Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror

SACRED CAUSES: THE CLASH OF RELIGION AND POUnCS, FROM THE GREAT WAR TO THE WAR ON TERROR. Michael Burleigh. New York: Harper Collins, 2007. Pp. 557 + xviii. Hb. $27.95. Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton (Evangel University/Springfield, MO). When it comes to religious and political behavior, war is not a mere metaphor. Burleigh traces the labyrinthine integration and disintegration of these two great dimensions of human behavior during the past century. He organized the work to reflect ten events that dominate epochs in chronological order, beginning with the Great War. He supplements his text with 10 pages of pictures, 26 pages of detailed notes, 22 pages of a select bibliography, and a 22-page index. The preface is important. Burleigh established his goal as writing "a coherent history of modern Europe primarily organised (sic) around issues of mind and spirit." (p. xi). Thus, by design, the reader will find this treatise has a Eurocentric focus. Less obvious until reading a few chapters, the primary analysis of religious behavior deals with the role of the Vatican and its adherents within the major states of continental Europe. Chapters one to four examine events from World War I through World War II. As the author noted in the preface, this is not just a rehearsal of known events but an insightful look at the dilemmas faced by the church. For example, when church leaders spoke out against Nazi abuses, the German regime subjected Christians to more abuse than before. In addition, Burleigh examined the speeches and printed propaganda to show how the major totalitarian power brokers (Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Hitler) presented their party/government ethos using religious concepts, rituals, and narratives. From flags, to ceremonies, to linguistic concepts, people were led into a pseudo-religious state-worship that competed temporally and spatially with church programs and holidays already crippled by economic limitations, violence, and unrelenting intimidation. Increasingly, in the expanded Soviet Union, the churches struggled against Communist laws and constraints during the Cold War. Some countries fared better than others did but the atheistic states gradually increased their control over the promulgation of religion to such an extent that parents in East Germany were required to obtain written permission to discuss religion with their children during the evening. Not surprisingly, the author attributes much of the eventual demise of Communism to the persistent role of the Vatican. The author focused on Britain when reviewing the 1960s cultural revolution and the loss of religious influence. He notes a few events in the Americas before returning to the revengeful ravages of religious war in Northern Ireland. …