Political religions (religious ideologies, politicized religions) emerge in different societies and at different stages of development and take on bizarre forms. Modern political religions appear because of the need to solve the tasks of modernization: they are not an archaic, but a modern phenomenon. Political religion is a hybrid of religion and ideology, an intermediary form that allows us to connect religions with political action. The article examines political Orthodoxy and political Islam, compares political religions and totalitarian ideologies. The latter, like religion, seek to control all spheres of human life. Theocratic regimes were attempts to directly implement the religious principles, not at all adapting them to reality. The analysis of political religions in modern Western society is presented. Reorienting politics from acting in the name of abstract principles and supra-personal institutions to action for the sake of life and well-being of an individual is one of the characteristics of postmodern political culture. Western society is not free from ideological dictatorship, there is no less a rigid ideocracy here than, for example, in Iran. However, modern management of human behavior is based not on direct power dictates, but on “management through upbringing”. The control is carried out as before, it even intensifies, since now a person is controlled not “from outside” but “from within”, he is somewhat programmed by his whole education to follow certain rules of conduct. As a result, if there nearly always occurs an uprising, sooner or later, against external control, then internal lack of freedom, as a rule, is not realized. The common traits of modern political religions are singled out: a free attitude to the dogma and practice of the original religions, sometimes allowing significant deviations and borrowings from other religions or secular ideologies; the supporters of the original religion can be considered as adversaries; extreme eclecticism, which makes us evaluate them not even as a modernistic, but as a postmodern phenomenon.

political religion, totalized ideology, Islamic fundamentalism, Islamism, theocracy, Caesarpapizm, met story, ideocraty, modernization, jihad, MacWorld

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