In Earthly Powers, Michael Burleigh surveys the roughly 125 years indicated by the book's subtitle and describes the ongoing struggle between the secular, political powers and the several traditional Christian churches - Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox for supremacy or at least a modus vivendi that state, church and society could support. He primarily covers France, Germany, Russia, Great Britain, Italy and the Hapsburg Empire. Over the decades in scope his narrative moves from the French Revolution to the Restoration Period, the liberal monarchies, absolutist monarchies, liberal republicanism, unification of Italy and Germany, the Polish situation and status of the church in each context.

Burleigh also covers the emergence of the "social question" and the various responses from utopian socialists, Marxian socialists, liberal theologians, traditional theologians, secular thinkers and the political heavyweights and lightweights of the periods.

Burleigh's study is comprehensive in scope and his mastery of the literature is impressive, He combines erudition and a facility for narrative not generally associated with academic historians and displays a dry wit and gift for irony that he occasionally summons to puncture the pretensions of thinkers past and present. It is fascinating to see how the responses of the churches to the state shift with changes in regime or at least changes in which party held the upper hand. Even more interesting are the several serious attempts made by the secular left to substitute a political religion around the state and its ethos to replace the religiously inspired beliefs, norms and customs of the ordinary workers, peasants, artisans and the middle class. This effort extended in several cases to actually producing a secular catechism in a Q&A format in imitation of the Catholic Church.

If you have ever wondered why the Catholic Church has "enjoyed" a reputation as a patron of royalism and reaction and as an implacable enemy of liberalism and republicanism Burleigh's narrative supplies numerous examples of overt aggression committed by the left when in power, particularly, in ostensibly Catholic countries like France, that show that the Church's hostility was frequently well earned.

As the the 19th century drew towards its close the nationalist trends that would explode in the World Wars of the 20th century included the concept of asserting the identification of particular nation states and political regimes with the historical mission of the Christian churches by both theologians and statesmen to the detriment of both church and state.

I look forward to tackling Burleigh's work on the historic roots of terrorism, Blood & Rage, and recommend Earthly Powers to all who have any interest in the competing claims of church and state in Western history. ( )

I can't say I liked this one. It provides a good history of the century or so between the French Revolution and the Great War, but the tone of the book is often more judgmental than analytical, hinting at the author's biases without providing any explanations for them. His overarching point that nationalistic and ideological movements are effectively religions is, I think, a stretch. Yes, they are religion-like. When they gain power, they exhibit some of the worst characteristics of religions. They become dogmatic. They persecute (and sometimes execute) dissenters. They develop rites, rituals, slogans, and holidays. They indulge in propaganda and indoctrination. They idolize their leaders and honor their martyrs.... But religion requires something in addition to all that. It needs to have some mystical, ethereal, supernatural, magical, or metaphysical aspect. I'm not sure things like the French Revolution or various nationalistic movements have enough of these to qualify.

What is interesting is a point the author does not make. Regardless of how noble, how insightful, or how enlightened the founding principles of a movement may be, when it gains followers and influence, it degenerates to become, well, religion-like. This may be an effect of something inherent in human behavior. People, as individuals, can exhibit clear, logical thinking, at least on specific tasks for short periods. But in groups, and over time, insanity reigns. Despite our pretenses, humans are not rational animals. ( )

