Religion is a set of beliefs and practices that are determined by one’s view of reality and the supernatural. Politics is the process by which groups make decisions. Because one’s view of reality has a powerful effect on decision-making, the two realms are tightly intertwined in a number of ways.
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.
-Mohandas Gandhi
Theocracy describes a state in which religious and government leaders either are identical or form a strongly interlocked and virtually inseparable group. A number of states in the ancient world could be so described, and examples in more recent times include the Vatican, Tibet under the Dalai Lama, and Iran and other Islamic Republics.
Nihilism was a term that was first popularized by the novelist Ivan Turgenev in 1862 (though it had been used in Russia and abroad for several decades before that time) to characterize the rebellious and highly unconventional youths who had appeared in Russia by the late 1850s. Though the nihilists were often described as people who no longer believed in anything, in actuality they believed in their own ideas with passionate and indeed fanatical intensity. Heavily influenced by theories originating from Western Europe, including German philosophy and French socialist thought, the nihilists sought to radically redesign society by destroying existing conventions of social morality – which they regarded as abstract concepts lacking any inherent basis in reality. After many failed attempts, they managed to assassinate Tsar Alexander II, after which they were largely hunted down and wiped out.
Where has God gone? I shall tell you. We have killed him —you and I. We are all his murderers… God is dead. That which was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet possessed has bled to death under our knives. There has never been a greater deed.
-Friedrich Nietzsche
