Political liberalism, broadly understood, has taken to heart
the profound lesson that traditional or confessional religions
can contribute to extremely dangerous political and social
outcomes. We also know about the terror that can flow from a
different kind of religion. In the twentieth century, catastrophic
murder and suffering is associated with what some call political
or civil religion , that is, with political and civil institutions that
became charged with the sacred and functioned in many ways
as a religion. Mussolini’s fascism, Hitler’s Nazism, and Russian
Bolshevism have all been plausibly described as religious,
when suitably defined by something like a broad, Durkheimian
account of religion. Of the danger of these political regimes, we
are all well aware.