Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, from the French Revolution to the Great War

By Michael Burleigh

Book Overview

In this masterful, stylish, and authoritative book, Michael Burleigh gives us an epic history of the battles over religion in modern Europe. Examining the ways in which politics and religion have influenced each other over the last two hundred years, he reveals that throughout history the two realms have interacted in complex and sometimes lethal ways -- just as they still do today. The overall effect was a widespread increase in secularism and a demystification of the power of politics. With dazzling scope, Burleigh encompasses the philosophies of the Enlightenment and the influence of thinkers like Maistre and Bonald and Lamennais, painters like Zoffany and David, the Catholic Emancipation hero O'Connell, as well as the pseudo-religious aspects of Marxism. While the nineteenth century saw the replacement of the confessional by the liberal state, it also saw the birth of ideological fanaticisms that would achieve enormous power in the twentieth century. As the state began to colonize areas of existence where it previously hadn't ventured, it laid the foundations for both the soft totalitarianism of the modern bureaucratic welfare state and the more sinister police states of Communists and National Socialists. The most violent and repressive of these systems mimicked many of the functions of religion. Although liberalism was eventually restored to the continent in 1945 and 1989, many of the themes that Burleigh highlights here, notably the need for civic religions, have assumed a terrible relevance as Europe reacts to the threat of Al Qaeda. Earthly Powers is a magisterial history that sheds new light on the momentous struggles between church and state, from the French Revolution to the totalitarian movements of the twentieth century. Written with astonishing breadth and sophistication, this is a uniquely powerful portrait of one of the great tensions in modern history, one that continues to be played out on the world stage today.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060580933
• ISBN13: 9780060580933
• Release Date: February 2006
• Publisher: Harper
• Length: 544 Pages
• Weight: 1.83 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Very well written

Burleigh is a master in this particular arena and asserts his command of the subject in this well written and well balanced book.

A brilliant read

This is one of the most brilliant explications of the contrast and conflict between religion and politics in Europe from 1800 to the early 20th century. The authro delves deep into the underlying values of Europe in the 19th century as secularism swept the continent and unleashed terrible things. This is groundbreaking research that explains, finally, the interplay between Darwining, biblical criticism and the way in which religion and secularism lead to both violence and peace. The French revolution was the ultimate secular crusade the war of 1914 marked the end of that period of secularization and the advent of the communist and fascist period that would arrive after 1922. A very interesting and grounbbreaking study. Easily readable, and brilliantly laid out, the argument is only half developed for this is part of a larger study, but this portion is the strongest. Seth J. Frantzman

An Excellent Historic Insight

The sources of the global disasters that define the previous century are very rightly the subject of investigation. If anything should be, they should be. The Great War was the worst case scenario come true....and it's aftermath, a continuation of the 20th century nightmare. Burleigh certainly has a pivotal subject. Linking religion to the Great War....and for me, to the two later nefarious secular religions of our recent past, is an important way of understading the danger of the essential volatility of this mix. When belief, loses its moorings in "the good", and becomes subsumed in evil, the consequences are terrible, as Burleigh demonstrates in his investigastion of the Catholic-Protestant contest.....and catastrophic, when applied to the misled nation state. In either scenario, history becomes a contest between vigorously convinced teams, who seek to impose upon the world their systems of belief and thought. My read is that Burleigh is clearly suggesting that this religious division was the nurturing environment for the Great War....and for me, the twin fiascos of the 20th century ideologies of the left and right. To recognize that the traditional, if flawed, center of western moral direction was in itself, divided against itself, and weakened, is an important historic insight....which makes all that followed, a logical consequence. This thesis raises many and difficult questions for our 21st century world, which I hope Mr. Burleigh, will develop in future writings. As an aside, I particularly enjoyed the discussion on the philosophes. These were men, like Franklin and Voltaire, who were always in search of answering that very first question of western philosphy: "What is Virtue?". The tragedy of religion and politics from the French Revolution to the Great War is that many of the powerful men, unelected and elected, answered this question very, very badly. Would that they would have behaved differently! Michael Burleigh's book is a good read....and a good historical thesis to consider for today's world.

A Fascinating Account of the Conflict Between the Churches and the Modern Political Religions.

