Politics as Religion. Max Weber. modernity.

[Mark Kohut]

In conclusion, it appears entirely legitimate to consider the
sacralization of politics a modern ieropahany, that is, a
manifestation of the sacred in modernity and to study civil and
political religions as new forms of religiosity that originated during
the modern era and belong to it.

Max Weber, who was very much the theoretician of disillusionment with
the modern world, wrote in 1890 that the ancients had not been
definitively banished but were to return in another form: “The ancient
gods, disenchanted and therefore transformed into impersonal powers,
rise from their graves and reassume the eternal struggle between them
in the hope of conquering the supremacy of life.”

The experience of totalitarian religions authorizes us to argue that
politics was the battlefield where the new gods fought for supremacy
over men during the twentieth century. Those who witness the advent of
totalitarian religions were certainly convinced of this, and they
considered such religions to be a deadly danger to humanity.


http://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/essays/gentile-religion.html
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