"Watch out for Homo religiosus (the religious species)"

The Vienna daily Der Standard reports on a conference about religion and the secular state in "Beim Homo religiosus wachsam sein" von Christoph Prantner 29.08.06:

„Der Homo christianus muss wachsam sein, wenn der Homo religiosus populär wird“, warnte indes der katholische Theologe Jürgen Manemann von der Universität Erfurt. Religion werde missbraucht, um kollektive Identitäten für politische Zwecke zu mobilisieren. Das Christentum sei im Übrigen auch durch Desäkularisierung bedroht.

Für die französische Philosophin Chantal Mouffe zeigte die Debatte, dass ein zentraler Vorzug der Demokratie auf dem Spiel steht: „Die Möglichkeit, den Konflikt zwischen dem Wir und den Anderen als einen Wettbewerb und nicht als Feindschaft zu begreifen.“ Werde das „Wir/die Anderen“-Thema von der politischen in die religiöse Sphäre transponiert, könne es nur noch absolute Gegnerschaft geben.

("The Homo christianus (Christian species) had better look out, if the Homo religiosus (religious species) becomes popular," warned the Catholic theologian Jürgen Manemann of Erfurt University. Religion would be misused, in order to mobilize collective identities for political goals". Besides, Christianity would also be threatened by de-secularization.

For the French philosopher Chantal Mouffem the debate shows that a central advantage of democracy is in play: "The possibility of taking that the conflict between We and Them as compeitition and not as enmity". If the We/Them theme is transported from the political to the religious sphere, there could be only absolute hostility".)

Obviously, secular ideologies like Nazism and Communism can and have been used to polarize populations into extremes. Religion is not the only sort of ideology that can serve that purpose.

But in America and Europe, religion is one sphere of life in which it is generally accepted, even by those who reject religion entirely, that fundamental theological assumptions are not subject to direct proof or disproof in the material world. We're already seeing with the postmodern propaganda efforts of the Cheney-Bush administration and the authoritarian Republican Party what consequences such a "faith-based" approach to politics can have in a present-day democracy.

It is not an American export that I could recommend to our European friends.

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