Some have opposed clergy on the basis of moral corruption, institutional issues and/or disagreements in religious interpretation, such as during the Protestant Reformation. Anti-clericalism became extremely violent during the French Revolution, because revolutionaries claimed the church played a pivotal role in the systems of oppression which led to it.[2] Many clerics were killed, and French revolutionary governments tried to put priests under the control of the state by making them employees.
During the Protestant Reformation, anti-clericalism resulted from opposition to the political and economic privileges of the clergy.[4]
France
"Shall he be allowed to rule America?"
Revolution
The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was passed on July 12, 1790, requiring all clerics to swear allegiance to the French government and, by extension, to the increasingly anti-clerical National Constituent Assembly. All but seven of the 160 bishops refused the oath, as did about half of the parish priests.[5] Persecution of the clergy and of the faithful was the first trigger of the rebellion; the second being conscription. Nonjuring priests were exiled or imprisoned and women on their way to Mass were beaten in the streets.[5]
The anti-clericalism during the French Revolution initially began with attacks on church corruption and the wealth of the higher clergy, an action with which even many Christians could identify, since the Catholic Church held a dominant role in pre-revolutionary France. During a two-year period known as the Reign of Terror, the episodes of anti-clericalism grew more violent than Europe would see until the rise of state atheism in communist Eastern Europe. The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the church; abolished the Catholic monarchy; nationalized church property; exiled 30,000 priests and killed hundreds more.[6] Many churches were converted into "temples of reason", in which atheistical services were held.[7][8][9][10] There has been much scholarly debate over whether the movement was popularly motivated.[11] As part of the campaign to dechristianize France, in October 1793 the Christian calendar was replaced with one reckoning from the date of the Revolution, and Festivals of Liberty, Reason and the Supreme Being were scheduled. New forms of moral religion emerged, including the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being and France's first established state sponsoredatheisticCult of Reason,[12][13][14] with all churches not devoted to these being closed.[15] In April and May 1794, the government mandated the observance of a festival of the Cult of the Supreme Being.[15] When anti-clericalism became a clear goal of French revolutionaries, counter-revolutionaries seeking to restore tradition and the Ancien Régime took up arms, particularly in the War in the Vendée (1793 to 1796). Local people often resisted dechristianization and forced members of the clergy who had resigned to conduct Mass again. Eventually, Maximilien Robespierre and the Committee of Public Safety denounced the dechristianization campaign and tried to establish their own religion, without the superstitions of Catholicism.[16]
When Pope Pius VI took sides against the revolution in the First Coalition (1792–1797), Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy (1796).[17] French troops imprisoned the Pope in 1797, and he died after six weeks of captivity.[17] After a change of heart, Napoleon then re-established the Catholic Church in France with the signing of the Concordat of 1801,[17] and banned the Cult of the Supreme Being. Many anti-clerical policies continued. When Napoleonic armies entered a territory, monasteries were often sacked, and church property secularized.[18][19][20][21]
Third Republic
A further phase of anti-clericalism occurred in the context of the French Third Republic and its dissensions with the Catholic Church. After the Concordat of 1801 the Catholic Church enjoyed preferential treatment from the French state (formally along with the Jewish, Lutheran and Calvinist minority religions, but in practice with much more influence than those). During the 19th century, public schools employed primarily priests as teachers, and religion was taught in schools (teachers also lead the class to Mass). This changed during the 1880s as several anti-clerical international gatherings took place in Paris, leading to the establishment of the Fédération nationale de la libre pensée, a strongly anti-clerical society regrouping socialists, anarchists and liberals. In 1881–1882 Jules Ferry's government passed the Jules Ferry laws, establishing free education (1881) and excluded clerics and religious education from schools (1882).
In the Affaire des Fiches (1904-1905), it was discovered that the anti-clerical War Minister of the Combes government, General Louis André, was determining promotions based on the French Masonic Grand Orient's card index on public officials, detailing which were Catholic and who attended Mass, with a view to preventing their promotions.[25]
In the years following their relocations, boarding schools of congregants were accused by some senators of trying to "recruit" French youth from abroad, supposedly placing the French Republic "in jeopardy".[26]
Republicans' anti-clericalism softened after the First World War as the Catholic right-wing began to accept the Republic and secularism, which aimed to prevent socialist parties. However, the issue of subsidized private schools in France, which are overwhelmingly Catholic but whose teachers draw pay from the state, remains a sensitive issue in French politics and the Fédération Nationale de la Libre-Pensée, now commonly associated with the anti-clerical far-left, maintains its strongly anti-clerical stance.
Austria (Holy Roman Empire)
Emperor Joseph II (emperor 1765–1790) opposed what he called "contemplative" religious institutions – reclusive Catholic institutions that he perceived as doing nothing positive for the community.[27] His policy towards them is included in what is called Josephinism.
Joseph decreed that Austrian bishops could not communicate directly with the Curia. More than 500 of 1,188 monasteries in Austro-Slav lands (and a hundred more in Hungary) were dissolved, and 60 million florins taken by the state. This wealth was used to create 1,700 new parishes and welfare institutions.[28]
The education of priests was taken from the Church as well. Joseph established six state-run "General Seminaries". In 1783, a Marriage Patent treated marriage as a civil contract rather than a religious institution.[29]
Catholic historians have claimed that there was an alliance between Joseph and anti-clerical Freemasons.[30]
"Between Berlin and Rome", with Bismarck on the left and the Pope on the right. Kladderadatsch, 1875.
