Book #1: Religion and State by L. Carl Brown

[Tukhachevskii]

I have only gotten to page 44, but what I find interesting is the connection between religion and nationalism in general. for example, if the colonial powers had not "created" states like Egypt would the connection between religion and government not been created by the Muslim Brotherhood?

Is religious identity politicized in the process of creating a national identity?

My answer is "yes", particularly since values are tied so closely to political legitimacy and religion provides a ready-made set of values to work from or to build on.

That’s a very post-Aquinas view of politics. Politics and the Political were understood by the likes of Aristotle to be the relationship of humans being to one another. That definition of man as Bios Politikos was perverted when Aquinas and his ilk translated it incorrectly (or not, depending on their purpose) into Latin as homo est naturaliter politicus, id est, socialis (man is by nature political, that is, social) thereby turning the relationship between people into something that is purely social whilst politics became merely an administrative function or process divorced from the wider populace (almost said society then, which would have been falling into that trap!). The separation of religion from politics or church and state is a peculiarly Western European, post-protestant phenomena/mania.

Nationalism is a phenomena that occurs, at least if Anthony Smith and his like are to be followed (and I think they are), when ethnic groups want control of a specific territorial space. An ethnie or ethnic group is one which has shared traditions, language, culture, dress, etc (but not race, which is a useless biological fallacy which see here, here or even here for instance). To say that Muslims have “conflated” or “perverted” Islam from a religious force into a political one is to ignore Islamic history, philosophy and theology (it is also to ignore how that conceit came to be fixed in our minds too). It also runs fowl of trying to understand or comprehend the Other is terms familiar to the self (ethnocentrism). The role of the Church and Orthodox Christianity in the Byzantine Empire, for instance, (one thinks of the causes of the Council of Nicea) is a non-Muslim/Islamic example of religion as a “political” force (isn’t it interesting how when we say “politics” we “naturally” mentally shear it away from everything else, like when we say religion, or economics, etc. Post-Enlightenment “Political science” really does strait-jacket our imaginations!). Indeed, anything, in Aristotelian terms, that concerns the relationship of beings with one another is political (pace Carl Schmitt, everything is political). The relationship of “religion” to other “spheres” of human existence (if such divisions are to be accepted; a la political “science”) remains a problem to be explained not a phenomena to be taken at face value.

[TheCurmudgeon]

That’s a very post-Aquinas view of politics.

I am not so sure. As the book mentions, the separation of politics and religion can at least be traced back to Jesus' advice to render onto Caeser that which is Caeser's. This would indicate that at least the religious and the political could be considered separate.

The separation of religion from politics or church and state is a peculiarly Western European, post-protestant phenomena/mania.

I am not so sure that Westerners have actually separated politics from the church; we have only compartmentalized their organizational charts. That was simply the result of dealing with multiple religions. India had a separation of church and state for two thousand years.

I believe that any complex society that has to deal with multiple religions either has to suppress religions not in concert with the political entities or would have to find a way to tolerate them – a defacto separation if not one sanctified by a constitutional separation. That does not mean that religion, or politics, or any other component of society are separate (or separable) from the human animal or the human condition. They are creations of the human condition and have no life without it; they are immutable from their creator.

The relationship of “religion” to other “spheres” of human existence (if such divisions are to be accepted; a la political “science”) remains a problem to be explained not a phenomena to be taken at face value.

I don't accept it at face value, and I accept the challenge of attempting to explain the phenomena.

[Tukhachevskii]

I am not so sure. As the book mentions, the separation of politics and religion can at least be traced back to Jesus' advice to render onto Caeser that which is Caeser's. This would indicate that at least the religious and the political could be considered separate.

