Concluding Remarks

Abstract

What do these contributions add to our understanding of the sacralization of politics in democratic systems and the role of ordinary people in it? An important element of this volume has been a re-evaluation of the relationship between politics and religion itself. On a fundamental level Herman Paul has shown that politics constitutes a secular religion if it simply resembles a religion. What is more, he stresses that religion does not function only on a spiritual and symbolic level, but that it also always contains social and political aspects. Most obviously that is the case when political power is based on divine sanction, as with the monarchy in the medieval and early modern periods. However, in the modern era, when political power came to be derived from the people, the connection between politics and religion has also been shown to be very direct. The chapter by Maartje Janse has made clear that political action in a mass democracy was actually in form and content directly based on models stemming from the religious realm, while Eduard van de Bilt has shown that a religious motivation does not necessarily lead to inactivity in the political arena, but neither does it lead to a sacralization of politics. The call upon a higher authority to some extent prevents this from taking place.