The Kulturkampf (literally "culture struggle") refers to German policies in reducing the role and power of the Catholic Church in Prussia, enacted from 1871 to 1878 by the Prime Minister of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck.
Bismarck accelerated the Kulturkampf, which did not extend to the other German states such as Bavaria (where Catholics were in a majority). As one scholar put it, "the attack on the church included a series of Prussian, discriminatory laws that made Catholics feel understandably persecuted within a predominantly Protestant nation." Jesuits, Franciscans, Dominicans and other orders were expelled in the culmination of twenty years of anti-Jesuit and antimonastic hysteria.[31]
In 1871, the Catholic Church comprised 36.5% of the population of the German Empire, including millions of Germans in the west and South, as well as the vast majority of Poles. In this newly founded Empire, Bismarck sought to appeal to liberals and Protestants (62% of the population) by reducing the political and social influence of the Catholic Church.
Priests and bishops who resisted the Kulturkampf were arrested or removed from their positions. By the height of anti-Catholic measures, half of the Prussian bishops were in prison or in exile, a quarter of the parishes had no priest, half the monks and nuns had left Prussia, a third of the monasteries and convents were closed, 1800 parish priests were imprisoned or exiled, and thousands of laypeople were imprisoned for helping the priests.[32]
The Kulturkampf backfired, as it energized the Catholics to become a political force in the Centre party and revitalized Polish resistance. The Kulturkampf ended about 1880 with a new pope Leo XIII willing to negotiate with Bismarck. Bismarck broke with the Liberals over religion and over their opposition to tariffs; He won Centre party support on most of his conservative policy positions, especially his attacks against socialism.
Italy
Anti-clericalism in Italy is connected with reaction against the absolutism of the Papal States, overthrown in 1870. For a long time, the pope required Catholics not to participate in the public life of the Kingdom of Italy that had invaded the Papal States to complete the unification of Italy, prompting the pope to declare himself a "prisoner" in the Vatican. Some politicians that had played important roles in this process, such as Giuseppe Garibaldi and Camillo Benso, conte di Cavour, were known to be hostile to the temporal and political power of the Church. Throughout the history of Liberal Italy, relations between the Italian government and the Church remained acrimonious, and anti-clericals maintained a prominent position in the ideological and political debates of the era. Tensions eased between church and state in the 1890s and early 1900s as a result of both sides' mutual hostility toward the burgeoning Socialist movement. Initially also anticlerical, fascistBenito Mussolini tempered such rhetoric to win support from Catholics and later as dictator, official hostility between the Holy See and the Italian state was finally settled by Pope Pius XI and him: the Lateran Accords were finalised in 1929.[33]
After World War II, anti-clericalism was embodied by the Italian Communist (PCI) and Italian Socialist (PSI) parties, in opposition to the Vatican-backed party Christian Democracy (DC). Since the PSI joined DC-led coalition governments, the DC under Aldo Moro turned centre-left. In 1978, with support of the PSI, the DC-led coalition government legalized abortion despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church and DC conservative factions.
The revision of the Lateran treaties during the 1980s by the PSI Prime MinisterBettino Craxi, removed the status of "official religion" of the Catholic Church, but still granted a series of provisions in favour of the Church, such as the eight per thousand law, the teaching of religion in schools, and other privileges.
In recent years, the Italian society has got increasingly secularized and many contest the intervention of the Catholic Church in Italian politics, usually through voting instructions to the faithful and to Catholic parliamentarians on the legislative and regulatory action of the State. For example, the positions of CardinalCamillo Ruini in the 2005 Italian fertility laws referendum attracted criticism, and so did his opposition to a 2007 bill that would have provided recognition of same-sex unions in Italy. From the side of the Church, a right to express its opinions and a moral duty in guiding Christians on ethical questions is claimed.
The fall of the Monarchy in the Republican revolution of 1910 led to another wave of anti-clerical activity. Most church property was put under State control, and the church was not allowed to inherit property. The revolution and the republic allegedly took a "hostile" approach to the issue of church and state separation, like that of the French Revolution, the Spanish Constitution of 1931 and the Mexican Constitution of 1917.[34] As part of the anti-clerical revolution, the bishops were driven from their dioceses, the property of clerics was seized by the state, wearing of the cassock was banned, all minor seminaries were closed and all but five major seminaries.[35] A law of February 22, 1918, permitted only two seminaries in the country, but they had not been given their property back.[35]Religious orders were expelled from the country, including 31 orders comprising members in 164 houses (in 1917 some orders were permitted to form again).[35] Religious education was prohibited in both primary and secondary school.[35] Religious oaths and church taxes were also abolished.
Anti-clerical cover of a magazine published in Valencia in 1933.
The first instance of anti-clerical violence due to political conflict in 19th-century Spain occurred during the Trienio Liberal (Spanish Civil War of 1820–1823). During riots in Catalonia, 20 clergymen were killed by members of the liberal movement in retaliation for the Church's siding with absolutist supporters of Ferdinand VII.
