearing cases concerning the constitutionality of displaying the ten commandments. Honestly that's stupid. The Religious right is not some kind of uber-religious fascist organization. the Patriot Act is not quite the same as totalitarianism, I suppose the bill of rights is just something we make-believe with. You seem to be misunderstanding what goes on in North Korea, where you are FORCED to do these things. No one is forced to be part of the religious right or become a dispensationalist.-User:naryathegreat | (talk) 22:23, Mar 23, 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Dantas and disagree with Narya. This is not an article meant to preach or propagate an ideology, whether its american or not. It´s an article about a scientific field and has substance to be referenced to. FORCING something is´nt a criterion for a religion. FINginga (talk) 12:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

VfD Discussion

This article was recently nominated for deletion but kept by default of no consensus being reached. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Political religion for the archived discussion -- Francs2000 | Talk 15:40, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

A term is a term

A term is a term. The thing that the term refers to is not a term. A political religion is not a term. The term "political religion" is a term. Thus it makes no sense to begin by saying that a political religion is a term. Michael Hardy 00:48, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

True.

Come on though, there is no difference between a political ideology and a religion... they are the same thing!

If anything it's religion that is politics that co-opts faith!

87.114.3.143 (talk) 15:22, 27 November 2007 (UTC) Promsan

Accuracy?

"Quintessential examples are Marxism and Nazism, but totalitarianism is not a requirement"

Is this accurate? Marxism is not a totalitarian system by definition. 24.154.247.181 03:20, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Marxism could be validly considered an archetypal totalitarian system. All aspects of life are to be subjugated to "the revolution". All people are defined in terms of their relationship to "the proletariat" and "the revolution". All aspects of life in Marxist countries get re-organized according to "the revolution". If Marxism is not totalitarian, then Nazism is not totalitarian. Dogface 14:03, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Democracy could be validly considered an archetypal totalitarian system. All aspects of life are to be subjugated to "free elections". All people are defined in terms of their relationship to "representatives" and "accountability". All aspects of life in Democratic countries get re-organized according to "free elections". If Democracy is not totalitarian, then Nazism is not totalitarian. Lpetrazickis 15:32, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

I think my previous comment is a bit opaque and unconstructive. I don't think you'll get many arguments about Marxism-Leninism being a totalitarian system, but Marxism proper appeared in the early 19th century and wasn't tied to totalitarianism until ML came along. Totalitarianism relates to implementation, not philosophy -- Marxism may be unimplementable, but it doesn't call for secret police, camps for dissenters, and institutionalized fear.

It doesn't even call for a one-party state – the first thing Bolsheviks did after the October Revolution was hold an election. They lost with 28% of the final vote, so they disbanded the elected body. I don't think any of the original Russian revolutionaries initially intended to set up anything totalitarian. It just turned out that way. The rational thing would have been to abandon the impractical aspects of the philosophy, but they instead went for enforced ideological purity and called it Marxism-Leninism. That gets you totalitarianism.Lpetrazickis 15:51, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

All this theory is cute, but you really have to look at the way things turned out. You can't say ML isn't dictatorial in theory, when it's outcome is dictatorial. And saying that "the original Russian revolutionaries initially intended to set up anything totalitarian. It just turned out that way." is just disshonest. They might not have intended to set up a totalitarian state, but they did. It didn't "just turn out that way" by itself, they actively made it totalitarian. ArnoldPlaton (talk) 06:56, 23 April 2010 (UTC)

Catholicism and Freemasonry

Many of the original Church-State conflicts of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries were related to a much deeper conflict between Catholicism and Freemasonry. For instance, the Church has condemned Masons since 1738, and many prominent secularists such as Thomas Jefferson and Émile Combes have been Freemasons. It would not be a bad thing to mention this with relevant sources, the only problem being that any unexpected mention of Freemasonry is taboo. Also, I noticed that one major difference between American secularism and French/Turkish/Mexican secularism is that the US Grand Lodge masons are usually deists while the French/Turkish/Mexican Grand Orient masons are often agnostic/atheist. ADM (talk) 04:46, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Besmirch of DPRK ("North Korea")!!

