The Sacralisation of politics: Definitions, interpretations and reflections on the question of secular religion and totalitarianism

This article discusses the various historical and theoretical questions that characterise the relationship between religion and politics, and religion and totalitarianism. Given the complexity of this relationship, it limits itself to examining only certain aspects of it. In the first instance, it defines the concepts of the sacralisation of politics and totalitarianism, and examines only those aspects of the latter that connect it directly with lay religion. It does not, therefore, offer any comprehensive interpretation either of totalitarianism or of secular religion.1 Second, it subsequently provides a historiographical verification of these theoretical questions, and examines, by way of various key examples, how the religious dimension of totalitarianism during the interwar period has been perceived and interpreted.