The Republican government which came to power in Spain in 1931 was based on secular principles. In the first years some laws were passed secularising education, prohibiting religious education in the schools, and expelling the Jesuits from the country. On Pentecost 1932, Pope Pius XI protested against these measures and demanded restitution. He asked the Catholics of Spain to fight with all legal means against the injustices. June 3, 1933, he issued the encyclical Dilectissima Nobis, in which he described the expropriation of all Church buildings, episcopal residences, parish houses, seminaries and monasteries.
By law, they were now property of the Spanish State, to which the Church had to pay rent and taxes continuously in order to use these properties. "Thus the Catholic Church is compelled to pay taxes on what was violently taken from her".[37] Religious vestments, liturgical instruments, statues, pictures, vases, gems and other valuable objects were expropriated as well.[38]
During the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, Catholics largely supported Franco and the Nationalist forces. Anti-clerical assaults called the Red Terror by Nationalists, included sacking and burning monasteries and churches and killing 6,832 members of the clergy.[39]
283 nuns, according to one source, some of whom were badly tortured.[40]
There are accounts of Catholic faithful being forced to swallow rosary beads, thrown down mine shafts and priests being forced to dig their own graves before being buried alive.[41][42] The Catholic Church has canonized several martyrs of the Spanish Civil War and beatified hundreds more.
Prior to the Falangists joining Francisco Franco's unified alliance of right-wing parties, the party exhibited anti-clerical tendencies, and saw the Catholic Church as an elite institution that presented an obstacle to the Falangist's full control the state. Despite this, the Falangists had not been involved in any massacres of Catholics, and it went on to support the Church as a result of their alliance to monarchists and other nationalist movements.
Rodrigo Duterte, the country's previous president, has adopted a combative verbal stance toward the Church hierarchy and its staunchest supporters.[46] In 2015, he blamed and cursed Pope Francis for the traffic congestion in the national capital; he later apologized and clarified that it was the government's fault and not the pope's.[47] In 2019, he predicted the Church's temporal demise in 25 years.[48] Duterte, however, has underscored that his animosity toward the Church was purely personal and warned the otherwise uninvolved public against taking unethical action against the clergy.[49]
Canada
In French Canada following the Conquest, much like in Ireland or Poland under foreign rule, the Catholic Church was the sole national institution not under the direct control of the British colonial government. It was also a major marker of social difference from the incoming Anglo-Protestant settlers. French Canadian identity was almost entirely centred around Catholicism, and to a much lesser extent the French language. However, there was a small anti-clerical movement in French Canada in the early nineteenth drawing inspiration from American and French liberal revolutions. This group was one current (but by no means the dominant) one in the Parti canadien and its associated Lower Canada Rebellion of 1837. In the more democratic politics that followed the rebellions, the more radical and anti-clerical tendency eventually formed the Parti rouge in 1848.
The vastly different religious backgrounds of the Reformers and rouges was one of the factors which prevented them from working together well during the era of two-party coalition government in Canada (1840–1867). By 1861, however, the two groups fused to create a united Liberal block.[51] After 1867, this party added like-minded reformers from the Maritime provinces, but struggled to win power, especially in still strongly-Catholic Quebec.
Once Wilfrid Laurier became party leader, however, the party dropped its anti-clerical stance and went on to dominate Canadian politics throughout most of the 20th century. Since that time, Liberal prime ministers have been overwhelmingly Catholic (St. Laurent, both Pierre and Justin Trudeau, Chrétien, Martin), but since the 1960s Liberals have again had a strained relationship with the Catholic church, and have increasingly parted with the Catholic church's teachings on sexual morality, as when Pierre Trudeau legalized homosexuality and streamlined divorce (as justice minister under Pearson), and Martin legalized same-sex marriage.
In Quebec itself, the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s broke the hold of the church on provincial politics. The Quebec Liberal Party embraced formerly taboo social democratic ideas, and the state intervened in fields once dominated by the church, especially health and education, which were taken over by the provincial government. Quebec is now considered[52] Canada's most secular province.
United States
A famous 1876 editorial cartoon by Thomas Nast which portrays bishops as crocodiles who are attacking public schools, with the connivance of Irish Catholic politicians
Although anti-clericalism is more often spoken of regarding the history or current politics of Latin countries where the Catholic Church was established and where the clergy had privileges, Philip Jenkins notes in his 2003 book The New Anti-Catholicism that the U.S., despite the lack of Catholic establishments, has always had anti-clericals.[53]
Of the population of Latin America, about 71% acknowledge allegiance to the Catholic Church.[54][55] Consequently, about 43% of the world's Catholics inhabit the 'Latin' countries of South, Central and North America.[55]
The slowness to embrace religious freedom in Latin America is related to its colonial heritage and to its post-colonial history. The Aztec, Maya and Inca cultures made substantial use of religious leaders to ideologically support governing authority and power. This pre-existing role of religion as ideological adjunct to the state in pre-Columbian culture made it relatively easy for the Spanish conquistadors to replace native religious structures with those of a Catholicism that was closely linked to the Spanish throne.[56]
Anti-clericalism was a common feature of 19th-century liberalism in Latin America. This anti-clericalism was often purportedly based on the idea that the clergy (especially the prelates who ran the administrative offices of the Church) were hindering social progress in areas such as public education and economic development.