My short rebuttal would be to mention ... the Divine Right of Kings. A longer (though still to short) response is...
Like the forgoing passage about coercion in the Quran that saying attributed to Christ has been as misunderstood and abused as it has bandied about for all number of political purposes (usually shorn of its context and transformation over the centuries). The adventure of that particular idea is complex. The meaning of that phrase had changed over the centuries and meant one thing to the Church Fathers (and Augustine), another thing to the pre-modern Princes in their conflict with the Pope and yet another to the post-Lockean generation (and Americans in particular). Its easy to forget the context of the statement and also how it was understood at the time. It has everything to do with Pilate and the attempt to “frame” Christ as a political authority in opposition (and that’s the key) to Rome. That is how St. Paul understood that phrase and how many of the later saints understood it. Once Rome itself became Christian the temporal and spiritual powers are united in the form of the Pope and the Emperor, one a lord temporal and the other a lord spiritual (so to speak). That is not a division of church and state it is a division of powers toward the same end. Again, it is not until Luther and the Reformation that the meaning attributed to that phrase begins to resemble what you Americans (via Locke) understand it to be.
Christian political theory can be said to begin (in terms of its codification) with St. Paul (during the Roman era) and find its ultimate conceptual maturity or culmination with St. Augustine and begins its long, slow unravelling with St. Aquinas. We can divide it, for convenience sake, into three periods; 1) formative, 2) consolidation (and I use that word deliberately), 3) sundering. However, the pre-Christian era needs an honourable mention so I’ll let Robin Osborne (“The Religious Contexts of Ancient Political Thought” in the Blackwell Companion to Greek and Roman Political Thought), do it for me;

“Not only was there no single voice with religious authority, but there was no separate sphere of ‘‘religious’’ matters held to be outside the authority of the state. In the modern western world religious convictions are held to be fundamentally a private matter and in the liberal state religion provides the key example of a private matter in which political interference is regarded as inappropriate. In both Greece and Rome religious life was public life and religious behaviour as proper for political control as any other form of behaviour.”p.119

The formative phase (the periodisations are all mine and for convenience only) lasts from the Roman Empire to its conversion under Constantine (however, Constantine’s belief that the Emperor reigns over the church rather than vice versa is what leads to the next major development in the West, although Eastern Orthodox Christianity virtually accepts that concept especially later, in Russia when it becomes the “third Rome”, but we are getting ahead sidetracked).
I’ll let Carlyle, The History of Medieval Political Theory in the West, Vol. 1 speak for me,
[quote]“The most important passage in the New Testament which is connected with this subject is that in the thirteenth chapter of St Paul's epistle to the Romans. "Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers : for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God. Therefore lie that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment. For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldest thou have no fear of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same : for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience' sake. For this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are the ministers of God's service, attending continually upon this very thing. Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour." This passage, which is of the greatest importance throughout the whole course of medieval political thought, being indeed constantly quoted from the second century onwards, is indeed pregnant and significant in the highest degree. It defines in the profoundest way the Christian theory of the nature of political society” p.89-90

The central issue in the formative phase is therefore centred around authority over the body and soul of the body politik. Does the soul take precedence or the body? It is not a question of separation of purpose but rather division of labour. With specific reference to the magic phrase “Render unto....”(&c), it really didn’t figure too prominently in writing of the time except polemically.

In a letter to the Emperor Constantine, Hosius of Cordova uses the phrase in its commonly accepted meaning; that temporal powers have no business interfering with God’s representative but that that does NOT apply the other way around (the Church therefore, supervenes, on the affairs of the Empire);

(from, Francis Young, ‘Christianity’, Cambridge History of Greek & Roman Political Thought) Intrude not yourself into ecclesiastical matters, neither give commands unto us concerning them; but learn from us. God has put into your hands the kingdom; to us he has entrusted the affairs of his church... It is written, 'Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's.' p. 658

Bishop Ambrose (of St. Augustine fame) is similarly dismissive in AD386 when, angry at Imperial interference over the question of the Arian heresy, he writes to the political powers in Milan that

'the emperor is within the church, not above the church'. ”p. 658 (my italics, from, Young, “Christianity”, Ibid)

