Quote Originally Posted by TheCurmudgeon View Post
I wish I had the time to post a more in-depth response. I would start by arguing that the entire idea of a “Divine right” of kings, as opposed to a god king, as some other societies would view their political leaders, creates a defacto separation of church and state. That the passage of two keys (or two swords) was simply a recognition of a belief already prevalent in Roman times that the church and the state represented action in two separate spheres of human activity.

Instead I will ask a question relevant to the thread:

“Why is religion so closely tied to political legitimacy?” Even where there is a separation of church and state many laws are based in religious beliefs. Politicians swear oaths before God. Congress opens with a benidiction. What is the connection? Why is it important to our mortal lives?
It is only right that I explain my premises rather than simply assuming that they are evident at least so that we and others may know what our respective positions are. My rather rakishly rebellious refusal to follow any sort of “criterion of elegance” (as Herbert Blumer termed the over-identification of a researcher with a particular method of research rather than the object of research) has resulted in my thought processes not only confusing others but also myself (there is perhaps something to be said for methodological parsimony).

My issues with the notion of “political” religion / political “religion” require, unfortunately for the reader, a little foregrounding. This will, however, not only help clarify my position but also the premises with which I am working. Everything I write here, of course, is simplistic, general and only skims the surface.


1. The Concept of the Political: The Meaning of Being (Human)

Firstly, I make a distinction between “the political” (la politique/ das Politische), the human condition of being with others (a la Heidegger) and the word politics (le politique/die Politik) itself representing purely administrative issues to do with the management of the state (in this I am largely following lines of thought initiated by Ernst Vollrath ( ‘The Rational and The Political An Essay in the Semantic of Politics [no link avaliable]). The former, then, represents the ontological conditions that make the latter possible; the political is about the very meaning of life itself or in Heideggerian language, the meaning of Being (with others/ Dasein as Mit-Dasein). In those terms what could be more political if not religion?

I think, from my reading of archaeology and anthropology (I had always wanted to be an archaeologist but chose another path instead; a dead end too) that the evidence supports that conclusion. As my brother (pbuh) used to say “religions were the first political theories that could only be disproved when their “Gods” had been destroyed or undermined”. Though discussing sacred relics and the like, Andrew Cowell’s discussion (in The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred ) is apposite in this context;
It is thus not surprising that true power in society should rest with those who have access to these objects, and thus to the resources of the sacred. As Godelier notes, regarding Melanesia, the “big man” is ultimately less powerful than the “great man,” who controls such access to the sacred, kept object (1999:8). Likewise, in the Plains Indian cultures of North America, it is the keeper of the Sacred Pipe who is the ultimate locus of authority in the tribe, not the wealthiest and most generous giver, or the bravest and most successful taker. In a medieval context, Irish kings gained power through performance, but then “assumed a sacred mantle that was central to the legitimization of their rank” (Aitchison 1994:70). More specifically, they were “seeking to formalize and render less challengeable the possession of rank”(Aitchison 1994:73). The efforts of the French monarchy to establish its privileged access to sacred power – especially healing power – as incarnated in the possession of sacred objects such as relics and the crown itself are emblematic of this fact. Access to sacred power marks the ultimate in vertical exchange. It represents not the vertical exchanges downwards between lord and dependents, however, but a vertical exchange upwards between God or gods and those who have access to these exchanges. Such power clearly trumps any possible advantages deriving from horizontal exchanges within the society, and thus allows the recipient a form of integrity which literally transcends the bonds of reciprocity between human individuals and groups. Anyone familiar with the thirst for relics exhibited by medieval society will recognize the validity of these ideas. (p.90)

At this point we may need a definition of religion for the sake of argument if nothing else and why not fall back on old Durkheim for that purpose (The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life);
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church all those who adhere to them. The second element which thus finds a place in our definition is no less essential than the first; for by showing that the idea of religion is inseparable from the idea of a Church, it conveys the notion that religion must be an eminently collective thing. (p. 47 in my 1915 George Allen & Unwin edition)
Aside from Durkheim there are others, as listed in Jack Eller, Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate ](p. 7-8);
James Frazer: “a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and human life” (1958: 58–9).

William James: “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine” (1958: 34).

Émile Durkheim: “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set aside and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them” (1965: 62).

Paul Radin: “it consists of two parts: the first an easily definable, if not precisely specific feeling; and the second certain acts, customs, beliefs, and conceptions associated with this feeling. The belief most inextricably connected with the specific feeling is a belief in spirits outside of man, conceived as more powerful than man and as controlling all those elements in life upon which he lay most stress” (1957: 3).

Anthony Wallace: “a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man and nature” (1966: 107).

Sherry Ortner: “a metasystem that solves problems of meaning (or Problems of Meaning) generated in large part (though not entirely) by the social order, by grounding that order within a theoretically ultimate reality within which those problems will ‘make sense’” (1978: 152).

Clifford Geertz: “(1) a system of symbols which act to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (1973: 90).
Or as per Emilio Gentile (quoted in Richard Shorten, “The status of ideology in the return of political religion theory”, Journal of Political Ideologies, 12:2, 2007) religion is,
a system of beliefs, myths and symbols which interpret and define the meaning and the goal of human existence, making the destiny of an individual and of the community dependent on their subordination to a supreme entity. p.177
But, and it’s a big Jennifer Lopez but, the modern concept of religion is nothing more than an ideal-type,
If by religion is meant a matter of belief, separable from forms of action and political organization, signified by one’s assent to a creed and enacted in certain ritual behaviours (i.e., worship), then even in Latin the modern term “religion” has no equivalent. ( The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Volume 5, p.2408, my italics)