Re‐enchanting Europeans: Michael Burleigh and Political Religion Theory

Abstract

After winning the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction with his The Third Reich: a New History, Michael Burleigh turned his attention to the wider question raised by that book: the history of political religion. Focusing on Europe from circa the French Revolution to the present day, the two volumes Earthly Powers and Sacred Causes seek to examine in detail this phenomenon – the former offering a long nineteenth-century finishing with the First World War, while the latter progresses the debate on to 2006 via the rise of fascism and the tragic events of 9/11. The central thesis put forward by these books comes across as a conservative one: due to the waning of traditional religions and the rise of an industrial modernity in which rights are more likely to be asserted than duties, the political and cultural space for ideologies masquerading as religions, i.e. political religions, opens up, leading to phenomena such as the Third Reich and Stalinism. Burleigh clearly has an axe to grind here. To cite some examples: the decline of traditional religious systems, especially Catholicism, is lamented; the issue of political rights dominating over political duties is critiqued; and a somewhat grouchy attack on the political Left in academia and society at large as a sign of modern decadence in intellectual spheres is repeatedly forwarded. It is also worth noting that the books are written for a wider readership, rather than a limited academic audience, targeting the market that, in recent times, has also been addressed by books such as Richard Overy’s The Dictators: Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russia and Robert