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State atheism

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World map showing countries that formerly or currently practice state atheism.[26] Most of the countries that practice state atheism are socialist states, with a few exceptions such as Mexico during the Cristero War.
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State atheism or atheist state is the incorporation of hard atheism or non-theism into political regimes.[27] It is considered the opposite of theocracy and may also refer to large-scale secularization attempts by governments.[28] To some extent, it is a religion-state relationship that is usually ideologically linked to irreligion and the promotion of irreligion or atheism.[29] 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.[27][30][31] In some instances, religious symbols and public practices that were once held by religions were replaced with secularized versions of them.[32] State atheism in these cases is considered as not being politically neutral toward religion, and therefore it is often considered non-secular.[27]

The majority of communist states followed similar policies from 1917 onwards.[9][28][30][33][34][35][36] The Soviet Union (1922–1991) had a long history of state atheism, whereby those who were seeking social success generally had to profess atheism and stay away from places of worship; this trend became especially militant during the middle of the Stalinist era, which lasted from 1929 to 1953. In Eastern Europe, countries like Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine experienced strong state atheism policies.[34] East Germany and Czechoslovakia also had similar policies.[28] The Soviet Union attempted to suppress public religious expression over wide areas of its influence, including places such as Central Asia. Currently, China,[28][33][36][37] North Korea,[36][37] and Vietnam,[38][9] are officially atheist.

Cuba[35] was an atheist state until 2019, when a change in its constitution declared it a secular state.[39][40]

In contrast, a secular state officially purports to be neutral in matters of religion; it does not support religion, nor does it support irreligion.[27][41][42] In a review of 35 European states in 1980, 5 states were considered "secular" in the sense of religious neutrality, 9 considered "atheistic", and 21 states considered "religious".[43]

Countries that currently practice state atheism

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Countries that formerly practiced state atheism

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Communist states

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Main articles: Marxism and religion, Marxist–Leninist atheism, and Communism and religion

A communist state is a state with a form of government which is characterized by the one-party rule or the dominant-party rule of a communist party which professes allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist–Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state.[44][45][46] The founder and primary theorist of Marxism, the 19th-century German thinker Karl Marx, had an ambivalent attitude toward religion, which he viewed as "the opium of the people", simultaneously "the sigh of" and a source of moral agency of the "oppressed creature" against their suffering. To Marx, religion was not the ideological expression of those in power,[47] and he did not see it needing abolishing. Instead, he saw the communist state as creating conditions where the consolation provided by religion would not be needed.[48] In the Marxist–Leninist interpretation of Marxist theory, developed primarily by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, atheism emanates from its dialectical materialism and tries to explain and criticize religion.[49]

Lenin states:

Religion is the opium of the people—this dictum by Marx is the corner-stone of the whole Marxist outlook on religion. Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches, and each and every religious organisation, as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class.[50]

Although Marx and Lenin were both atheists,[51][52] several religious communist groups exist, including Christian communists.[53]

Julian Baggini devotes a chapter of his book Atheism: A Very Short Introduction to a discussion about 20th-century political systems, including communism and political repression in the Soviet Union. Baggini argues that "Soviet communism, with its active oppression of religion, is a distortion of original Marxist communism, which did not advocate oppression of the religious." Baggini goes on to argue that "Fundamentalism is a danger in any belief system" and that "Atheism's most authentic political expression... takes the form of state secularism, not state atheism."[48]

Soviet Union

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Main articles: Religion in Russia, Religion in the Soviet Union, Irreligion in Russia, Irreligion in Kazakhstan, Irreligion in Azerbaijan, Irreligion in Estonia, Secularism in Georgia (country), and Soviet anti-religious legislation
Cover of Bezbozhnik u Stanka in 1929, the magazine of the Society of the Godless. The first five-year plan of the Soviet Union is shown crushing the gods of the Abrahamic religions.
1929 cover of the Soviet magazine Bezbozhnik u stanka ("The Atheist at the Machine"), in which a group of industrial workers are depicted throwing Jesus Christ in the trash

State atheism (gosateizm, a syllabic abbreviation of "state" [gosudarstvo] and "atheism" [ateizm]) was a major goal of the official Soviet ideology.[54] This phenomenon, which lasted for seven decades, was new in world history.[55] The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism".[56][57] It sought to make religion disappear by various means.[58][59] Thus, the USSR became the first state to have as one objective of its official ideology the elimination of the existing religion, and the prevention of the future implanting of religious belief, with the goal of establishing state atheism (gosateizm).[60][61][62][63]

After the Russian Civil War, the state used its resources to stop the implanting of religious beliefs in nonbelievers and remove "prerevolutionary remnants" which still existed.[4] The Bolsheviks were particularly hostile toward the Russian Orthodox Church (which supported the White Movement during the Russian Civil War) and saw it as a supporter of Tsarist autocracy.[64] During the collectivization of the land, Orthodox priests distributed pamphlets declaring that the Soviet regime was the Antichrist coming to place "the Devil's mark" on the peasants, and encouraged them to resist the government.[64] Political repression in the Soviet Union was widespread and while religious persecution was applied to numerous religions,[65] the regime's anti-religious campaigns were often directed against specific religions based on state interests.[57] The attitude in the Soviet Union toward religion varied from persecution of some religions to not outlawing others.[57]

