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State atheism

October 10, 2023

State atheism or atheist state is the incorporation of hard atheism or non-theism into political regimes.[27] It is considered the opposite of theocracy and may also refer to large-scale secularization attempts by governments.[28] To some extent, it is a religion-state relationship that is usually ideologically linked to irreligion and the promotion of irreligion or atheism.[29] State atheism may refer to a government's promotion of anti-clericalism, which opposes religious institutional power and influence in all aspects of public and political life, including the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen.[27][30][31] In some instances, religious symbols and public practices that were once held by religions were replaced with secularized versions of them.[32] State atheism can also exist in a politically neutral fashion, in which case, it is considered non-secular.[27]

World map showing countries that formerly or currently practice state atheism.[26] Most of the countries that practice state atheism are socialist states, with a few exceptions such as Mexico during the Cristero War.
  Countries that formerly practiced state atheism
  Countries that currently practice state atheism

The majority of communist states followed similar policies from 1917 onwards.[9][28][30][33][34][35][36] The Soviet Union (1922–1991) had a long history of state atheism, whereby those who were seeking social success generally had to profess atheism and stay away from places of worship; this trend became especially militant during the middle of the Stalinist era, which lasted from 1929 to 1953. In Eastern Europe, countries like Belarus, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Russia, and Ukraine experienced strong state atheism policies.[34] East Germany and Czechoslovakia also had similar policies.[28] The Soviet Union attempted to suppress public religious expression over wide areas of its influence, including places such as Central Asia. Either currently or in their past, China,[28][33][36][37] North Korea,[36][37] Vietnam,[38] Cambodia,[9] and Cuba[35] are or were officially atheist.

In contrast, a secular state officially purports to be neutral in matters of religion, it does not support religion nor does it support irreligion.[27][39][40] In a review of 35 European states in 1980, 5 states were considered "secular" in the sense of religious neutrality, 9 considered "atheistic", and 21 states considered "religious".[41]

Countries that currently practice state atheism Edit

Countries that formerly practiced state atheism Edit

Communist states Edit

Main articles: Marxism and religion, Marxist–Leninist atheism, and Communism and religion

A communist state is a state with a form of government which is characterized by the one-party rule or the dominant-party rule of a communist party which professes allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist–Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state.[42][43][44] The founder and primary theorist of Marxism, the 19th-century German thinker Karl Marx, had an ambivalent attitude toward religion, which he viewed as "the opium of the people", simultaneously "the sigh of" and a source of moral agency of the "opressed creature" against their suffering. To Marx, religion was not the ideological expression of those in power,[45] and he did not see it needing abolishing. Instead, he saw the communist state as creating conditions where the consolation provided by religion would not be needed.[46] In the Marxist–Leninist interpretation of Marxist theory, developed primarily by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, atheism emanates from its dialectical materialism and tries to explain and criticize religion.[47]

Lenin states:

Religion is the opium of the people—this dictum by Marx is the corner-stone of the whole Marxist outlook on religion. Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches, and each and every religious organisation, as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class.[48]

Although Marx and Lenin were both atheists,[49][50] several religious communist groups exist, including Christian communists.[51]

Julian Baggini devotes a chapter of his book Atheism: A Very Short Introduction to a discussion about 20th-century political systems, including communism and political repression in the Soviet Union. Baggini argues that "Soviet communism, with its active oppression of religion, is a distortion of original Marxist communism, which did not advocate oppression of the religious." Baggini goes on to argue that "Fundamentalism is a danger in any belief system" and that "Atheism's most authentic political expression... takes the form of state secularism, not state atheism."[46]

Soviet Union Edit

Main articles: Religion in Russia, Religion in the Soviet Union, Irreligion in Russia, Irreligion in Kazakhstan, Irreligion in Azerbaijan, Irreligion in Estonia, Secularism in Georgia (country), and Soviet anti-religious legislation
 
Cover of Bezbozhnik in 1929, the magazine of the Society of the Godless. The first five-year plan of the Soviet Union is shown crushing the gods of the Abrahamic religions.
 
1929 cover of the Soviet magazine Bezbozhnik ("The Atheist"), in which a group of industrial workers are depicted throwing Jesus Christ in the trash

State atheism (gosateizm, a syllabic abbreviation of "state" [gosudarstvo] and "atheism" [ateizm]) was a major goal of the official Soviet ideology.[52] This phenomenon, which lasted for seven decades, was new in world history.[53] The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism".[54][55] It sought to make religion disappear by various means.[56][57] Thus, the USSR became the first state to have as one objective of its official ideology the elimination of the existing religion, and the prevention of the future implanting of religious belief, with the goal of establishing state atheism (gosateizm).[58][59][60][61]

After the Russian Civil War, the state used its resources to stop the implanting of religious beliefs in nonbelievers and remove "prerevolutionary remnants" which still existed.[4] The Bolsheviks were particularly hostile toward the Russian Orthodox Church (which supported the White Movement during the Russian Civil War) and saw it as a supporter of Tsarist autocracy.[62] During the collectivization of the land, Orthodox priests distributed pamphlets declaring that the Soviet regime was the Antichrist coming to place "the Devil's mark" on the peasants, and encouraged them to resist the government.[62] Political repression in the Soviet Union was widespread and while religious persecution was applied to numerous religions,[63] the regime's anti-religious campaigns were often directed against specific religions based on state interests.[55] The attitude in the Soviet Union toward religion varied from persecution of some religions to not outlawing others.[55]

From the late 1920s to the late 1930s, such organizations as the League of Militant Atheists ridiculed all religions and harassed believers.[64] The league was a "nominally independent organization established by the Communist Party to promote atheism".[65] It published its own newspaper, and journals, sponsored lectures, and organized demonstrations that lampooned religion and promoted atheism.[66] Anti-religious and atheistic propaganda was implemented into every portion of soviet life from schools to the media and even on to substituting rituals to replace religious ones.[54] Though Lenin originally introduced the Gregorian calendar to the Soviets, subsequent efforts to reorganise the week to improve worker productivity saw the introduction of the Soviet calendar, which had the side-effect that a "holiday will seldom fall on Sunday".[67]

Within about a year of the revolution, the state expropriated all church property, including the churches themselves, and in the period from 1922 to 1926, 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1,200 priests were killed (a much greater number was subjected to persecution).[63] Most seminaries were closed, and publication of religious writing was banned.[63] A meeting of the Antireligious Commission of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) that occurred on 23 May 1929 estimated the portion of believers in the USSR at 80 percent, though this percentage may be understated to prove the successfulness of the struggle with religion.[68] The Russian Orthodox Church, which had 54,000 parishes before World War I, was reduced to 500 by 1940.[63] Overall, by that same year 90 percent of the churches, synagogues, and mosques that had been operating in 1917 were either forcibly closed, converted, or destroyed.[69]

Since the Soviet era, Russia,[70][71] Armenia,[4] Kazakhstan,[72] Uzbekistan,[73] Turkmenistan,[74] Kyrgyzstan,[75] Tajikistan,[76] Belarus,[77][78] Moldova,[79] Georgia,[80] Ukraine[81] and Lithuania[82][83] have diverse religious affiliations.[84] Russians have primarily returned to identifying with the Orthodox Church; by 2008 72% of Russians identified as Orthodox - rising from 31% in 1991. However, Professor Niels Christian Nielsen of philosophy and religious thought of Rice University has written that the post-Soviet population in areas which were formerly predominantly Orthodox are now "nearly illiterate regarding religion", almost completely lacking the intellectual or philosophical aspects of their faith and having almost no knowledge of other faiths.[85]

In 1928, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was established by Joseph Stalin, acting on an idea proposed by Lenin in order to give the Jewish population in Russia more personal autonomy, as reparation for antisemitism in the Russian Empire. Along with granting Jewish autonomy, Stalin also allowed Sharia law in the majority-Islamic countries of the Soviet Union.[86] "The Soviet Government considers that the Sharia, as common law, is as fully authorized as that of any other of the peoples inhabiting Russia" (statement by Stalin during the Congress of the Peoples of Dagestan, an autonomous republic in Russia). Art. 135 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union protects individuals from religious discrimination.[87]

Albania Edit

Main articles: Religion in Albania, Islam in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, Freedom of religion in Albania, and Irreligion in Albania

In 1967 Enver Hoxha, the head of state of Albania, declared Albania to be the "first atheist state of the world" even though the Soviet Union under Lenin had already been a de facto atheist state.[88][89][58][59][60][61] Marxist–Leninist authorities in Albania claimed that religion was foreign to Albania and used this to justify their policy of state atheism and suppression of religion. This nationalism was also used to justify the communist stance of state atheism from 1967 to 1991.[2] The Agrarian Reform Law of August 1945 nationalized most property of religious institutions, including the estates of mosques, monasteries, orders, and dioceses. Many clergy and believers were tried and some were executed. All foreign Roman Catholic priests, monks, and nuns were expelled in 1946.[90]

Religious communities or branches that had their headquarters outside the country, such as the Jesuit and Franciscan orders, were henceforth ordered to terminate their activities in Albania. Religious institutions were forbidden to have anything to do with the education of the young, because that had been made the exclusive province of the state. All religious communities were prohibited from owning real estate and operating philanthropic and welfare institutions and hospitals.

Although there were tactical variations in Enver Hoxha's approach to each of the major denominations, his overarching objective was the eventual destruction of all organized religion in Albania. Between 1945 and 1953, the number of priests was reduced drastically and the number of Roman Catholic churches was decreased from 253 to 100, and all Catholics were stigmatized as fascists.[90]

The campaign against religion peaked in the 1960s. Beginning in February 1967 the Albanian authorities launched a campaign to eliminate religious life in Albania. Despite complaints, even by APL members, all churches, mosques, monasteries, and other religious institutions were either closed down or converted into warehouses, gymnasiums, or workshops by the end of 1967.[91] By May 1967, religious institutions had been forced to relinquish all 2,169 churches, mosques, cloisters, and shrines in Albania, many of which were converted into cultural centers for young people. As the literary monthly Nendori reported the event, the youth had thus "created the first atheist nation in the world."[90]

Clerics were publicly vilified and humiliated, their vestments were taken and desecrated. More than 200 clerics of various faiths were imprisoned, others were forced to seek work in either industry or agriculture, and some were executed or starved to death. The cloister of the Franciscan order in Shkodër was set on fire, which resulted in the death of four elderly monks.[90]

Article 37 of the Albanian Constitution of 1976 stipulated, "The state recognizes no religion, and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people."[92][30] The penal code of 1977 imposed prison sentences of three to ten years for "religious propaganda and the production, distribution, or storage of religious literature", which meant that individuals caught with Bibles, Qurans, icons, or other religious objects faced long prison sentences.[90] A new decree that in effect targeted Albanians with Muslim and Christian names, stipulating that citizens whose names did not conform to "the political, ideological, or moral standards of the state" were to change them. It was also decreed that towns and villages with religious names must be renamed.[90] Hoxha's brutal antireligious campaign succeeded in eradicating formal worship, but some Albanians continued to practice their faith clandestinely, risking severe punishment.[90]

Parents were afraid to pass on their faith, for fear that their children would tell others. Officials tried to entrap practicing Christians and Muslims during religious fasts, such as Lent and Ramadan, by distributing dairy products and other forbidden foods in school and at work, and then publicly denouncing those who refused the food. Those clergy who conducted secret services were incarcerated.[90] Catholic priest Shtjefen Kurti was executed for secretly baptizing a child in Shkodër in 1972.[93]

The article was interpreted by Danes as violating The United Nations Charter (chapter 9, article 55) which declares that religious freedom is an inalienable human right. The first time that the question came before the United Nations' Commission on Human Rights at Geneva was as late as 7 March 1983. A delegation from Denmark got its protest over Albania's violation of religious liberty placed on the agenda of the thirty-ninth meeting of the commission, item 25, reading, "Implementation of the Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination based on Religion or Belief.", and on 20 July 1984 a member of the Danish Parliament inserted an article into one of Denmark's major newspapers protesting the violation of religious freedom in Albania.[citation needed]

The 1998 Constitution of Albania defined the country as a parliamentary republic, and established personal and political rights and freedoms, including protection against coercion in matters of religious belief.[94][95] Albania is a member state of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation,[94] and the 2011 census found that 58.79% of Albanians adhere to Islam, making it the largest religion in the country. The majority of Albanian Muslims are secular Sunnis along with a significant Bektashi Shia minority. Christianity is practiced by 16.99% of the population, making it the 2nd largest religion in the country. The remaining population is either irreligious or belongs to other religious groups.[96] In 2011, Albania's population was estimated to be 56.7% Muslim, 10% Roman Catholic, 6.8% Orthodox, 2.5% atheist, 2.1% Bektashi (a Sufi order), 5.7% other, 16.2% unspecified.[97] Today, Gallup Global Reports 2010 shows that religion plays a role in the lives of 39% of Albanians, and Albania is ranked the thirteenth least religious country in the world.[98][failed verification] The U.S. state department reports that in 2013, "There were no reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice."[95]

Cambodia Edit

 
Khmer Rouge bullet holes left at the Angkor Wat temple
Main articles: Democratic Kampuchea and Religion in Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge actively persecuted Buddhists during their rule of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979.[99] Buddhist institutions and temples were destroyed and Buddhist monks and teachers were killed in large numbers.[100] A third of the country's monasteries were destroyed along with numerous holy texts and items of high artistic quality. 25,000 Buddhist monks were massacred by the regime,[101] which was officially an atheist state.[9] The persecution was undertaken because Pol Pot believed that Buddhism was "a decadent affectation". He sought to eliminate Buddhism's 1,500-year-old mark on Cambodia.[101]

Under the Khmer Rouge, all religious practices were banned.[102][103] According to Ben Kiernan, "the Khmer Rouge repressed Islam, Christianity, and Buddhism, but its fiercest extermination campaign was directed against the ethnic Cham Muslim minority."[103]

China Edit

Main articles: Religion in China, Freedom of religion in China, Irreligion in China, and Antireligious campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party

China has adopted a policy of official state atheism.[33][37][104][105] Art. 36 of the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of religion but it only allows members of state sanctioned organizations to practice religions. The government has promoted atheism throughout the country. In April 2016, the General Secretary, Xi Jinping, stated that members of the Chinese Communist Party must be "unyielding Marxist atheists" and in the same month, a government-sanctioned demolition work crew drove a bulldozer over two Chinese Christians who protested against the demolition of their church by refusing to step aside.[106]

