Political parties and religions: Between the sacralization of politics and the secularization of religion

Religious parties or parties with a religious activist dynamic have not disappeared and have become ordinary objects of political science. However, the dispersion of the specialities of those who work on these parties or on religious activists contributes to weakening the cumulativity of research and the visibility of the object. This article proposes ways to renew comparative approaches by paying attention to the possible plurality of different hierarchies of the secular and the religious within political parties. Depending on the case, one provides the horizon of action and the other the repertoire of mobilization. There are many intermediate possibilities, but a specific balance of power is always observable within the parties around the construction of the relationship between religion and politics. Political parties offer a terrain for deconstructing the opposition between religion and politics and for perceiving the fluidity of circulations between these two registers of action and legitimization.