From the late 1920s to the late 1930s, such organizations as the League of Militant Atheists ridiculed all religions and harassed believers.[66] The league was a "nominally independent organization established by the Communist Party to promote atheism".[67] It published its own newspaper, and journals, sponsored lectures, and organized demonstrations that lampooned religion and promoted atheism.[68] Anti-religious and atheistic propaganda was implemented into every portion of soviet life from schools to the media and even on to substituting rituals to replace religious ones.[56] Though Lenin originally introduced the Gregorian calendar to the Soviets, subsequent efforts to reorganise the week to improve worker productivity saw the introduction of the Soviet calendar, which had the side-effect that a "holiday will seldom fall on Sunday".[69]

Within about a year of the revolution, the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed (a much greater number was subjected to persecution).[65] Most seminaries were closed, and publication of religious writing was banned.[65] A meeting of the Antireligious Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) that occurred on 23 May 1929 estimated the portion of believers in the USSR at 80 percent, though this percentage may be understated to prove the successfulness of the struggle with religion.[70] The Russian Orthodox Church, which had 54,000 parishes before World War I, was reduced to 500 by 1940.[65] Overall, by that same year 90 percent of the churches, synagogues, and mosques that had been operating in 1917 were either forcibly closed, converted, or destroyed.[71]

Since the Soviet era, Russia,[72][73] Armenia,[4] Kazakhstan,[74] Uzbekistan,[75] Turkmenistan,[76] Kyrgyzstan,[77] Tajikistan,[78] Belarus,[79][80] Moldova,[81] Georgia,[82] Ukraine[83] and Lithuania[84][85] have diverse religious affiliations.[86] Russians have primarily returned to identifying with the Orthodox Church; by 2008 72% of Russians identified as Orthodox - rising from 31% in 1991. However, Professor Niels Christian Nielsen of philosophy and religious thought of Rice University has written that the post-Soviet population in areas which were formerly predominantly Orthodox are now "nearly illiterate regarding religion", almost completely lacking the intellectual or philosophical aspects of their faith and having almost no knowledge of other faiths.[87]

In 1928, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was established by Joseph Stalin, acting on an idea proposed by Lenin in order to give the Jewish population in Russia more personal autonomy, as reparation for antisemitism in the Russian Empire. Along with granting Jewish autonomy, Stalin also allowed Sharia law in the majority-Islamic countries of the Soviet Union.[88] "The Soviet Government considers that the Sharia, as common law, is as fully authorized as that of any other of the peoples inhabiting Russia" (statement by Stalin during the Congress of the Peoples of Dagestan, an autonomous republic in Russia). Art. 135 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union protects individuals from religious discrimination.[89]

Albania

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Main articles: Religion in Albania, Islam in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, Freedom of religion in Albania, and Irreligion in Albania

In 1967 Enver Hoxha, the head of state of Albania, declared Albania to be the "first atheist state of the world" even though the Soviet Union under Lenin had already been a de facto atheist state.[90][91][60][61][62][63] Marxist–Leninist authorities in Albania claimed that religion was foreign to Albania and used this to justify their policy of state atheism and suppression of religion. This nationalism was also used to justify the communist stance of state atheism from 1967 to 1991.[2]

Article 37 of the Albanian Constitution of 1976 stipulated, "The state recognizes no religion, and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people."[92][30]

Catholic priest Shtjefen Kurti was executed for secretly baptizing a child in Shkodër in 1972.[93]

In 1990, the policy of state atheism was repealed.[94] The 1998 Constitution of Albania defined the country as a parliamentary republic, and established personal and political rights and freedoms, including protection against coercion in matters of religious belief.[95][96] Albania is a member state of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation,[95] and the 2011 census found that 58.79% of Albanians adhere to Islam, making it the largest religion in the country. The majority of Albanian Muslims are secular Sunnis along with a significant Bektashi Shia minority. Christianity is practiced by 16.99% of the population, making it the 2nd largest religion in the country. The remaining population is either irreligious or belongs to other religious groups.[97] In 2011, Albania's population was estimated to be 56.7% Muslim, 10% Roman Catholic, 6.8% Orthodox, 2.5% atheist, 2.1% Bektashi (a Sufi order), 5.7% other, 16.2% unspecified.[98] In the Gallup Global Reports 2010 survey, when asked whether religion is an important part of daily life, 39% of Albanians responded "yes" and 53% "no", which placed Albania in the lowest quartile of countries ranked by "yes" responses.[99] The U.S. state department reports that in 2013, "There were no reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice."[96]

Cambodia

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Khmer Rouge bullet holes left at the Angkor Wat temple
Main articles: Democratic Kampuchea and Religion in Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge actively persecuted Buddhists during their rule of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.[100] Buddhist institutions and temples were destroyed and Buddhist monks and teachers were killed in large numbers.[101] A third of the country's monasteries were destroyed along with numerous holy texts and items of high artistic quality. 25,000 Buddhist monks were massacred by the regime,[102] which was officially an atheist state.[9] The persecution was undertaken because Pol Pot believed that Buddhism was "a decadent affectation". He sought to eliminate Buddhism's 1,500-year-old mark on Cambodia.[102]

Under the Khmer Rouge, all religious practices were banned.[103][104] According to Ben Kiernan, "the Khmer Rouge repressed Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism, but its fiercest extermination campaign was directed against the ethnic Cham Muslim minority."[104]

China

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Main articles: Religion in China, Freedom of religion in China, Irreligion in China, and Antireligious campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party

