Conclusion

This concluding chapter begins by differentiating between combative secularism and eliminationist secularism. Combative secularism presents more of an anticlerical than an anti-religious posture and did not launch a frontal attack against religion as such, while eliminationist secularism sometimes did—or at least it more readily had that potential, tethered as it was to an ideology in which the decline (and eventual extinction) of belief served as a bellwether of revolutionary progress and its resilience presented a vexing political problem. Still, combative and eliminationist secularism shared some things in common. In addition to authoritarian tendencies, exponents of both often possessed an unflappable certainty about being on the “right side of history” and confidence in the tutelary capacity of the modern state to subdue and/or manage dissenters. The chapter then looks at other factors that come into play in the instances of violence given in this book, including ideological state-sponsored violence, ideological secularism, and nationalism. It also considers how some of the most brutal attempts to repress religion contributed in a few cases to religion's resurgence, if of a different or altered kind. Finally, the chapter reflects on religious life in North Korea, the Communist states of Laos and Vietnam, and Cuba. Of the remaining Communist regimes in the world today, however, nowhere is the situation for religious practitioners, at least in terms of scale, bleaker than in China.