Theologies of Revolution: Religion, Utopia, and Change in Iran and Nicaragua

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  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: 6. Populism and Revolution

Abstract

Though often seen as a reactionary force, religion can have immense transformative potential. In few places is this more obvious than in the 1979 Iranian and Nicaraguan Revolutions, where Khomeinist Shi'i Islamism and Catholic liberation theology had a powerful impact on the course of the revolutions. This paper examines the role of these theologies on the articulation and unfolding of the revolution, particularly after the fall of the old regime.

The religious and revolutionary thinking behind Iran and Nicaragua’s 1979 revolutions highlight five essential themes of revolutionary thought. These five aspects are (i) what the revolutionary utopia looks like, (ii) who and what the revolution is for and against, (iii) the means and methods of revolution, (iv) the role of the individual, and in particular the individual revolutionary, in the revolution, (v) what role a single revolution plays in human history.

Religious thought, when fused with revolutionary thought, influences and highlights all five of these, primarily by influencing the vision of the revolutionary utopia (i), which in turn affects the other essential themes. Revolutions need to look towards the future in order to create change, and without a uniting principle of a revolutionary utopia, the coherence of the revolution, and the links between its elements, is called into question.

In Iran and Nicaragua, the eschatological religious element in revolutionary ideology, combined with either manifest or latent elements of Marxism, resulted in an emphasis on a revolutionary utopia that in turn yielded a unique conception of the individual revolutionary and of morality, as well as a deep connection to a grand teleological conception of history.

Author

• Zachary M. Wilmot, Brown University