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PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE This article was downloaded by: On: 21 July 2010 Access details: Access Details: Free Access Publisher Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37- 41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713636813 'Clerical Fascism' in Interwar Europe: An Introduction Matthew Feldman a ; Marius Turda a a University of Northampton, To cite this Article Feldman, Matthew and Turda, Marius(2007) ''Clerical Fascism' in Interwar Europe: An Introduction', Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8: 2, 205 — 212 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14690760701321098 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14690760701321098 Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

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PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

This article was downloaded by:On: 21 July 2010Access details: Access Details: Free AccessPublisher RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Totalitarian Movements and Political ReligionsPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t713636813

'Clerical Fascism' in Interwar Europe: An IntroductionMatthew Feldmana; Marius Turdaa

a University of Northampton,

To cite this Article Feldman, Matthew and Turda, Marius(2007) ''Clerical Fascism' in Interwar Europe: An Introduction',Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions, 8: 2, 205 — 212To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/14690760701321098URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14690760701321098

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial orsystematic reproduction, re-distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.

The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contentswill be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae and drug dosesshould be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss,actions, claims, proceedings, demand or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directlyor indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.

Page 2: Clerical Fascism - Feldman

Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,Vol. 8, No. 2, 205–212, June 2007

ISSN 1469-0764 Print/ISSN 1743-9647 Online/07/020205-08 © 2007 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/14690760701321098

‘Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Europe: An Introduction

MATTHEW FELDMAN* and MARIUS TURDA**

*University of Northampton **Oxford Brookes UniversityTaylor and FrancisFTMP_A_232005.sgm10.1080/14690760701321098Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions1469-0764 (print)/1743-9647 (online)Original Article2007Taylor & Francis [email protected]

In 1934 Frederick L. Schuman, financed by an American Academy of Political andSocial Sciences fellowship, set about conducting an ambitious field work projectin Germany: a study of the recent National Socialist revolution. His reportconcluded, strikingly: ‘For the present, the new German cult, with its parapherna-lia of symbols, rituals, hymns, sacred writings, saints, and martyrs brings genuinesolace to the troubled middle-class soul’.1 This insight, which would undoubtedlyhave enjoyed the approval of the eminent German protestant theologian and NaziParty member, Emanuel Hirsch, was nevertheless intended as a scholarly expla-nation of Nazism’s transformation into an ersatz, or political, religion – oneaiming to link this ‘solace’ to the wider social and existential crises experienced byso many Germans in the early 1930s.

The thesis that Nazism (in addition to other movements) synthesised politicalextremism with religious millenarianism was already explored at length by theGerman political philosopher Eric Voegelin’s near-contemporaneous Die Politis-chen Religionen. In some seven decades since Voegelin’s classic, an enormous bodyof scholarly literature has grown up around the nature of sacralised forms of secu-lar politics, not just in respect of Nazism,2 but also in terms of the general utilityand relevance of the concept ‘political religion’,3 as well as this phrase’s relevanceto other movements and ideologies. Moreover, the particular diffusion of theconcept ‘political religion’ during the last 10 or so years – not least in the pages ofTotalitarian Movements and Political Religions, but also in the more recent writings ofscholars such as Hans Maier, Michael Burleigh and Claus-Ekkehard Bärsch – hasdramatically increased our understanding of twentieth-century totalitarian move-ments. This has been a major achievement, particularly regarding how, and underwhat conditions, secular political ideologies and their attendant political move-ments can assume sacral – that is, religious and/or faith-based – qualities. Espe-cially in the last decade, studies from this perspective have been extended toMaoist China, post-Cold War North Korea and Stalinist Russia in terms of Marx-ism, in addition to Nazism, Italian Fascism and various abortive fascist movementsin interwar Europe. However, as Emilio Gentile’s recent Politics as Religion remindsus, like Schuman and Voegelin, our contemporary understanding of ‘the sacralisa-tion of politics’ is due to a host of contemporaneous observers, like the little-knownItalian philosopher, Adriano Tilgher:

The period after the [First World] War witnessed one of the most startlingoutbreaks of pure numinousness ever recalled in the history of the world.We witness the birth of new deities [numines] with our own eyes. Youwould need to be blind and deaf to all current realities if you were unable

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206 M. Feldman and M. Turda

to realize that for very many of our contemporaries State, Fatherland,Nation, Race and Class are objects not just of enthusiastic veneration butalso of mystical adoration […] The twentieth century promises to add afew interesting chapters to the history of religious wars.4

