State cult

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A state cult is a cult carried out by the state, i.e. the (excessive) worship of a thing or person.

Goals of state cult

State-controlled cult can in particular serve to legitimize and stabilize rule .

Examples

Portrait of Mao Zedong at the entrance to the Forbidden City

The Athenian state cult included the mysteries of Eleusis and the cult of Dionysus . In ancient Rome, for example, the state religion became part of the state cult, as well as the veneration and deification ( apotheosis ) of the emperor in the imperial cult . Other customs related to the state cult in ancient Rome were called Mos maiorum .

A state-controlled state cult was or is cultivated particularly in dictatorships . For example, in North Korea around the leader Kim Jong-un and his two predecessors, in China around Mao Zedong or more recently in Kazakhstan around Nursultan Nazarbayev, an intense personality cult is cultivated, as this can be instrumentalized for propaganda . This is expressed, for example, in the erection of statues or in the naming of cities, streets, squares, universities, etc. State cult can, however, go far beyond personality cult in detail.

There was also a pronounced state cult in the GDR .

Web links

• Gabrielle Kremer: State Cult: Power in Heaven and Power on Earth. In: Discovering, experiencing in Römerland Carnuntum: Catalog for the Lower Austrian State Exhibition 2011. 2011, pp. 110–115 (pdf, 3 MB). 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Cult, the. In: Duden.de. Retrieved May 25, 2019 . 
2. ↑ cf. for example Rainer Albertz: Religious history of Israel in Old Testament times , Volume 8/1, Part 1. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen, 1996, p. 194.