Beginning in the 1820s, a succession of liberal regimes came to power in Latin America.[57] Some members of these liberal regimes sought to imitate the Spain of the 1830s (and revolutionary France of a half-century earlier) in expropriating the wealth of the Catholic Church, and in imitating the 18th-century benevolent despots in restricting or prohibiting the religious orders. As a result, a number of these liberal regimes expropriated Church property and tried to bring education, marriage and burial under secular authority. The confiscation of Church properties and changes in the scope of religious liberties (in general, increasing the rights of non-Catholics and non-observant Catholics, while licensing or prohibiting the orders) generally accompanied secularist and governmental reforms.[58]
Starting in 1855, President Benito Juárez issued decrees nationalizing church property, separating church and state, and suppressing religious orders. Church properties were confiscated and basic civil and political rights were denied to religious orders and the clergy.
Following the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the new Mexican Constitution of 1917 contained further anti-clerical provisions. Article 3 called for secular education in the schools and prohibited the Church from engaging in primary education; Article 5 outlawed monastic orders; Article 24 forbade public worship outside the confines of churches; and Article 27 placed restrictions on the right of religious organizations to hold property. Article 130 deprived clergy members of basic political rights. Many of these laws were resisted, leading to the Cristero Rebellion of 1927–1929. The suppression of the Church included the closing of many churches and the killing of priests. The persecution was most severe in Tabasco under the atheist"[61] governor Tomás Garrido Canabal.
The church-supported armed rebellion only escalated the violence. US Diplomat Dwight Morrow was brought in to mediate the conflict. But 1928 saw the assassination of President Alvaro Obregón by Catholic radical José de León Toral, gravely damaging the peace process.
The war had a profound effect on the Church. Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.[62] Between 1926 and 1934, over 3,000 priests were exiled or assassinated.[63][62]
Where 4,500 priests served the people before the rebellion, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been eliminated by emigration, expulsion and assassination.[62][64] It appears that ten states were left without any priests.[64]
The Cristero rebels committed their share of violence, which continued even after formal hostilities had ended. In some of the worst cases, public school teachers were tortured and murdered by the former Cristero rebels.[65][66][67] It is calculated that almost 300 rural teachers were murdered in this way between 1935 and 1939.[68]
Ecuador
This issue was one of the bases for the lasting dispute between Conservatives, who represented primarily the interests of the Sierra and the church, and the Liberals, who represented those of the Costa and anti-clericalism. Tensions came to a head in 1875 when the conservative President Gabriel García Moreno, after being elected to his third term, was allegedly assassinated by anti-clerical Freemasons.[69][70]
Across the country, militants attacked churches, convents, and monasteries, killing priests and looking for arms, since the conspiracy theory maintained that the religious had guns, and this despite the fact that not a single serviceable weapon was located in the raids.[75]
When their party came to power in 1930, anti-clerical Liberals pushed for legislation to end Church influence in public schools. These Liberals held that the Church and its intellectual backwardness were responsible for a lack of spiritual and material progress in Colombia. Liberal-controlled local, departmental and national governments ended contracts with religious communities who operated schools in government-owned buildings, and set up secular schools in their place. These actions were sometimes violent, and were met by a strong opposition from clerics, Conservatives, and even a good number of more moderate Liberals.
Argentina
The original Argentine Constitution of 1853 provided that all Argentine presidents must be Catholic and stated that the duty of the Argentine congress was to convert the Indians to Catholicism. All of these provisions have been eliminated with the exception of the mandate to "sustain" Catholicism.
Liberal anti-clericalists of the 1880s established a new pattern of church-state relations in which the official constitutional status of the Church was preserved while the state assumed control of many functions formerly the province of the Church. Conservative Catholics, asserting their role as definers of national values and morality, responded in part by joining in the rightist religio-political movement known as Catholic Nationalism which formed successive opposition parties. This began a prolonged period of conflict between church and state that persisted until the 1940s when the Church enjoyed a restoration of its former status under the presidency of Colonel Juan Perón. Perón claimed that Peronism was the "true embodiment of Catholic social teaching" – indeed, more the embodiment of Catholicism than the Catholic Church itself.
In 1954, Argentina saw extensive destruction of churches, denunciations of clergy and confiscation of Catholic schools as Perón attempted to extend state control over national institutions.[76]
The renewed rupture in church-state relations was completed when Perón was excommunicated. However, in 1955, he was overthrown by a military general who was a leading member of the Catholic Nationalist movement.
Venezuela
In Venezuela, the government of Antonio Guzmán Blanco (in office from 1870 to 1877, from 1879 to 1884, and from 1886 to 1887) virtually crushed the institutional life of the church, even attempting to legalize the marriage of priests. These anti-clerical policies remained in force for decades afterward.
Cuba
Cuba, under the rule of atheist Fidel Castro, succeeded in reducing the Church's ability to work by deporting the archbishop and 150 Spanish priests, by discriminating against Catholics in public life and education and by refusing to accept them as members of the Communist Party.[77] The subsequent flight of 300,000 people from the island also helped to diminish the Church there.[77]
State atheism
World map showing nations that formerly or currently practice state atheism.
