Suchergebnisse

Soka Gakkai (Value Creation Academic Society), originally a religious org, went into politics in 1955 & has had an unprecedented success. It is opposed by Socialists & Communists. Its membership has increased more than 100 times since 1952. It emphasizes the creation of a worldly heaven, stresses faith healing & the solution of personal problems. The program has the strongest appeal among workers & small businessmen. It has successfully organized young people. The charge of fascism cannot be taken seriously. Its main aim is peaceful conversion & its entry into politics was only another means to increase the strength of the org. It has no pol'al program, but it shows the latent strength of ideas which seemed to have been rejected by the majority of the Japanese. IPSA.

Despite its numerical strength Polish Catholicism was unable to form a viable pol'al bloc before WWII: This seems to be due to the absence of a Polish Mc, & to the basic spirit of Polish individualism. Indeed, Polish Catholicism seems unable to command the total pol'al situation without the prop of dictatorship or a favorable historical milieu. 3 factors could have strengthened the Catholic Church after WWII: the elimination of other minority religious groups by the Nazis; the large pop shifts; the moral prestige attained by individual Catholics during the resistance period. With the setting up of a communist State in Poland, the ultimate aim of the authorities was inevitably the complete eradication of religion. However, at the beginning, the Marxist leadership tended to tread softly in religious matters. Instead of operating a frontal attack an attempt was made to push the Catholic hierarchy from its prominent position in nat'l life, by making it appear 'non-Polish' & 'foreign.' The State-Church relationship in Poland since 1944 has alternated between benevolence, tolerance & hostility, & more recently the Gomulka compromise of 'coexistence' & 'tolerance.' IPSA.

Until the 19th cent, Mohammedanism was perfectly suited to the needs of primitive African societies. The intrusion, along with Christianity, of a dynamic civilization in a closed static civilization, brought about the destruction of customary structures, & the Africa of today shows more & more the need of a universal religion which will allow the society to become reintegrated at a higher level than that of the ancient tribal & family groups. Christianity may appear to the Africans as a means of overcoming their technical backwardness, though at the same time it is frequently regarded to be an instrument of colonialism & of Western domination. Strictly speaking, Mohammedanism could replace Marxism (which has been accepted as an area of intellectual inquiry, but has been rejected as an ideology because of its European & atheistic attributes), if it did not; itself, tend to become an instrument of Arab, & especially of Egyptian, neo-colonialism As a result, it is not impossible that Africa will move in a 3rd direction, toward a pantribal, neo-paganism, which might be capable of giving rise to a kind of African national socialism. Such a development would be based upon racial rather than class struggle, & would present all the dangers of a totalitarian system that includes.both religion & politics at the same time. Tr by J. A. Broussard.

In relation to pol'al issues Cath's have their own att's & decline to join with other Christians, except to a very limited extent; & the efficiency & farsightedness of their lobbying & influence in pol'al circles outstrip similar efforts by other Christians. The strong links between the Free Churches & the Labor Party at the beginning of the cent have been considerably changed & weakened. Free Church att's to politics have been affected by the radical change in their relations to the established Church &, in common with other Christians, by the change in the aims of the politicians themselves with respect to soc questions. Christian att's towards politics & policy are expressed in 3 areas: by Bishops in the House of Lords, speaking on pol'al questions of the day; by Church representatives who work in the headquarter offices of their churches or on the consultative bodies of the British Council of Churches; & by the mass of Church lay & clerical opinion in the country as a whole. IPSA.

Religious concern is f'ly found in the works of Tocqueville, who saw in religion an essential basis for new societies & felt that a society threatened by disbelief could not prosper. In the midst of a world which leans toward disbelief, the only possible voice favoring religion seems to be the one followed in the US. Religion can exercise indirect power over politics by emphasizing tradition & maintaining respect for order. For Tocqueville therefore, religion is not only 'a particular kind of hope'; it is more than mere sentiment. Tr from IPSA by J. A.Broussard.

The controversy over mixing religion and politics has not kept religion apart from government. Religious groups participate in a wide variety of political activities. But religious groups in the United States are not organized as political parties or political machines. There is a relation between religious affiliation and party affiliation. The correlation, however, does not usually indicate a "religious" vote. In part, the relation reflects socio-economic status. For Catholics and Jews it is very much a result of awareness of minority status. As minority awareness declines, trends in voting change. There is no pattern of voting for or against candidates because of their religion. The importance of religion in a presidential election cannot be assessed on the basis of other elections. The election of a Catholic president would not change the nature of our government, but it would have an effect on American politics.