China has adopted a policy of official state atheism.[33][37][105][106] Art. 36 of the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of religion but it only allows members of state sanctioned organizations to practice religions. The government has promoted atheism throughout the country. In April 2016, the General Secretary, Xi Jinping, stated that members of the Chinese Communist Party must be "unyielding Marxist atheists"; in the same month, a government-sanctioned demolition work crew drove a bulldozer over two Chinese Christians who protested against the demolition of their church by refusing to step aside.[107]

Traditionally, a large segment of the Chinese population practiced Chinese folk religions[108] and Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. As a result, all of these religions had played a significant role in the everyday lives of ordinary people.[109][110][111] After the 1949 Chinese Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party took power.[112][113] For much of its early history, that government maintained under Marxist thought that religion would ultimately disappear, and characterized it as emblematic of feudalism and foreign colonialism.[citation needed]

During the Cultural Revolution, student vigilantes who were known as Red Guards converted religious buildings into buildings which were used for secular purposes or they destroyed them. However, this attitude relaxed considerably in the late 1970s, during the reform and opening up period. The 1978 Constitution of the People's Republic of China guaranteed freedom of religion with a number of restrictions. Since then, there has been a massive program to rebuild Buddhist and Taoist temples that were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.[citation needed]

The CCP has said that religious beliefs and membership in it are incompatible.[10] However, the state is not allowed to force ordinary citizens to become atheists.[21] China's five officially sanctioned religious organizations are the Buddhist Association of China, Chinese Taoist Association, Islamic Association of China, Three-Self Patriotic Movement and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. These groups are afforded a degree of protection, but are subject to restrictions and controls under the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Unregistered religious groups face varying degrees of harassment.[114] The constitution permits what is called "normal religious activities," so long as they do not involve the use of religion to "engage in activities that disrupt social order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious organizations and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign dominance."[21]

Article 36 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China of 1982 specifies that:

Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The state protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.[115]

Most people report no organized religious affiliation; however, people with a belief in folk traditions and spiritual beliefs, such as ancestor veneration and feng shui, along with informal ties to local temples and unofficial house churches number in the hundreds of millions. In its annual report on International Religious Freedom, the United States Department of State[116] provides statistics about organized religions. In 2007, it reported the following (citing the Government's 1997 report on Religious Freedom and 2005 White Paper on religion):[116]

  • Buddhists 8%.
  • Taoists, unknown as a percentage partly because it is practiced along with Confucianism and Buddhism.
  • Muslims, 1%, with more than 20,000 Imams. Other estimates state that at least 1% of China's population is Muslim.
  • Christians, Protestants, at least 2%. Catholics, about 1%.

To some degree, statistics which are related to Buddhism and religious Taoism are incomparable to statistics for Islam and Christianity. This fact is due to the traditional Chinese belief system which blends Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, so a person who follows a traditional belief system would not exclusively identify as a Buddhist or a Taoist, even though he or she would attend Buddhist or Taoist places of worship. According to Peter Ng, Professor of the Department of Religion at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as of 2002, 95% of Chinese were religious in some way if religion is believed to include traditional folk practices such as burning incense for gods or ancestors at life-cycle or seasonal festivals, fortune telling and related customary practices.[117]

The U.S. State Department has designated China as a "country of particular concern" since 1999.[118] Freedom House classifies Tibet and Xinjiang as regions of particular repression of religion, due to concerns about separatist activity.[119][120][121][122][123] Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, says that China's actions against the Uighurs are "a major problem".[124] The Chinese government has denounced the report, stating that China has "ample" religious freedom.[125]

Cuba

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Main article: Religion in Cuba

Until 1992,[126] Cuba was officially an atheist state.[35][37]

In August 1960, several bishops signed a joint pastoral letter condemning communism and declaring it incompatible with Catholicism, and calling on Catholics to reject it.[12] Fidel Castro gave a four-hour long speech the next day, condemning priests who serve "great wealth" and using fears of Falangist influence in order to attack Spanish-born priests, declaring "There is no doubt that Franco has a sizeable group of fascist priests in Cuba."[127]

Originally more tolerant of religion, the Cuban government began arresting many believers and shutting down religious schools after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Its prisons were being filled with clergy since the 1960s.[35] In 1961, the Cuban government confiscated Catholic schools, including the Jesuit school that Fidel Castro had attended. In 1965 it exiled two hundred priests.[128]

In 1976, the Constitution of Cuba added a clause stating that the "socialist state...bases its activity on, and educates the people in, the scientific materialist concept of the universe".[129] In 1992, the dissolution of the Soviet Union led the country to declare itself a secular state.[130][131] Pope John Paul II contributed to the Cuban thaw when he paid a historic visit to the island in 1998 and criticized the US embargo.[132] Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba in 2012 and Pope Francis visited Cuba in 2015.[133][134][135][136] The Cuban government continued hostile actions against religious groups; having ordered, in 2015 alone, the closure or demolition of over 100 Pentecostal, Methodist, and Baptist parishes, according to a report from Christian Solidarity Worldwide. [137] While the Cuban constitution now recognizes freedom of religion, the law is still silent on the issue of church construction. This vagueness allowed authorities in some areas to prohibit the construction of new churches, but allowing to lead services inside their homes and in religious buildings erected before the Cuban revolution. Despite the difficults in constructing new churches, there's been a boom in evangelical worship, with tens of thousands of Cubans worshipping unmolested across the island each week.[138]