A number of countries have practiced state atheism. Most of them, though not all, were communist states. In the Soviet Union, anti-clericalism was expressed through the state; in the first five years alone after the Bolshevik revolution, 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.[104]
Anti-clericalism in the Islamic world
In various traditions of Islam, Muslims who are not experts in Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) are ought to follow the instructions of an expert, i.e., a mujtahid, (with the exception of "matters of belief" or usulu 'd-din).[105][106] This deference is known as taqlid or "imitation” and is meant for experts in a broad range of matters. In practice this means asking a cleric trained in Islamic law for a fatwa or ‘legal opinion’ on the issue the Muslim is concerned about. This ties into the significance of local customs and practices, known as urf, in the context of Sunni Islam, which does not have a formal clergy.
Shia Islam, on the other hand, has had a doctrine of a centralized clergy in the imamate. Thus, by extension, the practice of taqlid has historically been more systematic. For example, as of the 19th century the Shia ulama taught believers to turn to the highest ranking clerics, known as "sources of taqlid" (marja' at-taqlid).[107]
Following the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran—the one Muslim country where Shia form an overwhelming majority—even more systematic power was given to clerics. Under the doctrine of rule by Islamic jurists, or velayat-e faqih, Islamic clerics must rule or Islam will whither away. A cleric is head of state in Iran, and clerics control many powerful governmental positions.
Iran
Akhund Khurasani is known to be the greatest theorist of Usuli Shi'ism in modern times.
During the first democratic revolution of Asia, the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, the Shia Marja Akhund Khurasani and his colleagues theorized a model of religious secularity in the absence of Imam, that still prevails in Shia seminaries.[108] In absence of the ideal ruler, that is Imam al-Mahdi, democracy was the best available option.[109] He considers opposition to constitutional democracy as hostility towards the twelfth Imam.[110] He declared his full support for constitutional democracy and announced that objection to "foundations of constitutionalism" was un-Islamic.[111] According to Akhund, "a rightful religion imposes conditions on the actions and behavior of human beings", which stem from either holy text or logical reasoning, and these constraints are essentially meant to prevent despotism.[112] He believes that an Islamic system of governance can not be established without the infallible Imam leading it. Thus the clergy and modern scholars have concluded that a proper legislation can help reduce the state tyranny and maintain peace and security. He said:[113]
Persian: سلطنت مشروعه آن است کہ متصدی امور عامه ی ناس و رتق و فتق کارهای قاطبه ی مسلمین و فیصل کافه ی مهام به دست شخص معصوم و موید و منصوب و منصوص و مأمور مِن الله باشد مانند انبیاء و اولیاء و مثل خلافت امیرالمومنین و ایام ظهور و رجعت حضرت حجت، و اگر حاکم مطلق معصوم نباشد، آن سلطنت غیرمشروعه است، چنان کہ در زمان غیبت است و سلطنت غیرمشروعه دو قسم است، عادله، نظیر مشروطه کہ مباشر امور عامه، عقلا و متدینین باشند و ظالمه و جابره است، مثل آنکه حاکم مطلق یک نفر مطلق العنان خودسر باشد. البته به صریح حکم عقل و به فصیح منصوصات شرع «غیر مشروعه ی عادله» مقدم است بر «غیرمشروعه ی جابره». و به تجربه و تدقیقات صحیحه و غور رسی های شافیه مبرهن شده که نُه عشر تعدیات دوره ی استبداد در دوره ی مشروطیت کمتر میشود و دفع افسد و اقبح به فاسد و به قبیح واجب است.[114]
English: "According to Shia doctrine, only the infallible Imam has the right to govern, to run the affairs of the people, to solve the problems of the Muslim society and to make important decisions. As it was in the time of the prophets or in the time of the caliphate of the commander of the faithful, and as it will be in the time of the reappearance and return of the Mahdi. If the absolute guardianship is not with the infallible then it will be a non-islamic government. Since this is a time of occultation, there can be two types of non-islamic regimes: the first is a just democracy in which the affairs of the people are in the hands of faithful and educated men, and the second is a government of tyranny in which a dictator has absolute powers. Therefore, both in the eyes of the Sharia and reason what is just prevails over the unjust. From human experience and careful reflection it has become clear that democracy reduces the tyranny of state and it is obligatory to give precedence to the lesser evil."
—Muhammad Kazim Khurasani
As "sanctioned by sacred law and religion", Akhund believes, a theocratic government can only be formed by the infallible Imam.[115]Aqa Buzurg Tehrani also quoted Akhund Khurasani saying that if there was a possibility of establishment of a truly legitimate Islamic rule in any age, God must end occultation of the Imam of Age. Hence, he refuted the idea of absolute guardianship of jurist.[116] Therefore, according to Akhund, Shia jurists must support the democratic reform. He prefers collective wisdom (Persian: عقل جمعی) over individual opinions, and limits the role of jurist to provide religious guidance in personal affairs of a believer.[117] He defines democracy as a system of governance that enforces a set of "limitations and conditions" on the head of state and government employees so that they work within "boundaries that the laws and religion of every nation determines". Akhund believes that modern secular laws complement traditional religion. He asserts that both religious rulings and the laws outside the scope of religion confront "state despotism".[118] Constitutionalism is based on the idea of defending the "nation's inherent and natural liberties", and as absolute power corrupts, a democratic distribution of power would make it possible for the nation to live up to its full potential.[119]
In 1925, Rezā Khan proclaimed himself shah of the country. As part of his Westernization program, the traditional role of the ruling clergy was minimized; Islamic schools were secularized, women were forbidden to wear the hijab, sharia law was abolished, and men and women were desegregated in educational and religious environments. All this infuriated the ultraconservative clergy as a class. Rezā Khan's son and heir Mohammad Reza Pahlavi continued such practices. They ultimately contributed to the Islamic Revolution of 1978–79, and the Shah's flight from his country.
