Religion, Nationalism, and Transnational Actors Reference library
Jeffrey Haynes
The International Studies Encyclopedia
...and development since the Enlightenment (c. 1720–80 ). It implies a significant diminishing of religious concerns in everyday life, a unidirectional process, whereby societies move from a sacred condition to an increasingly irreligious state. “Irreligion” implies both atheism and agnosticism and in general a state of secularism – to the point that the sacred eventually becomes socially and politically marginal. According to “secularization theory,” both religion and piety are destined universally to become “only” private matters; consequently,...
German-American Bund Reference library
Stephanie Brookins
The Oxford Companion to World War II
...a small minority of Americans of German ancestry, the Bund's membership, which at its peak may have totalled more than 20,000, was concentrated in eastern and Midwestern cities containing substantial numbers of German immigrants. The organization opposed racial intermixture, atheism, communism , Jewish financial interests, and labour movements, and promoted Aryan culture. As Nazism became increasingly unpopular among the American public, including the majority of German Americans, the Bund tried to obscure its allegiance to Nazi ideology , claiming it had...
religion Reference library
Keith Robbins, Norman Davies, and Michael Bourdeaux
The Oxford Companion to World War II
...thousands of Catholics and Poles were murdered by Ukrainian nationalists. In the USSR the Russian Orthodox Church emerged with vigour from the penumbra of state atheism. Reflecting later on the events of the 1940s, a Russian Christian wrote, ‘In the old days our army carried its standard into battle with the cry, “For God and the Tsar” you never heard anyone in the Great Patriotic War cry, “For atheism and Stalin”.’ In truth, the German invasion of June 1941 ( see BARBAROSSA ) caused not only a cessation of persecution, but a temporary reversal of Stalin's...