East Germany

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Main articles: Christianity in East Germany, East Germany § Religion, New states of Germany § Religion, State Secretary for Church Affairs, and Irreligion in Germany

Though Article 39 of the GDR constitution of 1968 guarantees religious freedom, the state's policy was oriented towards the promotion of atheism.[14] Eastern Germany practiced heavy secularization.[28] The German Democratic Republic (GDR) generated antireligous regulations and promoted atheism for decades which impacted the growth of citizens affiliating with no religion from 7.6% in 1950 to 60% in 1986.[139] It was in the 1950s that scientific atheism became official state policy[140] when Soviet authorities were setting up a communist government. As of 2012 the area of the former German Democratic Republic was the least religious region in the world.[141][142][143][144]

North Korea

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Main articles: Religion in North Korea, Freedom of religion in North Korea, Irreligion in North Korea, Juche, North Korean cult of personality, and Persecution of Christians in North Korea

The North Korean constitution states that freedom of religion is permitted.[145] However, the North Korean government's Juche ideology has been described as "state-sanctioned atheism" and atheism is the government's official position.[36][37] According to a 2018 CIA report, free religious activities almost no longer exist, with government-sponsored groups to delude them.[146] The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom stated that assessing the situation in North Korea is challenging, but reports which state that DPRK officials repress religious activities have surfaced, including reports which state that the government forms and controls religious organizations in an attempt to restrict the performance of religious activities.[147] In 2004, the Human Rights Overview reported that North Korea remains one of the most repressive governments, with isolation and disregard for international law making monitoring almost impossible.[148] After 1,500 churches were destroyed during the rule of Kim Il Sung from 1948 to 1994, three churches were built in Pyongyang. Foreign residents who regularly attend services at these churches have reported that the services which are performed there are staged for their benefit.[147]

The North Korean government promotes the cult of personality of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, described as a political religion, as well as the Juche ideology, based on Korean ultranationalism, which calls on people to "avoid spiritual deference to outside influences", which was interpreted as including religions which originated outside Korea.[149][21]

Since 2001, the U.S. State Department has designated North Korea as a "country of particular concern", due to its violations of religious freedom.[150][151] Cardinal Nicolas Cheong Jin-suk has said that, "There's no knowledge of priests surviving persecution that came in the late forties, when 166 priests and religious were killed or kidnapped," which includes the Roman Catholic bishop of Pyongyang, Francis Hong Yong-ho.[152] In November 2013, it was reported that the repression of religious people led to the public execution of 80 people, some of them were executed for possessing Bibles.[149][150][153]

There are five Christian churches in Pyongyang, three of them are Protestant, one of them is Eastern Orthodox, and one of them is Catholic.[154] President Kim Il Sung and his mother were frequent patrons of the Chilgol Church, one of the Protestant churches, and that church can be visited on tours.[155] Christian institutions are regulated by the Korean Christian Federation, a state-controlled religious organization.[156] Chondoism is an indigenous religion in Korea, and the Chondoist Chongu Party is part of the ruling front in North Korea, but the number of Chondoists in North Korea is unknown.[157]

Mongolia

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Main article: Religion in Mongolia

The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) propagated atheism until the 1960s.[158] In the Mongolian People's Republic, after it was invaded by Japanese troops in 1936, the Soviet Union deployed its troops there in 1937, undertaking an offensive against the Buddhist religion. Parallel with this, a Soviet-style purge was launched in the People's Revolutionary Party and the Mongolian army. The Mongol leader at that time was Khorloogiin Choibalsan, a follower of Joseph Stalin, who emulated many of the policies that Stalin had previously implemented in the Soviet Union. The purge virtually succeeded in eliminating Tibetan Buddhism and cost an estimated thirty to thirty-five thousand lives.[citation needed]

Vietnam

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Main article: Religion in Vietnam

Officially, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is an atheist state as declared by its communist government.[24] Art. 24 of the constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam recognizes religious freedom.[159]

Non-communist states

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Revolutionary Mexico

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See also: Religion in Mexico, Mexican Revolution, Calles Law, and Cristero War

Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and 130 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 as originally enacted included anticlerical provisions and restricted religious freedoms.[160] The Articles were initially seldom enforced until President Plutarco Elías Calles, who sought to enact the separation of church and state established in the Constitution of 1917, took office in 1924.[160] Calles' Mexico has been characterized as an atheist state[18] and his program as aiming to eradicate religious practices in Mexico during the 20th century.[161]

There was an expulsion of foreign clergy and expropriation of Church properties.[162] Article 27 prohibited any future acquisition of such property by churches, and prohibited religious corporations and ministers from establishing or directing primary schools.[162] The Constitution of 1917 also forbade the existence of monastic orders (Article 5) and religious activities outside of church buildings (which became government property), and mandated that such religious activities would be overseen by government (Article 24).[162]

On 14 June 1926, President Calles enacted anticlerical legislation known formally as The Law Reforming the Penal Code and unofficially as Calles Law.[163] His anti-Catholic actions included outlawing religious orders, depriving the Church of property rights and depriving the clergy of civil liberties, including their right to a trial by jury in cases involving anti-clerical laws and the right to vote.[163][164] Catholic antipathy towards Calles was enhanced because of his vocal anti-Catholicism.[165]