When Ayatollah Khomeini took power a month after the revolution, the Shah's anti-clerical measures were largely overturned, replaced by an Islamic Republic based on the principle of rule by Islamic jurists, velayat-e faqih, where clerics serve as heads of state and judges, veto legislation they consider un-Islamic and control who may run for president or parliament. However, by the late 1990s and 2000s, anti-clericalism was reported to be significant in the Islamic Republic of Iran:
Iran, although an Islamic state, imbued with religion and religious symbolism, is an increasingly anti-clerical country. In a sense it resembles some Catholic countries where religion is taken for granted, without public display, and with ambiguous feelings towards the clergy. Iranians tend to mock their mullahs, making mild jokes about them ...[120]
Demonstrators using slogans such as "The clerics live like kings while we live in poverty!" One report claims "Working-class Iranian lamented clerical wealth in the face of their own poverty," and "stories about Swiss bank accounts of leading clerics circulated on Tehran's rumor mill."[121]
During the fall of Suharto in 1998, a witch hunt in Banyuwangi against alleged sorcerers spiraled into widespread riots and violence. In addition to alleged sorcerers, Islamic clerics were also targeted and killed, Nahdlatul Ulama members were murdered by rioters.[122][123]
According to the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia, Freemasonry was historically viewed by the Catholic Church as being a principal source of anti-Clericalism[124] – especially in, but not limited to,[125] historically Catholic countries.
↑ Collins, Michael (1999). The Story of Christianity. Mathew A Price. Dorling Kindersley. pp.176–177. ISBN978-0-7513-0467-1.
↑ Horne, Thomas Hartwell; Davidson, Samuel (21 November 2013). An Introduction to the Critical Study and Knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. Cambridge University Press. p.30. ISBN978-1-108-06772-0.
↑ Latreille, A. FRENCH REVOLUTION, New Catholic Encyclopedia v. 5, pp. 972–973 (Second Ed. 2002 Thompson/Gale) ISBN0-7876-4004-2
↑ Spielvogel, Jackson J. (2006). Western Civilization. Wadsworth. p.549. ISBN9780534646028.
↑ McGowan, Dale (7 September 2012). Voices of Unbelief: Documents from Atheists and Agnostics. ABC-CLIO. p.14. ISBN9781598849790. 1793 Establishment of the Cult of Reason, an atheistic alternative to Christianity, during the French Revolution. First state-sponsored atheism.
↑ Fremont-Barnes, Gregory (2007). Encyclopedia of the Age of Political Revolutions and New Ideologies, 1760-1815: A-L. Greenwood Publishing Group. p.237. ISBN9780313334467. The cult was a deliberate attempt to counter the unsuccessful efforts at dechristianization, and the atheistic Cult of Reason, which reached its high point in the winter of the previous year.
↑ Censer and Hunt, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution, pp. 92–94.
1 2 3 Duffy, Eamon (1997). Saints and Sinners, a History of the Popes. Yale University Press in association with S4C. Library of Congress Catalog card number 97-60897.
↑ Franklin 2006, p.9 (footnote 26) cites Larkin, Maurice. Church and State after the Dreyfus Affair. pp.138–41.: "Freemasonry in France". Austral Light. 6: 164–72, 241–50. 1905.
↑ "In Germany and Austria, Freemasonry during the eighteenth century was a powerful ally of the so-called party, of 'Enlightenment' (Aufklaerung), and of Josephinism".(Gruber 1909)
↑ Sigmund, Paul E. (1996). "Religious Human Rights in the World Today: A Report on the 1994 Atlanta Conference: Legal Perspectives on Religious Human Rights: Religious Human Rights in Latin America". Emory International Law Review. Emory University School of Law.
↑ Stacy, Lee (2003). Mexico and the United States. Marshall Cavendish. p.139. ISBN9780761474050.
↑ Norman, The Roman Catholic Church an Illustrated History (2007), pp. 167–72
↑ Gutiérrez, Pedro Ruz (October 31, 1999). "Bullets, Bloodshed And Ballots;For Generations, Violence Has Defined Colombia's Turbulent Political History". Orlando Sentinel (Florida): G1. Archived from the original on May 31, 2006.Political violence is not new to that South American nation of 38 million people. In the past 100 years, more than 500,000 Colombians have died in it. From the "War of the Thousand Days," a civil war at the turn of the century that left 100,000 dead, to a partisan clash between 1948 and 1966 that claimed nearly 300,000...
