Abstract: This article analyses the various interpretations of the concept of “political religion” both before and after the publication of Voegelin’s Die politichen Religionen. It pays particular attention to the interpretations of “political religion” that were elaborated in the Thirties by Catholic and Protestant theologians and intellectuals, who shared the view that the totalitarian form of sacralized politics was a modern phenomenon, inherent to the process of secularization and the transformation of secular entities – Nation, Race, Class – into absolute and all-embracing new idols.