Cristeros hanged in Jalisco

Due to the strict enforcement of anticlerical laws, people in strongly Catholic states, especially Jalisco, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Colima and Michoacán, began to oppose him, and this opposition led to the Cristero War from 1926 to 1929, which was characterized by atrocities on both sides. Some Cristeros applied terrorist tactics, including the torture and killing of public school teachers,[166][167] while the Mexican government persecuted the clergy, killing suspected Cristeros and supporters and often retaliating against innocent individuals.[168]

A truce was negotiated with the assistance of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow.[169] Calles, however, in violation of its terms did not abide by the truce and he had approximately 500 Cristero leaders and 5,000 other Cristeros shot, frequently in their homes in front of their spouses and children.[169] Particularly offensive to Catholics after the supposed truce was Calles' insistence on a state monopoly on education, suppressing Catholic education and introducing socialist education in its place: "We must enter and take possession of the mind of childhood, the mind of youth."[169] Persecutions continued as Calles maintained control under the Maximato and did not relent until 1940, when President Manuel Ávila Camacho took office.[169] Attempts to eliminate religious education became more pronounced in 1934 through an amendment of Article 3 of the Mexican Constitution, which strived to eliminate religion by mandating "socialist education", which "in addition to removing all religious doctrine" would "combat fanaticism and prejudices", "build[ing] in the youth a rational and exact concept of the universe and of social life".[160] In 1946, socialist education provisions were removed from the constitution and new laws promoted secular education. Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.[169] Where there were 4,500 priests operating within the country before the War, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been killed, exiled or not obtaining licenses.[169][170] In 1935, 17 states had no registered priests.[171]

Revolutionary France

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The Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg turned into a Temple of Reason, depicted in 1794.
See also: Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution, Cult of Reason, and Religion of Humanity

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 Gallican 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 any in modern European history. The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the Church, abolished the Catholic monarchy, nationalized Church property, exiled 30,000 priests, and killed hundreds more.[172] In October 1793, the Christian calendar was replaced with one reckoned 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 the atheistic Cult of Reason,[173] with the revolutionary government briefly mandating observance of the former in April 1794.[174][175][176][177][178]: 1–17 

Human rights

[edit]
Main article: History of human rights

Antireligious states, including atheist states, have been at odds with international human rights law.[179] Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is designed to protect freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. In 1993, the UN's human rights committee declared that article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights "protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief."[180] The committee further stated that "the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views." Signatories to the convention are barred from "the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers" to recant their beliefs or convert.[149] Despite this, as of 2009 minority religions were still being persecuted in many parts of the world.[181][182]

Theodore Roosevelt condemned the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, establishing a history of U.S. presidents commenting on the internal religious liberty of foreign countries.[183] In Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address, he outlined Four Freedoms, including Freedom of worship, that would be foundation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and future U.S. diplomatic efforts.[183] Jimmy Carter asked Deng Xiaoping to improve religious freedom in China, and Ronald Reagan told US Embassy staff in Moscow to help Jews harassed by the Soviet authorities.[183][184] Bill Clinton established the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, in order to use diplomacy to promote religious liberty in repressive states.[183] Countries like Albania had anti-religious policies, while also promoting atheism, that impacted their religious rights.[185]