In the consolidation (Early Mediaeval) phase Christian political theory further develops and the theory arises that the church administers to the soul and the state to the body but it is a functional differentiation only. They are both doing the same job, the sheparding of Man (what Foucault in “Security, Territory and Population” called the pastoral mode of government or “the government of souls”). One administers to the transcendent the other to the temporal (the “long arm of the church”) but both as aspects of the same reality and project. If the early church fathers had believed in the separation of church and state the concept of the divine right of kings would never have come into being nor would it have been needed in the first place (the king, as Kantorowicz tells us, had two bodies). Using a British example the relationship between church and state is analogous to that between the Queen and Parliament, or a president and prime minister, there is a hierarchy (in fact, Iran probably represents a homologous case....another thread needed there methinks!). A cavalry squadron and an artillery battalion may be functionally separate but both have the same mission (with God in this schema being the Commander-in-Chief, who has other non-military responsibilities, and the Emperor/Monarch the Chief-of-Staff). To Understand this one needs to understand the imagery, culture, symbolic references and other stuff they thought with (such as the metaphor of the body, hierarchy of spheres, corpus mysticum, which is where we get the phrase “body politic”, etc.). The very role and purpose of a Monarch is derived from and legitimated and regulated by Christian doctrine (a feat modern day doctrine writers can only envy). In Figgis’ words (Political Thought from Gerson to Grotius),

“In the Middle Ages the Church was not a State, it was the State; the State or rather the civil authority (for a separate society was not recognised) was merely the police department of the Church. The latter took over from the Roman Empire its theory of the absolute and universal jurisdiction of the supreme authority, and developed it into the doctrine of the plenitude potestatis of the Pope, who was the supreme dispenser of law, the fountain of honour, including regal honour, and the sole legitimate earthly source of power, the legal if not the actual founder of religious orders” p.8
[...]
the medieval mind conceived of its universal Church-State, with power ultimately fixed in the Spiritual head bounded by no territorial frontier; the Protestant mind places all ecclesiastical authority below the jurisdiction and subject to the control of the “Godly prince,” who is omnipotent in his own dominion. It was not until the exigencies of the situation compelled the Presbyterians to claim rights independent of the State, that the theory of two distinct kingdoms is set forth”p.45

Cont/. below....

[Tukhachevskii]

Or, alternatively, in Gierke’s words (Political Ideas of the Middle Ages), according to Christian political theorists in the early to mid medieval period (what I have called the consolidation phase),

“the Emperor, and likewise all other Rulers, derive their offices but mediately from God, and immediately from the Church's Head, who in this matter as in other matters acts as God's Vice- Regent-this became the general theory of the Church. It was in this sense that the allegory of the Two Swords was expounded by the ecclesiastical party. Both Swords have been given by God to Peter and through him to the Popes, who are to retain the spiritual sword, while the temporal they deliver to others. This delivery, however. will confer, not free ownership, but the right of an ecclesiastical office-holder. As before the delivery, so afterwards, the Pope has utrumque gladium. He has both Powers habitu, though only the Spiritual Power actu. The true ownership (dominium) of both swords is his, and what he concedes in the temporal sword is merely some right of independent user, which is characterized as usus immediatus, or perhaps as dominium utile. In the medium of feudal law the papal right in the Temporal Power appears as neither more nor less than a feudal lordship. The Emperor assumes the place of the highest of papal vassals, and the oath that at his coronation he swears to the Pope can be regarded as a true homagium". In any case the Emperor and every other worldly Ruler are in duty bound to use in the service and under the direction of the Church the sword that has been entrusted to them'. It is not merely that the Pope by virtue of his spiritual sword may by spiritual means supervise, direct and correct all acts of rulership". Much rather must we hold that, though in the general course of affairs he ought to refrain from any immediate intermeddling with temporal matters, and to respect the legitimately acquired rights of rulers, he is none the less entitled and bound to exercise a direct control of temporalities whenever there is occasion and reasonable cause for his intervention (casunliter et ex rationabili causa).Therefore for good cause may he
withdraw and confer the Imperium from and upon peoples and individuals": and indeed it was by his plenitude of power that the Imperium was withdrawn from the Greeks and bestowed upon the Germans (translation Imperii)”p.14

