When Religion Justifies Politics: The Real Question Is Not Faith but Power
Religious language is not new in politics. It becomes dangerous where it replaces democratic rules with a claim to a higher, unassailable truth.
Religion has not disappeared from politics. It never did. Political movements have always worked with ideas of guilt, redemption, order and downfall. What draws more attention today is a language that presents political goals as part of an overarching struggle between good and evil. The term «political theology» can serve as a useful observation – but it is not a label for every religious voice in the public sphere.
Between state-backed war rhetoric in Russia, religiously tinged culture wars in the United States and individual entrepreneurs who use religious imagery, there are considerable differences. Merging them into a single movement would be analytically too crude. What matters is not whether someone is a believer or uses religious terms. What matters is what power is tied to such terms and whether dissent remains possible.
Not every moral language is an attack on democracy
Politics inevitably involves value judgements. Anyone who campaigns for poverty reduction, climate protection, peace, family or economic freedom generally appeals to a vision of the good life. Religious people may bring their convictions into this debate – just as humanists, atheists or people without a firm worldview label do. The right to free expression does not lose value because an argument is religiously grounded.
It becomes problematic only when a political position no longer appears as a verifiable and criticisable decision, but as unassailable truth. Then opposition can be declared a moral failing, media criticism hostility, and compromise betrayal. The democratic question is therefore not: may faith be political? It is: do law, fundamental rights and peaceful transfers of power remain stronger than any worldview certainty?
The European Court of Human Rights describes freedom of religion as one of the foundations of a pluralistic democratic society. This includes the freedom to believe, not to believe or to change religion. The state must act as a neutral and impartial organiser of the relationship between different religions and worldviews. Its task is to enable equal freedom and peaceful coexistence.
Switzerland is religious and secular at the same time
For Switzerland, this is not an abstract observation from the outside. Article 15 of the Federal Constitution guarantees freedom of belief and conscience. It protects not only religious communities but also the freedom to belong to none, to change convictions or to criticise them. No one may be forced into a religious community or a religious act.
Society is also diverse in its worldviews. According to data from the Federal Statistical Office, in 2021 just under a third of the population aged 15 and over belonged to no religious community; at the same time, many people practise their faith as a binding commitment. Switzerland is therefore neither simply «secular» nor «religious». It must find rules that apply to everyone, across very different ways of life.
This becomes visible in questions about schooling, symbols, public holidays or public spaces. Such conflicts can be resolved neither by banning religious voices nor by granting a privileged position to particular convictions. What counts is a legal basis, a public interest and a proportionate solution. This procedure protects minorities as well as the majority's freedom to live their convictions.
For ordinary Swiss citizens, this is not an abstract constitutional lesson. It is about whether children from different backgrounds are treated equally, whether an authority decides in a worldview-neutral way and whether political rights remain independent of what someone believes or does not believe.
How to recognise an open democracy
Warning signs do not begin with a Bible quote, a mosque event or an ethical demand. They begin when opponents are blanket-labelled as impure, hostile to the state or not belonging. They begin when laws are meant to apply only to others, or when courts, media and election results are declared illegitimate as soon as they contradict one's own promise of salvation.
The strongest protection against this is not state-ordered silence. It lies in independent courts, free media, comprehensible laws, political education and procedures that safeguard minority rights. These institutions do not prevent every polarisation. But they limit the possibility of translating personal certainty into general coercive power.
Switzerland cannot resolve other countries' religiously charged conflicts from a distance. It can, however, take its own norm seriously: worldviews belong in society; state power is decided by the constitution, the law and the equal dignity of all people. This separation is not a lack of conviction, but the precondition for different convictions to coexist peacefully.
Sources
- Federal Constitution, Art. 15: freedom of belief and conscience
- Federal Statistical Office: population without religious affiliation
- European Court of Human Rights: guide to Article 9, freedom of religion
- European Court of Human Rights: Refah Partisi v. Turkey
- Starting point of the research: NZZ article on political theology
