Religions and politics in postmodern world : remarks on mutual relations

For a long period of time we speak about the secularization of the political sphere. Many thinkers, especially since the Enlightenment, was proclaiming a rising atrophy of religious influences seeing it as a kind of atavism, which (along industrialization and the emergence of the industrial society and the scientific progress) will be push on the margin of social life. Auguste Comte, Karl Marks, Herbert Spencer and Emilé Durkheim are just few examples of people sharing this view. In the 20th century theory of secularization made its career, pointing out the necessity of erosion of religion in the social dimension, as well in the individual one due to modernization processes. For years it was considered as axiomatic and undeniable and became according to Jose Casanova "the main theoretical and analytic frame by which social sciences perceived the relations between religion and modernity". Meanwhile, today more and more scholars ascertains a specific revival of religion, its new presence in the public discourse and a broader influence on the socio-political sphere. It even contributed to the use of the deprivation of religion theory among sociologists, putting it again into the public. Religion emphases its place in the public space and the political discourse. Philosopher and historian of ideas Mark Lilla assumed that we have to put aside the dawn of gods. Because of the fact, that for the last two centuries since the French Revolution the political life of the West did focus on strictly political questions related to class relations, social justice, national identity etc., today "we struggle alike in the 16th century around the concept of reason and revelation, dogmatic purity and tolerance". It is worth taking a look in that context where most of the conflicts are taking place, in which spheres confrontation occurs between what is laic-political and what is religious-spiritual.