The Importance of Religion in War

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In both cases, it's the instrumental use of religion, right? And so in both cases and certainly in Poland to an extent as well. It is useful for would-be autocrats to wrap themselves in a veneer of religion. In the end, it profoundly undermines the legitimacy of these religious authorities. This does not end well for the churches that are involved. You know, there's been an exodus from the church.

When it comes to the development of Western Europe there was religion and then there was science. That is how the story is generally told but Anna Gryzmala Busse believes that modern Europe owes more to the religious part of that than is generally appreciated. She has written Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State (Princeton UP, 2023) and talks to Owen Bennett Jones about religion and the European state.

Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and writer. A former BBC correspondent and presenter he has been a resident foreign correspondent in Bucharest, Geneva, Islamabad, Hanoi and Beirut. He is recently wrote a history of the Bhutto dynasty which was published by Yale University Press.

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