Academic consideration of ‘political religions’, and particularly their relation-ship with Christianity, has led some commentators to argue for a Christian basisto fascist movements like German National Socialism. Foremost amongst this newwave of critics to take religion seriously in terms of fascist ideology is RichardSteigmann-Gall’s 1999 The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity 1919–1945.Taking the Nazis’ twenty-fourth point in their February 1920 Party Programme asa point of departure for investigating their alleged ‘positive Christianity’,Steigmann-Gall, a contributor to the present volume, has helped to re-openthe debate about fascism and religion.5 In a recent special issue of the Journal ofContemporary History dedicated to Steigmann-Gall’s monograph – exemplifyingthe revival of interest in the multi-faceted interactions between politics and religionin the modern world – both Ernst Piper and Doris Bergen point out that theNazis need not have assumed a religious guise for their own ‘flock’ to have beenpractising Christians. For on the eve of the Second World War, writes Bergen:

The overwhelming majority of Germans remained baptized, tax-payingmembers of the official Christian Churches throughout the 12 years of nazirule. In hindsight, it may seem impossible to reconcile the vicious hatredsof nazism with Christianity’s injunction to ‘turn the other cheek’ or tosquare the circle of nazi antisemitism with Christianity’s obvious originsin Judaism. But the vast majority of Germans – over 95 per cent by lastcount in 1939 – evidently had no problem doing so. The fact alone speaksto a coexistence of Christianity and National Socialism [and Germans]voted with their feet and with their church-tax-paying pocked-books andtheir participation in rituals such as baptism, to remain Christian.6

Even if, as is suggested by most contributors to JCH’s special issue “Nazism,Christianity and Political Religion: A Debate”, virtually all Nazi functionarieswere likely to agree with Martin Bormann’s rejection of any ‘presuppos]ition of] asynthesis of National Socialism and Christianity’, which he dismissed as an‘impossibility’, this was not the way it looked to much of the laity,7 for manychurch-going Germans during the Third Reich, like their national counterpartsacross interwar Europe, doubtless carried their party membership cards to localSunday services. However, if Steigmann-Gall’s thesis that Nazi leaders retainedcertain residual Christian beliefs suggests that a larger exploration of the‘Christian’ roots of European fascism, and especially Nazism, is called for, it alsoraises the inverse question: to what extent did interwar Christians, especiallyclerics, see national fascism movements as more than revolutionary parties withsecular goals, but as ‘holy’ redeemers of the nation or race; or at the very least, asChristian enough to do business with?

This returns us to Schuman’s commentary, which is of particular relevanceto the ensuing 15 studies published here. For not only did he note, like manyothers at the time, the adoption of religious symbolism by an ostensibly secularmovement, Schuman also discerned a symbiosis taking place between religion andpolitics as well. For some Nazis, and indeed some priests, fascism and Christianity

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were neither antithetical nor even necessarily oppositional forms of spirituality. Infact, the prospect of fusing the secular and the sacred exerted a profound appeal tomany clerics intent on solving the perceived crises of modernity. This sense wasredoubled by the imperative defence of Christianity against the ‘godless’ rise ofcommunism, and the need to resolve the personal moral and existential dilemmathey faced as Christians when confronted with the growing hegemony of fascism.As early as 1922, the Italian Catholic priest and leader of Partito Popolare Italiano,Luigi Sturzo, used the term ‘clerical fascist’ to describe those Italian clericsactively involved with Fascism. ‘Clerical fascism’ was thus, from its inception, aterm already situated at the interstices between fascism and Christianity.

Yet if the relationship between the various Christian confessions and right-wing movements has long been recognised as a major factor in the history ofinterwar Europe, it is striking how little has been done to test the conceptual feasi-bility of Sturzo’s ‘clerical fascism’. In part, this is due to a predominant focus onright-wing intellectual and political elites fascinated by religion and/or having areligious education, instead of more closely investigating those religious leadersand priests involved in radical political activism. Yet as these studies suggest, forsome, typically younger, priests – and a wide swath of the churchgoing laity – thisled to an active collaboration with ‘political religions’ in the form of interwarEuropean fascism. More troublingly, it produced many instances of proactiveclerical collaboration with fascist movements, which in some cases meant clericsnot just conniving at, but participating in, fascist violence and even genocide (asin wartime Croatia). In short, Christianity and interwar fascism were not incom-mensurate worldviews in practice, at least in the minds of a surprising number ofnationalist priests across Europe.