See also

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Notes

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  1. ^ Stanton 2012, p. 32, Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopedia
  2. ^ a b Hall 1999, (subscription required) - Representations of Place: Albania: "the perception that religion symbolized foreign (Italian, Greek and Turkish) predation was used to justify the communists' stance of state atheism (1967-1991)."
  3. ^ Marques de Morais 2014, Religion and the State in Angola
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Kowalewski 1980, pp. 426–441, (subscription required) - Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR: Characteristics and Consequences
  5. ^ Clarke 2009, p. 94, Crude Continent: The Struggle for Africa's Oil Prize
  6. ^ a b c d e f Avramović 2007, p. 599, Understanding Secularism in a Post-Communist State: Case of Serbia
  7. ^ a b c d e f Kideckel & Halpern 2000, p. 165, Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History
  8. ^ Kalkandjieva 2015, The encounter between the religious and the secular in post-atheist Bulgaria
  9. ^ a b c d 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."
  10. ^ a b deccanherald.com 2011, No religion for Chinese Communist Party cadres
  11. ^ Clark & Decalo 2012, Historical Dictionary of Republic of the Congo - [page needed]
  12. ^ a b Mallin 1994, Covering Castro: Rise and Decline of Cuba's Communist Dictator - [page needed]
  13. ^ a b Ramet 1998, p. 125, Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia
  14. ^ a b Kellner 2014, 25 years after Berlin Wall's fall, faith still fragile in former East Germany: "During the decades of state-sponsored atheism in East Germany, more formally known as the German Democratic Republic, the great emphasis was on avoiding religion."
  15. ^ a b Doulos 1986, p. 140, Christians in Marxist Ethiopia
  16. ^ Zuckerman 2009, Atheism and Secularity. - [page needed]
  17. ^ Stiller 2013, Laos: A Nation With Religious Contradictions
  18. ^ a b 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."
  19. ^ Sanders 2003, Historical Dictionary of Mongolia - [page needed]
  20. ^ Van den Bergh-Collier 2007, p. 180, Towards Gender Equality in Mozambique
  21. ^ a b c d Temperman 2010, pp. 141–145, State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance
  22. ^ Walaszek 1986, pp. 118–134, (subscription required) - An Open Issue of Legitimacy: The State and the Church in Poland
  23. ^ Leustean 2009, p. 92, Orthodoxy and the Cold War: Religion and Political Power in Romania: "was to transform Romania into a communist atheist society."
  24. ^ a b 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."
  25. ^ Campbell 2015, Yemen: The Tribal Islamists
  26. ^ Supporting sources listed as of January 22, 2018 for the world map showing nations that formerly or currently practice state atheism: Afghanistan[1];Albania[2]; Angola[3]; Armenia[4]; Azerbaijan[4]; Belarus[4]; Benin[5]; Bosnia-Herzegovina[6][7]; Bulgaria[8]; Cambodia[9]; China[10]; Croatia[6][7]; Congo[11]; Cuba[12]; Czechia[13]; East Germany[14]; Eritrea[15]; Estonia[4]; Ethiopia[15]; Hungary[16]; Kazakhstan[4]; Kyrgyzstan[4]; Laos[17]; Latvia[4]; Lithuania[4]; Mexico[18]; Moldova[4]; Mongolia[19]; Montenegro[6][7]; Mozambique[20]; North Korea[21]; North Macedonia[6][7]; Poland[22]; Romania[23]; Serbia[6][7]; Slovakia[13]; Slovenia[6][7]; Tajikistan[4]; Turkmenistan[4]; Ukraine[4]; Uzbekistan[4]; Vietnam[24]; Yemen, or more specifically, South Yemen[25]
  27. ^ a b c d Bullivant & Lee 2016, p. 74, A Dictionary of Atheism: "State Atheism is the name given to the incorporation of positive atheism or non-theism into political regimes, particularly associated with Soviet systems. State Atheisms have tended to be as much anti-clerical and anti-religious as they are anti-theist, and typically place heavy restrictions on acts of religious organization and the practice of religion. State Atheist regimes are sometimes seen as examples of political secularism because they entail a nonreligious form of government; these regimes are even sometimes described as 'radically secularist'. However, where political secularism is understood as political neutrality towards religion or religions, or even political neutrality towards any worldview or existential culture including not only theist but also atheist examples, State Atheism is considered non-secular."
  28. ^ a b c d e Bullivant & Ruse 2015, pp. 461–462, The Oxford handbook of atheism: "As we look elsewhere around the world, the dynamics of secularization and religionization are even more complex. The largest-scale experiments in secularization — state atheisms — have had mixed outcomes. In the former Soviet Union, as in China, Communist 'scientific: 'militant', or 'practical' atheism has unquestionably had some secularizing effect overall. But the story—or history—does not end there. As the former Soviet countries illustrate, long-term effects of the experiment are uneven. It took hold more profoundly in, for example, eastern Germany or the Czech Republic than in Poland. Armenia, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, or Uzbekistan, among others (Froese 2004; see Irena Borowik, Branko Ana& and Radoslaw Tyrala's 'Central and Eastern Europe)."
  29. ^ Madeley 2009, p. 183: "In Eastern Europe the end of the world war produced radically different outcomes as Soviet-installed regimes introduced strict controls on the churches and other religious bodies and the state atheism which had been pioneered in Russia after the Bolshevik takeover in 1917 was imposed. ... By 1970 however, as Table 12.1 indicates, all 22 countries of Central and Eastern Europe which lay behind the Iron Curtain could be designated Atheistic de jure, committed in Barrett's terms to 'formally promoting irreligion'. This meant typically that while the state was ostensibly separated from all religions and churches, it was also 'linked for ideological reasons with irreligion and opposed on principle to all religion', claiming the right 'to oppose religion by discrimination, obstruction or even suppression' (Barrett 1982: 96). Separation in these states meant exclusion from public life and the cutting-off of most of the resources required for religion to flourish; it emphatically did not mean that the state was debarred from interfering in the field of religious provision — rather that, as in Turkey, the state and its organs should exert maximum control and surveillance."
  30. ^ a b c Temperman 2010, pp. 140–141, State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance: "Before the end of the Cold War, many Communist States did not shy away from being openly hostile to religion. In most instances, communist ideology translated unperturbedly into state atheism, which, in turn, triggered measures aimed at the eradication of religion. As much was acknowledged by some Communist Constitutions. The 1976 Constitution of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, for instance, was firmly based on a Marxist dismissal of religion as the opiate of the masses. It provided: "The state recognizes no religion of any kind and supports and develops the atheist view so as to ingrain in to the people the scientific and materialistic world-view."
