Following the 2005 publication of Earthly Powers, and reinforcing Michael Burleigh's reputation as one of the leading historians of our time, Sacred Causes is a brilliant and hugely relevant work examining the politics of religion and the religion of politics from the catastrophe of the First World War until the modem-day War on Terror.

Beginning with the chaotic post First World War landscape, Sacred Causes is a sweepingly assured critique of how religion has often been camouflaged by politics. Covering a vast canvas, Burleigh examines the many 'secular' religions the twentieth century produced, analysing how successive totalitarian leaders fantasised and aped the hierarchy, rites and ritual of the churches in the
desire to return to the day where ruler and deity were one.

All the many bloody regimes and movements of the century are here, from Stalin's Soviet Union, Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, Franco's Spain through to the modern scourge of terrorism. Often blackly comic, the book shows how the churches, in various guises, have been swayed by - and contributed to - conflicting secular currents. He traces religious beliefs and institutions from a time when the Catholic Church, disenchanted with both democracy and fascism, began to search for political alternatives, and exposes the way in which fears of socialist movements tempered its response to the threat of totalitarian regimes. During the Second World War, all churches faced agonising dilemmas, notably how to respond to the Holocaust. Controversially, Burleigh uses new evidence to show that Pope Pius XII performed well.

Combining the deeper workings of history with an urgent sense of the contemporary relevance of his material, Burleigh challenges his readers to consider why no-one foresaw the religious implications of massive Third World immigration, as well as the validity of current calls for a 'civic religion' with which to counter the terrorist threats that have so shocked the West.