Kant on Religious Superstition and Fetishism
Consider this line from Kant:
“The delusion that through religious acts of cult we can achieve anything in the way of justification before God is religious superstition.”
—Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, and Other Writings, Revised Edition, Translated by Allen Wood and George Di Giovanni, Introduction by Robert Adams, Cambridge University Press, 2018, p. 200
He is referring to acts which in themselves have no moral significance or are otherwise matters of indifference or even disapprobation to God, such as mere attendance at religious services, the thoughtless profession of religious propositions, apathetic observance of ritualistic practices, etc.* He associates such things with “sorcery” and “fetishism” (202) and “conjuring up” (203) because they are attempts to gain God’s favor through entirely naturalistic practices with no intrinsic moral significance and to use God as a means to get what one wants, which is “absurd.” (203)
Whoever prioritizes such rituals over moral service to God “transforms the service of God into mere fetishism; he engages in a counterfeit service.” (204) Any church that practices such fetishism is engaged in superstitious “priestcraft” and not true religion.
Kant seems to have had in mind the sort of behavior Jesus advised against, namely, the empty babbling (battalogēsēte) that some folks think will gain God’s favor (Matthew 6:7) and the ritualistic priestcraft censured in Matthew 23:23. That Kant is correct seems beyond reasonable doubt, and yet the problem he addresses continues with disturbing frequency. Human beings seem miserably vulnerable to such fetishism, both inside and outside the church building.
*Kant grants that one may practice some rituals properly if one is antecedently committed to the moral service of God as taking precedence over ritual.