Traditionally, a large segment of the Chinese population practiced Chinese folk religions[107] and Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. As a result, all of these religions had played a significant role in the everyday lives of ordinary people.[108][109][110] After the 1949 Chinese Revolution, the Chinese Communist Party took power.[111][112] For much of its early history, that government maintained under Marxist thought that religion would ultimately disappear, and characterized it as emblematic of feudalism and foreign colonialism.[citation needed]

During the Cultural Revolution, student vigilantes who were known as Red Guards converted religious buildings into buildings which were used for secular purposes or they destroyed them. However, this attitude relaxed considerably in the late 1970s, during the reform and opening up period. The 1978 Constitution of the People's Republic of China guaranteed freedom of religion with a number of restrictions. Since then, there has been a massive program to rebuild Buddhist and Taoist temples that were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution.[citation needed]

The CCP has said that religious beliefs and membership in it are incompatible.[10] However, the state is not allowed to force ordinary citizens to become atheists.[21] China's five officially sanctioned religious organizations are the Buddhist Association of China, Chinese Taoist Association, Islamic Association of China, Three-Self Patriotic Movement and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. These groups are afforded a degree of protection, but are subject to restrictions and controls under the State Administration for Religious Affairs. Unregistered religious groups face varying degrees of harassment.[113] The constitution permits what is called "normal religious activities," so long as they do not involve the use of religion to "engage in activities that disrupt social order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious organizations and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign dominance."[21]

Article 36 of the Constitution of the People's Republic of China of 1982 specifies that:

Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief. No state organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion. The state protects normal religious activities. No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state. Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.[114]

Most people report no organized religious affiliation; however, people with a belief in folk traditions and spiritual beliefs, such as ancestor veneration and feng shui, along with informal ties to local temples and unofficial house churches number in the hundreds of millions. In its annual report on International Religious Freedom, the United States Department of State[115] provides statistics about organized religions. In 2007, it reported the following (citing the Government's 1997 report on Religious Freedom and 2005 White Paper on religion):[115]

  • Buddhists 8%.
  • Taoists, unknown as a percentage partly because it is practiced along with Confucianism and Buddhism.
  • Muslims, 1%, with more than 20,000 Imams. Other estimates state that at least 1% of China's population is Muslim.
  • Christians, Protestants, at least 2%. Catholics, about 1%.

To some degree, statistics which are related to Buddhism and religious Taoism are incomparable to statistics for Islam and Christianity. This fact is due to the traditional Chinese belief system which blends Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, so a person who follows a traditional belief system would not exclusively identify himself or herself as a Buddhist or a Taoist, even though he or she would attend Buddhist or Taoist places of worship. According to Peter Ng, Professor of the Department of Religion at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, as of 2002, 95% of Chinese were religious in some way if religion is believed to include traditional folk practices such as burning incense for gods or ancestors at life-cycle or seasonal festivals, fortune telling and related customary practices.[116]

The U.S. State Department has designated China as a "country of particular concern" since 1999,[117] partially in response to the Uyghur genocide and the persecution of Tibetan Buddhists. Freedom House classifies Tibet and Xinjiang as regions of particular repression of religion, due to concerns about separatist activity.[118][119][120][121][122] Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, says that China's actions against the Uighurs are "a major problem".[123] The Chinese government has denounced the report, stating that China has "ample" religious freedom.[124]

Cuba Edit

Main article: Religion in Cuba

Until 1992,[125] Cuba was officially an atheist state.[35][37]

In August 1960, several bishops signed a joint pastoral letter condemning communism and declaring it incompatible with Catholicism, and calling on Catholics to reject it.[12] Fidel Castro gave a four-hour long speech the next day, condemning priests who serve "great wealth" and using fears of Falangist influence in order to attack Spanish-born priests, declaring "There is no doubt that Franco has a sizeable group of fascist priests in Cuba."[126]

Originally more tolerant of religion, the Cuban government began arresting many believers and shutting down religious schools after the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Its prisons were being filled with clergy since the 1960s.[35] In 1961, the Cuban government confiscated Catholic schools, including the Jesuit school that Fidel Castro had attended. In 1965 it exiled two hundred priests.[127]

In 1976, the Constitution of Cuba added a clause stating that the "socialist state...bases its activity on, and educates the people in, the scientific materialist concept of the universe".[128] In 1992, the dissolution of the Soviet Union led the country to declare itself a secular state.[129][130] Pope John Paul II contributed to the Cuban thaw when he paid a historic visit to the island in 1998 and criticized the US embargo.[131] Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba in 2012 and Pope Francis visited Cuba in 2015.[132][133][134][135] The Cuban government continued hostile actions against religious groups; in 2015 alone, the Castro regime ordered the closure or demolition of over 100 Pentecostal, Methodist, and Baptist parishes, according to a report from Christian Solidarity Worldwide.[136]

East Germany Edit

Main articles: Christianity in East Germany, East Germany § Religion, New states of Germany § Religion, State Secretary for Church Affairs, and Irreligion in Germany

Though Article 39 of the GDR constitution of 1968 guarantees religious freedom, the state's policy was oriented towards the promotion of atheism.[14] Eastern Germany practiced heavy secularization.[28] The German Democratic Republic (GDR) generated antireligous regulations and promoted atheism for decades which impacted the growth of citizens affiliating with no religion from 7.6% in 1950 to 60% in 1986.[137] It was in the 1950s that scientific atheism became official state policy[138] when Soviet authorities were setting up a communist government. As of 2012 the area of the former German Democratic Republic was the least religious region in the world.[139][140][141][142]

North Korea Edit

Main articles: Religion in North Korea, Freedom of religion in North Korea, Irreligion in North Korea, Juche, North Korean cult of personality, and Persecution of Christians in North Korea

The North Korean constitution states that freedom of religion is permitted.[143] However, the North Korean government's Juche ideology has been described as "state-sanctioned atheism" and atheism is the government's official position.[36][37] According to a 2018 CIA report, free religious activities almost no longer exist, with government-sponsored groups to delude them.[144] The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom stated that assessing the situation in North Korea is challenging, but reports which state that DPRK officials repress religious activities have surfaced, including reports which state that the government forms and controls religious organizations in an attempt to restrict the performance of religious activities.[145] In 2004, the Human Rights Overview reported that North Korea remains one of the most repressive governments, with isolation and disregard for international law making monitoring almost impossible.[146] After 1,500 churches were destroyed during the rule of Kim Il Sung from 1948 to 1994, three churches were built in Pyongyang. Foreign residents who regularly attend services at these churches have reported that the services which are performed there are staged for their benefit.[145]

The North Korean government promotes the cult of personality of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, described as a political religion, as well as the Juche ideology, based on Korean ultranationalism, which calls on people to "avoid spiritual deference to outside influences", which was interpreted as including religions which originated outside Korea.[147][21]

Since 2001, the U.S. State Department has designated North Korea as a "country of particular concern", due to its violations of religious freedom.[148][149] Cardinal Nicolas Cheong Jin-suk has said that, "There's no knowledge of priests surviving persecution that came in the late forties, when 166 priests and religious were killed or kidnapped," which includes the Roman Catholic bishop of Pyongyang, Francis Hong Yong-ho.[150] In November 2013, it was reported that the repression of religious people led to the public execution of 80 people, some of them were executed for possessing Bibles.[147][148][151]

There are five Christian churches in Pyongyang, three of them are Protestant, one of them is Eastern Orthodox, and one of them is Catholic.[152] President Kim Il Sung and his mother were frequent patrons of the Chilgol Church, one of the Protestant churches, and that church can be visited on tours.[153] Christian institutions are regulated by the Korean Christian Federation, a state-controlled religious organization.[154] Chondoism is an indigenous religion in Korea, and the Chondoist Chongu Party is part of the ruling front in North Korea, but the number of Chondoists in North Korea is unknown.[155]

Mongolia Edit

Main article: Religion in Mongolia

The Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party (MPRP) propagated atheism until the 1960s.[156] In the Mongolian People's Republic, after it was invaded by Japanese troops in 1936, the Soviet Union deployed its troops there in 1937, undertaking an offensive against the Buddhist religion. Parallel with this, a Soviet-style purge was launched in the People's Revolutionary Party and the Mongolian army. The Mongol leader at that time was Khorloogiin Choibalsan, a follower of Joseph Stalin, who emulated many of the policies that Stalin had previously implemented in the Soviet Union. The purge virtually succeeded in eliminating Tibetan Buddhism and cost an estimated thirty to thirty-five thousand lives.[citation needed]

Vietnam Edit

Main article: Religion in Vietnam

Officially, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is an atheist state as declared by its communist government.[24] Art. 24 of the constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam recognizes religious freedom.[157]

Non-communist states Edit

Revolutionary Mexico Edit

See also: Religion in Mexico, Mexican Revolution, Calles Law, and Cristero War

Articles 3, 5, 24, 27, and 130 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 as originally enacted included anticlerical provisions and restricted religious freedoms.[158] The Articles were initially seldom enforced until President Plutarco Elías Calles, who sought to enact the separation of church and state established in the Constitution of 1917, took office in 1924.[158] Calles' Mexico has been characterized as an atheist state[18] and his program as aiming to eradicate religious practices in Mexico during the 20th century.[159]

There was an expulsion of foreign clergy and expropriation of Church properties.[160] Article 27 prohibited any future acquisition of such property by churches, and prohibited religious corporations and ministers from establishing or directing primary schools.[160] The Constitution of 1917 also forbade the existence of monastic orders (Article 5) and religious activities outside of church buildings (which became government property), and mandated that such religious activities would be overseen by government (Article 24).[160]

On 14 June 1926, President Calles enacted anticlerical legislation known formally as The Law Reforming the Penal Code and unofficially as Calles Law.[161] His anti-Catholic actions included outlawing religious orders, depriving the Church of property rights and depriving the clergy of civil liberties, including their right to a trial by jury in cases involving anti-clerical laws and the right to vote.[161][162] Catholic antipathy towards Calles was enhanced because of his vocal anti-Catholicism.[163]

 
Cristeros hanged in Jalisco

Due to the strict enforcement of anticlerical laws, people in strongly Catholic states, especially Jalisco, Zacatecas, Guanajuato, Colima and Michoacán, began to oppose him, and this opposition led to the Cristero War from 1926 to 1929, which was characterized by atrocities on both sides. Some Cristeros applied terrorist tactics, including the torture and killing of public school teachers,[164][165] while the Mexican government persecuted the clergy, killing suspected Cristeros and supporters and often retaliating against innocent individuals.[166]

A truce was negotiated with the assistance of U.S. Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow.[167] Calles, however, in violation of its terms did not abide by the truce and he had approximately 500 Cristero leaders and 5,000 other Cristeros shot, frequently in their homes in front of their spouses and children.[167] Particularly offensive to Catholics after the supposed truce was Calles' insistence on a state monopoly on education, suppressing Catholic education and introducing socialist education in its place: "We must enter and take possession of the mind of childhood, the mind of youth."[167] Persecutions continued as Calles maintained control under the Maximato and did not relent until 1940, when President Manuel Ávila Camacho took office.[167] Attempts to eliminate religious education became more pronounced in 1934 through an amendment of Article 3 of the Mexican Constitution, which strived to eliminate religion by mandating "socialist education", which "in addition to removing all religious doctrine" would "combat fanaticism and prejudices", "build[ing] in the youth a rational and exact concept of the universe and of social life".[158] In 1946, socialist education provisions were removed from the constitution and new laws promoted secular education. Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed.[167] Where there were 4,500 priests operating within the country before the War, in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people, the rest having been killed, exiled or not obtaining licenses.[167][168] In 1935, 17 states had no registered priests.[169]

Revolutionary France Edit

 
The Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg turned into a Temple of Reason, depicted in 1794.
See also: Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution, Cult of Reason, and Religion of Humanity

The French Revolution initially began with attacks on Church corruption and the wealth of the higher clergy, an action with which even many Christians could identify, since the Gallican Church held a dominant role in pre-revolutionary France. During a two-year period known as the Reign of Terror, the episodes of anti-clericalism grew more violent than any in modern European history. The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the Church, abolished the Catholic monarchy, nationalized Church property, exiled 30,000 priests, and killed hundreds more.[170] In October 1793, the Christian calendar was replaced with one reckoned from the date of the Revolution, and Festivals of Liberty, Reason, and the Supreme Being were scheduled. New forms of moral religion emerged, including the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being and the atheistic Cult of Reason,[171] with the revolutionary government briefly mandating observance of the former in April 1794.[172][173][174][175][176]: 1–17 

Human rights Edit

Main article: History of human rights

Antireligious states, including atheist states, have been at odds with international human rights law.[177] Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is designed to protect freedom of thought, conscience, and religion. In 1993, the UN's human rights committee declared that article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights "protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief."[178] The committee further stated that "the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views." Signatories to the convention are barred from "the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers" to recant their beliefs or convert.[147] Despite this, as of 2009 minority religions were still being persecuted in many parts of the world.[179][180]

Theodore Roosevelt condemned the Kishinev pogrom in 1903, establishing a history of U.S. presidents commenting on the internal religious liberty of foreign countries.[181] In Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union address, he outlined Four Freedoms, including Freedom of worship, that would be foundation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and future U.S. diplomatic efforts.[181] Jimmy Carter asked Deng Xiaoping to improve religious freedom in China, and Ronald Reagan told US Embassy staff in Moscow to help Jews harassed by the Soviet authorities.[181][182] Bill Clinton established the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998, in order to use diplomacy to promote religious liberty in repressive states.[181] Countries like Albania had anti-religious policies, while also promoting atheism, that impacted their religious rights.[183]