Let’s not forget too that even as early as the fifth century Pope Leo I (440–61),

had attributed monarchical powers to the popes as successors of St Peter and had attached to the papacy the old pagan imperial title of “supreme pontiff” (pontifex maximus) not long since abandoned by the emperors themselves (in Oakley, Kingship: The Politics of Enchantment, p. 111)

That’s not to say the Kings went along with it, their grumbling and contestation of the role of the Papacy would continue until the Treaty of Utrecht (or thereabouts)


However, it is also during this period that we see St. Aquinas (forgetting Tertullian’s admonition 'What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?') tinkering around with Aristotle and once again the adventures of ideas takes centre stage. Says, McClelland A History of Western Political Thought
“Thomas’s [Aquinas] problem was to try to reconcile the polis of the Greeks with Augustine’s city of fallen men. Again, it has to be emphasised that ignoring the Politics of Aristotle was out of the question. The reputation of Aristotle was so much a part of the intellectual landscape of Thomas’s time that Aristotle did not even have to be mentioned by name in philosophical treatises. When Thomas’s contemporaries wrote ‘as the Philosopher says’, or even ‘as He says’, everybody knew it meant Aristotle.”p.106
His resolution of that would have profound consequences for political theory and practice during and after the reformation (to which I have alluded in a previous post).


In fact, had the Roman empire not adopted Christianity as the official legitimating discourse and market of belonging (in the Greek and Roman sense, which see opening quote) then the modern concept of separation of church and state we see germinate during the reformation may, I stress, may, have occurred earlier. But it didn’t. It is precisely the concept of divine right of kings that causes the problems we see prior to the reformation and which come to a head with the Thirty Years War. After all it was Luther’s complaint that religion has no business in politics (or being tainted by it) that led him to reformulate the phrase “Render unto Caesar”. Toward the end of the early-modern period (the sundering phase) then the legitimacy (and purpose) of a Monarch rests less on the Papacy and more on a nascent conception of the popular will which is a story for another time/thread. It is with John Locke’s Two Treatise on Government, however, that the legal constitutional formulation for the separation of church and state as it is understood today first arises (especially in the American case). It is, however, false to take that concept and apply it retrospectively. The foregoing is also a gross oversimplification of what is a hugely complicated and confusingly entangled set of processes.

Suffice to say and more to the point,...we can’t simply say “what about Render unto Caesar?” without understanding what the phrase meant to the people who used it or how it changed. Just like the passage in the Quran about coercion. However, unlike Islamic theology which has relatively strict (hermeneutic) rules about how things are to be interpreted (think Hadith, Naksh and Shari’a scholarship in the Islamic case) most conceptual systems tend to suffer from a sort of semantic drift in which meanings can be lost, changed or just perverted. “Render unto Caesar” may be all things to all men which why we need to situate its usage to divine meaning. Quentin Skinner, Visions of Politics, Vol. 1 calls this process of (deliberate) semantic drift “paradiastolic redescription” (not one for catchy phrases old Quentin) and calls the people who practice this “innovating ideologists” that’s a simplification but I hope you’ll forgive me for it). Skinner uses Weber as an example (please read Skinner in the original, he is worth the effort);

Focusing on the early capitalists, Weber [in the Protestant Ethic] shows how they represented their behaviour in terms of the concepts normally used to commend an ideal of the religious life, emphasising their dedication to their calling and their careful and painstaking lives. As he indicates, this was undoubtedly a rational choice for them to make. Not only were they right to see that, if they could apply such concepts to their own behaviour, this would provide them with a powerful legitimising device. They were also right to see that it was plausible to make the attempt. The Protestant conception of the calling echoed their own worldly asceticism, and there were many affinities between the distinctively Protestant ideal of individual service and devotion to God and the commercial belief in the importance of duty, service and devotion to one’s work. p. 150-1 [...][Another] example is provided by the history of the word commodity. Before the advent of commercial society, to speak of something as a commodity was to praise it, and in particular to affirm that it answered to one’s desires, and could thus be seen as beneficial, convenient, a source of advantage. Later an attempt was made to suggest that an article produced for sale ought to be seen as a source of benefit or advantage to its purchaser, and ought in consequence to be described as a commodity. For a time the outcome of this further effort by the early English capitalists to legitimate their activities was that commodity became a polysemic word. But eventually the original applications withered away, leaving us with nothing more than the current and purely descriptive meaning of commodity as an object of trade. Although the capitalists inherited the earth, and with it much of the English language, they were unable in this case to persuade their fellow language users to endorse their attempted eulogy of their own commercial practices. p.169

