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Religious democracy [1] is a form of democracy where the values of a particular religion or state religion are preferred. The term applies to all democratic countries in which religion is incorporated into the form of government. Democracies are characterized as secular or religious. [2]
A more modest form of religious state activity is having an official state religion. Unlike a theocracy, this maintains the superiority of the state over the religious authorities. Over 20% (a total of 43) of the countries in the world have a state religion, most of them (27) being Muslim countries. [8]
After World War II, many governments in Latin America, Asia, and Africa were ruled by autocratic governments. Examples of dictators include Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and the Kim dynasty of North Korea founded by Kim Il Sung. Military dictatorship: A dictatorship primarily enforced by the military.
Many countries have a state religion without the government directly deriving its powers from a divine authority or a religious authority which is directly exercising governmental powers. Since few theocracies exist in the modern world, the word "theocracy" is now used as a descriptive term for a government which enforces a state religion.
State religions are official or government-sanctioned establishments of a religion, where public spending on the maintenance of church property and clergy is unrestricted, but the state does not need to be under the legislative control of the clergy as it would be in a theocracy.
The application of the labels "cults" or "sects" to (for example) religious movements in government documents usually signifies the popular and negative use of the term "cult" in English and a functionally similar use of words translated as "sect" in several European languages.
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While the word religion is difficult to define, one standard model of religion used in religious studies courses defines it as [a] system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations ...