The history of secularization can be understood not as a replacement of belief by reason, but an exchange of one belief for another. The traditional monotheisms were hustled out of the way so that they could sell Lenin in the place left vacant by Jesus. Perhaps no other century has seen more god-men than the 20th. Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Mao Zedong, Nicolae Ceauşescu, Saparmurat Niyazov, Ho Chi Minh, Kim Il-Sung, Ayatollah Khomeini, Sukarno, and Kim Jong-Il promoted a cult of personality. And there’s a reason for that. The dictators could only sell the box of matches with their likeness on the cover if they could darken the sun of faith. “During the peak of their regimes, these leaders were presented as god-like and infallible. Their portraits were hung in homes and public buildings, with artists and poets legally required to produce only works that glorified the leader.” Maybe Chesterton was right when he predicted that “the first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.”
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