I don’t mean to be flippant but time and more importantly, space precludes a deeper discussion of this (in fact I don’t even know if I said what I wanted to say or if I flew off on a tangent! The latter me thinketh). I pray you read the references above. They can explain things better than this mere mortal can! I also have not meant to be condescending in any way either. It’s a hazard of our medium that emoticons just can’t ameliorate. However if you are ever in town we can have a good old pagan symposium and thrash it all out conversationally (always my strongpoint).


I sometimes wonder if that great absconder MarcT wouldn’t be able to do a better, more succinct job.

[Tukhachevskii]

I am not so sure that Westerners have actually separated politics from the church; we have only compartmentalized their organizational charts. That was simply the result of dealing with multiple religions. India had a separation of church and state for two thousand years.

I don’t quite know what you mean by that unless you mean Protestantism and Catholicism are two separate religions which is what they meant at the time (I know, strange to our ears though it may be. As for India it hasn’t existed for two thousand years, it is a post-colonial creation. Prior to the Empire the geographical area in question contained kingdoms that were either Hindu, Muslim or Buddhist.

I believe that any complex society that has to deal with multiple religions either has to suppress religions not in concert with the political entities or would have to find a way to tolerate them – a defacto separation if not one sanctified by a constitutional separation. That does not mean that religion, or politics, or any other component of society are separate (or separable) from the human animal or the human condition. They are creations of the human condition and have no life without it; they are immutable from their creator.

A belief is not a statement of fact it is a desire. That sort of constitutional thinking is typical for the heirs of Locke and that “unvarnished Doctrine” splinters a little too much for my liking sir. But I cans ee where you are going (though I don't have to go there).

I don't accept it at face value, and I accept the challenge of attempting to explain the phenomena.

You may want to investigate the Putney debates by the New Model Army during the English Civil war (itself an instructive case) to determine what is political and what religious or even if the distinctions apply. Personally, I gave up on high brow pursuits like that in favour of trying (dismally) to scratch a living so I’ll leave it to fitter minds like yourself to grapple with it.

[omarali50]

Tukhachevskii, Thank you for your very learned comments. But I just had the thought that very deep learning (which is good, which is just great) is not the level at which everyday practical politics operates.
Its not clear to me (btw, I would guess there is a deeply learned discourse about this topic too, I just dont know much about it) if the profoundest thinkers really influence events or just understand them better and laugh bitterly every night as they go to bed. At the level at which decision makers take decisions, it does not seem to matter that the actual history of Islam (or anything else) is much more complex than this thin book can encompass. So the big question may not be what the book covers and what it leaves out, but whether the WRITER of the book knew much more, understood deeply and then CHOSE (wisely?) to simplify in this manner; for the sake of actually having an impact on everyday decisions? as carefully/subtly crafted stylized facts? or is he really rather shallow and what you see is what you get?
The wise and well informed reviewer (not I; I neither know that much nor have I even read the whole thing yet) will tell us that.
I hope you will. I hope I have conveyed my rather convoluted thought process sufficiently (I know I have not conveyed it very clearly).

[jmm99]

T:

In your comment, on a multi-culturalist (cultural relativist) hypothesis:

It’s not enough to say that we all believe in G-d (well, I don’t but that’s beside the point) and that therefore we should all get on with one another.

the phrase "...we all believe in G-d ..." is actually an improvement on Brown's statement:

Jews, Christians, and Muslims worship the same God,...

Asserting a widespread belief in an undefined "G-d" (a "higher power" of some kind) is different from claiming worship of the same God.

