*6.2. The Temporal Aspirations of Religion*

The reflection about the significance of the attitude to rationality for the emergence of fundamentalist movements needs an additional note, however. If we assume that the content of fundamentalism in all of its varieties is the idea of God's power, understood not in the perspective of eternity or the deep sense of historical events, but as actualised directly and fully in "this world," then the issue of key importance for the relationship between religion and fundamentalism is the relationship between religion and politics. It may thus be hypothesised that fertile soil for the development of fundamentalism is provided by religious doctrines which create an ideal, a utopia of social and political relations, supported by divine authority. At the same time, since at its sources fundamentalism is related to a hope of establishing a perfect world, a religion which introduces an eschatological distance to the temporal world will become a natural buffer against fundamentalist tendencies.

The difference between Islam and Christianity could be used as a case study. One specific feature of Islam is that it regularises the organisation of society and state (Zenderowski 2014). The dichotomy of *regnum* and *sacerdotium*, so crucial in the history of Western Christendom, has no equivalence there (Sulkowski 2018). Consequently, politics that represent a direct answer to religious commandments are, in a way, a natural form of the political. Without violating the structure of the relationship between religion and politics provided for in the Quran, it may legitimately be treated as a tool in creating a "model" world. Politics and religion are thus fused to a large extent through eschatology: politics may be treated as a tool for creating an ideal social and political order, contained in the religious formulas of the Quran and the tradition.

It is worth emphasising that such a stance is not only found in radical Islam. On the contrary, also liberal Muslim ideologists, who criticise traditional ulemas, object to the separation of the spiritual from the temporal. For example, for Mehdi Bazargan, one of the liberal leaders of the revolution in Iran, it was obvious that "there is no frontier between religion and politics. Religion must control and inspire politics, and not the contrary" (Keddie 2003, p. 199). Consequently, he criticises Christianity for being "unable to give believers directives for practical, social, and political life," referring them to "philosophic-political idols" (liberalism, socialism, etc.), "which Islam does not need, as it is a complete religion" (Keddie 2003, p. 199). A complete religion—for Islamic liberals, too—is a comprehensive one, providing solutions that are both temporal and eternal, whose natural environment is religious and political unity. Aware of this specificity of Islam, some scholars even propose that fundamentalism is inherent to Islam (Kłodkowski 2006, pp. 99–101).

Christianity, as Bazargan rightly points out, perceives the relationship between religion and politics differently. The Church, carrying internally the memory of Christ's death on a verdict issued by a governor of the Roman Emperor, as well as Christ distancing himself on many occasions from temporal power, believes that the Kingdom of God, or an ideal order, should not be expected or attempted here on earth. Consequently, the Church perceives identification of the state and religion as a temptation which, if succumbed to, would be as harmful to the state as it would be to religion (Mazurkiewicz 2012). In this perspective, it is easy to understand why, in their reflection on law, "Christian theologians aligned themselves against the religious law associated with polytheism and on the side of philosophy, and that they acknowledged reason and nature in their interrelation as the universally valid source of law."(Benedict XVI 2011) It is not an exaggeration, therefore, to say that the central idea of modern democracies, namely the idea of the rule of law, is an outcome of the supra-religious approach, developed on Christian grounds, to the foundations of legal order (Gierycz 2012).

The Christian approach to politics is anchored in the belief that man, created in the likeness and image of God, participates in God's wisdom by his very nature through reason. By virtue of this participation, he is able to recognise and strive towards objective good (Thomas 1947, p. 2270). This participation does not depend on faith (cf. Romans 2, 14–15) but results from the very nature of man—within himself, he discovers an inner law which is "natural" to him, inherent to the human condition (John Paul II 1993, no. 43).

The reference to natural law does not make religion irrelevant. Christian tradition is fully aware, as expressed already by Cicero (*The Republic*), of man's freedom in violating or obliterating this law within himself. As Thomas Aquinas says, although the "natural law, in the abstract, can nowise be blotted out from men's hearts," "it is blotted out in the case of a particular action, in so far as reason is hindered from applying the general principle to a particular point of practice, on account of concupiscence or some other passion ... by evil persuasions ... or by vicious customs and corrupt habits...and even unnatural vices" (Thomas 1947, p. 2308). Christianity is also aware that God is the one who should be asked about good (see Mark 10:17–27); that there is a need of higher that human being authority to resolve moral dilemmas; that revelation brings knowledge about what is the good proper to man and is the point of reference for properly forming one's conscience. Thus, emphasising that the state does not "create" good, "Christianity maintains that the objective norms governing right action are accessible to reason, prescinding from the content of revelation. According to this understanding, the role of religion in political debate is not so much to supply these norms, as if they could not be known by non-believers—still less to propose concrete political solutions, which would lie altogether outside the competence of religion—but rather to help purify and shed light upon the application of reason to the discovery of objective moral principles" (Benedict XVI 2010). Such a role of Christianity, pointed out in similar ways by secular thinkers (Habermas 2005; Perra 2005), shows that in the case of Christianity, religion is not a political factor but rather "external" to politics and a source which the political community may draw on for moral truth. Consequently, politics and religion within the Christian tradition are linked not by eschatology, but by ethics (Gierycz 2012; Mazurkiewicz 2007). Religion thus becomes a buffer that safeguards respect for human dignity in the political order.