  31. ^ Franken & Loobuyck 2011, p. 152, Religious Education in a Plural, Secularised Society. A Paradigm Shift: "In this model, atheism is a state doctrine. Instead, it is regarded as an official state policy, aiming to eradicate all sympathy for religious ideas, and the idea that God exists in particular. The adherents of political atheism make a plea for an atheist state that has to foster atheist convictions in its citizenry."
  32. ^ Maddox 1998, p. 99
  33. ^ a b c Eller 2014, p. 254, Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate.: "After the communist revolution of 1949, the People's Republic of China adopted a policy of official state atheism. Based on Marxist thinking that religion is class exploitation and false consciousness, the communist regime suppressed religion, "re-educated" believers and religious leaders, and destroyed religious buildings or converted them to non-religious uses."
  34. ^ a b Bullivant & Ruse 2015, p. 626, The Oxford handbook of atheism: "There have been only a few comparative analyses of atheism carried out in the CEE region. One of the few attempts of this kind is that undertaken by Sinita Zrinkak (see 2004). Comparing different types of generational responses to atheism in several CEE countries, on the basis of studies carried out in these countries and based on data from the EVS, he distinguishes three groups of countries in the region. The first group comprises countries in which state atheism had the most severe consequences... This group includes such countries as Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Bulgaria."
  35. ^ a b c d Hertzke 2006, p. 43, Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights: "Cuba is the only country in the Americas that has attempted to impose state atheism, and since the 1960s onward its jails have been filled with pastors and other believers."
  36. ^ a b c d Hertzke 2006, p. 44, Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights: "The North Korea government not only imposed state-sanctioned atheism, it also mandated a totalitarian personality worship of Kim II Sung and Kim Jong II. This meant that the regime combined traditional Communist persecution of religion with a state-mandated faith we associate with Iranian mullahs or the Taliban. Thus "enemies of the state" are also treated as heretics."
  37. ^ a b c d e O'Brien 1993, p. 108, The state of religion atlas: "Atheism continues to be the official position of the governments of China, North Korea and Cuba."
  38. ^ B. S., Political Science. "Religion in Vietnam". Learn Religions. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  39. ^ "2019 Report on International Religious Freedom: Cuba". United States Embassy in Cuba (in European Spanish). Retrieved 2023-12-24.
  40. ^ "Normas Jurídicas: Constitución de La República de Cuba - Entre otras materias, Declara al Estado laico, consagra la libertad de conciencia y reconoce igualdad de derechos y deberes de instituciones religiosas y asociaciones fraternales: Proclamada en la Segunda Sesión Extraordinaria de la IX Legislatura de la Asamblea Nacional del Poder Popular, el 10/04/2019". Boletín Jurídico del Observatorio de Libertad Religiosa de América Latina y el Caribe (9).
  41. ^ Temperman 2010, p. 120, State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance: "A constitutional declaration of secularity means, first and foremost, that the state does not wish to invoke religion as a justification for its authority, actions and decisions. It must be emphasized that proclamations of secularity, both historically and presently, in the majority of cases denote official impartiality in matters of religion rather than official 'irreligiosity'. Secular states in that respect should certainly not be confused with declared atheist or anti religious states. "
  42. ^ Temperman 2010, p. 140, State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance: "Although the historical underlying incentives that accompanied the establishment of a secular state may have been characterized by criticism of certain religious doctrines or practices, presently a state of secularity in itself does not necessarily reflect value judgements about religion. In other words, state secularism does not come down to an official rejection of religion. State secularism denotes an intention on the part of the state to not affiliate itself with religion, to not consider itself a priori bound by religious principles (unless they are reformulated into secular state laws) and to not seek to justify its actions by invoking religion. Such a state of secularity denotes official impartiality in matters of religion rather than official irreligiosity. By contrast, secularism as a philosophical notion can indeed be construed as an ideological defense of the secular cause, which might include criticism of or scepticism towards religion. Thus, states that are 'ideologically secular' and that declare secular world-views the official state doctrine give evidence, explicitly or by implication, of judgements about the value of religion within society. Most versions of state communism, for instance, embrace Marxist criticism of religion."
  43. ^ Madeley 2003, pp. 1–22, (subscription required) - European Liberal Democracy and the Principle of State Religious Neutrality: "As Table 2 indicates along its horizontal dimension, according to the attributions based on these criteria, in 1980, out of 35 European territories listed, only five could be coded as secular in the sense that the 'State is secular, promoting neither religion nor irreligion' and nine were deemed Atheistic. On the other hand, 21 states or governments were found to be committed in one way or another to the support of religion and/or religious institutions."
  44. ^ "Which countries are communist? | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2023-04-02.
  45. ^ "Leninism | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 2023-04-02.
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  48. ^ a b Baggini 2003, Atheism: A Very Short Introduction
  49. ^ Thrower 1983, Marxist-Leninist "Scientific Atheism" and the Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR: "As an integral part of the Marxist–Leninist world-view, 'scientific atheism' is grounded in the view of the world and of Man enshrined in dialectical [materialism] and historical materialism: The study of scientific atheism brings to light an integral part of the Marxist–Leninist world-view. Being a philosophical science, scientific atheism emanates from the basic tenets of dialectical and historical materialism, both in explaining the origin of religion, and its scientific criticism of [religion]. (ibid., p. 272.)"
  50. ^ Lenin 1996, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin - The Attitude of the Workers' Party to Religion
  51. ^ Lobkowicz 1964, p. 319, - (subscription required) Karl Marx's Attitude toward Religion: "Marx, of course, was an atheist."
  52. ^ Britannica Lenin, Vladimir Lenin: "When he was 16, nothing in Lenin indicated a future rebel, still less a professional revolutionary—except, perhaps, his turn to atheism."
