ABSTRACT
The public interest1 in a narrower definition of the concept and nature of
political religions is definitely due to the totalitarian movements that have so emphatically marked the face of the twentieth century. The political
religions of pre-modern societies, by contrast, seem to have been securely
archived in the respective specialist disciplines. Under these circumstances,
the question as to the totalitarian implications of the sun-cult of Akhenaton
or the Geneva theocracy of Calvin might scarcely mobilise the combat
battalions of political correctness; they are more likely to be treated
controversially in the responsible specialist organs. That these pre-modern
societies formed theocracies that – en miniature – underwent every variation of wars of faith conceivable might belong among the pieces of knowledge
that arouse no further notice. Scientific concern with the political religions
of totalitarian movements of the modern era, by contrast, cannot work
undisturbed in an encapsulated space of the archives of specialist
disciplines; instead, it must always expect a public that reacts to scientific
problems and results with praise or censure, critique or agreement, outrage
or judgement. The explosiveness of the scientific study of the modern tota-
litarian movements and their political religions rests not so much with the data submitted and their incorporation into comprehensive theories; it is
based, rather, upon a matter that is seldom openly confessed and extends
far beyond the limits of the cultural sciences. What is involved is the problem
of the religious justification and motivation of the monstrous crimes that
these totalitarian movements practised with the help of institutions and
technologies of the utmost modernity. Moral judgements, allocations of
guilt and exonerations for those who commit religiously motivated and
legitimated crimes are indivisibly tied to the researching of problems in this area. In this context, both condemnations and exonerations are bound up
with one’s position;2 they are, therefore, dependent upon value judgements
and the foundations of faith that underpin them. Representatives of a uni-
versalism of human rights also judge in terms of their own position: in
terms, namely, of their faith-conviction that there are transculturally valid
standards of value that must obtain universally. It is necessary, therefore, to
answer the question as to whether the monstrous crimes that were planned
and executed by these totalitarian movements under explicit invocation of
their ideological postulate of destruction were in fact brought about and driven on by religious basic motives. Or was it only perversions of religious
faith that were involved? If this were the case, then such perversions would
have to be regarded as illusory legitimations and be eliminated from reli-
gious legitimation in the more narrow sense. Are the roots of the barbarian
inhumanity of modern totalitarian movements in fact religious, then? Did
the movements legitimate this inhumanity as a necessary deed in terms of
salvation history? Is there a religion of inhumanity, under the conditions of
modernity, which provides the technical means and prerequisites by which to let the crimes of the totalitarian movements penetrate into areas that
were hitherto inconceivable in the history of inhumanity? Stated differently:
would the crimes of the totalitarian movements also have been carried out if
those movements had not had at their disposal inner-worldly doctrines of
salvation that conveyed their adherents the certainty of belief that their
crimes were necessary and legitimate?