_Earthly Powers: The Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe from the French Revolution to the Great War_ by British historian Michael Burleigh provides a fascinating history of the conflict which developed between the churches and the modernist political religions. Burleigh, whose previous work has focused on the Third Reich, builds upon the theories of émigré German philosopher Eric Voegelin, who argued that the modern day political religions constituted revivals of the Gnostic heresy. Voegelin was a conservative political philosopher who had escaped the German Third Reich and came to write on the political religions, especially communism and Nazism, the two great totalitarianisms of the Twentieth Century. Burleigh also notes the importance of Raymond Aron, who spoke of the "opium of the intellectuals" in their zeal for totalitarian systems. The use of the term "totalitarian" has proven problematic for many historians, particularly Marxists who seem to believe that communism did not constitute the sort of evil to be found in Nazism (the universal "bad guy"). Burleigh rejects these Marxist notions arguing instead that totalitarianism remains a useful category. What this book does provide is a fascinating account of the various political conflicts brought about by the coming secularization of the preceding centuries from the French revolution onwards. Burleigh begins by discussing the utopian schemes of Dominican friar Tommaso Campenella as a precursor to his discussion of the coming political religions. This sort of utopian dreaming was to crop up again and again during the coming centuries. Burleigh next turns his attention to the "Age of Reason, Age of Faith", showing the conflict that developed between the Gallican church and the Jesuits. In particular, Burleigh references the works of Pascal and other Jansenists, who he argues came to resemble Deists in their belief that God had turned away from a fallen world. Burleigh also discusses the Philosophes and the conflict between them and the Ancien Regime. In the subsequent chapter, Burleigh provides a detailed account of the French revolution. Here we see firsthand the crimes committed in the name of "Reason" by the satanic revolutionaries. Burleigh considers two painters, who played an important role in the creation of the myth of the revolution: Johan Zoffany and Jacques-Louis David. Burleigh also explains the role of philosophers such as Rousseau in the revolution but also conservatives such as Burke and Toqueville. Burleigh also explains the role of the Jacobins and the subsequent role of the church in the creation of the counter-revolution. In particular, Burleigh considers two counter-revolutionary thinkers, both important traditionalist Catholics: Joseph de Maistre and Louis de Bonald. Burleigh also discusses the turns in the thought of Lammenais who began as a traditionalist opponent of the revolution but later embraced it and left the church entirely. In additi

Political Religion

While doing his research on the Third Reich, British historian Michael Brurleigh became interested in the religious character of totalitarianism. In "Earthly Powers," he traces the history of European secularization from the French Revolution to the First World War. He finds that the 19th century march toward secularization was not as inexorable as legend would have it. Indeed, Europeans were very ambivalent about secularization. The totalitarianisms of the 20th century - Fascism, Nazism, and Communism - made use of many of the rituals of established religions. They used festivals, spectacles, monuments, statues, loyalty oaths, and so forth to satisfy the religious impulse in societies in which religion had been banished. In his account of the French Revolution, Burleigh shows how the Jacobin suppression of the church led to the cult of nationalism that followed. The Jacobins were not opposed to religion per se, they were opposed specifically to the Catholic Church for being partner in the throne-and-altar tyranny. They did see the need for a civil religion to garner loyalty to the state. In the process they established various cults and rituals that mimiced religious ceremonies. The Jacobins were the precursors of Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini. The French Revolution, according to Burleigh, secularized religion. Religion went from "world-transcendent" to "world-immanent," a distinction he borrows from Eric Voegelin, an early 20th century Austrian writer who had written a book called "The Political Religions." The new "creed" was no longer other-worldly, it was the nation-state, and the new god was no longer God, it was the new secular leader. Burleigh pulls together many historical strands showing how both Protestants and Catholics negotiated the uneasy relationship between church and state throughout the 19th century. He gives a fascinating account of how secular forces in France's Third Republic and Bismark's Germany tried to eradicate religion from their educational systems. At the same time, he shows how O'Connell of Young Ireland and Mazzini of Young Italy used religious imagery to attract followers to their respective nationlist causes. And he goes on to show how utopian thinkers such as Saint Simon, Fourier, Comte, and Marx - to mention the most obvious - were actually prophets of political religions. The interplay between politics and religion is particulary relevant to our current age. Although it is safe to say that the Europeans have put the religious impulse, political or otherwise, to rest after the totalitarianisms of the 20th century; they now firmly belong to the secular camp, in the traditional sense of the term. However, since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, Islam is rapidly becaming the toxic brew of religion and politics in our time, not only in the Middle East but in the West as well. Volumes have already been written about the Islamic threat in Europe, and as this book reminds us, it should not be take