Indeed, in terms of the stance that many adopted toward fascist political reli-gions, it seems that a composite, or syncretic, Weltanschauung was adopted by somechurch members – laity and clergy alike – in all the major Christian denominations,sometimes in significant numbers. There is also evidence that in the case of someinterwar fascist movements some of their leading ideologues and most faithfuldevotees displayed a reciprocal readiness to assert the compatibility of secularnationalism with traditional religion. It is precisely the degree of cross-over, or‘hybridisation’, of these two ostensibly antagonistic faith systems – one long-estab-lished and monotheistic, the other secular and revolutionary – that “‘ClericalFascism’ in Interwar Europe” sets out to examine. Together, these analyses exam-ine the frequently complex, and often paradoxical, relationships that arosebetween Christian confessions in Europe (Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox) and13 national permutations of fascism (whether in the form of abortive movementsin the political system of an established regime or wartime Axis Satellite).

Most of the texts published here were originally presented at an internationalconference of the same name, held in April 2006 at Oxford Brookes University;several others were specially commissioned for this collection. A conceptualframework within which to locate these case studies is first offered by Roger’sGriffin‘s overview, ‘“The Holy Storm”, which originally opened the conferenceitself and which – like all the essays incorporated into this volume – has beenconsiderably expanded upon for publication. Following Griffin’s taxonomic andcontextual considerations, the 13 case-studies presented thereafter test this frame-work, which is augmented by John Pollard’s concluding reflections, whichfurther assess both the conceptual difficulty and methodological pitfalls facingany exploration of ‘clerical fascism’.

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208 M. Feldman and M. Turda

In the attempt to alleviate this term’s inherent epistemological weaknesses todate, some conceptual points of reference were suggested to authors in the interestof providing a common focus for the array of highly diverse national case studiespresented here. In particular, contributors were asked to consider the followingquestions: To what does ‘clerical fascism’ refer – the clergy, laity or both? What isthe relationship between ‘clerical fascism’ and concepts like ‘generic fascism’,‘political religions’ and ‘religious politics’? How do historical processes likemodernisation and secularisation bear upon ‘clerical fascism’? What was theimpact of universal confessions like Catholicism on national permutations of‘clerical fascism’? and finally, how did antisemitism and racism influence thedevelopment of ‘clerical fascism’?

Yet in approaching these broad areas of enquiry, contributors were not asked toendorse the heuristic value of the term ‘clerical fascism’. Indeed, several do not,either in terms of individual fascist priests or collective fascist movements. Whilea number of authors find the concept relevant to their case studies, only a few arewilling to label a given church organisation ‘clerical fascist’. Yet what emergesfrom some of the ensuing analyses is a deeply ambivalent attitude to fascism byEuropean clerics, who in many instances simply saw fascism as ‘the least of allevils’. Only in extreme cases would clerics go so far as to believe, to quote theLegionary journalist I. P. Prudendi, that ‘God is a fascist!’8

The considerable range of contributors’ responses to the issues raised by thestudy of “‘Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Europe” is due in no small measure to thefact that this is the first time the term has been given extended academic scrutiny,and the first time that a deliberate attempt has been made to apply it to as wide ageographical and confessional foundation as possible. To this end, texts includeconfessions as diverse as British Anglican Protestantism and Roman Catholicismin Italy to Croatian Catholicism and Serbian Orthodoxy in Yugoslavia. Similarly,countries surveyed range from Sweden in northern Europe to Greece in the south,and from Ukraine in the east to Ireland in the west. In addition to testing theapplicability of the concept ‘clerical fascism’ to states in interwar Europe, thiscollection also endeavours to illuminate wider questions relating to the study offascism: the degree of compatibility between ‘clerical fascism’ and fascism; thequestionable relevance of ‘political religion’ in this contexts; and the theoreticallysecular nature of fascist ideology itself.