See also Edit

Notes Edit

  1. ^ Stanton 2012, p. 32, Cultural Sociology of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa: An Encyclopedia
  2. ^ a b Hall 1999, (subscription required) - Representations of Place: Albania: "the perception that religion symbolized foreign (Italian, Greek and Turkish) predation was used to justify the communists' stance of state atheism (1967-1991)."
  3. ^ Marques de Morais 2014, Religion and the State in Angola
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Kowalewski 1980, pp. 426–441, (subscription required) - Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR: Characteristics and Consequences
  5. ^ Clarke 2009, p. 94, Crude Continent: The Struggle for Africa's Oil Prize
  6. ^ a b c d e f Avramović 2007, p. 599, Understanding Secularism in a Post-Communist State: Case of Serbia
  7. ^ a b c d e f Kideckel & Halpern 2000, p. 165, Neighbors at War: Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity, Culture, and History
  8. ^ Kalkandjieva 2015, The encounter between the religious and the secular in post-atheist Bulgaria
  9. ^ a b c d Wessinger 2000, p. 282, Millennialism, Persecution, and Violence: Historical Cases: "Democratic Kampuchea was officially an atheist state, and the persecution of religion by the Khmer Rouge was matched in severity only by the persecution of religion in the communist states of Albania and North Korea, so there were not any direct historical continuities of Buddhism into the Democratic Kampuchea era."
  10. ^ a b deccanherald.com 2011, No religion for Chinese Communist Party cadres
  11. ^ Clark & Decalo 2012, Historical Dictionary of Republic of the Congo -[page needed]
  12. ^ a b Mallin 1994, Covering Castro: Rise and Decline of Cuba's Communist Dictator -[page needed]
  13. ^ a b Ramet 1998, p. 125, Nihil Obstat: Religion, Politics, and Social Change in East-Central Europe and Russia
  14. ^ a b Kellner 2014, 25 years after Berlin Wall's fall, faith still fragile in former East Germany: "During the decades of state-sponsored atheism in East Germany, more formally known as the German Democratic Republic, the great emphasis was on avoiding religion."
  15. ^ a b Doulos 1986, p. 140, Christians in Marxist Ethiopia
  16. ^ Zuckerman 2009, Atheism and Secularity. -[page needed]
  17. ^ Stiller 2013, Laos: A Nation With Religious Contradictions
  18. ^ a b Haas 1997, p. 231, Nationalism, Liberalism, and Progress: The dismal fate of new nations: "Yet the revolutionary leaders managed to score progress toward making the country a rationalized nation-state, as shown in table 5-3. Revolts continued to plague Mexico, some due to continuing rivalries among the leaders. The bloody Cristero Revolt (1926-29), however, was fought by devout peasants against an atheist state."
  19. ^ Sanders 2003, Historical Dictionary of Mongolia -[page needed]
  20. ^ Van den Bergh-Collier 2007, p. 180, Towards Gender Equality in Mozambique
  21. ^ a b c d Temperman 2010, pp. 141–145, State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance
  22. ^ Walaszek 1986, pp. 118–134, (subscription required) - An Open Issue of Legitimacy: The State and the Church in Poland
  23. ^ Leustean 2009, p. 92, Orthodoxy and the Cold War: Religion and Political Power in Romania: "was to transform Romania into a communist atheist society."
  24. ^ a b Dodd 2003, p. 571, The rough guide to Vietnam: "After 1975, the Marxist-Leninist government of reunified Vietnam declared the state atheist while theoretically allowing people the right to practice their religion under the constitution."
  25. ^ Campbell 2015, Yemen: The Tribal Islamists
  26. ^ Supporting sources listed as of January 22, 2018 for the world map showing nations that formerly or currently practice state atheism: Afghanistan[1];Albania[2]; Angola[3]; Armenia[4]; Azerbaijan[4]; Belarus[4]; Benin[5]; Bosnia-Herzegovina[6][7]; Bulgaria[8]; Cambodia[9]; China[10]; Croatia[6][7]; Congo[11]; Cuba[12]; Czechia[13]; East Germany[14]; Eritrea[15]; Estonia[4]; Ethiopia[15]; Hungary[16]; Kazakhstan[4]; Kyrgyzstan[4]; Laos[17]; Latvia[4]; Lithuania[4]; Mexico[18]; Moldova[4]; Mongolia[19]; Montenegro[6][7]; Mozambique[20]; North Korea[21]; North Macedonia[6][7]; Poland[22]; Romania[23]; Serbia[6][7]; Slovakia[13]; Slovenia[6][7]; Tajikistan[4]; Turkmenistan[4]; Ukraine[4]; Uzbekistan[4]; Vietnam[24]; Yemen, or more specifically, South Yemen[25]
  27. ^ a b c d Bullivant & Lee 2016, p. 74, A Dictionary of Atheism: "State Atheism is the name given to the incorporation of positive atheism or non-theism into political regimes, particularly associated with Soviet systems. State Atheisms have tended to be as much anti-clerical and anti-religious as they are anti-theist, and typically place heavy restrictions on acts of religious organization and the practice of religion. State Atheist regimes are sometimes seen as examples of political secularism because they entail a nonreligious form of government; these regimes are even sometimes described as 'radically secularist'. However, where political secularism is understood as political neutrality towards religion or religions, or even political neutrality towards any worldview or existential culture including not only theist but also atheist examples, State Atheism is considered non-secular."
  28. ^ a b c d e Bullivant & Ruse 2015, pp. 461–462, The Oxford handbook of atheism: "As we look elsewhere around the world, the dynamics of secularization and religionization are even more complex. The largest-scale experiments in secularization — state atheisms — have had mixed outcomes. In the former Soviet Union, as in China, Communist 'scientific: 'militant', or 'practical' atheism has unquestionably had some secularizing effect overall. But the story—or history—does not end there. As the former Soviet countries illustrate, long-term effects of the experiment are uneven. It took hold more profoundly in, for example, eastern Germany or the Czech Republic than in Poland. Armenia, Lithuania, Azerbaijan, or Uzbekistan, among others (Froese 2004; see Irena Borowik, Branko Ana& and Radoslaw Tyrala's 'Central and Eastern Europe)."
  29. ^ Madeley 2009, p. 183: "In Eastern Europe the end of the world war produced radically different outcomes as Soviet-installed regimes introduced strict controls on the churches and other religious bodies and the state atheism which had been pioneered in Russia after the Bolshevik takeover in 1917 was imposed. ... By 1970 however, as Table 12.1 indicates, all 22 countries of Central and Eastern Europe which lay behind the Iron Curtain could be designated Atheistic de jure, committed in Barrett's terms to 'formally promoting irreligion'. This meant typically that while the state was ostensibly separated from all religions and churches, it was also 'linked for ideological reasons with irreligion and opposed on principle to all religion', claiming the right 'to oppose religion by discrimination, obstruction or even suppression' (Barrett 1982: 96). Separation in these states meant exclusion from public life and the cutting-off of most of the resources required for religion to flourish; it emphatically did not mean that the state was debarred from interfering in the field of religious provision — rather that, as in Turkey, the state and its organs should exert maximum control and surveillance."
  30. ^ a b c Temperman 2010, pp. 140–141, State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance: "Before the end of the Cold War, many Communist States did not shy away from being openly hostile to religion. In most instances, communist ideology translated unperturbedly into state atheism, which, in turn, triggered measures aimed at the eradication of religion. As much was acknowledged by some Communist Constitutions. The 1976 Constitution of the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, for instance, was firmly based on a Marxist dismissal of religion as the opiate of the masses. It provided: "The state recognizes no religion of any kind and supports and develops the atheist view so as to ingrain in to the people the scientific and materialistic world-view."
  31. ^ Franken & Loobuyck 2011, p. 152, Religious Education in a Plural, Secularised Society. A Paradigm Shift: "In this model, atheism is a state doctrine. Instead, it is regarded as an official state policy, aiming to eradicate all sympathy for religious ideas, and the idea that God exists in particular. The adherents of political atheism make a plea for an atheist state that has to foster atheist convictions in its citizenry."
  32. ^ Maddox 1998, p. 99
  33. ^ a b c Eller 2014, p. 254, Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate.: "After the communist revolution of 1949, the People's Republic of China adopted a policy of official state atheism. Based on Marxist thinking that religion is class exploitation and false consciousness, the communist regime suppressed religion, "re-educated" believers and religious leaders, and destroyed religious buildings or converted them to non-religious uses."
  34. ^ a b Bullivant & Ruse 2015, p. 626, The Oxford handbook of atheism: "There have been only a few comparative analyses of atheism carried out in the CEE region. One of the few attempts of this kind is that undertaken by Sinita Zrinkak (see 2004). Comparing different types of generational responses to atheism in several CEE countries, on the basis of studies carried out in these countries and based on data from the EVS, he distinguishes three groups of countries in the region. The first group comprises countries in which state atheism had the most severe consequences... This group includes such countries as Estonia, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Bulgaria."
  35. ^ a b c d Hertzke 2006, p. 43, Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights: "Cuba is the only country in the Americas that has attempted to impose state atheism, and since the 1960s onward its jails have been filled with pastors and other believers."
  36. ^ a b c d Hertzke 2006, p. 44, Freeing God's Children: The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights: "The North Korea government not only imposed state-sanctioned atheism, it also mandated a totalitarian personality worship of Kim II Sung and Kim Jong II. This meant that the regime combined traditional Communist persecution of religion with a state-mandated faith we associate with Iranian mullahs or the Taliban. Thus "enemies of the state" are also treated as heretics."
  37. ^ a b c d e O'Brien 1993, p. 108, The state of religion atlas: "Atheism continues to be the official position of the governments of China, North Korea and Cuba."
  38. ^ B. S., Political Science. "Religion in Vietnam". Learn Religions. Retrieved 2021-05-12.
  39. ^ Temperman 2010, p. 120, State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance: "A constitutional declaration of secularity means, first and foremost, that the state does not wish to invoke religion as a justification for its authority, actions and decisions. It must be emphasized that proclamations of secularity, both historically and presently, in the majority of cases denote official impartiality in matters of religion rather than official 'irreligiosity'. Secular states in that respect should certainly not be confused with declared atheist or anti religious states. "
  40. ^ Temperman 2010, p. 140, State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance: "Although the historical underlying incentives that accompanied the establishment of a secular state may have been characterized by criticism of certain religious doctrines or practices, presently a state of secularity in itself does not necessarily reflect value judgements about religion. In other words, state secularism does not come down to an official rejection of religion. State secularism denotes an intention on the part of the state to not affiliate itself with religion, to not consider itself a priori bound by religious principles (unless they are reformulated into secular state laws) and to not seek to justify its actions by invoking religion. Such a state of secularity denotes official impartiality in matters of religion rather than official irreligiosity. By contrast, secularism as a philosophical notion can indeed be construed as an ideological defense of the secular cause, which might include criticism of or scepticism towards religion. Thus, states that are 'ideologically secular' and that declare secular world-views the official state doctrine give evidence, explicitly or by implication, of judgements about the value of religion within society. Most versions of state communism, for instance, embrace Marxist criticism of religion."
  41. ^ Madeley 2003, pp. 1–22, (subscription required) - European Liberal Democracy and the Principle of State Religious Neutrality: "As Table 2 indicates along its horizontal dimension, according to the attributions based on these criteria, in 1980, out of 35 European territories listed, only five could be coded as secular in the sense that the ‘State is secular, promoting neither religion nor irreligion’ and nine were deemed Atheistic. On the other hand, 21 states or governments were found to be committed in one way or another to the support of religion and/or religious institutions."
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  53. ^ Epstein, Genis & Vladiv-Glover 2016, p. 379, Russian Postmodernism : New Perspectives on Post-Soviet Culture: "The seven decades of Soviet atheism, whether one calls it "mass atheism," "scientific atheism," "state atheism," was unquestionably a new phenomenon in world history."
  54. ^ a b Froese 2004, p. 35, (subscription required) - Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia: Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed: "Atheists waged a 70-year war on religious belief in the Soviet Union. The Communist Party destroyed churches, mosques, and temples; it executed religious leaders; it flooded the schools and media with anti-religious propaganda; and it introduced a belief system called "scientific atheism," complete with atheist rituals, proselytizers, and a promise of worldly salvation."
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  176. ^ Tallett, Frank (1991). "Dechristianizing France: The Year II and the Revolutionary Experience". In Frank Tallett; Nicholas Atkin (eds.). Religion, Society and Politics in France Since 1789. A&C Black. pp. 1–28. ISBN 978-1-85285-057-9.
  177. ^ Temperman 2010, pp. 165–166, [State-Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law : Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance]: "A type of state-religion identification that in essence boils down to an antireligious regime, a regime which officially rejects the concept of religion altogether, can be considered, in itself, at odd with principles of human rights law , in particular to freedom of religion or belief and the equality principle. History has seen,some regimes which attempted to ban all religious activity (communist Albania for instance)...It is submitted that a state that establishes itself as an 'atheistic state" breaches the non-discrimination principle for similar reasons that were advanced with respect to religious states..."
  178. ^ minorityrights.org 1993, CCPR General Comment 22: 30/07/93 on ICCPR Article 18
  179. ^ fdih.org 2003, Discrimination against religious minorities in Iran
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Further reading Edit

  • L’athéisme d’État. Pourquoi est-il nécessaire? (State atheism. Why is it necessary?), (2019) by Jean-Philippe Cossette (ISBN 1704788528).

