Dr.Traveler
Mathematician
- Aug 31, 2009
- 3,948
- 652
- 190
A religious movement has to do with the organic personality of the people as they adapt those things that they want to live by for themselves while political movements have to do with the power of the government itself so when you compare a conservative to a pre-reformation movement within religion and liberalism to protestent movement then you are saying that politics is a religion.
If you were to compare conservative with believing in monarchies and liberal with believing in democracy it would sound different but perhaps you just wanted to use them as a comparison or it might have been a fraudian slip of some kind.
Ah, I think I see the problem here.
I do not consider the Religious Right a Conservative group, nor do I really consider them a religious group. They are a political group with religious motivations, a subtly different thing.
In the same way, the pre-Reformation Papacy wasn't really a religious group. They represented the defacto leadership of Europe at the time, and acted that way. Very few things the Papacy did in that period were motivated by religion at all, though the public was sold religion as a justification.
That's why I consider the two comparible. The Religious Right is now a political, not a religious group.
I do not think it is possible to compare, or even make compatible, political ideologies like Liberalism or Conservatism with religious movements like Christianity, Islam, or Judaism. I think there are sometimes similar goals, or even similarities on world views, but political motivations and religious motivations clash, often with terrible repercussions.
I've said here and elsewhere that I believe the best thing is to keep religion out of politics, and politics out of religion. I think the Religious Right and the Papacy pre-Reofrmation are both prime examples of why. You could also talk about certain Islamic governments or historical Israel.