In order to best carry out this agenda, the editors felt that a confessional groupingwould provide for the most effective analysis of ‘clerical fascism’, thus avoidingcontested geographical divisions for the countries in question, as well as similardisputes over what constitutes a ‘empowered’, as opposed to an ‘abortive’ fascistmovement (as exemplified by wartime Hungary). As a result, the first sectionsurveys the relationship of Orthodox churches to fascism, including Greece,western Ukraine, Romania and Serbia. This is followed by three Protestant coun-tries – Sweden, Germany and Britain – with the latter two, more markedly multi-confessional, countries presenting less straightforward instances of the compara-tively ‘newer’ Protestant denominations of Christianity. The third section focuseson the oldest and most diffused confession across Europe, Catholicism, containingtexts on Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Austria, Croatia, Hungary and Ireland. Althoughanother volume could be devoted to the dozen or so European countries notincluded here, the present collection of essays can claim to have covered a signifi-cant sample of the fascist–clerical relationships that arose in the interwar period,choosing to include discussions of cases rarely encountered in Anglophone history

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(Greece, Hungary, the western Ukraine), rather than episodes already familiar inAnglophone secondary literature (Spain, Slovakia and France).

The first glimpse of ‘clerical fascism’ in interwar Europe is given in the section‘Orthodox/Greek-Orthodox Christianity and Fascism’, which opens with Aristo-tle Kallis’ discussion of Greek interwar politics in “Fascism and Religion: TheMetaxas Regime in Greece and the ‘Third Hellenic Civilisation’”. As with similarOrthodox Christian countries such as Serbia and Romania, the processes of politi-cal liberalisation and social modernisation in Greece created propitious condi-tions for fascist ideas to emerge. However, although religion was a central facet ofIoannis Metaxas’ regenerative project for the nation, his notion of religion heavilydepended on restoring and continuing the established church’s role in Greek soci-ety, rather than attempting to introduce ‘religious politics’ into the heart of hisregime. As Kallis clearly demonstrates, Metaxas himself attempted to base hisregime on the ‘traditional authority’ of established entities (the nation, religionand the church), a novel layer of personal ‘charismatisation’ (the leader cult) andan emerging ethos of totalitarianism.

In terms of Orthodoxy in central and southeast Europe, one notices thatCroatia’s experience of fascism was not the only entanglement between radicalpolitics and Christianity, not even within the federal state of Yugoslavia, for Serbiaalso exhibited numerous features characteristic of ultra-nationalism and fascism,as Maria Falina suggests in “Between ‘Clerical Fascism’ and Political Orthodoxy:Orthodox Christianity and Nationalism in Interwar Serbia”. Assessing the pivotalrole played by nationalism in the politicisation of religion, Falina considers ‘polit-ical Orthodoxism’ a more appropriate term for describing the relationshipbetween Orthodoxy and fascism than ‘clerical fascism’. In a similarly scepticalvein, Valentin S[abreve] ndulescu’s “Sacralised Politics in Action: the February 1937Burial of the Romanian Iron Guard leaders Ion Mo[tcedil] a and Vasile Marin” inspectsthe Orthodox rituals used by the Legionary movement in Romania, as illustratedby the funeral held for two high-ranking functionaries. Even if one were to agreethat this illustrated a form of ‘sacralised politics’, advocating the creation of a ‘newman’ and a ‘new country’ – one fully embraced by Romanian Legionaries – the factthat they attempted to transcend the canonical boundaries of the OrthodoxChurch leads S[abreve] ndulescu to refrain from defining them as ‘clerical fascists’.9

In contrast, it was the Greek Orthodox Church that dominated much of the evolv-ing nationalism in interwar western Ukraine, argues Anton Shekhovtsov. “By Crossand Sword: ‘Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Western Ukraine” finds that the fascist‘style’ of certain political parties, and the ‘fascistisation’ of the political milieu,ignited the transformation of nationalist clericalism into ‘clerical fascism’. EchoingSchuman’s remark about the ‘troubled soul’ of the nation, Shekhovtsov insists thatit was the Christian churches’ inability to answer the general European crisis expe-rienced by millions during the interwar period that gave rise to radical forms ofChristianity. What emerges from his analysis is the sense that the perceived crisisof the modern world that constituted a main factor not only in the successes ofItalian Fascism and German Nazism, but also in the problematic cases of friendshipand even fusion between fascism and particular understandings of Christianity.