↑ Bergquist, Charles; David J. Robinson (1997–2005). "Colombia". Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2005. Microsoft Corporation. Archived from the original on 2007-11-11. Retrieved April 16, 2006.On April 9, 1948, Gaitán was assassinated outside his law offices in downtown Bogotá. The assassination marked the start of a decade of bloodshed, called La Violencia (the violence), which took the lives of an estimated 180,000 Colombians before it subsided in 1958.
↑ Wessinger 2000, p.282, Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases: "Democratic Kampuchea was officially an atheist state, and the persecution of religion by the Khmer Rouge was matched in severity only by the persecution of religion in the communist states of Albania and North Korea, so there were not any direct historical continuities of Buddhism into the Democratic Kampuchea era."
↑ Haas 1997, p.231, Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress: The dismal fate of new nations: "Yet the revolutionary leaders managed to score progress toward making the country a rationalized nation-state, as shown in table 5-3. Revolts continued to plague Mexico, some due to continuing rivalries among the leaders. The bloody Cristero Revolt (1926-29), however, was fought by devout peasants against an atheist state."
↑ Dodd 2003, p.571, The rough guide to Vietnam: "After 1975, the Marxist-Leninist government of reunified Vietnam declared the state atheist while theoretically allowing people the right to practice their religion under the constitution."
↑ "From the official documents of French Masonry contained principally in the official 'Bulletin' and 'Compte-rendu' of the Grand Orient it has been proved that all the anti-clerical measures passed in the French Parliament were decreed beforehand in the Masonic lodges and executed under the direction of the Grand Orient, whose avowed aim is to control everything and everybody in France" (Gruber 1909 cites "Que personne ne bougera plus en France en dehors de nous", "Bull. Gr. Or.", 1890, 500 sq.)
↑ "But in spite of the failure of the official transactions, there are a great many German and not a few American Masons, who evidently favour at least the chief anti-clerical aims of the Grand Orient party" (Gruber 1909)
de la Cueva, Julio (1998), "Religious Persecution, Anticlerical Tradition and Revolution: On Atrocities against the Clergy during the Spanish Civil War", Journal of Contemporary History, XXXIII (3): 355–369, JSTOR261121
Gross, Michael B. The War Against Catholicism: Liberalism and the Anti-Catholic Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Germany (University of Michigan Press, 2004)
Jedin, Hubert; Repgen, Konrad; Dolan, John, eds. (1999) [1981], History of the Church: The Church in the Twentieth Century, vol.X, New York & London: Burn & Oates
Kowalewski, David (1980). "Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR: Characteristics and Consequences". The Russian Review. 39 (4): 426–441. doi:10.2307/128810. ISSN0036-0341. JSTOR128810.
Walaszek, Zdzislawa (January 1986). "An Open Issue of Legitimacy: The State and the Church in Poland". The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 483 (1): 118–134. doi:10.1177/0002716286483001011. ISSN0002-7162. S2CID145367724.
In the history of Germany, the Kulturkampf was the seven-year political conflict (1871–1878) between the Catholic Church in Germany, led by Pope Pius IX; and the Kingdom of Prussia, led by chancellor Otto von Bismarck. The Prussian church-and-state political conflict was about the Church's direct control over both education and ecclesiastical appointments in the Prussian kingdom as a Roman Catholic nation and country. Moreover, when compared to other church-and-state conflicts about political culture, the German Kulturkampf of Prussia also featured anti-Polish sentiment.
The relations between the Catholic Church and the state have been constantly evolving with various forms of government, some of them controversial in retrospect. In its history, the Church has had to deal with various concepts and systems of governance, from the Roman Empire to the medieval divine right of kings, from nineteenth- and twentieth-century concepts of democracy and pluralism to the appearance of left- and right-wing dictatorial regimes. The Second Vatican Council's decree Dignitatis humanae stated that religious freedom is a civil right that should be recognized in constitutional law.
The French Catholic Church, or Catholic Church in France is part of the worldwide Catholic Church in communion with the Pope in Rome. Established in the 2nd century in unbroken communion with the bishop of Rome, it was sometimes called the "eldest daughter of the church".
State atheism or atheist state is the incorporation of hard atheism or non-theism into political regimes. It is considered the opposite of theocracy and may also refer to large-scale secularization attempts by governments. To some extent, it is a religion-state relationship that is usually ideologically linked to irreligion and the promotion of irreligion or atheism. State atheism may refer to a government's promotion of anti-clericalism, which opposes religious institutional power and influence in all aspects of public and political life, including the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen. In some instances, religious symbols and public practices that were once held by religions were replaced with secularized versions of them. State atheism in these cases is considered as not being politically neutral toward religion, and therefore it is often considered non-secular.
Anti-Catholicism, also known as Catholophobia, is hostility towards Catholics and opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, many majority-Protestant states, including England, Northern Ireland, Prussia and Germany, Scotland, and the United States, turned anti-Catholicism, opposition to the authority of Catholic clergy (anti-clericalism), opposition to the authority of the pope (anti-papalism), mockery of Catholic rituals, and opposition to Catholic adherents into major political themes and policies of religious discrimination and religious persecution. Major examples of groups that have targeted Catholics in recent history include Ulster loyalists in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and the second Ku Klux Klan in the United States. The anti-Catholic sentiment which resulted from this trend frequently led to religious discrimination against Catholic communities and individuals and it occasionally led to the religious persecution of them. Historian John Wolffe identifies four types of anti-Catholicism: constitutional-national, theological, popular and socio-cultural.
