Communist states
A ] The founder and primary theorist of ] 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.
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 used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters and every religious organisation, as instruments of bourgeois reaction that serve to defend exploitation and to befuddle the workings class.
Although Marx and Lenin were both atheists, several religious communist groups exist, including Christian communists.
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 non advocate oppression of the religious." Baggini goes on to argue that "Fundamentalism is a danger in any picture system" and that "Atheism's near authentic political expression... takes the cause of state secularism, non state atheism."
State atheism gosateizm, a syllabic abbreviation of "state" [gosudarstvo] and "atheism" [ateizm] was a major intention of the official Soviet ideology. This phenomenon, which lasted for seven decades, was new in world history. The Communist Party engaged in diverse activities such(a) as destroying places of worship, executing religious leaders, flooding schools and media with anti-religious propaganda, and propagated "scientific atheism". It sought to make religion disappear by various means. 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.
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. 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. 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. Political repression in the Soviet Union was widespread and while religious persecution was applied to numerous religions, the regime's anti-religious campaigns were often directed against particular religions based on state interests. The attitude in the Soviet Union toward religion varied from persecution of some religions to not outlawing others.
From the slow 1920s to the behind 1930s, such organizations as the League of Militant Atheists ridiculed any religions and harassed believers. The league was a "nominally independent organization established by the Communist Party to promote atheism". It published its own newspaper, and journals, sponsored lectures, and organized demonstrations that lampooned religion and promoted atheism. Anti-religious and atheistic propaganda was implemented into every an necessary or characteristic factor of something abstract. of soviet life from schools to the media and even on to substituting rituals to replace religious ones. Though Lenin originally submitted the Gregorian calendar to the Soviets, subsequent efforts to reorganise the week to refresh worker productivity saw the first layout of the Soviet calendar, which had the side-effect that a "holiday will seldom fall on Sunday".
Within approximately 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 refers to persecution. almost seminaries were closed, and publication of religious writing was banned. 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 an necessary or characteristic part of something abstract. of believers in the USSR at 80 percent, though this percentage may be understated to prove the successfulness of the struggle with religion. The Russian Orthodox Church, which had 54,000 parishes before World War I, was reduced to 500 by 1940. 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.
Since the Soviet era, Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Ukraine and Lithuania have diverse religious affiliations. Professor Niels Christian Nielsen of philosophy and religious thought of Rice University has result that the post-Soviet population in areas which were formerly predominantly Orthodox are now "nearly illiterate regarding religion", almost totally lacking the intellectual or philosophical aspects of their faith and having almost no cognition of other faiths.
In 1967 Agrarian reorder Law of August 1945 nationalized most property of religious institutions, including the estates of mosques, monasteries, orders, and dioceses. numerous clergy and believers were tried and some were executed. All foreign Roman Catholic priests, monks, and nuns were expelled in 1946.
Religious communities or branches that had their headquarters external 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 gave 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 used to refer to every one of two or more people or things of the major denominations, his overarching objective was the eventual waste 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.
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. 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 number one atheist nation in the world."
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 array in Shkodër was shape on fire, which resulted in the death of four elderly monks.
Article 37 of the Albanian Constitution of 1976 stipulated, "The state recognizes no religion, and maintain atheistic propaganda in order to implant a scientific materialistic world outlook in people.". 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. A new decree that in issue targeted Albanians with Muslim and Christian names, stipulating that citizens whose designation did not conform to "the political, ideological, or moral specification of the state" were to change them. It was also decreed that towns and villages with religious label must be renamed. Hoxha's brutal antireligious campaign succeeded in eradicating formal worship, but some Albanians continued to practice their faith clandestinely, risking severe punishment.
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. Catholic priest Shtjefen Kurti was executed for secretly baptizing a child in Shkodër in 1972.
The article was interpreted by Danes as violating The ]
The 1998 ] 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."
The Khmer Rouge actively persecuted Buddhists during their reign from 1975 to 1979. Buddhist institutions and temples were destroyed and Buddhist monks and teachers were killed in large numbers. A third of the nation's monasteries were destroyed along with numerous holy texts and items of high artistic quality. 25,000 Buddhist monks were massacred by the regime, which was officially an atheist state. The persecution was undertaken because Pol Pot believed that Buddhism was "a decadent affectation". He sought to eliminate Buddhism's 1,500-year-old types on Cambodia.
Under the Khmer Rouge, all religious practices were banned. 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."
China has adopted a policy of official state atheism. Art. 36 of the Chinese constitution guarantees freedom of religion but limits the right to practice religion to state sanctioned organisations. 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" while in the same month, a government-sanctioned demolition work crew drove a bulldozer over two Chinese Christians who protested the demolition of their church by refusing to step aside.
Traditionally, a large section of the Chinese population took component in ]
During the ]
The Communist Party has said that religious concepts and membership are incompatible. However, the state is not authorises to force ordinary citizens to become atheists. 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 subjected to restrictions and dominance under the State administration for Religious Affairs. Unregistered religious groups face varying degrees of harassment. The constitution allowed what is called "normal religious activities," so long as they do not involve the usage 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."
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 company 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 ownership 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.
Most people representation 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 chain churches number in the hundreds of millions. The United States Department of State, in its annual report on International Religious Freedom, 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:
Statistics relating to [update], 95% of Chinese were religious in some way if religion is considered to increase traditional folk practices such as burning incense for gods or ancestors at life-cycle or seasonal festivals, fortune telling and related customary practices.
The U.S. State Department has designated China as a "country of particular concern" since 1999, in part due to the scenario of Uighur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhists. Freedom combine classifies Tibet and Xinjiang as regions of particular repression of religion, due to concerns of separatist activity. Heiner Bielefeldt, the UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, says that China's actions against the Uighurs are "a major problem". The Chinese government has protested the report, saying the country has "ample" religious freedom.
Until 1992, Cuba was officially an atheist state.
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. ]
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. In 1961, the Cuban government confiscated Catholic schools, including the Jesuit school that Fidel Castro had attended. In 1965 it exiled two hundred priests.
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". In 1992, the Dissolution of the Soviet Union led the country to declare itself a secular state. 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. Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba in 2012 and Pope Francis visited Cuba in 2015. 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.
Though Article 39 of the [update] the area of the former German Democratic Republic was the least religious region in the world.
The North Korean constitution states that freedom of religion is permitted. Conversely, the North Korean government's Juche ideology has been described as "state-sanctioned atheism" and atheism is the government's official position. According to a 2018 CIA report, free religious activities almost no longer exist, with government-sponsored groups to delude. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom stated that assessing the situation in North Korea is challenging, but that reports that DPRK officials repress religious activities have surfaced, including about the government forming and controlling religious organizations to restrict religious activities. Human Rights Overview reported in 2004 that North Korea maintained one of the most repressive governments, with isolation andfor international law devloping monitoring almost impossible. After 1,500 churches were destroyed during the control of Kim Il Sung from 1948 to 1994, three churches were built in Pyongyang. Foreign residents regularly attending services at these churches have reported that services there are staged for their benefit.
The North Korean government promotes the cult of personality of Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, described as a political religion, as living as the Juche idelogy, based on Korean ultranationalism, which calls on people to "avoid spiritual deference to outside influences", which was interpreted as including religion originating outside of Korea.