This fusion of fascism with clerical ideology is also the main focus of the threestudies comprising the section ‘Protestant Christianity and Fascism’, whichcommences with Tom Linehan’s “’On The Side of Christ’: Fascist Clerics in 1930sBritain”. It appears that, even though BUF clerics (both Catholic and Protestant)did not tend to see fascism as a substitute for their own Christian beliefs, many of

at

a

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them hoped to reconcile the Christian faith with fascist praxis (an example ofcollusion rather than synthesis, to adopt the terminology proposed by RogerGriffin). In similar vein, the Swedish case study next explored by Lena Berggren,entitled “Completing the Lutheran Reformation: Ultra-nationalism, Christianityand the Possibility of ‘Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Sweden”, investigates the rela-tionship between Protestant Christianity (in this case evangelical Lutheranism)and nationalism. Berggren focuses upon forms of fascism that materialised aroundradical theologians within Lutheran churches that generally favoured the ascen-dancy of Nazism in Germany. Similar to Germany, many Swedish fascistsperceived the evangelical Nordic Faith to be not only profoundly Christian, butthe pure, true and original form of Christianity, one revealing the ‘natural teach-ings of God’.

Furthermore, viewing Christianity and fascism as sharing common assump-tions about the regeneration of society and the nation is an approach able toprovide fruitful insights into central Europe as well. In the case of Nazi Germany,as Richard Steigmann-Gall demonstrates, the argument for a link between theDeutsche Christen and the Nazi attempts to re-shape the German Weltanschauunghas been misinterpreted by a number of scholars. In “The Nazis’ ‘PositiveChristianity’: a Variety of ‘Clerical Fascism’?”, he argues that the Nazis did takean active interest in religious activities and church organisations, thus demon-strating that a ‘clerical fascist’ variety of Nazism may be a viable interpretativetool, so long as the concept is provided the kind of terminological precision it hasso far lacked.

Likewise, the relationship between Catholicism and fascism has generatedmuch controversy, as is demonstrated by the seven texts forming the final sectionin this volume, ‘Catholic Christianity and Fascism’. However, as Jorge Dagninoclearly demonstrates in “Catholic Modernities in Fascist Italy: The Intellectuals ofAzione Cattolica”, discussion of ‘clerical fascism’ should be repositioned: if oneviews Fascism not simply as anti-modern, but as an alternative form of moder-nity, then the relationship between religion and Fascism takes on a differentdimension: the new nationalist morality, family ethic and ultimately rejuvenatednation advocated by Fascism was favourably received by many Catholic clerics.That such a shared call for a better and healthier country was answered by manyCatholics is convincingly shown by the case of Belgium. According to Bruno DeWever’s “Catholicism and Fascism in Belgium”, the history of Léon Degrelle andthe Rexist movement suggests that much of the Catholic agenda was embraced byBelgian fascists. It was, therefore, by reaching a compromise between the revolu-tionary zeal of some members within the church, and fascism’s ambition tobecome a political religion, that a national form of ‘clerical fascism’ ultimatelyappeared in Belgium.

It was this compromise between the Roman Catholic Church and the state thatalso provided the institutional framework for António de Oliveira Salazar’sEstado Novo. As António Costa Pinto argues in “Political Catholicism, Crisis ofDemocracy, and Salazar’s New State in Portugal”, the Catholic Church may haveopposed the ‘fascistisation’ of the regime, while simultaneously attempting to‘Catholicise’ it. This authoritarian Catholic social doctrine also resembledthe corporatist system tested by Engelbert Dollfuss in Austria. Dollfuss’ regime isotherwise the only regime included here to have previously been described as‘clerical fascist’.10 However, as shown in Robert Pyrah’s discussion of the theatreand its relationship to the question of national identity in the 1930s, “Enacting

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Encyclicals? Cultural Politics and ‘Clerical Fascism’ in Austria, 1933-8”, Catholi-cism and religious belief were not subordinated to ethnic rituals and myths inAustria like they were in Germany or Italy. Conversely, the Austrian nation waspresented as coterminous with Catholicism, thus impregnating the Austrianauthoritarian regimes with a mission to safeguard the country’s Catholic heritageand national identity.

A final question persists, nevertheless. Are clerical movements that developedfascist tendencies to be considered ‘clerical fascist’? Are they much different, if atall, from fascist movements that attracted Catholic support, as in the case of Italy,Slovakia, Belgium or Spain? Such questions dominate Mark Biondich’s discussionof the notorious Croatian case in his “Radical Catholicism and Fascism in Croatia,1918–1945”, Croatia being a country usually invoked as an extreme variant of‘clerical fascism’. Indeed, the relationship between Catholicism and fascism char-acterised much of the domestic policies pursued by the independent state ofCroatia in the 1940s, but according to Biondich the two existed in a polarisedrather than amiable relationship.

