Translated from the original, published in Italian in 2001, this study by Emilio Gentile, a historian at the University of Rome La Sapienza, extends his earlier work on the sacralization of politics in fascist Italy. Now more broadly generalized, his thesis is that religion in the modern world, particularly the twentieth century, transmutes into alternative forms through which its myths, rituals, and symbols lend sacral authority to political entities. In a concise and learned study, Gentile distinguishes broadly between civil religion, which reinforces the political culture of democratic societies (most notably the United States), and political religion, which characterizes a wide variety of totalitarian regimes that assume religious character. This takes place through various means, including the placement of a secular collective entity at the center of a set of beliefs and myths surrounding the origin and purpose of the religion, the formalization of commands that prescribe the loyalty and devotion of citizens, and the creation of a “political liturgy” usually around the cult of an individual leader (138–39).

Gentile's impressive range of examples suggests that this thesis has broad application to many of the political states that flourished during the last century, not only in the west but also in Asia and Africa. The evidence he marshals must further qualify versions of the secularization thesis that regard the diminishing public significance of religion as an inevitable consequence of modernity. Quoting Saint-Simon's remark that religion cannot disappear from the world but only transform itself (30), Gentile argues that traditional expressions of religion are typically usurped rather than annihilated by new forms of politics. What emerges is neither Erastianism nor theocracy as configurations of the church-state relationship, but instead a commandeering of religious categories by secular forces for the legitimization and promotion of political ends. By deploying myths, symbols, and rituals, a sacral politics can succeed, at least for a time, even in the absence of plausibility structures for traditional forms of religious belief.

The discussion of totalitarian political systems is perhaps the greatest strength of his study. Through expert analysis of the appropriation of religious forms by fascism, national socialism, and communism, Gentile reveals how some of the most murderous regimes in history found popular support by tapping into the religious instincts and needs of communities. While more sympathetic to the ways in which civil religion has strengthened democratic societies, he also expresses unease about the tendency of the rhetoric of election and providence to promote attitudes of superiority and cultural imperialism. Had he written the book several years later, he would surely have had much more to say about civil religion in light of the Iraq War.

Although it offers a wide-ranging account of different political systems, this study is largely confined to countries where the dominant religion has been Christianity. What is less apparent, therefore, is whether and in what ways political religion emerges in lands dominated by one of the Indian religious traditions or, more significantly in our current context, Islamic traditions. Gentile concentrates on how politics becomes religious; his study does not focus on the extent to which traditional religions become political. Yet a post-September 11 sequel to this study would surely have to consider the complex relationship of the religious and the civil in traditionally Muslim lands—as well as Hindu nationalism in India—together with the ways in which western democracies seek to accommodate the different religious affiliations of their citizens by adopting a position of relative neutrality to all faiths.

Gentile does not commit himself to the question of whether political religion will prove ephemeral, although he notes that many of the regimes under scrutiny have been. Nor does he consider whether it is possible for a truly secular society to exist and flourish without seeking a sacralized identity and the support of something like a civil religion, a question meriting some focus. Though he notes that the sacral role of monarchies in Western Europe has significantly diminished since the beginning of the twentieth century, and that the separation of the religious and the civil is becoming more pronounced, he does not discuss or speculate about possible effects this will have on how well states can function. On the contrary, he focuses on the establishment arrangement in England and the tendency in France, even under Mitterand, to venerate the republic in quasi-religious categories. Yet more needs to be said here. Western European countries have generally been undergoing a process of gradual disestablishment for many years. Education, professional advancement, and the holding of public office are now all formally detached from one's religious affiliation. In advancing multicultural ideals, political leaders, unlike their counterparts in the United States, generally eschew the use of theological rhetoric. While there is some vestigial evidence for a sacral dimension to political life, it has now been largely decentered from mainstream politics and was neatly summarized in the words of Blair's spin doctor, Alastair Campbell: “We don't do God.” One might also argue that a powerful, new political entity has emerged in the form of the European Union, which explicitly eschews advocacy of religious categories, even to the point of omitting all reference to God in its proposed constitutional text.

From the perspective of the churches and other traditional religious institutions, Gentile's study underscores the need for a critical religious perspective on politics together with the importance of maintaining the classical differentiation of the sacred and secular powers, an emphasis that has characterized mainstream Christian political thought since the time of the New Testament. Gentile notes the worthy critical function of religious institutions, albeit imperfect and sometimes impotent, in Italy and Germany in the 1930s. There is little mention, however, of the Bekennende Kirche in Germany. Yet here again a more extensive study, going into the principled opposition of Protestant theologians such as Barth and Bonhoeffer to the Third Reich, would have been helpful. The subsequent influence of these two theologians upon the World Council of Churches and Christian witness against civil religion in South Africa and elsewhere merits attention, as does the political mobilization of black Christians like Martin Luther King in the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s. This missing example is significant in that it touches on the complex relationship between civil religion and the Christian churches in the United States. The extent to which the latter is required to sustain the former needs to be explored, as does the capacity of the churches to contest and redirect the regnant political culture. Here, as elsewhere, Gentile's preferred conceptual demarcation between the politicization of religion and the sacralization of politics (141) surely becomes blurred.

However, what this work powerfully reveals is how dangerous religion becomes, not only when it ceases to be properly differentiated from the secular in political and civil society, but also when the critical standards that have been exercised by long traditions of theological education amongst both clergy and laity are lost or occluded by sudden changes in political culture. Chesterton is alleged to have remarked that when people cease to believe in God, instead of believing in nothing they are capable of believing anything. This study of Gentile's reveals how perilous this can be. After sweeping away the traditional demons that inhabit the house, the empty spaces become vulnerable to ever more harmful ones.

As a footnote, it might be added that while this English translation is most welcome, it is surprising that Princeton University Press should have allowed it to appear without an index.