The period covered by Michael Burleigh’s book is a fascinating one. Eric Hobsbawm’s works described it as the Ages Of Revolution, Capital and Empire, reflecting the startling economic, social and political changes of the period. This book zooms in on the conflicts and alliances between politics and religion, and the way that religion was challenged and to some extent usurped by post Enlightenment ideas. There are some fascinating ideas within. The main problems with the book are the sometimes turgid prose, and (perhaps a reflection of the scope of subject) the assumptions of prior knowledge about terms and events which are sometimes not fully explained. Additionally Burleigh does tend to wander around without a central thesis or strong structure, and in a few sections the reader is left wondering how the material relates to the story as a whole.
As Burleigh explains in the introduction the starting point in writing the book was as a study of political religions. Initially he planned to follow the breadcrumbs from the Jacobins of the French Revolution through the rise of Marxism, Bolshevism, Fascism and National Socialism. Somewhere along the way the scope broadened and the discussion of the twentieth century totalitarianisms was deferred to the next volume. Some precursors, in the form of Marxism and the extreme rightists Charles Maurras and Paul Anton de Lagarde.
Burleigh does well in keeping some structure and enough specific interest - often intellectual and philosophical history can be a bit dry. He evokes some of the background of the key individuals along the way which prevents things becoming too esoteric. We learn of Wagner’s “remorseless quest for money, best symbolised by his wife Cosima hauling off bags of coins when banknotes were not forthcoming” and that the abbe Claude Fauchet was the “proud owner of a soutane [a cassock] rent by shot during the storming of the Bastille”. Yet at times the book was hard going. Often issues and events are mentioned with insufficient background. Burleigh claims that “The Chartist crisis contributed to the formation of an Anglican grouplet” without ever explaining what the Chartist crisis was. My Kindle was extremely useful in explaining the wide variety of anachronistic and non-English terms invoked without explanation, however this did disrupt the flow of the book. The main area for improvement in readability would be in trimming and reorganising some of his sentences. Sentences such as “Since Roman Catholics were primarily attached to the universal Church, they had difficulties in regarding the nation as the highest form of human community that God had established, something which they had in common with an Enlightenment belief in human universality, however much they may have despised and feared other aspects of that variegated project” just contain too many ideas. I often had to reread to remind myself where we had started.
I did gain some valuable insights however, and enjoyed Burleigh’s opinion gently sprinkled through the book. He takes a fairly dim view of the reality of the French revolution as well as anticlericalist movements such as the Kulturkampf. His diversion into the sectarian terrorist violence in tsarist Russia has “assumed ghastly saliency in a world where religions fanatics crash hijacked aircraft into skyscrapers”. This diversion - he himself admits that it could be seen as an “eccentric digression” does come across as one. Although the discussion in chapter 7 of Sacred Violence in Russia is fascinating I struggled to find anything especially ‘religious’ or antireligious in the examples in the chapter. I did enjoy his exposition of the contradictions and idiosyncrasies of Russian revolutionaries, mostly evoked by Burleigh through literature. His wonderful quote from Dostoevsky’s The Possessed neatly captures the arrogance of the utopian idealist who wants to overthrow the old order; ‘I am perplexed by my own data,’ he says at one point, ‘and my conclusion is a direct contradiction of the original idea with which I start. Starting from unlimited freedom, I arrive at unlimited despotism. I will add, however, that there can be no solution of the social problem but mine.’
The section on the Industrial age is interesting, with discussion ranging from utopian movements such as Robert Owen’s integration of home, spiritual and working life to Methodism (“never simply a creed designed to discipline an industrial workforce, a charge routinely made by modern British academic apologists for a political religion that preferred to discipline workers by means of Arctic concentration camps”). One senses a certain intolerance of Marxism!
One of the central themes of the book is the conflict between Nationalism and the more ‘Internationalist’ Catholicism. Burleigh points out that “Nationalism was the most pervasive and potent Church to emerge during the nineteenth century”. Politics is full of contradictions however. Burleigh states that “since Roman Catholics were primarily attached to the universal Church, they had difficulties in regarding the nation as the highest form of human community that God had established, something which they had in common with an Enlightenment belief in human universality, however much they may have despised and feared other aspects of that variegated project”. Yet often the French republic was very hostile to Catholicism at various parts of the twentieth century. They also suffered at German hands under Bismarck, although that regime had little sympathy for most Enlightenment values.
The book ends with the hideous First World War. This was marked by the invocation of God on both sides. Kaiser Wilhelm had a bizarre belief in his unique relationship with God, while in the UK an Anglican priest pronounced “‘We are fighting, not so much for the honour of our country, as for the honour of God. Not only is this a Holy War, it is the holiest war that has ever been waged…This truly is a war of ideas. Odin is ranged against Christ, and Berlin is seeking to prove its supremacy against Bethlehem.’’
Overall the book provides a sense of the decline in Christianity through the century, especially amongst the new working classes. At times religion is actively suppressed in the name of rationality, or more cynically to suppress any perceived internationalist threat to new nations. Both Germany and Italy feared the disloyalty of those who hearkened to the word of the Pope. Most fascinating are the hints at elements which hinted at the direction of Germany in the twentieth century. Burleigh provides an answer (undoubtedly to be expanded upon in the next volume) to those who cannot answer how Nazism could take root in a supposedly civilised Christian nation. He points out the popularity of individuals such as Adolf Stoecker who exemplified “the extent to which Protestantism had become polluted with antisemitism and chauvinism, at the expense of traditional Christian values”. However even more importantly the middle classes were distancing themselves from the traditional church, leaning towards “a vulgar scientism” and the power of the individual. Even in traditional Germany ruled by a monarchy and by the conservative Bismarck these Enlightenment values gained credence. This undermines to some extent the idea that Germany’s twentieth century fate can be explained by it missing out on the Enlightenment. I look forward to seeing how Burleigh develops his ideas in the next volume [b:Sacred Causes: The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror|415583|Sacred Causes The Clash of Religion and Politics, from the Great War to the War on Terror|Michael Burleigh|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347449927s/415583.jpg|1782307].

Note on the Kindle edition: annoyingly the illustrations were omitted, and all the footnotes were just numbers, not hyperlinks. Publishers - please up your game! ( )

Natuurlijk zeer breed overzicht, maar erg tendentieus: Burleigh wil per se bewijzen dat religie na de Franse Revolutie niet dood was. In die zin zeker verdienstelijk als correctie op het soms overheersende beeld, maar hij verwaarloost daardoor een aantal andere thematieken (zoals de conflictueuze houding met wetenschap). Tussendoor laatdunkende commentaar tegen politiek correcte denken en modernistische architectuur. ( )

Zoals in de meeste historische werken bevat dit boek weinig boodschappen voor het heden, schrijft Burleigh. Het tegendeel is uiteraard waar. Het boek is nog het meest een lange, historische voetnoot bij de debatten over normen en waarden, bezielende verbanden en dergelijke die Nederland en een groot aantal andere landen sinds de aanslagen van 11 september bezighouden.
In zijn inleiding komt zelfs Rita Verdonk, voormalig minister van Integratie en Vreemdelingenzaken, ter sprake die nieuwe Nederlanders middels een videotape met bollenvelden, Willem de Zwijger, molens en topless vrouwen kennis van de Nederlandse mentaliteit wil laten opdoen. Het is een zuiver voorbeeld van wat Burleigh ‘burgerreligie’ noemt.
Lees verder.... ( )