North Korea does not possess a state religion this is total propaganda this article must updated to reflect accuracy instead of lie. Read here: Official DPRK Constitution Specifically: Article 68 Citizens have freedom of religious beliefs. This right is granted by approving the construction of religious buildings and the holding of religious ceremonies. If wikipedia hopes to be a source of information for the education of the proletariat it must gain an objectivity instead of mindlessly parroting talking points of the white house and western neo-con type interests. It seems many article are written by those working within the US government or hired lackeys thereof to turn wikipedia into a mouthpiece of lies if the quality could be improved to reflect facts than countries who seek to shield their citizens from lies could open access to this site and make it a more widely used resource. Someone please remove flase references to the DPRK from this article! — Preceding unsigned comment added by ProgressiveThinker (talk • contribs) 20:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The above is more bogus propaganda from North Korean trolls. I've already corrected several articles that they have infested. North Korean citizens have no religious freedom, in practise, whatsoever, so the whole premise of the above is nonsense. In any case, Progressive Thinker (!) has misread the article, which does not say that NK has a state religion, but that it is, like Nazi Germany, a state whose public focus is on worship of a leader figure as if he were some sort of deity. Thus, its public displays show an uncanny resemblance to the sorts of displays characteristic of religion. Interestingly, NK is also, like Nazi Germany, an explicitly racist state, one which classifies its citizens on the basis of perceived class loyalty, and does so not based on the performance or attributes of individuals, but rather on their having been born to a parent who was previously classified; so these supposed ideologically based types of citizenship are in fact immutable and inheritable, that is, they are, in effect racist. That doesn't seem to me like an example of Progressive Thinking. Theonemacduff (talk) 22:42, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Theonemacduff. The DPRK is just another totalitarian monarchy with a state religion. North Korea isn't even communistic so please don't talk about "education of the proletariat" before you actually have read the Communist Manifesto. RomanK79 (talk) 09:06, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Inclusion of US

I think the inclusion of the US in here, on the Fear section, seems very odd. I mean you have China, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and then America. One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just does not belong. If one reads the article, you can see that States does not match the aspects of a political religion in any significant way. It seems that according to whoever wrote it that using fear tactics for political use makes you a country with a political religion...which is obviously not true, or you may as well put every country in that section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.67.52.85 (talk) 15:28, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't meant for propaganda RomanK79 (talk) 08:59, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Scientific definitions and references

I made a few changes. Based on Academic discussion about the meaning of Political religion, few of which I added, I erased the parts about what some regimes WITH a (considered to have a) political religion have done in history and which didn´t have religious substance within. The modern utilization of mass-media, for example, does not count by any definition a criterion of religion. In that case the US would be a totalitarian political religion, which it is not. In any case, there seems to be a serious confusion, by some, between Totalitarianism and political religion. Both are topics of academic research, but they are DIFFERENT topics, with different concepts and some different researchers. This article is not about totalitarianism, it`s about political religion. The question of totalitarianism has to be taken on page Totalitarianism. FINginga (talk) 12:43, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

A notable change I made on the article was to remove a non-referential part on Fear, which did´nt seem to have a single link on religious aspect of politics, but instead a sort of patronizing, intentional mixing of totalitarianism and political religion as a part of preaching against Evil. FINginga (talk) 14:49, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Leninism

Regardless of the section on Leninism's neutrality, I don't think it has enough substantial information to warrant being included. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.32.59.16 (talk) 20:54, 16 April 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I'd favor a deletion of it since the intention of the USSR was partly a religion free society. RomanK79 (talk) 09:01, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Wrong link: Hans Maier

The link to Hans Maier takes you to a skeletal page on a Dutch sportsman, not the German political scientist. Doesn't appear to be a page devoted to the latter in any case, unless he got married and changed his name..... Theonemacduff (talk) 22:45, 11 September 2013 (UTC)

Kemalism

Kemalism is a political religion too.--85.110.220.225 (talk) 01:44, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Secular religion

Political religion and Secular religion are not just overlapping concepts but slightly differing terms for roughly the same concept, as readily conceded in the Origin section:

Other contributions on "political religion" (or associated terms such as "secular religion", "lay religion" or "public religion") were made by…

While Political religion seems to contain quite some WP:OR, it can be easily improved, while Secular religion is not much more than a stub, mostly overlapping wth what we already have here. PanchoS (talk) 20:56, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Other things being equal, from a purely editorial viewpoint, yes merge would be indicated by the topic similarity. OTOH, Political Islam, Christianity. Buddhism, etc. are the main things in the one, while the other is thetically secular. So either X Religion as a unifying name change prior to merge that can subsume these opposites or leaving separate IMO. Also side merges such as state religion and so forth should maybe be considered. 98.4.124.117 (talk) 02:59, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Oppose merge, in the that the secular scope is broader than the political; for example, "the view of love as our postmodern secular religion", "modern psychology", sport, and Olympism. Therefore, suggesting moving some of the political material (such as that related to communism), then linking the two pages more obviously ('about' template at the top). Klbrain (talk) 13:06, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

Support What if we merge the articles under the name Secular religion (broader concept) and have subsections for political religions? --Phonet (talk) 23:05, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Perhaps; the next problem I see is that historic political religions need not be secular: consider Religion in ancient Rome. In addition, the very name of secular religion smacks of an oxymoron, but, as ever, given that it is a term that has been used, it deserves to have its place in Wikipedias. So, happy to switch to a fence-sitting neutral. Klbrain (talk) 22:05, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

 Done Klbrain (talk) 13:23, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Typical aspects

The section of typical aspects is a good summary and it's giving a good definition key to my course work.

Where are all sources about it?

Cite-note 17 maybe doesnt tell that.

I tried to find Hans Maier but actually didnt find .

Ideocracy

What is the difference between political religion and Ideocracy? Crawiki (talk) 13:46, 23 October 2017 (UTC)