October 10, 2023
state, atheism, atheist, state, incorporation, hard, atheism, theism, into, political, regimes, considered, opposite, theocracy, also, refer, large, scale, secularization, attempts, governments, some, extent, religion, state, relationship, that, usually, ideol. State atheism or atheist state is the incorporation of hard atheism or non theism into political regimes 27 It is considered the opposite of theocracy and may also refer to large scale secularization attempts by governments 28 To some extent it is a religion state relationship that is usually ideologically linked to irreligion and the promotion of irreligion or atheism 29 State atheism may refer to a government s promotion of anti clericalism which opposes religious institutional power and influence in all aspects of public and political life including the involvement of religion in the everyday life of the citizen 27 30 31 In some instances religious symbols and public practices that were once held by religions were replaced with secularized versions of them 32 State atheism can also exist in a politically neutral fashion in which case it is considered non secular 27 World map showing countries that formerly or currently practice state atheism 26 Most of the countries that practice state atheism are socialist states with a few exceptions such as Mexico during the Cristero War Countries that formerly practiced state atheism Countries that currently practice state atheismThe majority of communist states followed similar policies from 1917 onwards 9 28 30 33 34 35 36 The Soviet Union 1922 1991 had a long history of state atheism whereby those who were seeking social success generally had to profess atheism and stay away from places of worship this trend became especially militant during the middle of the Stalinist era which lasted from 1929 to 1953 In Eastern Europe countries like Belarus Bulgaria Estonia Latvia Russia and Ukraine experienced strong state atheism policies 34 East Germany and Czechoslovakia also had similar policies 28 The Soviet Union attempted to suppress public religious expression over wide areas of its influence including places such as Central Asia Either currently or in their past China 28 33 36 37 North Korea 36 37 Vietnam 38 Cambodia 9 and Cuba 35 are or were officially atheist In contrast a secular state officially purports to be neutral in matters of religion it does not support religion nor does it support irreligion 27 39 40 In a review of 35 European states in 1980 5 states were considered secular in the sense of religious neutrality 9 considered atheistic and 21 states considered religious 41 Contents 1 Countries that currently practice state atheism 2 Countries that formerly practiced state atheism 3 Communist states 3 1 Soviet Union 3 2 Albania 3 3 Cambodia 3 4 China 3 5 Cuba 3 6 East Germany 3 7 North Korea 3 8 Mongolia 3 9 Vietnam 4 Non communist states 4 1 Revolutionary Mexico 4 2 Revolutionary France 5 Human rights 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 8 1 Book references 8 2 Journal references 8 3 News references 8 4 Web references 9 Further readingCountries that currently practice state atheism Edit nbsp North Korea nbsp People s Republic of China nbsp Republic of Cuba nbsp Socialist Republic of VietnamCountries that formerly practiced state atheism Edit nbsp Czechoslovak Socialist Republic nbsp Democratic Kampuchea nbsp Democratic Republic of Afghanistan nbsp French First Republic nbsp German Democratic Republic nbsp Hungarian People s Republic nbsp Lao People s Democratic Republic nbsp Mongolian People s Republic nbsp People s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia nbsp People s Democratic Republic of Yemen nbsp People s Republic of Angola nbsp People s Republic of Benin nbsp People s Republic of Bulgaria nbsp People s Republic of Mozambique nbsp People s Republic of Poland nbsp People s Republic of the Congo nbsp People s Socialist Republic of Albania nbsp State of Eritrea nbsp Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia nbsp Socialist Republic of Romania nbsp Union of Soviet Socialist Republics nbsp United Mexican StatesCommunist states EditMain articles Marxism and religion Marxist Leninist atheism and Communism and religion A communist state is a state with a form of government which is characterized by the one party rule or the dominant party rule of a communist party which professes allegiance to a Leninist or Marxist Leninist communist ideology as the guiding principle of the state 42 43 44 The founder and primary theorist of Marxism the 19th century German thinker Karl Marx had an ambivalent attitude toward religion which he viewed as the opium of the people simultaneously the sigh of and a source of moral agency of the opressed creature against their suffering To Marx religion was not the ideological expression of those in power 45 and he did not see it needing abolishing Instead he saw the communist state as creating conditions where the consolation provided by religion would not be needed 46 In the Marxist Leninist interpretation of Marxist theory developed primarily by Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin atheism emanates from its dialectical materialism and tries to explain and criticize religion 47 Lenin states Religion is the opium of the people this dictum by Marx is the corner stone of the whole Marxist outlook on religion Marxism has always regarded all modern religions and churches and each and every religious organisation as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the working class 48 Although Marx and Lenin were both atheists 49 50 several religious communist groups exist including Christian communists 51 Julian Baggini devotes a chapter of his book Atheism A Very Short Introduction to a discussion about 20th century political systems including communism and political repression in the Soviet Union Baggini argues that Soviet communism with its active oppression of religion is a distortion of original Marxist communism which did not advocate oppression of the religious Baggini goes on to argue that Fundamentalism is a danger in any belief system and that Atheism s most authentic political expression takes the form of state secularism not state atheism 46 Soviet Union Edit Main articles Religion in Russia Religion in the Soviet Union Irreligion in Russia Irreligion in Kazakhstan Irreligion in Azerbaijan Irreligion in Estonia Secularism in Georgia country and Soviet anti religious legislation nbsp Cover of Bezbozhnik in 1929 the magazine of the Society of the Godless The first five year plan of the Soviet Union is shown crushing the gods of the Abrahamic religions nbsp 1929 cover of the Soviet magazine Bezbozhnik The Atheist in which a group of industrial workers are depicted throwing Jesus Christ in the trashState atheism gosateizm a syllabic abbreviation of state gosudarstvo and atheism ateizm was a major goal of the official Soviet ideology 52 This phenomenon which lasted for seven decades was new in world history 53 The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such as destroying places of worship executing religious leaders flooding schools and media with anti religious propaganda and propagated scientific atheism 54 55 It sought to make religion disappear by various means 56 57 Thus the USSR became the first state to have as one objective of its official ideology the elimination of the existing religion and the prevention of the future implanting of religious belief with the goal of establishing state atheism gosateizm 58 59 60 61 After the Russian Civil War the state used its resources to stop the implanting of religious beliefs in nonbelievers and remove prerevolutionary remnants which still existed 4 The Bolsheviks were particularly hostile toward the Russian Orthodox Church which supported the White Movement during the Russian Civil War and saw it as a supporter of Tsarist autocracy 62 During the collectivization of the land Orthodox priests distributed pamphlets declaring that the Soviet regime was the Antichrist coming to place the Devil s mark on the peasants and encouraged them to resist the government 62 Political repression in the Soviet Union was widespread and while religious persecution was applied to numerous religions 63 the regime s anti religious campaigns were often directed against specific religions based on state interests 55 The attitude in the Soviet Union toward religion varied from persecution of some religions to not outlawing others 55 From the late 1920s to the late 1930s such organizations as the League of Militant Atheists ridiculed all religions and harassed believers 64 The league was a nominally independent organization established by the Communist Party to promote atheism 65 It published its own newspaper and journals sponsored lectures and organized demonstrations that lampooned religion and promoted atheism 66 Anti religious and atheistic propaganda was implemented into every portion of soviet life from schools to the media and even on to substituting rituals to replace religious ones 54 Though Lenin originally introduced the Gregorian calendar to the Soviets subsequent efforts to reorganise the week to improve worker productivity saw the introduction of the Soviet calendar which had the side effect that a holiday will seldom fall on Sunday 67 Within about a year of the revolution the state expropriated all church property including the churches themselves and in the period from 1922 to 1926 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and more than 1 200 priests were killed a much greater number was subjected to persecution 63 Most seminaries were closed and publication of religious writing was banned 63 A meeting of the Antireligious Commission of the Central Committee of the All Union Communist Party Bolsheviks that occurred on 23 May 1929 estimated the portion of believers in the USSR at 80 percent though this percentage may be understated to prove the successfulness of the struggle with religion 68 The Russian Orthodox Church which had 54 000 parishes before World War I was reduced to 500 by 1940 63 Overall by that same year 90 percent of the churches synagogues and mosques that had been operating in 1917 were either forcibly closed converted or destroyed 69 Since the Soviet era Russia 70 71 Armenia 4 Kazakhstan 72 Uzbekistan 73 Turkmenistan 74 Kyrgyzstan 75 Tajikistan 76 Belarus 77 78 Moldova 79 Georgia 80 Ukraine 81 and Lithuania 82 83 have diverse religious affiliations 84 Russians have primarily returned to identifying with the Orthodox Church by 2008 72 of Russians identified as Orthodox rising from 31 in 1991 However Professor Niels Christian Nielsen of philosophy and religious thought of Rice University has written that the post Soviet population in areas which were formerly predominantly Orthodox are now nearly illiterate regarding religion almost completely lacking the intellectual or philosophical aspects of their faith and having almost no knowledge of other faiths 85 In 1928 the Jewish Autonomous Oblast was established by Joseph Stalin acting on an idea proposed by Lenin in order to give the Jewish population in Russia more personal autonomy as reparation for antisemitism in the Russian Empire Along with granting Jewish autonomy Stalin also allowed Sharia law in the majority Islamic countries of the Soviet Union 86 The Soviet Government considers that the Sharia as common law is as fully authorized as that of any other of the peoples inhabiting Russia statement by Stalin during the Congress of the Peoples of Dagestan an autonomous republic in Russia Art 135 of the 1936 constitution of the Soviet Union protects individuals from religious discrimination 87 Albania Edit Main articles Religion in Albania Islam in the People s Socialist Republic of Albania Freedom of religion in Albania and Irreligion in Albania In 1967 Enver Hoxha the head of state of Albania declared Albania to be the first atheist state of the world even though the Soviet Union under Lenin had already been a de facto atheist state 88 89 58 59 60 61 Marxist Leninist authorities in Albania claimed that religion was foreign to Albania and used this to justify their policy of state atheism and suppression of religion This nationalism was also used to justify the communist stance of state atheism from 1967 to 1991 2 The Agrarian Reform Law of August 1945 nationalized most property of religious institutions including the estates of mosques monasteries orders and dioceses Many clergy and believers were tried and some were executed All foreign Roman Catholic priests monks and nuns were expelled in 1946 90 Religious communities or branches that had their headquarters outside the country such as the Jesuit and Franciscan orders were henceforth ordered to terminate their activities in Albania Religious institutions were forbidden to have anything to do with the education of the young because that had been made the exclusive province of the state All religious communities were prohibited from owning real estate and operating philanthropic and welfare institutions and hospitals Although there were tactical variations in Enver Hoxha s approach to each of the major denominations his overarching objective was the eventual destruction of all organized religion in Albania Between 1945 and 1953 the number of priests was reduced drastically and the number of Roman Catholic churches was decreased from 253 to 100 and all Catholics were stigmatized as fascists 90 The campaign against religion peaked in the 1960s Beginning in February 1967 the Albanian authorities launched a campaign to eliminate religious life in Albania Despite complaints even by APL members all churches mosques monasteries and other religious institutions were either closed down or converted into warehouses gymnasiums or workshops by the end of 1967 91 By May 1967 religious institutions had been forced to relinquish all 2 169 churches mosques cloisters and shrines in Albania many of which were converted into cultural centers for young people As the literary monthly Nendori reported the event the youth had thus created the first atheist nation in the world 90 Clerics were publicly vilified and humiliated their vestments were taken and desecrated More than 200 clerics of various faiths were imprisoned others were forced to seek work in either industry or agriculture and some were executed or starved to death The cloister of the Franciscan order in Shkoder was set on fire which resulted in the death of four elderly monks 90 Article 37 of the Albanian Constitution of 1976 stipulated The state recognizes no religion and supports atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people 92 30 The penal code of 1977 imposed prison sentences of three to ten years for religious propaganda and the production distribution or storage of religious literature which meant that individuals caught with Bibles Qurans icons or other religious objects faced long prison sentences 90 A new decree that in effect targeted Albanians with Muslim and Christian names stipulating that citizens whose names did not conform to the political ideological or moral standards of the state were to change them It was also decreed that towns and villages with religious names must be renamed 90 Hoxha s brutal antireligious campaign succeeded in eradicating formal worship but some Albanians continued to practice their faith clandestinely risking severe punishment 90 Parents were afraid to pass on their faith for fear that their children would tell others Officials tried to entrap practicing Christians and Muslims during religious fasts such as Lent and Ramadan by distributing dairy products and other forbidden foods in school and at work and then publicly denouncing those who refused the food Those clergy who conducted secret services were incarcerated 90 Catholic priest Shtjefen Kurti was executed for secretly baptizing a child in Shkoder in 1972 93 The article was interpreted by Danes as violating The United Nations Charter chapter 9 article 55 which declares that religious freedom is an inalienable human right The first time that the question came before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights at Geneva was as late as 7 March 1983 A delegation from Denmark got its protest over Albania s violation of religious liberty placed on the agenda of the thirty ninth meeting of the commission item 25 reading Implementation of the Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination based on Religion or Belief and on 20 July 1984 a member of the Danish Parliament inserted an article into one of Denmark s major newspapers protesting the violation of religious freedom in Albania citation needed The 1998 Constitution of Albania defined the country as a parliamentary republic and established personal and political rights and freedoms including protection against coercion in matters of religious belief 94 95 Albania is a member state of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation 94 and the 2011 census found that 58 79 of Albanians adhere to Islam making it the largest religion in the country The majority of Albanian Muslims are secular Sunnis along with a significant Bektashi Shia minority Christianity is practiced by 16 99 of the population making it the 2nd largest religion in the country The remaining population is either irreligious or belongs to other religious groups 96 In 2011 Albania s population was estimated