Religious rejection of politics

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There are several religious perspectives that reject any involvement in politics. In Christianity certain organizations deem Christ's statements about the kingdom not being of the world to mean that earthly politics can or should be rejected. In certain cases Christian groups may reject the "world" in general as is the case with most Amish, some Hutterites, and related movements. In principle the Exclusive Brethren also reject the world, but in practice some are said to be politically active. Likewise some Amish have been active on political issues concerning agriculture and same-sex marriage opposition.

There are also Eastern schools of philosophy with a similar view. Many Taoists believed politics was insincere or artificial and had a dim view of the state. They favored withdraw from politics in favor of life of contemplation in nature. Many Chinese politicians have adopted this way of life on retirement. Rejection of the world also occurs in some ascetic schools of Hinduism or Buddhism.

In other religious systems it can relate to a rejection of nationalism or even the concept of nations. In certain schools of Islamic thinking nations are a creation of Western imperialism and ultimately all Muslims should be united religiously in the ummah. Therefore Muslims should be in hijra as nations, in the Western sense, are basically deemed apostate. There is some aspects of the early days of the radical Takfir wal-Hijra that hint at this. Likewise various Christian denominations reject any involvement in national issues considering it to be a kind of idolatry called statolatry. Most Christians who rejected the idea of nations have associated with the Christian Left.

Lastly some religions do not specifically reject politics per se, but believe existing political systems are so inherently corrupt they must be ignored. In some respects the view of governments as apostate relates to that. Also in its early stages many in the Nation of Islam rejected the idea of voting as the US political system was rejected in strong terms. Although in recent decades this view has declined in popularity amongst them or been outright rejected.

In the United States a recent survey indicated that 2% of those who did not register to vote cited religious reasons.^[1] As it indicated 22% of Americans were not registered this could mean .44% of Americans do not register to vote for religious reasons. That said caution should be indicated as the figure is small enough to be strongly affected by the margin of error.