  53. ^ Adam & Stewart 1878, p. 577, Canadian Monthly and National Review:Communism
  54. ^ Kowalewski 1980, p. 426, Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR: Characteristics and Consequences: "The Soviet policy of state atheism (gosateizm), albeit inconsistently applied, remains a major goal of official ideology. Massive state resources have been expended not only to prevent the implanting of religious belief in nonbelievers but also to eradicate "prerevolutionary remnants" already existing. The regime is not merely passively committed to a godless polity but takes an aggressive stance of official forced atheization. Thus a major task of the police apparatus is the persecution of forms of religious practice. Not surprisingly, the Committee for State Security (KGB) is reported to have a division dealing specifically with "churchmen and sectarians."
  55. ^ Epstein, Genis & Vladiv-Glover 2016, p. 379, Russian Postmodernism : New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture: "The seven decades of Soviet atheism, whether one calls it "mass atheism," "scientific atheism," "state atheism," was unquestionably a new phenomenon in world history."
  56. ^ a b Froese 2004, p. 35, (subscription required) - Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia: Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed: "Atheists waged a 70-year war on religious belief in the Soviet Union. The Communist Party destroyed churches, mosques, and temples; it executed religious leaders; it flooded the schools and media with anti-religious propaganda; and it introduced a belief system called "scientific atheism," complete with atheist rituals, proselytizers, and a promise of worldly salvation."
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  61. ^ a b Kowalewski 1980, pp. 426–441
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  67. ^ Peris 1998, p. 2, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless
  68. ^ Peris 1998, p. 2, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless: "The League's Central Council in Moscow published its own newspaper, Bezbozhnik (The Godless), several other Russian-language journals, and propaganda materials in many other languages of the Soviet Union. Antireligious pamphlets and posters were printed in large numbers. The League's far-flung network of cells and councils sponsored lectures, organized demonstrations, and actively propagandized against religious observance. Leading Bolshevik figures gave speeches at the League's national congress in 1929, at which the League officially became "Militant." The Communist Party, the Komsomol, the trade unions, the Red Army, and Soviet schools all conducted antireligious propaganda, but the League was the organizational centerpiece of this effort to bring atheism to the masses."
  69. ^ Time magazine 1931, Staggerers Unstaggered
  70. ^ Mandelstam Balzer 2009, pp. 6–7, Religion and Politics in Russia: A Reader
  71. ^ Atwood 2001, p. 311: "The Soviets moved quickly against the Russian Orthodox Church in 1918. Most church lands became the property of the state, but the state refused to pay the salaries of the clergy. Education was taken out of the church's hands, and the state legally recognized only civil marriages. Many church leaders responded by supporting the anti-revolutionaries and tsarists. Thousands of priests and monks perished in the civil war and subsequent repression. In 1929, Stalin instituted harsher measures against religion. The state strictly controlled the publication of religious books, including the Bible. Confirmed Christians could not teach in schools or join the Communist party. The erection of new church buildings was forbidden and many former church buildings were desecrated or used to promote anti-Christian propaganda. For slightly more than a decade, the week officially contained only six days because the Christian Sabbath had been simply removed .... the Stalinist campaign against religion was directed against Jews and Muslims as well, particularly in the southern Soviet republics. As many as ninety percent of the churches, mosques, and synagogues that had been in existence in 1917 had been forcibly closed, converted, or destroyed by 1940."
  72. ^ "Russians Return to Religion, But Not to Church". Pew Research Center. February 10, 2014.
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  76. ^ CIA: Turkmenistan, The World Factbook: Turkmenistan
  77. ^ US state: Kyrgyzstan 2001, International Religious Freedom Report – Kyrgyzstan
  78. ^ US state: Tajikistan, Background Note: Tajikistan (03/09)
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  104. ^ a b Gellately & Kiernan 2006, p. 30, The specter of genocide : mass murder in historical perspective:"Pol Pot's Cambodia perpetrated genocide against several ethnic groups, systematically dispersed national minorities by force, and forbade the use of minority and foreign languages. It also banned the practice of religion. The Khmer Rouge repressed Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism, but its fiercest extermination campaign was directed at the ethnic Cham Muslim minority."
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  141. ^ focus.de: E. Germany 2012, Ostdeutschland: Wo der Atheist zu Hause ist (in German): "52 Prozent der Menschen in Ostdeutschland sind laut einer aktuellen Studie Atheisten. Das ist ein globaler Spitzenwert."
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  177. ^ Fremont-Barnes, p. 119.
  178. ^ Tallett, Frank (1991). "Dechristianizing France: The Year II and the Revolutionary Experience". In Frank Tallett; Nicholas Atkin (eds.). Religion, Society and Politics in France Since 1789. A&C Black. pp. 1–28. ISBN 978-1-85285-057-9.
  179. ^ Temperman 2010, pp. 165–166, [State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance]: "A type of state-religion identification that in essence boils down to an antireligious regime, a regime which officially rejects the concept of religion altogether, can be considered, in itself, at odd with principles of human rights law , in particular to freedom of religion or belief and the equality principle. History has seen,some regimes which attempted to ban all religious activity (communist Albania for instance)...It is submitted that a state that establishes itself as an 'atheistic state" breaches the non-discrimination principle for similar reasons that were advanced with respect to religious states..."
  180. ^ minorityrights.org 1993, CCPR General Comment 22: 30/07/93 on ICCPR Article 18
  181. ^ fdih.org 2003, Discrimination against religious minorities in Iran
  182. ^ Davis 2002, The Evolution of Religious Liberty as a Universal Human Right
  183. ^ a b c d Hertzke 2015, (archived) Responding to Religious Freedom and Presidential Leadership: A Historical Approach
  184. ^ chabad.org, Mission to Russia - A Rabbi Eulogizes President Reagan
  185. ^ Sinishta 1983

References

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Further reading

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  • L'athéisme d'État. Pourquoi est-il nécessaire? (State atheism. Why is it necessary?), (2019) by Jean-Philippe Cossette (ISBN 1704788528).


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