to be 56 7 Muslim 10 Roman Catholic 6 8 Orthodox 2 5 atheist 2 1 Bektashi a Sufi order 5 7 other 16 2 unspecified 97 Today Gallup Global Reports 2010 shows that religion plays a role in the lives of 39 of Albanians and Albania is ranked the thirteenth least religious country in the world 98 failed verification The U S state department reports that in 2013 There were no reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious affiliation belief or practice 95 Cambodia Edit nbsp Khmer Rouge bullet holes left at the Angkor Wat templeMain articles Democratic Kampuchea and Religion in Cambodia The Khmer Rouge actively persecuted Buddhists during their rule of Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 99 Buddhist institutions and temples were destroyed and Buddhist monks and teachers were killed in large numbers 100 A third of the country s monasteries were destroyed along with numerous holy texts and items of high artistic quality 25 000 Buddhist monks were massacred by the regime 101 which was officially an atheist state 9 The persecution was undertaken because Pol Pot believed that Buddhism was a decadent affectation He sought to eliminate Buddhism s 1 500 year old mark on Cambodia 101 Under the Khmer Rouge all religious practices were banned 102 103 According to Ben Kiernan the Khmer Rouge repressed Islam Christianity and Buddhism but its fiercest extermination campaign was directed against the ethnic Cham Muslim minority 103 China Edit Main articles Religion in China Freedom of religion in China Irreligion in China and Antireligious campaigns of the Chinese Communist Party China has adopted a policy of official state atheism 33 37 104 105 Art 36 of the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of religion but it only allows members of state sanctioned organizations to practice religions The government has promoted atheism throughout the country In April 2016 the General Secretary Xi Jinping stated that members of the Chinese Communist Party must be unyielding Marxist atheists and in the same month a government sanctioned demolition work crew drove a bulldozer over two Chinese Christians who protested against the demolition of their church by refusing to step aside 106 Traditionally a large segment of the Chinese population practiced Chinese folk religions 107 and Confucianism Taoism and Buddhism As a result all of these religions had played a significant role in the everyday lives of ordinary people 108 109 110 After the 1949 Chinese Revolution the Chinese Communist Party took power 111 112 For much of its early history that government maintained under Marxist thought that religion would ultimately disappear and characterized it as emblematic of feudalism and foreign colonialism citation needed During the Cultural Revolution student vigilantes who were known as Red Guards converted religious buildings into buildings which were used for secular purposes or they destroyed them However this attitude relaxed considerably in the late 1970s during the reform and opening up period The 1978 Constitution of the People s Republic of China guaranteed freedom of religion with a number of restrictions Since then there has been a massive program to rebuild Buddhist and Taoist temples that were destroyed in the Cultural Revolution citation needed The CCP has said that religious beliefs and membership in it are incompatible 10 However the state is not allowed to force ordinary citizens to become atheists 21 China s five officially sanctioned religious organizations are the Buddhist Association of China Chinese Taoist Association Islamic Association of China Three Self Patriotic Movement and Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association These groups are afforded a degree of protection but are subject to restrictions and controls under the State Administration for Religious Affairs Unregistered religious groups face varying degrees of harassment 113 The constitution permits what is called normal religious activities so long as they do not involve the use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt social order impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state Religious organizations and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign dominance 21 Article 36 of the Constitution of the People s Republic of China of 1982 specifies that Citizens of the People s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief No state organ public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in or not to believe in any religion nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in or do not believe in any religion The state protects normal religious activities No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the state Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination 114 Most people report no organized religious affiliation however people with a belief in folk traditions and spiritual beliefs such as ancestor veneration and feng shui along with informal ties to local temples and unofficial house churches number in the hundreds of millions In its annual report on International Religious Freedom the United States Department of State 115 provides statistics about organized religions In 2007 it reported the following citing the Government s 1997 report on Religious Freedom and 2005 White Paper on religion 115 Buddhists 8 Taoists unknown as a percentage partly because it is practiced along with Confucianism and Buddhism Muslims 1 with more than 20 000 Imams Other estimates state that at least 1 of China s population is Muslim Christians Protestants at least 2 Catholics about 1 To some degree statistics which are related to Buddhism and religious Taoism are incomparable to statistics for Islam and Christianity This fact is due to the traditional Chinese belief system which blends Confucianism Buddhism and Taoism so a person who follows a traditional belief system would not exclusively identify himself or herself as a Buddhist or a Taoist even though he or she would attend Buddhist or Taoist places of worship According to Peter Ng Professor of the Department of Religion at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as of 2002 update 95 of Chinese were religious in some way if religion is believed to include traditional folk practices such as burning incense for gods or ancestors at life cycle or seasonal festivals fortune telling and related customary practices 116 The U S State Department has designated China as a country of particular concern since 1999 117 partially in response to the Uyghur genocide and the persecution of Tibetan Buddhists Freedom House classifies Tibet and Xinjiang as regions of particular repression of religion due to concerns about separatist activity 118 119 120 121 122 Heiner Bielefeldt the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief says that China s actions against the Uighurs are a major problem 123 The Chinese government has denounced the report stating that China has ample religious freedom 124 Cuba Edit Main article Religion in Cuba Until 1992 125 Cuba was officially an atheist state 35 37 In August 1960 several bishops signed a joint pastoral letter condemning communism and declaring it incompatible with Catholicism and calling on Catholics to reject it 12 Fidel Castro gave a four hour long speech the next day condemning priests who serve great wealth and using fears of Falangist influence in order to attack Spanish born priests declaring There is no doubt that Franco has a sizeable group of fascist priests in Cuba 126 Originally more tolerant of religion the Cuban government began arresting many believers and shutting down religious schools after the Bay of Pigs Invasion Its prisons were being filled with clergy since the 1960s 35 In 1961 the Cuban government confiscated Catholic schools including the Jesuit school that Fidel Castro had attended In 1965 it exiled two hundred priests 127 In 1976 the Constitution of Cuba added a clause stating that the socialist state bases its activity on and educates the people in the scientific materialist concept of the universe 128 In 1992 the dissolution of the Soviet Union led the country to declare itself a secular state 129 130 Pope John Paul II contributed to the Cuban thaw when he paid a historic visit to the island in 1998 and criticized the US embargo 131 Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba in 2012 and Pope Francis visited Cuba in 2015 132 133 134 135 The Cuban government continued hostile actions against religious groups in 2015 alone the Castro regime ordered the closure or demolition of over 100 Pentecostal Methodist and Baptist parishes according to a report from Christian Solidarity Worldwide 136 East Germany Edit Main articles Christianity in East Germany East Germany Religion New states of Germany Religion State Secretary for Church Affairs and Irreligion in Germany Though Article 39 of the GDR constitution of 1968 guarantees religious freedom the state s policy was oriented towards the promotion of atheism 14 Eastern Germany practiced heavy secularization 28 The German Democratic Republic GDR generated antireligous regulations and promoted atheism for decades which impacted the growth of citizens affiliating with no religion from 7 6 in 1950 to 60 in 1986 137 It was in the 1950s that scientific atheism became official state policy 138 when Soviet authorities were setting up a communist government As of 2012 update the area of the former German Democratic Republic was the least religious region in the world 139 140 141 142 North Korea Edit Main articles Religion in North Korea Freedom of religion in North Korea Irreligion in North Korea Juche North Korean cult of personality and Persecution of Christians in North Korea The North Korean constitution states that freedom of religion is permitted 143 However the North Korean government s Juche ideology has been described as state sanctioned atheism and atheism is the government s official position 36 37 According to a 2018 CIA report free religious activities almost no longer exist with government sponsored groups to delude them 144 The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom stated that assessing the situation in North Korea is challenging but reports which state that DPRK officials repress religious activities have surfaced including reports which state that the government forms and controls religious organizations in an attempt to restrict the performance of religious activities 145 In 2004 the Human Rights Overview reported that North Korea remains one of the most repressive governments with isolation and disregard for international law making monitoring almost impossible 146 After 1 500 churches were destroyed during the rule of Kim Il Sung from 1948 to 1994 three churches were built in Pyongyang Foreign residents who regularly attend services at these churches have reported that the services which are performed there are staged for their benefit 145 The North Korean government promotes the cult of personality of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung described as a political religion as well as the Juche ideology based on Korean ultranationalism which calls on people to avoid spiritual deference to outside influences which was interpreted as including religions which originated outside Korea 147 21 Since 2001 the U S State Department has designated North Korea as a country of particular concern due to its violations of religious freedom 148 149 Cardinal Nicolas Cheong Jin suk has said that There s no knowledge of priests surviving persecution that came in the late forties when 166 priests and religious were killed or kidnapped which includes the Roman Catholic bishop of Pyongyang Francis Hong Yong ho 150 In November 2013 it was reported that the repression of religious people led to the public execution of 80 people some of them were executed for possessing Bibles 147 148 151 There are five Christian churches in Pyongyang three of them are Protestant one of them is Eastern Orthodox and one of them is Catholic 152 President Kim Il Sung and his mother were frequent patrons of the Chilgol Church one of the Protestant churches and that church can be visited on tours 153 Christian institutions are regulated by the Korean Christian Federation a state controlled religious organization 154 Chondoism is an indigenous religion in Korea and the Chondoist Chongu Party is part of the ruling front in North Korea but the number of Chondoists in North Korea is unknown 155 Mongolia Edit Main article Religion in Mongolia The Mongolian People s Revolutionary Party MPRP propagated atheism until the 1960s 156 In the Mongolian People s Republic after it was invaded by Japanese troops in 1936 the Soviet Union deployed its troops there in 1937 undertaking an offensive against the Buddhist religion Parallel with this a Soviet style purge was launched in the People s Revolutionary Party and the Mongolian army The Mongol leader at that time was Khorloogiin Choibalsan a follower of Joseph Stalin who emulated many of the policies that Stalin had previously implemented in the Soviet Union The purge virtually succeeded in eliminating Tibetan Buddhism and cost an estimated thirty to thirty five thousand lives citation needed Vietnam Edit Main article Religion in Vietnam Officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam is an atheist state as declared by its communist government 24 Art 24 of the constitution of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam recognizes religious freedom 157 Non communist states EditRevolutionary Mexico Edit See also Religion in Mexico Mexican Revolution Calles Law and Cristero War Articles 3 5 24 27 and 130 of the Mexican Constitution of 1917 as originally enacted included anticlerical provisions and restricted religious freedoms 158 The Articles were initially seldom enforced until President Plutarco Elias Calles who sought to enact the separation of church and state established in the Constitution of 1917 took office in 1924 158 Calles Mexico has been characterized as an atheist state 18 and his program as aiming to eradicate religious practices in Mexico during the 20th century 159 There was an expulsion of foreign clergy and expropriation of Church properties 160 Article 27 prohibited any future acquisition of such property by churches and prohibited religious corporations and ministers from establishing or directing primary schools 160 The Constitution of 1917 also forbade the existence of monastic orders Article 5 and religious activities outside of church buildings which became government property and mandated that such religious activities would be overseen by government Article 24 160 On 14 June 1926 President Calles enacted anticlerical legislation known formally as The Law Reforming the Penal Code and unofficially as Calles Law 161 His anti Catholic actions included outlawing religious orders depriving the Church of property rights and depriving the clergy of civil liberties including their right to a trial by jury in cases involving anti clerical laws and the right to vote 161 162 Catholic antipathy towards Calles was enhanced because of his vocal anti Catholicism 163 nbsp Cristeros hanged in JaliscoDue to the strict enforcement of anticlerical laws people in strongly Catholic states especially Jalisco Zacatecas Guanajuato Colima and Michoacan began to oppose him and this opposition led to the Cristero War from 1926 to 1929 which was characterized by atrocities on both sides Some Cristeros applied terrorist tactics including the torture and killing of public school teachers 164 165 while the Mexican government persecuted the clergy killing suspected Cristeros and supporters and often retaliating against innocent individuals 166 A truce was negotiated with the assistance of U S Ambassador Dwight Whitney Morrow 167 Calles however in violation of its terms did not abide by the truce and he had approximately 500 Cristero leaders and 5 000 other Cristeros shot frequently in their homes in front of their spouses and children 167 Particularly offensive to Catholics after the supposed truce was Calles insistence on a state monopoly on education suppressing Catholic education and introducing socialist education in its place We must enter and take possession of the mind of childhood the mind of youth 167 Persecutions continued as Calles maintained control under the Maximato and did not relent until 1940 when President Manuel Avila Camacho took office 167 Attempts to eliminate religious education became more pronounced in 1934 through an amendment of Article 3 of the Mexican Constitution which strived to eliminate religion by mandating socialist education which in addition to removing all religious doctrine would combat fanaticism and prejudices build ing in the youth a rational and exact concept of the universe and of social life 158 In 1946 socialist education provisions were removed from the constitution and new laws promoted secular education Between 1926 and 1934 at least 40 priests were killed 167 Where there were 4 500 priests operating within the country before the War in 1934 there were only 334 priests licensed by the government to serve fifteen million people the rest having been killed exiled or not obtaining licenses 167 168 In 1935 17 states had no registered priests 169 Revolutionary France Edit nbsp The Cathedral of Our Lady of Strasbourg turned into a Temple of Reason depicted in 1794 