The Catholic Church and politics concerns the interplay of Catholicism with religious, and later secular, politics. The Catholic Church's views and teachings have evolved over its history and have at times been significant political influences within nations.
Clericalism is the application of the formal, church-based leadership or opinion of ordained clergy in matters of the church or in broader political and sociocultural contexts.
The aim of a number of separate policies conducted by various governments of France during the French Revolution ranged from the appropriation by the government of the great landed estates and the large amounts of money held by the Catholic Church to the termination of Christian religious practice and of the religion itself. There has been much scholarly debate over whether the movement was popularly motivated or motivated by a small group of revolutionary radicals. These policies, which ended with the Concordat of 1801, formed the basis of the later and less radical laïcité policies.
Religion in France is diverse, with the major religion being Christianity. A significant part of the population is not religious, and significant minorities professing Islam and other religions. Freedom of religion and freedom of thought are warranted by the legacy of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, and by the principle of laïcité enforced by the 1880s Jules Ferry laws and the 1905 law on the Separation of the Churches and the State. Roman Catholicism has been the major religion in the domains of the French monarchy for more than a millennium, and it also held the role of state religion; the monarchy had such close ties to the Roman papacy that France was yclept the "eldest daughter of the Church".
Antireligion or Religiophobia is opposition to religion or traditional religious beliefs and practices. It involves opposition to organized religion, religious practices or religious institutions. The term antireligion has also been used to describe opposition to specific forms of supernatural worship or practice, whether organized or not. The Soviet Union adopted the political ideology of Marxism–Leninism and by extension the policy of state atheism which opposed the growth of religions.
Ayatullah Sheikh Muhammad Kazim Khurasani, commonly known as Akhund Khurasani was a Shia jurist and political activist.
Traditionally, the thought and practice of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamism in the nation of Iran has referred to various forms of Shi'i Islamic religious revivalism that seek a return to the original texts and the inspiration of the original believers of Islam. Issues of importance to the movement include the elimination of foreign, non-Islamic ideas and practices from Iran's society, economy and political system. It is often contrasted with other strains of Islamic thought, such as traditionalism, quietism and modernism. In Iran, Islamic fundamentalism and Islamism is primarily associated with the thought and practice of the leader of the Islamic Revolution and founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini ("Khomeinism"), but may also involve figures such as Fazlullah Nouri, Navvab Safavi, and successors of Khomeini.
After the October Revolution, there was a movement within the Soviet Union to unite all of the people of the world under communist rule known as world communism. Communism as interpreted by Vladimir Lenin and his successors in the Soviet government included the abolition of religion and to this effect the Soviet government launched a long-running unofficial campaign to eliminate religion from society. Since some of these Slavic states tied their ethnic heritage to their ethnic churches, both the peoples and their churches were targeted by the Soviets.
The modern history of anticlericalism has often been characterized by deep conflicts between the government and the Catholic Church, sometimes including outright persecution of Catholics in Mexico.
Sheikh Fazlollah bin Abbas Mazindarani, also known as Fazlollah Noori, was a major figure in Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911) as a Twelver Shia Muslim scholar and politically connected mullah of the court of Iran's Shah. Originally a supporter of the constitution, he turned against it after the supporting constitution shah died and was replaced by one opposing the constitution. He was hanged as a traitor in 1909 by a court of the constitutionalist government for "sowing corruption and sedition on earth".
Irreligion in Mexico refers to atheism, deism, religious skepticism, secularism, and secular humanism in Mexican society, which was a confessional state after independence from Imperial Spain. The first political constitution of the Mexican United States, enacted in 1824, stipulated that Roman Catholicism was the national religion in perpetuity, and prohibited any other religion. Since 1857, however, by law, Mexico has had no official religion; as such, anti-clerical laws meant to promote a secular society, contained in the 1857 Constitution of Mexico and in the 1917 Constitution of Mexico, limited the participation in civil life of Roman Catholic organizations and allowed government intervention in religious participation in politics.
The anti-religious campaign during the Russian Civil War describes the promotion of state atheism and persecution of the religious that accompanied the rise of the former Soviet Union from the earliest days after the revolution in 1917. The initial anti-religious campaign after the revolution focused on Christianity, which was characterized by the killing of thousands, along with antireligious legislation meant to deprive the Church of its capacity to function.
The Catholic Church in Latin America began with the Spanish colonization of the Americas and continues up to the present day.
Christopher Columbus, on his first Spanish-sponsored voyage to the Americas in 1492, sailed south from what is now the Bahamas to explore the northeast coast of Cuba and the northern coast of Hispaniola. Columbus, who was searching for a route to India, believed Cuba to be a peninsula of the Asian mainland. The first sighting of a Spanish ship approaching Cuba was on 28 October 1492, probably at Bariay, Holguín Province, on the eastern point of Cuba.
Anti-Christian sentiment, also referred to as Christophobia or Christianophobia, constitutes the fear of, hatred of, discrimination, and/or prejudice against Christians, the Christian religion, and/or its practices.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
