ABSTRACT
Christian religion is typically understood to be about three things: first, belief in the supernatural, combined—in monotheist religions—with an imperative to obey the commands of God as relayed by the clergy; second, an exhortation to believers to take the moral law as their guide, loving one’s neighbor as oneself, as Christians put it; and third, creating and promoting a sense of community, both at the local level and at the national level, whether through ritual or through such things as cultural preservation and, in the case of nineteenth-century Poland, support (on the part of local priests, though not of the Holy See) for Polish insurgency against Russian rule. It is immediately obvious that the first and third of these functions are political. But the second function, promoting a concept of morality, is also deeply political, whether one considers the communist states, where authorities wanted to control moral education and the content of social morality or noncommunist states such as Poland, Croatia, or, for that matter, the United States, where Christian Churches have agitated against gay and lesbian rights and demanded that abortion be banned.