See also Dechristianization of France during the French Revolution Cult of Reason and Religion of Humanity The French Revolution initially began with attacks on Church corruption and the wealth of the higher clergy an action with which even many Christians could identify since the Gallican Church held a dominant role in pre revolutionary France During a two year period known as the Reign of Terror the episodes of anti clericalism grew more violent than any in modern European history The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the Church abolished the Catholic monarchy nationalized Church property exiled 30 000 priests and killed hundreds more 170 In October 1793 the Christian calendar was replaced with one reckoned from the date of the Revolution and Festivals of Liberty Reason and the Supreme Being were scheduled New forms of moral religion emerged including the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being and the atheistic Cult of Reason 171 with the revolutionary government briefly mandating observance of the former in April 1794 172 173 174 175 176 1 17 Human rights EditMain article History of human rights Antireligious states including atheist states have been at odds with international human rights law 177 Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is designed to protect freedom of thought conscience and religion In 1993 the UN s human rights committee declared that article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights protects theistic non theistic and atheistic beliefs as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief 178 The committee further stated that the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief including the right to replace one s current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views Signatories to the convention are barred from the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non believers to recant their beliefs or convert 147 Despite this as of 2009 update minority religions were still being persecuted in many parts of the world 179 180 Theodore Roosevelt condemned the Kishinev pogrom in 1903 establishing a history of U S presidents commenting on the internal religious liberty of foreign countries 181 In Franklin D Roosevelt s 1941 State of the Union address he outlined Four Freedoms including Freedom of worship that would be foundation for the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and future U S diplomatic efforts 181 Jimmy Carter asked Deng Xiaoping to improve religious freedom in China and Ronald Reagan told US Embassy staff in Moscow to help Jews harassed by the Soviet authorities 181 182 Bill Clinton established the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom with the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 in order to use diplomacy to promote religious liberty in repressive states 181 Countries like Albania had anti religious policies while also promoting atheism that impacted their religious rights 183 See also EditAnti clericalism Antireligion Civil religion Decline of Christianity in the Western world History of Atheism History of religion Militant atheism Reign of Terror Religious persecution Secularism Secularization State religionNotes Edit Stanton 2012 p 32 Cultural Sociology of the Middle East Asia and Africa An Encyclopedia a b Hall 1999 subscription required Representations of Place Albania the perception that religion symbolized foreign Italian Greek and Turkish predation was used to justify the communists stance of state atheism 1967 1991 Marques de Morais 2014 Religion and the State in Angola a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Kowalewski 1980 pp 426 441 subscription required Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR Characteristics and Consequences Clarke 2009 p 94 Crude Continent The Struggle for Africa s Oil Prize a b c d e f Avramovic 2007 p 599 Understanding Secularism in a Post Communist State Case of Serbia a b c d e f Kideckel amp Halpern 2000 p 165 Neighbors at War Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity Culture and History Kalkandjieva 2015 The encounter between the religious and the secular in post atheist Bulgaria a b c d Wessinger 2000 p 282 Millennialism Persecution and Violence Historical Cases Democratic Kampuchea was officially an atheist state and the persecution of religion by the Khmer Rouge was matched in severity only by the persecution of religion in the communist states of Albania and North Korea so there were not any direct historical continuities of Buddhism into the Democratic Kampuchea era a b deccanherald com 2011 No religion for Chinese Communist Party cadres Clark amp Decalo 2012 Historical Dictionary of Republic of the Congo page needed a b Mallin 1994 Covering Castro Rise and Decline of Cuba s Communist Dictator page needed a b Ramet 1998 p 125 Nihil Obstat Religion Politics and Social Change in East Central Europe and Russia a b Kellner 2014 25 years after Berlin Wall s fall faith still fragile in former East Germany During the decades of state sponsored atheism in East Germany more formally known as the German Democratic Republic the great emphasis was on avoiding religion a b Doulos 1986 p 140 Christians in Marxist Ethiopia Zuckerman 2009 Atheism and Secularity page needed Stiller 2013 Laos A Nation With Religious Contradictions a b Haas 1997 p 231 Nationalism Liberalism and Progress The dismal fate of new nations Yet the revolutionary leaders managed to score progress toward making the country a rationalized nation state as shown in table 5 3 Revolts continued to plague Mexico some due to continuing rivalries among the leaders The bloody Cristero Revolt 1926 29 however was fought by devout peasants against an atheist state Sanders 2003 Historical Dictionary of Mongolia page needed Van den Bergh Collier 2007 p 180 Towards Gender Equality in Mozambique a b c d Temperman 2010 pp 141 145 State Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance Walaszek 1986 pp 118 134 subscription required An Open Issue of Legitimacy The State and the Church in Poland Leustean 2009 p 92 Orthodoxy and the Cold War Religion and Political Power in Romania was to transform Romania into a communist atheist society a b Dodd 2003 p 571 The rough guide to Vietnam After 1975 the Marxist Leninist government of reunified Vietnam declared the state atheist while theoretically allowing people the right to practice their religion under the constitution Campbell 2015 Yemen The Tribal Islamists Supporting sources listed as of January 22 2018 for the world map showing nations that formerly or currently practice state atheism Afghanistan 1 Albania 2 Angola 3 Armenia 4 Azerbaijan 4 Belarus 4 Benin 5 Bosnia Herzegovina 6 7 Bulgaria 8 Cambodia 9 China 10 Croatia 6 7 Congo 11 Cuba 12 Czechia 13 East Germany 14 Eritrea 15 Estonia 4 Ethiopia 15 Hungary 16 Kazakhstan 4 Kyrgyzstan 4 Laos 17 Latvia 4 Lithuania 4 Mexico 18 Moldova 4 Mongolia 19 Montenegro 6 7 Mozambique 20 North Korea 21 North Macedonia 6 7 Poland 22 Romania 23 Serbia 6 7 Slovakia 13 Slovenia 6 7 Tajikistan 4 Turkmenistan 4 Ukraine 4 Uzbekistan 4 Vietnam 24 Yemen or more specifically South Yemen 25 a b c d Bullivant amp Lee 2016 p 74 A Dictionary of Atheism State Atheism is the name given to the incorporation of positive atheism or non theism into political regimes particularly associated with Soviet systems State Atheisms have tended to be as much anti clerical and anti religious as they are anti theist and typically place heavy restrictions on acts of religious organization and the practice of religion State Atheist regimes are sometimes seen as examples of political secularism because they entail a nonreligious form of government these regimes are even sometimes described as radically secularist However where political secularism is understood as political neutrality towards religion or religions or even political neutrality towards any worldview or existential culture including not only theist but also atheist examples State Atheism is considered non secular a b c d e Bullivant amp Ruse 2015 pp 461 462 The Oxford handbook of atheism As we look elsewhere around the world the dynamics of secularization and religionization are even more complex The largest scale experiments in secularization state atheisms have had mixed outcomes In the former Soviet Union as in China Communist scientific militant or practical atheism has unquestionably had some secularizing effect overall But the story or history does not end there As the former Soviet countries illustrate long term effects of the experiment are uneven It took hold more profoundly in for example eastern Germany or the Czech Republic than in Poland Armenia Lithuania Azerbaijan or Uzbekistan among others Froese 2004 see Irena Borowik Branko Ana amp and Radoslaw Tyrala s Central and Eastern Europe Madeley 2009 p 183 In Eastern Europe the end of the world war produced radically different outcomes as Soviet installed regimes introduced strict controls on the churches and other religious bodies and the state atheism which had been pioneered in Russia after the Bolshevik takeover in 1917 was imposed By 1970 however as Table 12 1 indicates all 22 countries of Central and Eastern Europe which lay behind the Iron Curtain could be designated Atheistic de jure committed in Barrett s terms to formally promoting irreligion This meant typically that while the state was ostensibly separated from all religions and churches it was also linked for ideological reasons with irreligion and opposed on principle to all religion claiming the right to oppose religion by discrimination obstruction or even suppression Barrett 1982 96 Separation in these states meant exclusion from public life and the cutting off of most of the resources required for religion to flourish it emphatically did not mean that the state was debarred from interfering in the field of religious provision rather that as in Turkey the state and its organs should exert maximum control and surveillance a b c Temperman 2010 pp 140 141 State Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance Before the end of the Cold War many Communist States did not shy away from being openly hostile to religion In most instances communist ideology translated unperturbedly into state atheism which in turn triggered measures aimed at the eradication of religion As much was acknowledged by some Communist Constitutions The 1976 Constitution of the People s Socialist Republic of Albania for instance was firmly based on a Marxist dismissal of religion as the opiate of the masses It provided The state recognizes no religion of any kind and supports and develops the atheist view so as to ingrain in to the people the scientific and materialistic world view Franken amp Loobuyck 2011 p 152 Religious Education in a Plural Secularised Society A Paradigm Shift In this model atheism is a state doctrine Instead it is regarded as an official state policy aiming to eradicate all sympathy for religious ideas and the idea that God exists in particular The adherents of political atheism make a plea for an atheist state that has to foster atheist convictions in its citizenry Maddox 1998 p 99 a b c Eller 2014 p 254 Introducing Anthropology of Religion Culture to the Ultimate After the communist revolution of 1949 the People s Republic of China adopted a policy of official state atheism Based on Marxist thinking that religion is class exploitation and false consciousness the communist regime suppressed religion re educated believers and religious leaders and destroyed religious buildings or converted them to non religious uses a b Bullivant amp Ruse 2015 p 626 The Oxford handbook of atheism There have been only a few comparative analyses of atheism carried out in the CEE region One of the few attempts of this kind is that undertaken by Sinita Zrinkak see 2004 Comparing different types of generational responses to atheism in several CEE countries on the basis of studies carried out in these countries and based on data from the EVS he distinguishes three groups of countries in the region The first group comprises countries in which state atheism had the most severe consequences This group includes such countries as Estonia Latvia Russia Ukraine Belarus and Bulgaria a b c d Hertzke 2006 p 43 Freeing God s Children The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights Cuba is the only country in the Americas that has attempted to impose state atheism and since the 1960s onward its jails have been filled with pastors and other believers a b c d Hertzke 2006 p 44 Freeing God s Children The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights The North Korea government not only imposed state sanctioned atheism it also mandated a totalitarian personality worship of Kim II Sung and Kim Jong II This meant that the regime combined traditional Communist persecution of religion with a state mandated faith we associate with Iranian mullahs or the Taliban Thus enemies of the state are also treated as heretics a b c d e O Brien 1993 p 108 The state of religion atlas Atheism continues to be the official position of the governments of China North Korea and Cuba B S Political Science Religion in Vietnam Learn Religions Retrieved 2021 05 12 Temperman 2010 p 120 State Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance A constitutional declaration of secularity means first and foremost that the state does not wish to invoke religion as a justification for its authority actions and decisions It must be emphasized that proclamations of secularity both historically and presently in the majority of cases denote official impartiality in matters of religion rather than official irreligiosity Secular states in that respect should certainly not be confused with declared atheist or anti religious states Temperman 2010 p 140 State Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance Although the historical underlying incentives that accompanied the establishment of a secular state may have been characterized by criticism of certain religious doctrines or practices presently a state of secularity in itself does not necessarily reflect value judgements about religion In other words state secularism does not come down to an official rejection of religion State secularism denotes an intention on the part of the state to not affiliate itself with religion to not consider itself a priori bound by religious principles unless they are reformulated into secular state laws and to not seek to justify its actions by invoking religion Such a state of secularity denotes official impartiality in matters of religion rather than official irreligiosity By contrast secularism as a philosophical notion can indeed be construed as an ideological defense of the secular cause which might include criticism of or scepticism towards religion Thus states that are ideologically secular and that declare secular world views the official state doctrine give evidence explicitly or by implication of judgements about the value of religion within society Most versions of state communism for instance embrace Marxist criticism of religion Madeley 2003 pp 1 22 subscription required European Liberal Democracy and the Principle of State Religious Neutrality As Table 2 indicates along its horizontal dimension according to the attributions based on these criteria in 1980 out of 35 European territories listed only five could be coded as secular in the sense that the State is secular promoting neither religion nor irreligion and nine were deemed Atheistic On the other hand 21 states or governments were found to be committed in one way or another to the support of religion and or religious institutions Which countries are communist Britannica www britannica com Retrieved 2023 04 02 Leninism Britannica www britannica com Retrieved 2023 04 02 marxism leninism dictionary cambridge org Retrieved 2023 04 02 Raines 2002 pp 5 6 Marx on Religion a b Baggini 2003 Atheism A Very Short Introduction Thrower 1983 Marxist Leninist Scientific Atheism and the Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR As an integral part of the Marxist Leninist world view scientific atheism is grounded in the view of the world and of Man enshrined in dialectical materialism and historical materialism The study of scientific atheism brings to light an integral part of the Marxist Leninist world view Being a philosophical science scientific atheism emanates from the basic tenets of dialectical and historical materialism both in explaining the origin of religion and its scientific criticism of religion ibid p 272 Lenin 1996 Vladimir Ilyich Lenin The Attitude of the Workers Party to Religion Lobkowicz 1964 p 319 subscription required Karl Marx s Attitude toward Religion Marx of course was an atheist Britannica Lenin Vladimir Lenin When he was 16 nothing in Lenin indicated a future rebel still less a professional revolutionary except perhaps his turn to atheism Adam amp Stewart 1878 p 577 Canadian Monthly and National Review Communism Kowalewski 1980 p 426 Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR Characteristics and Consequences The Soviet policy of state atheism gosateizm albeit inconsistently applied remains a major goal of official ideology Massive state resources have been expended not only to prevent the implanting of religious belief in nonbelievers but also to eradicate prerevolutionary remnants already existing The regime