Secular religion

Secular religion is a term that has been used to characterize Communism and other nontheistic communal belief systems.

Communism as a secular religion

In 1936 a Protestant priest referred explicitly to Communism as a new secular religion.[1] A couple of years later, on the eve of World War II, F. A. Voigt characterised both Marxism and National Socialism as secular religions, akin at a fundamental level in their authoritarianism and messianic beliefs[2] – as well as in their eschatological view of human History.[3] Both, he considered, were waging religious war against the liberal enquiring mind of the European heritage.[4]

After the war, the social philosopher Raymond Aron would expand on the exploration of communism in terms of a secular religion;[5] while A. J. P. Taylor, for example, would characterise it as "a great secular religion....the Communist Manifesto must be counted as a holy book in the same class as the Bible".[6]

Contemporary characterizations

The term secular religion is often applied today to communal belief systems – as, for example, with the view of love as our postmodern secular religion.[7] Paul Vitz applied the term to modern psychology, in as much as it fosters a cult of the self, explicitly calling "the self-theory ethic ... this secular religion".[8] Sport has also been considered as a new secular religion, particularly with respect to Olympism.[9] For Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic Games, belief in them as a new secular religion was explicit and lifelong:[10]

In more recent times, “Global Warming” has been referred to as a secular religion by physicists Roger Pielke Jr. and Richard Lindzen of MIT. [11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Gentile, p. 2
  2. ↑ F. A. Voigt, Unto Caesar (1938) p. 37
  3. ↑ Voigt, p. 17–20, p. 71 and p. 98–9
  4. ↑ Voigt, p. 203
  5. ↑ Aron, Raymond. The Opium of the Intellectuals. London: Secker & Warburg, 1957, pp. 265–294
  6. ↑ Quoted in Chris Wrigley, A. J. P. Taylor (2006) p. 229 and 202
  7. ↑ U. Beck/E. Beck-Gernsheim, The Normal Chaos of Love (1995) Chap. 6
  8. ↑ Paul C. Vitz, Psychology as Religion: The Cult of Self-worship (1994) p. 145
  9. ↑ H. Preuss/ K. Liese, Internationalism in the Olympic Movement (2011) p. 44
  10. ↑ B. W. Ritchie/D. Adair, Sport Tourism (2004) p. 1988
  11. ↑ http://www.jpands.org/vol18no3/lindzen.pdf Global Climate Alarmism and Historical Precedents, Richard Siegmund Lindzen Ph. D., Fall 2013.

Further reading