Christian anti-communism

Kirby, Dianne

doi:10.3898/175864314813903962

Cited by 15 publications

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“…), mainstream churches tend to sustain it as another opportunity to reaffirm their close ties with the nation and state. Yet the nationalist-populist movements of CEE seem to gravitate nowadays towards the global conservative trend where Christianity features as a moral and civilisational dimension rather than national-identitarian alone, a possible legacy of the Christian, anticommunist rhetoric that characterised Cold War politics (Kirby 2014). Poland and Hungary are presented as examples of this shift Mishtal 2015) while in Ukraine, Russia or Romania the Orthodox Churches remain closely entangled in state politics and national identity in ways that go beyond a simple instrumentalisation of religion (Köllner 2020;Laruelle 2020;Wanner 2020).…”

Section: Nationalism State and New Political Mobilisationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropology of Transformation

2022

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This collection of essays is the result of the joint efforts of colleagues and students of the leading social anthropology and post-socialism theorist, Professor Chris Hann. With the thirtieth anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 2019 as their catalyst, the authors reflect upon Chris Hann’s lifelong fieldwork in the discipline, spanning regions as diverse as East Central Europe, Turkey, and the Chinese north-west. The collapse of the Berlin Wall naturally triggered a plethora of analysis and scholarly research. Sociocultural anthropology, with its focus on ethnographic study and on the gradual evolution of social relations, sharply contrasted with the emphasis on dramatic rupture brought about by the 1989 transition. Continuing in this tradition, this volume, through micro-level analysis of societal transformation from the post-war years to the present day, provides an alternative perspective to the neoliberalist views often encountered in the scholarship on political and economic modernisation. The more nuanced analysis of social transformations proposed here is a particularly useful tool in the investigation of contemporary issues such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the refugee ‘crisis’, and the rise of right-wing populism in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Anthropology of Transformation will be of interest to researchers in the fields of socio-cultural anthropology, religion and economics. Moreover, the book’s discussion of issues widely discussed beyond the field of academia such as neoliberalism and the welfare state, and populist and exclusionary politics, will appeal to non-specialist readers.

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Section: Nationalism State and New Political Mobilisationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Anthropology of Transformation

2022

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“…It was a claim that helped provide justification for shifting the Soviet Union from wartime ally to postwar enemy. It was also critical to western propaganda's depiction of the Soviet regime as inherently hostile to the values of western civilization and Christianity and to be bent on their destruction and eventual world domination (Kirby 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Roots of the Religious Cold War: Pre-Cold War Factors

Kirby

2018

Social Sciences

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The article is an examination of the roots of the amalgam of complex forces that informed the 'religious cold war'. It looks at the near and the more distant past. Naturally this includes consideration of the interwar years and those of the Second World War. It also means addressing divisions in Christianity that can be traced back to the end of the third century, to the official split of 1054 between Catholic and Orthodox, the impact of the Crusades and the entrenched hostility that followed the fifty-seven years imposition on Constantinople of a Latin Patriarch. It surveys the rise of significant forces that were to contribute to, as well as consolidate and strengthen, the religious cold war: civil religion, Christian fundamentalism and the Religious Right. The article examines both western and eastern mobilization of national religious resources for political purposes.

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“…The trope of 'Judeo-Bolshevism' was a standard one in Catholic anti-Communism. 55 Thus Social Democratic and Catholic anti-communism had very different roots, yet it could still act as a unifying force in the interwar period. Catholicism's virulent anti-Bolshevism and anti-secularism was also, as Todd Weir has pointed out, an important element in the growing anti-pluralist and anti-republican turn of the Centre Party in the final years of the Weimar Republic.…”

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Difficult (Re-)Alignments – Comparative Perspectives on Social Democracy and Religion from Late-nineteenth century to Interwar Germany and Britain

Berger

2018

Journal of Contemporary History

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The attitudes of British and German socialists vis-a-vis religion before the First World War has been described by one of the most eminent scholars in the field of the history of religion, Hugh McLeod, as being diametrically opposed – German socialists were largely secular, irreligious and anti-clerical whereas within British socialism, Christianity, especially dissenting Protestantism, was a far more important streak. In this article I would like to modulate the stark contrast contained in this commonly held view by looking at a slightly different time frame than McLeod, and by emphasizing more the ambiguities and uncertainties of that relationship between socialism and religion in both countries. It shall be argued that a longer-term positive relationship between religion and socialism in Britain can be juxtaposed with a rapprochement between the forces of religion and socialism in interwar Germany. Hence the article will provide a cross-country diachronic comparison of the relationship between religion and socialism in Britain and Germany. It will highlight, in particular, a common utopianism of religion and socialism, that could also be called utopianism of the social ethics of the Sermon on the Mount; attempts to forge socialism as new religion shall be examined on the subsequent pages.

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Christian anti-communism

Cited by 15 publications

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Anthropology of Transformation

Anthropology of Transformation

The Roots of the Religious Cold War: Pre-Cold War Factors

Difficult (Re-)Alignments – Comparative Perspectives on Social Democracy and Religion from Late-nineteenth century to Interwar Germany and Britain

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