Abstract
The article explores the genesis and varieties of the phenomenon of ideology, and its relationship with religion. It begins with the origins of the notion and term in Antoine Destutt de Tracy and Karl Marx, and then continues up to the most recent developments of conservative and liberal ideological schemata. The author pays particular attention to the totalitarian ideologies of Communism and Nazism. The article argues that ideology sometimes tried to replace religion, and sometimes mimicked it. In any case, it exercised a profound impact on churches. This impact is in most cases polarizing for the church, when the latter identifies itself with ideology and thus dramatically reduces itself. Among the instances of such an impact are “political Orthodoxy” in Ukraine, and the “Russian world” in Russia. The author concludes that the church should learn to distinguish what is ideological and what is theological.
Highlights
The article explores the genesis and varieties of the phenomenon of ideology, and its relationship with religion. It begins with the origins of the notion and term in Antoine Destutt de Tracy and Karl Marx, and continues up to the most recent developments of conservative and liberal ideological schemata
Fascism of different modifications that came to power on the pretext of fighting against Communism turned into a totalitarian ideology
The term “political Orthodoxy” was coined with the concept of “political Islam” in mind. This concept has been defined as “the mobilization of Islamic identity in pursuit of particular objectives of public policy, both within an Islamic society and in its relations with other societies.” 36 In the case of “political Orthodoxy” in Ukraine, there is a mobilization of the Orthodox identity in pursuit of the particular objectives of public policy, namely expansion of the “Russian world”’ and restoration of the Soviet project in post-Soviet countries
Summary
If Carl Schmitt was right that “all significant concepts of the modem theory of the state are secularized theological concepts,” this dictum is applicable primarily to ideologies. Ideology is a secularized epitome of theology .1 Like the latter, it offers a holistic worldview, mobilizes masses, and acts with the power of a myth .2. It offers a holistic worldview, mobilizes masses, and acts with the power of a myth .2 In this sense, it is a “secular religion” with its own “priests” — the intellectuals .3. Marx pointed out that when a picture of reality is drawn on the basis of ideas alone, something that the idealist philosophers in the early nineteenth century tended to do, it produced false consciousness. Fascism of different modifications that came to power on the pretext of fighting against Communism turned into a totalitarian ideology .6. It is as well to realize that these great movements began with ideas in people’s heads: ideas about what relations between men have been, are, might be, and should be; and to realize how they came to be transformed in the name of a vision of some supreme goal in the minds of the leaders, above all of the prophets with armies at their backs .7
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