More than 40 years ago, as I was hitchhiking my way across western Europe, I frequently was humbled by the generosity of the people I encountered. But I also found myself puzzled by a nagging, internal question that sprang from my experience of common humanity with those people, especially as I traveled through West Germany — namely, how could the fundamentally decent citizens of such a great nation ever have supported the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler?

I realize that some readers might properly object that the people of Germany did not really support Hitler, but rather were subjugated by him. And while that objection is partially true, it does not account for Hitler’s widespread popularity in Germany both before and during World War II, as evidenced by his massive rallies and the unquestioning allegiance of millions of German soldiers.

So as I tried as a college student to answer my own question, I chose to assume that the German people were not primarily dominated against their will, but rather that the majority of those citizens both permitted and supported the Nazi regime. But how could anyone account for such a widespread abdication of decency among people who were still inherently decent?

My conundrum ultimately led to my senior honors thesis in government at the College of William and Mary in 1977. It was titled “A Christian Discourse on Fanaticism in Mass Movements.” Although the limitations of this brief newspaper column do not allow an elaboration that took about 20,000 words for me to develop nearly 40 years ago, still perhaps a brief sketch of those same ideas might help to shed light on some of the political and social phenomena that we see playing out even today in various forms.

I began my thesis with a set of assumptions that confounded my faculty adviser, who was a secular humanist. I accepted as givens, for the purpose of this political analysis, that some basic Christian teachings regarding human nature were true, especially because those assumptions could provide valuable insight to help explain the underlying nature of fanaticism in mass movements.

So let us assume for the time being that all people are created in God’s image; that we are fundamentally good as created, although also “sinful,” in the sense of always falling short of the mark of perfection; and that as creatures, we are designed for a trusting, loving relationship with our Creator and with one another.

In examining fanaticism within the context of a Christian perspective on human nature, I focused especially on the three theological virtues of faith, hope and love. But rather than regarding these three aspects of human activity as being “virtuous” in the sense of meaning good acts that we do, I looked at those virtues as the ancient Greeks understood the concept, meaning as fundamental human capacities that express who we essentially are intended to be.

Looking at fanaticism through the lens of those three virtues, the actions of people who become devoted to a cause or to a leader of a mass movement become more understandable. If people are designed to live as faithful servants of an almighty Creator, then even a worldly leader can elicit the same form of personal devotion and satisfaction of needs. If our lives are intended to be aimed in the hope of a better future and toward a world of a higher order, then even a flawed or deeply perverse set of tenets regarding that future can still engage our enormous capacity and thirst for hope. And if we are meant to love one Supreme Being above all and to love our neighbor as ourselves, then it becomes easier to understand why people will lay down their lives for the idols, cult leaders and political causes of this Earth or this era.

In the same way that my thesis helped me to understand why people became fanatics in movements such as Nazism or Communism, it has also helped me to shed light on more recent manifestations of the same dynamic, such as the rise of extremism in the Islamic world, or even the ardent devotion of the followers of more benign American political movements, like the campaigns of Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump. If you remove some of our natural tendency to place value judgments on the movements themselves and focus rather on the common underlying psychology and social dynamics of those movements, they all become easier to understand.

Ultimately, we are all flawed creatures with that spark of inner divinity that allows us to pursue great good or idols, even to the point where we are willing to sacrifice our everyday selves while fulfilling other aspects of our better, truer nature.

John McColgan writes from his home in Joseph.