is not merely passively committed to a godless polity but takes an aggressive stance of official forced atheization Thus a major task of the police apparatus is the persecution of forms of religious practice Not surprisingly the Committee for State Security KGB is reported to have a division dealing specifically with churchmen and sectarians Epstein Genis amp Vladiv Glover 2016 p 379 Russian Postmodernism New Perspectives on Post Soviet Culture The seven decades of Soviet atheism whether one calls it mass atheism scientific atheism state atheism was unquestionably a new phenomenon in world history a b Froese 2004 p 35 subscription required Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed Atheists waged a 70 year war on religious belief in the Soviet Union The Communist Party destroyed churches mosques and temples it executed religious leaders it flooded the schools and media with anti religious propaganda and it introduced a belief system called scientific atheism complete with atheist rituals proselytizers and a promise of worldly salvation a b c Congress Library AR Anti religious Campaigns Daniel 1995 subscription required Journal of Church and State Journal Religious Policy in the Soviet Union Anderson 1994 pp 3 4 Religion state and politics in the Soviet Union and successor states a b Revelations from the Russian Archives ANTI RELIGIOUS CAMPAIGNS Library of Congress US Government Retrieved 2 May 2016 a b Kowalewski 1980 pp 426 441 a b Ramet Sabrina Petra ed 1993 Religious Policy in the Soviet Union Cambridge University Press pp 4 ISBN 9780521416436 a b Anderson 1994 p 3 a b Fitzpatrick 1996 p 33 Stalin s Peasants Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization a b c d countrystudies com Russia The Russian Orthodox Church Overy 2004 p 271 Dictators Hitler s Germany Stalin s Russia page cited inaccessible Peris 1998 p 2 Storming the Heavens The Soviet League of the Militant Godless Peris 1998 p 2 Storming the Heavens The Soviet League of the Militant Godless The League s Central Council in Moscow published its own newspaper Bezbozhnik The Godless several other Russian language journals and propaganda materials in many other languages of the Soviet Union Antireligious pamphlets and posters were printed in large numbers The League s far flung network of cells and councils sponsored lectures organized demonstrations and actively propagandized against religious observance Leading Bolshevik figures gave speeches at the League s national congress in 1929 at which the League officially became Militant The Communist Party the Komsomol the trade unions the Red Army and Soviet schools all conducted antireligious propaganda but the League was the organizational centerpiece of this effort to bring atheism to the masses Time magazine 1931 Staggerers Unstaggered Mandelstam Balzer 2009 pp 6 7 Religion and Politics in Russia A Reader Atwood 2001 p 311 The Soviets moved quickly against the Russian Orthodox Church in 1918 Most church lands became the property of the state but the state refused to pay the salaries of the clergy Education was taken out of the church s hands and the state legally recognized only civil marriages Many church leaders responded by supporting the anti revolutionaries and tsarists Thousands of priests and monks perished in the civil war and subsequent repression In 1929 Stalin instituted harsher measures against religion The state strictly controlled the publication of religious books including the Bible Confirmed Christians could not teach in schools or join the Communist party The erection of new church buildings was forbidden and many former church buildings were desecrated or used to promote anti Christian propaganda For slightly more than a decade the week officially contained only six days because the Christian Sabbath had been simply removed the Stalinist campaign against religion was directed against Jews and Muslims as well particularly in the southern Soviet republics As many as ninety percent of the churches mosques and synagogues that had been in existence in 1917 had been forcibly closed converted or destroyed by 1940 Russians Return to Religion But Not to Church Pew Research Center February 10 2014 US State Russia Department of State Russia US state Kazakhstan 2012 International Religious Freedom Report 2009 Kazakhstan US state Uzbekistan 2010 Background Note Uzbekistan CIA Turkmenistan The World Factbook Turkmenistan US state Kyrgyzstan 2001 International Religious Freedom Report Kyrgyzstan US state Tajikistan Background Note Tajikistan 03 09 nationmaster com Belarus Belarus Religion Facts amp Stats CIA Belarus The World Factbook Belarus nationmaster com Moldova Moldova Religion Facts amp Stats nationmaster com Georgia Georgia Religion Facts amp Stats nationmaster com Ukraine Population by Religious Confession census Olsen 2007 p 148 Sacred Places Europe 108 Destinations Statistics Lithuania Population by Religious Confession census Miller 2009 A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World s Muslim Population Nielsen 2018 pp 77 78 Christianity After Communism Social Political And Cultural Struggle In Russia Congress of the Peoples of Daghestan Constitution Fundamental law of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Service Robert 21 February 2011 Lenin A Biography Pan Macmillan ISBN 9780330476331 Tonnes 2008 p 6 Albania An Atheist State subscription required The struggle against religion in its current incomparably harsher phase was inaugurated by Enver Hoxha in his speech of 6 February 1967 He declared Albania to be the first atheist state of the world All 2 169 religious establishments including the 268 Catholic churches were demolished or closed a b c d e f g h country data com amp Hoxha Hoxha s Antireligious Campaign country data com amp Albania Albania The Cultural and Ideological Revolution bjoerna amp Albania The Albanian Constitution of 1976 Sinishta 1976 The fulfilled promise a documentary account of religious persecution in Albania page needed a b uscirf 2012 U S Commission On International Religious Freedom a b US State Albania 2013 Albania 2013 International Religious Freedom Report instat 2011 archived page in Albanian CIA Albania 2013 The World Factbook Albania Gallup 2013 archived page Yale Cambodia 2004 Chronology 1994 2004 Cambodian Genocide Program Yale University StPetersburg Cambodia 2015 Nie Remembering the deaths of 1 7 million Cambodians a b Shenon 1992 subscription required Phnom Penh Journal Lord Buddha Returns With Artists His Soldiers britannica com Khmer Rouge 2019 Cambodia Religion Under the Khmer Rouge all religious practices were forbidden a b Gellately amp Kiernan 2006 p 30 The specter of genocide mass murder in historical perspective Pol Pot s Cambodia perpetrated genocide against several ethnic groups systematically dispersed national minorities by force and forbade the use of minority and foreign languages It also banned the practice of religion The Khmer Rouge repressed Islam Christianity and Buddhism but its fiercest extermination campaign was directed at the ethnic Cham Muslim minority Wielander 2013 p 1 Christian Values in Communist China The PRC is officially an atheist state well known for its persecution and destruction of religion and its material manifestations during the Cultural Revolution BBC China 1999 China announces civilizing atheism drive in Tibet Campbell 2016 China s Leader Xi Jinping Reminds Party Members to Be Unyielding Marxist Atheists Xiong 2013 Freedom of religion in China under the current legal framework and foreign religious bodies Sharma 2011 p 201 Problematizing Religious Freedom Chen 1965 subscription required Chinese Communist Attitudes Towards Buddhism in Chinese History In the journal Hsien tai Fo hsueh Modern Buddhism September 1959 there appeared a long article entitled Lun Tsung chiao Hsin yang Tzu yu A Discussion Concerning Freedom of Religious Belief by Ya Han chang which was originally published in the official Communist ideological journal Hung Ch i Red Flag 1959 No 14 Appearing as it did in Red Flag it is justifiable to conclude that the views expressed in it represented the accepted Communist attitude toward religion In this article Ya wrote that the basic policy of the Chinese Communist Party and the People s Republic of China is to recognise that everyone has the freedom to believe in a religion and also that everyone has the freedom not to believe in a religion Welch amp Holmes 1973 p 393 The practice of Chinese Buddhism 1900 1950 Xie 2006 p 145 page cited inaccessible Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China Tyler 2004 p 259 no preview available Wild West China The Taming of Xinjiang china embassy org 1997 White Paper Freedom of Religious Belief in China people cn Constitution of the People s Republic of China a b US state Rel Freedom 2007 International Religious Freedom Report 2007 China Madsen 2010 p 239 Chinese society change conflict and resistance USCIRF 2012 The religious freedom situation in Russia is deteriorating and China remains one of the world s most egregious violators of this fundamental right freedomhouse org 2013 China Country report Freedom in the World 2013 refworld org China 2001 Refworld Religious Minorities and China refworld org China Religion 2013 Refworld 2013 Report on International Religious Freedom China refworld org Macau province 2013 Refworld 2013 Report on International Religious Freedom China Macau refworld org Fujian province China Freedom of religious practice and belief in Fujian province Wee 2015 U N official calls China s crackdown on Uighurs disturbing Reuters 2015 China lodges protest with U S after religious freedom report theconversation com Cuba 2016 Religion shapes Cuba despite Castro s influence Under Castro s rule Cuba was for decades a self declared atheist state where Christians were persecuted and marginalized In 1992 the Cuban Constitution was amended to declare it a secular state It was no longer an atheist Republic Castro Speech Data Base Latin American Network Information Center LANIC lanic utexas edu Retrieved 2023 03 27 Buckley 2011 Cuba libre Castro was weakened by the fall of the Soviet Union Simons 1980 p 114 The Constitutions of the Communist world state gov 2011 CUBA Status of Government Respect for Religious Freedom Berkley Center for Religion 2017 CUBA Status of Government Respect for Religious Freedom Huffington Post 2014 How Pope John Paul II Paved The Way For The U S Cuba Thaw Miroff 2015 Pope Francis arrives in Havana praising U S Cuba thaw Scammell 2015 Castro thanks Pope Francis for brokering thaw between Cuba and US The New York Times 2014 Pope Francis Is Credited With a Crucial Role in U S Cuba Agreement Los Angeles Times 2014 Pope Francis role in Cuba stretches back years Bandow 2016 The Castros Continue to Shut Churches in Cuba Froese amp Pfaff 2005 p 397 subscription required Explaining a Religious Anomaly A Historical Analysis of Secularization in Eastern Germany No religion could benefit substantially from the conditions that obtained in the GDR Antireligious regulations and the official promotion of an exclusive socialist inspired atheism devastated religion The percentage of those without any religious affiliation grew from 7 6 percent of the population in 1950 to more than 60 percent in 1986 Clearly communist antipathy toward religion and the repression of religious organizations must have played a role in the rapid and dramatic abandonment of religion But what contribution did atheism make to this development In the GDR the weakening of the churches and their accommodation to communism was influential but apparently so was the success of scientific atheism as a competitor to religion Froese amp Pfaff 2005 p 402 subscription required Explaining a Religious Anomaly A Historical Analysis of Secularization in Eastern Germany In the late 1950s the regime announced that scientific atheism had become official policy and any of the approximately 1 5 million party members that remained church members were compelled to renounce religion Maser 1999 focus de E Germany 2012 Ostdeutschland Wo der Atheist zu Hause ist in German 52 Prozent der Menschen in Ostdeutschland sind laut einer aktuellen Studie Atheisten Das ist ein globaler Spitzenwert Worldcrunch 2009 WHY EASTERN GERMANY IS THE MOST GODLESS PLACE ON EARTH dialoginternational com 2012 East Germany the most atheistic of any region Barker 2004 subscription required Church and State Lessons from Germany The effects of living in an atheist state continue to be seen in younger generations of East Germans wikisource org N Korea Constitution of North Korea 1972 rev 1998 CIA N Korea The World Factbook North Korea Religion tab note autonomous religious activities now almost nonexistent government sponsored religious groups exist to provide illusion of religious freedom a b uscirf gov N Korea 2012 Countries of Particular Concern Democratic People s Republic of Korea hrw org 2004 Human Rights in North Korea DPRK The Democratic People s Republic of Korea a b c uscirf Kim Il Sung 2005 Thank You Father Kim Il Sung a b uscirf gov N Korea 1 2010 The Democratic People s Republic of Korea USCIRF Annual Report uscirf gov N Korea 2 amp NKorea Remarks by USCIRF Chair Katrina Lantos Swett at Conference on Religious Freedom Violent Religious Extremism and Constitutional Reform in Muslim Majority Countries 30giorni it 2007 30Giorni Korea for a reconciliation between North and South Interview with Cardinal Nicholas Cheong Jinsuk by Gianni Cardinale in Italian foxnews com Cuba 2013 North Korea publicly executes 80 some for videos or Bibles report says North Korea publicly executes 80 some for videos or Bibles report says Religion in Pyongyang North Korea Chilgol Church Pyongyang 24 April 2020 Korean Christian Federation 24 April 2020 What is Chondoism 2 May 2019 Sanders 2003 p 406 Historical Dictionary of Mongolia The MPRP propagated atheism but in the 1960s the communist government began low level support for Lamaism seeing it as a vehicle for propaganda in Asian Buddhist countries vietnamnews vn amp constitution The constitution of the socialist republic of Viet Nam a b c Fernandez 2002 pp 435 452 Mexico and the 1981 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief Cronon 1958 Subscription required American Catholics and Mexican Anticlericalism 1933 1936 a b c Mexico Constitution 1917 link to page a b Joes 2006 p 70 Rebellion The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency Tuck 1996 Cristero Rebellion part 1 toward the abyss Mexico History Shirk 2005 Mexico s New Politics Nathaniel Weyl Mrs Sylvia Castleton Weyl 1939 The reconquest of Mexico the years of Lazaro Cardenas Oxford university press p 322 John W Sherman 1997 The Mexican right the end of revolutionary reform 1929 1940 Greenwood Publishing Group pp 43 45 ISBN 978 0 275 95736 0 Enc Colombia amp Calles Plutarco Elias Calles a b c d e f Van Hove 1996 Blood Drenched Altars Scheina 2003 p 33 Latin America s Wars Volume II The Age of the Professional Soldier 1900 2001 Ruiz 1992 p 392 Triumphs and Tragedy A History of the Mexican People Collins Michael 1999 The Story of Christianity Mathew A Price Dorling Kindersley pp 176 177 ISBN 978 0 7513 0467 1 At first the new revolutionary government attacked Church corruption and the wealth of the bishops and abbots who ruled the Church causes with which many Christians could identify Clerical privileges were abolished Kennedy Emmet 1989 A Cultural History of the French Revolution Yale University Press p 343 ISBN 9780300044263 Helmstadter Richard J 1997 Freedom and religion in the nineteenth century Stanford Univ Press p 251 ISBN 9780804730877 Heenan David Kyle Deism in France 1789 1799 N p U of Wisconsin Madison 1953 Print Ross David A Being in Time to the Music N p Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2007 Print This Cult of Reason or Deism reached its logical conclusion in the French Revolution Fremont Barnes p 119 Tallett Frank 1991 Dechristianizing France The Year II and the Revolutionary Experience In Frank Tallett Nicholas Atkin eds Religion Society and Politics in France Since 1789 A amp C Black pp 1 28 ISBN 978 1 85285 057 9 Temperman 2010 pp 165 166 State Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance A type of state religion identification that in essence boils down to an antireligious regime a regime which officially rejects the concept of religion altogether can be considered in itself at odd with principles of human rights law in particular to freedom of religion or belief and the equality principle History has seen some regimes which attempted to ban all religious activity communist Albania for instance It is submitted that a state that establishes itself as an atheistic state breaches the non discrimination principle for similar reasons that were advanced with respect to religious states minorityrights org 1993 CCPR General Comment 22 30 07 93 on ICCPR Article 18 fdih org 2003 Discrimination against religious minorities in Iran Davis 2002 The Evolution of Religious Liberty as a Universal Human Right a b c d Hertzke 2015 archived Responding to Religious Freedom and Presidential Leadership A Historical Approach chabad org Mission to Russia A Rabbi Eulogizes President Reagan Sinishta 1983References EditBook references Edit Dodd Jan 2003 The rough guide to Vietnam 7th ed London Rough Guides ISBN 9781405389730 OCLC 762991000 Kideckel David Halpern Joel 2000 Neighbors at War