Another insight into the role played by fascism in the context of interwar Chris-tianity in Central Europe is given by Béla Bodó’s analysis of the relationshipbetween the Catholic Church and the right-wing, antisemitic elements within theHungarian political elite following the establishment of the Hungarian republic in1918. “‘Do not Lead us into (Fascist) temptation’: the Catholic Church in InterwarHungary” not only demonstrates that militias during the White Terror incorpo-rated religious messages, but also that they were divided along religious lines:Catholic, Protestant and even Muslim. Furthermore, as in Croatia, the majority offascist groups, including the Arrow Cross, were favourably disposed towards theCatholic Church. However, even though many Hungarian fascists had strong tiesto organised politics, they cannot be described, for Bodó as ‘clerical fascists’.

Similar military and political conflicts existed in Ireland, where a sizeablenumber of the fascist supporters had been active participants in the Irish revolu-tion of 1916–22, and the subsequent Civil War of 1922–23 which together broughtinto being an independent nation, the Irish Free State. As Mike Cronin showsin”’Catholicising Fascism, Fascistising Catholicism? The Blueshirts and theJesuits in 1930s Ireland”, it was by fostering a form of ultra-nationalism thatIreland’s fascist movement, the Blueshirts, gained acceptance. Although manyIrish Catholics sympathised with the Blueshirts, neither the church hierarchy, northe various Catholic orders, publicly supported the fascist movement.

Ironically, the very scepticism accompanying many of the arguments for ‘cleri-cal fascism’ voiced in this volume demonstrates the rich possibilities of a morespecific theoretical and methodological employment of the term. Moreover, it issymptomatic of the problems that arise when the concept of ‘political religion’ ishaphazardly applied to cases that do not display the particular conjuncture ofreligion with secularisation which Gentile and others consider so vital for itsemergence. In this regard, “’Clerical Fascism’ in Interwar Europe” presents somesignificant challenges to those indiscriminately adopting Gentile’s ‘religions ofpolitics’ in the study of Christianity’s multifaceted relationship with politicalcreeds of various shades. The texts here also highlight the idiosyncracies of partic-ular national cases, thus sounding a cautionary tone behind further attempts togeneralise about ‘clerical fascism’ in either the national or European dimension.That said, contextualising ‘clerical fascism’ within an interdisciplinary and plural-istic framework, it is sincerely hoped that this volume will contribute to new

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vistas for academic research and international collaboration in the vexed, andvexing, study of European Christianity and interwar politics.

Notes

1. Frederick L. Schuman, “The Political Theory of German Fascism”, The American Political ScienceReview, 28/2 (1934), p.232.

2. For a useful survey of recent historiography on Nazism and (political) religion, see Neil Gregor,“Nazism – A Political Religion? Rethinking the Voluntarist Turn”, in Neil Gregor, ed., Nazism, Warand Genocide (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2005).

3. See, for example, Hans Maier, ed., Totalitarianism and Political Religions: Concepts for the Comparisonof Dictatorships, Vol. I (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005).

4. Emilio Gentile, Politics as Religion (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2006). p.11.5. See, for example, Milan Babik’s “Nazism as a Secular Religion”, History and Theory, 45/3 (2006),

pp.375–96.6. Doris L. Bergen, “Nazism and Christianity: Partners and Rivals? A Response to Richard Steig-

mann-Gall, The Holy Reich. Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919–1945”, Journal of ContemporaryHistory, 42/1 (2007), p.29.

7. Quoted in Ernst Piper, “Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich”, in ibid., p.51.8. I. P. Prundeni, “Dumnezeu e fascist”, Porunca vremii (20 July 1937). See also Biserica Imbrescu

Ilie’s, Biserica [scedil] i Mi[scedil] carea legionar[abreve] (Bucharest: Cartea Româneascã, 1940), the infamous bookwritten by a Legionary priest.

9. This contrasts with Roger Eatwell’s argument that only the Iron Guard deserves to be dubbed‘clerical fascist’; see his “Reflections on Fascism and Religion”, Totalitarian Movements and PoliticalReligions, 4/3 (2003), p.148.

10. Klaus-Jörg Siegfried, Klerikalfaschismus: Zur Entstehung und sozialen Funktion des Dollfußregimes inÖsterreich – Ein Beitrag zur Faschismusdiskussion (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 1979).

s s a

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