Anthropological Perspectives on Yugoslav Ethnicity Culture and History Penn State Press p 165 ISBN 9780271044354 Avramovic Sima 2007 Understanding Secularism in a Post Communist State Case of Serbia PDF Zuckerman Phil 2009 Atheism and Secularity Santa Barbara ABC CLIO ISBN 9780313351822 OCLC 609858051 Bullivant Stephen Lee Lois 2016 A Dictionary of Atheism Oxford University Press ISBN 9780191816819 Bullivant Stephen Sebastien Ruse Michael 2015 The Oxford handbook of atheism Oxford United Kingdom ISBN 978 0198745075 OCLC 936352170 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Hertzke Allen D 2006 Freeing God s Children The Unlikely Alliance for Global Human Rights Rowman amp Littlefield ISBN 9780742547322 Eller Jack David 2014 Introducing Anthropology of Religion Culture to the Ultimate Routledge ISBN 9781138024915 O Brien Joanne 1993 The state of religion atlas Palmer Martin Barrett David B Swanston Graphics Limited Simon amp Schuster ISBN 978 0671793760 OCLC 28585951 Baggini Julian 26 June 2003 Atheism A Very Short Introduction OUP Oxford pp 82 90 ISBN 978 0 19 280424 2 Temperman Jeroen 2010 State Religion Relationships and Human Rights Law Towards a Right to Religiously Neutral Governance Brill Academic Martinus Nijhoff Publishers ISBN 9789004181489 Wessinger Catherine 2000 Millennialism Persecution and Violence Historical Cases Syracuse University Press ISBN 9780815628095 Ramet Sabrina 1998 Nihil Obstat Religion Politics and Social Change in East Central Europe and Russia Duke University Press ISBN 9780822320708 Stanton Andrea L 2012 Cultural Sociology of the Middle East Asia and Africa An Encyclopedia SAGE ISBN 9781412981767 Clark John F Decalo Samuel 2012 08 09 Historical Dictionary of Republic of the Congo Scarecrow Press ISBN 9780810879898 Clarke Duncan February 1 2009 Crude Continent The Struggle for Africa s Oil Prize Profile Books p 194 ISBN 9781847654557 Haas Ernst B 1997 Nationalism Liberalism and Progress The dismal fate of new nations Cornell University Press ISBN 9780801431098 Franken Leni Loobuyck Patrick 2011 Religious Education in a Plural Secularised Society A Paradigm Shift Waxmann Verlag ISBN 9783830975434 Sanders Alan April 9 2003 Historical Dictionary of Mongolia Scarecrow Press p 10 ISBN 9780810874527 Fitzpatrick Sheila 1996 Stalin s Peasants Resistance and Survival in the Russian Village After Collectivization Oxford University Press ISBN 9780195104592 Epstein Mikhail N Genis Alexander A Vladiv Glover Slobodanka M 2016 Russian Postmodernism New Perspectives on Post Soviet Culture Berghahn Books ISBN 978 1782388647 Sharma Arvind 8 August 2011 Problematizing Religious Freedom Springer Science amp Business Media p 201 ISBN 978 90 481 8993 9 Gellately Robert Kiernan Ben 2006 Twentieth Century Genocides Underlying Ideological Themes from Armenia to East Timor The specter of genocide mass murder in historical perspective Cambridge University Press ISBN 978 0521820639 OCLC 893888702 Thrower James 1983 Marxist Leninist Scientific Atheism and the Study of Religion and Atheism in the USSR Walter de Gruyter ISBN 9789027930606 Peris Daniel 1998 Storming the Heavens The Soviet League of the Militant Godless Ithaca Cornell University Press ISBN 9780801434853 Cambodia Religion Retrieved 2019 05 20 a href Template Cite encyclopedia html title Template Cite encyclopedia cite encyclopedia a website ignored help Wielander Gerda 2013 Christian Values in Communist China Hoboken Taylor and Francis ISBN 9781317976042 OCLC 860626352 Madsen Richard 2010 Chapter 10 Chinese Christianity Indigenization and conflict In Elizabeth J Perry Mark Selden ed Chinese society change conflict and resistance Routledge p 239 ISBN 978 0 415 56073 3 Adam Graeme Mercer Stewart George 1878 The Canadian Monthly and National Review Communism Adam Stevenson amp Company Olsen Brad 2007 Sacred Places Europe 108 Destinations CCC Publishing p 148 ISBN 978 1 888729 12 2 Mallin Jay 1 January 1994 Covering Castro Rise and Decline of Cuba s Communist Dictator Transaction Publishers ISBN 978 1 4128 2053 0 Joes Anthony James 2006 08 18 Resisting Rebellion The History and Politics of Counterinsurgency University Press of Kentucky ISBN 9780813191706 Shirk David A 2005 Mexico s New Politics Lynne Rienner Publishers ISBN 978 1 58826 270 7 Denslow William R 1957 10 000 famous freemasons Truman Harry S 1884 1972 Place of publication not identified Kessinger Pub Co ISBN 978 1417975785 OCLC 63197837 Quesada Vicente Fox Allyn Rob 2007 Revolution of Hope The Life Faith and Dreams of a Mexican President Penguin p 17 ISBN 9780670018390 Scheina Robert L 2003 07 01 Latin America s Wars Volume II The Age of the Professional Soldier 1900 2001 Potomac Books Incorporated p 33 ISBN 9781574884524 Ruiz Ramon Eduardo 1992 Triumphs and Tragedy A History of the Mexican People W W Norton amp Company p 392 ISBN 9780393310665 Leustean Lucian 2009 Orthodoxy and the Cold War Religion and Political Power in Romania 1947 65 la University of Michigan ISBN 9780230594944 Mandelstam Balzer Marjorie 2009 Religion and Politics in Russia A Reader M E Sharpe ISBN 978 0 7656 2415 4 Xie Zhibin 2006 Religious Diversity and Public Religion in China Ashgate Publishing Ltd ISBN 9780754656487 Welch Holmes 1973 The practice of Chinese Buddhism 1900 1950 Harvard University Press p 393 ISBN 978 0674697003 OCLC 39088631 Tyler Christian 2004 Wild West China The Taming of Xinjiang Rutgers University Press ISBN 9780813535333 Xiong 2013 Freedom of religion in China under the current legal framework and foreign religious bodies PDF United States Brigham Young University OCLC 975335961 Sinishta Gjon 1976 The fulfilled promise a documentary account of religious persecution in Albania Santa Clara H amp F Composing Service ISBN 978 0317187151 OCLC 175170260 Raines John C March 2002 Marx on Religion Temple University Press ISBN 9781592138050 Nielsen Niels C Jr 2018 03 08 Christianity After Communism Social Political And Cultural Struggle In Russia Routledge pp 77 78 ISBN 9780429981319 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint multiple names authors list link Overy Richard 2004 Dictators Hitler s Germany Stalin s Russia Allen Lane p 271 ISBN 978 0713993097 OCLC 696631892 Simons William 1980 The Constitutions of the Communist world Springer ISBN 978 9028600706 Atwood Craig 2001 Always Reforming A History of Christianity Since 1300 Macon Georgia Mercer University Press ISBN 978 0 86554 679 0 Madeley John 2009 12 Religion and the State In Haynes Jeffrey ed Routledge Handbook of Religion and Politics Routledge pp 174 191 ISBN 978 0 415 41455 5 Journal references Edit Froese Paul Pfaff Steven December 2005 Explaining a Religious Anomaly A Historical Analysis of Secularization in Eastern Germany Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44 4 397 422 doi 10 1111 j 1468 5906 2005 00294 x ISSN 0021 8294 Fernandez Jose 2002 05 01 Mexico and the 1981 United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief BYU Law Review 2002 2 435 452 Walaszek Zdzislawa January 1986 An Open Issue of Legitimacy The State and the Church in Poland The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 483 1 118 134 doi 10 1177 0002716286483001011 ISSN 0002 7162 S2CID 145367724 Madeley John January 2003 European Liberal Democracy and the Principle of State Religious Neutrality West European Politics 26 1 1 22 doi 10 1080 01402380412331300177 S2CID 154541171 Chen Kenneth 1965 Chinese Communist Attitudes Towards Buddhism in Chinese History The China Quarterly 22 14 30 doi 10 1017 S0305741000048682 ISSN 0305 7410 S2CID 153633666 Kowalewski David 1980 Protest for Religious Rights in the USSR Characteristics and Consequences The Russian Review 39 4 426 441 doi 10 2307 128810 ISSN 0036 0341 JSTOR 128810 Froese Paul 2004 Forced Secularization in Soviet Russia Why an Atheistic Monopoly Failed Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 43 1 35 50 doi 10 1111 j 1468 5906 2004 00216 x ISSN 1468 5906 OCLC 884663575 S2CID 53308958 Lobkowicz N 1964 Karl Marx s Attitude toward Religion The Review of Politics 26 3 319 352 doi 10 1017 S0034670500005076 S2CID 145727079 Daniel W 1995 09 01 Religious Policy in the Soviet Union Edited by Sabrina Petra Ramet New York Cambridge University Press 1993 361 pp 69 95 Journal of Church and State 37 4 913 914 doi 10 1093 jcs 37 4 913 ISSN 0021 969X Anderson John 1994 Religion state and politics in the Soviet Union and successor states Cambridge Cambridge University Press doi 10 1017 cbo9780511598838 ISBN 9780511598838 permanent dead link Hall Derek R 1999 Representations of Place Albania The Geographical Journal 165 2 161 172 doi 10 2307 3060414 ISSN 0016 7398 JSTOR 3060414 Barker Christine R April 2004 Church and State Lessons from Germany The Political Quarterly 75 2 168 176 doi 10 1111 j 1467 923X 2004 00599 x Cronon E David September 1958 American Catholics and Mexican Anticlericalism 1933 1936 The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45 2 201 230 doi 10 2307 1902927 ISSN 0161 391X JSTOR 1902927 Tonnes Bernhard 2008 Albania An Atheist State Religion in Communist Lands 3 1 3 4 7 doi 10 1080 09637497508430712 Sinishta Gjon 1983 Grave Violation of Religious Rights in Albania Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe 3 5 Maddox Marion 1998 Religion and the Secular State Revisited Australian Religion Studies Review 11 2 98 113 News references Edit Shenon Philip 1992 01 02 Phnom Penh Journal Lord Buddha Returns With Artists His Soldiers The New York Times ISSN 0362 4331 Retrieved 2019 05 19 Staggerers Unstaggered Time magazine December 7 1931 Archived from the original on December 23 2007 Retrieved 2007 10 02 Miroff Nick 19 September 2015 Pope Francis arrives in Havana praising U S Cuba thaw The Washington Post Scammell Rosie 2015 Castro thanks Pope Francis for brokering thaw between Cuba and US the Guardian Pope Francis Is Credited With a Crucial Role in U S Cuba Agreement The New York Times 18 December 2014 Los Angeles Times 18 December 2014 Pope Francis role in Cuba stretches back years Los Angeles Times Bandow Doug 1 February 2016 The Castros Continue to Shut Churches in Cuba Newsweek Retrieved 5 September 2017 Web references Edit Hertzke Allen 17 Feb 2015 Responding to Religious Freedom and Presidential Leadership A Historical Approach Berkley Center for Religion Peace and World Affairs Archived from the original on July 2 2015 Kellner Mark A 2014 10 31 25 years after Berlin Wall s fall faith still fragile in former East Germany DeseretNews com Retrieved 2019 05 19 Van Hove Brian 1996 Blood Drenched Altars www ewtn com Retrieved 2019 05 19 Kalkandjieva Daniela June 12 2015 The encounter between the religious and the secular in post atheist Bulgaria Doulos Mikael 1986 Christians in Marxist Ethiopia PDF No religion for Chinese Communist Party cadres deccanherald com 2011 12 19 Retrieved 2019 05 19 Marques de Morais Rafael April 27 2014 Religion and the State in Angola Stiller Brian June 18 2013 Laos A Nation With Religious Contradictions HuffPost Campbell Leslie August 27 2015 Yemen The Tribal Islamists Campbell Charlie 25 April 2016 China s Leader Xi Jinping Reminds Party Members to Be Unyielding Marxist Atheists Time Beijing Retrieved 3 September 2017 Lenin V I 1996 About the attitude of the working party toward the religion Collected works v 17 p 41 in Russian Retrieved 2006 09 09 CUBA Status of Government Respect for Religious Freedom PDF International Religious Freedom Report for 2011 United States Department of State Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor Constitution of Cuba Article 8 Freedom of Religion and Separation of Church and State Berkley Center for Religion Peace amp World Affairs Archived from the original on 2015 10 04 Retrieved 2015 10 03 How Pope John Paul II Paved The Way For The U S Cuba Thaw The Huffington Post 2014 12 18 Nie Remembering the deaths of 1 7 million Cambodians 2015 06 26 Archived from the original on 2015 06 26 Retrieved 2019 05 20 China announces civilizing atheism drive in Tibet BBC 1999 Retrieved 3 September 2017 Vladimir Lenin Encyclopedia Britannica 8 June 2023 Anti religious Campaigns www loc gov Retrieved 2019 05 20 International Religious Freedom Report 2009 Kazakhstan 2012 03 18 Archived from the original on 2012 03 18 Retrieved 2019 05 20 Background Note Uzbekistan 2010 07 02 Archived from the original on 2010 07 02 Retrieved 2019 05 20 The World Factbook cia gov 6 October 2021 International Religious Freedom Report Kyrgyzstan 2019 03 30 Archived from the original on 2019 03 30 Retrieved 2019 05 20 Background Note Tajikistan 03 09 2009 08 30 Archived from the original on 2009 08 30 Retrieved 2019 05 20 Belarus Religion Facts amp Stats www nationmaster com Retrieved 2019 05 20 Europe Belarus The World Factbook Central Intelligence Agency www cia gov Retrieved 2019 05 20 Moldova Religion Facts amp Stats www nationmaster com Retrieved 2019 05 20 Georgia Religion Facts amp Stats www nationmaster com Retrieved 2019 05 20 Miller Tracy October 2009 Mapping the Global Muslim Population A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World s Muslim Population PDF Pew Research Center Archived from the original PDF on October 10 2009 Retrieved 8 October 2009 Russia The Russian Orthodox Church countrystudies us Library of Congress Retrieved 2019 05 20 CCPR General Comment 22 30 07 93 on ICCPR Article 18 Minorityrights org 1993 Archived from the original on 2015 01 16 Remarks by USCIRF Chair Katrina Lantos Swett at Conference on Religious Freedom Violent Religious Extremism and Constitutional Reform in Muslim Majority Countries United States Commission on International Religious Freedom 2012 12 07 Retrieved 2019 05 20 China Country report Freedom in the World 2013 2013 01 09 Archived from the original on 2015 10 05 Retrieved 2015 10 05 Russia U S Department of State 2007 09 14 Albania Hoxha s Antireligious Campaign www country data com Based on the Country Studies Series by Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress Retrieved 2019 05 20 Albania The Cultural and Ideological Revolution country data com Based on the Country Studies Series by Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress The Albanian Constitution of 1976 bjoerna dk Retrieved 2019 05 20 The Religion State Relationship and the Right to Freedom of Religion or Belief A Comparative Textual Analysis of the Constitutions of Majority Muslim Countries and Other OIC Members PDF U S COMMISSION ON INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 2012 Njoftim per Media PDF Archived from the original PDF on 2017 03 26 Retrieved 2017 03 26 The World Factbook Albania Central Intelligence Agency Retrieved 21 June 2013 ALBANIA 2013 INTERNATIONAL RELIGIOUS FREEDOM REPORT PDF U S Department of State Gallup Global Reports Gallup com Archived from the original on January 27 2013 Retrieved 2013 03 25 Chronology 1994 2004 Cambodian Genocide Program Yale University Retrieved 8 August 2015 White Paper Freedom of Religious Belief in China Embassy of the People s Republic of China in the United States of America October 1997 Retrieved 2007 09 05 Refugees United Nations High Commissioner for 2001 Religious Minorities and China Refworld Retrieved 2019 05 20 Refugees United Nations High Commissioner for 2013 Report on International Religious Freedom China Refworld Retrieved 2019 05 20 Refugees United Nations High Commissioner for 2013 Report on International Religious Freedom China Macau Refworld Retrieved 2019 05 20 Refugees United Nations High Commissioner for China Freedom of religious practice and belief in Fujian province Refworld Retrieved 2019 05 20 Wee Sui Lee 2015 U N official calls China s crackdown on Uighurs disturbing Reuters Archived from the original on 2015 09 20 Retrieved 2015 10 05 China lodges protest with U S after religious freedom report 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1 toward the abyss Mexico History www mexconnect com Retrieved 2019 05 20 Plutarco Elias Calles www encyclopedia com Encyclopedia com Retrieved 2019 05 20 The Cristeros 20th century Mexico s Catholic uprising Archived from the original on 2009 09 03 International Federation for Human Rights 1 August 2003 Discrimination against religious minorities in Iran PDF fdih org Retrieved 3 March 2009 Davis Derek H 6 June 2002 The Evolution of Religious Liberty as a Universal Human Right PDF Archived from the original PDF on 27 March 2009 Retrieved 3 March 2009 Mission to Russia A Rabbi Eulogizes President Reagan www chabad org Retrieved 2019 05 20 Van den Bergh Collier Edda January 2007 Towards Gender Equality in Mozambique PDF p 180 Archived from the original PDF on 2019 03 29 Retrieved 2019 03 29 Ukraine Religion Stats nationmaster com Population by Religious Confession census Archived from the original on 2006 10 01 CONSTITUTION OF THE PEOPLE S REPUBLIC OF CHINA en people cn Archived from the original on 2020 06 09 Retrieved 2019 05 20 Buckley William F Jr 2011 Cuba libre Castro was weakened by the fall of the Soviet Union Will John Paul s visit Archived from the original on 2011 06 16 Constitution of North Korea 1972 rev 1998 en wikisource org Further reading EditL atheisme d Etat Pourquoi est il necessaire State atheism Why is it necessary 2019 by Jean Philippe Cossette ISBN 1704788528 Portal nbsp Politics Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title State atheism amp oldid 1178226334, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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