Your comment:

After the Islamic conquests many “Christian” communities actually found it easier to live under Islam because Muslims did not persecute them for refusing to tow the Constantinian line of Trinitarianism (but also because in holding such views they did not undermine the foundations of Islamic power given the Trinitarian outlook was associated with Islam’s major rival Byzantium).

is spot on; and illustrates (your "...but also ... Byzantium") pragmatism at work - a point made by Omar in his comments and by Brown (in later chapters 3-7).

I'd be interested in hearing from a multi-culturalist (cultural relativist) on how we can "dialog" with Islam, except on matters that can be made a-theistic, a-deistic (pragmatic). Even as to the latter, we have to be able to compartmentalize our hypocracies:

Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I’ll show you a hypocrite. Airplanes built according to scientific principles work. They stay aloft and they get you to your chosen destination. Airplanes built to tribal or mythological specifications, such as the dummy planes of cargo cults in jungle clearings or the beeswaxed wings of Icarus, don’t.

Dawkins, p.42 pdf; link).

I'll now return to my pork sandwich, named "Lunch"; its suitably sliced sibling, with rice, will be named "Dinner".

Regards

Mike

[Tukhachevskii]

Asserting a widespread belief in an undefined "G-d" (a "higher power" of some kind) is different from claiming worship of the same God.

Metaphysics was never my strong point but “higher power” would, to me at least, signify a single entity; Monotheism. Three monotheistic faiths all claiming to believe in a single God are bound to come into conflict.

illustrates (your "...but also ... Byzantium") pragmatism at work - a point made by Omar in his comments and by Brown (in later chapters 3-7).

I beg to differ sirrah. There was nothing pragmatic about it. Islam and Muslims were ordered to treat the People of the Book as protected persons under certain conditions. Islamic treatment of these people was wholly within keeping with their doctrine because, as far as Islam and Muslims were concerned, these people were Christians in the proper sense (as People of the Book; i.e., not Trinitarians). Had they failed the criteria of what Christianity was supposed to be according to Islam then I doubt they would have been so well received. I would understand pragmatism to be something along the lines of Churchill’s alliance with Stalin against Hitler.

[Tukhachevskii]

Tukhachevskii, Thank you for your very learned comments.

All I did was quote people who really are.

But I just had the thought that very deep learning (which is good, which is just great) is not the level at which everyday practical politics operates. Its not clear to me (btw, I would guess there is a deeply learned discourse about this topic too, I just dont know much about it) if the profoundest thinkers really influence events or just understand them better and laugh bitterly every night as they go to bed.

Profound thinkers, a rare breed, often inform the zeitgeist (Hegel! [PBuH]) or have taught people who do go on to influence things; Aristotle and Alexander come to mind, or Leo Strauss’ students although I can’t personally say I’d call him profound. Of course then there are complete train wrecks like Milton Freidman who captured the (tiny) imaginations of Reagan and Thatcher. In Britain the Sociologist Anthony Giddens (whom I had liked up until that point) wrote a treatise called The Third Way. This then became New Labour intellectual property. I doubt what New Labour did with it resembles anything like what Giddens intended. Only Nietzsche (PBuH), IMHO, ever truly understood things and laughed about them too though not bitterly (and then went insane)! Then again, Professor “Sir” Lawrence Freedman, one of my former teachers and an incredibly intelligent man, ghost wrote Tony Blair’s “Doctrine of International the Community” laying down the doctrine for pre-emptive intervention/invasion (or “ethical” foreign policy)...and was awarded a knighthood for his troubles and then.... sat on the Butler Inquiry into the Iraq War fiasco! You couldn’t make this stuff up! Not many people know that either. Then again there’s one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers, Martin Heidegger, and his ill-fated flirtation with Nazism. On a more prosaic note I cannot imagine politicians, who unfortunately do seem to affect events more than most people, discussing deep philosophical concepts. That is not what politicians are for. A politician, in the words of Gordon R. Dickson in Way of the Pilgrim, “is best described as one who seeks the confidence of its fellow beasts, more with words than acts, in order to be voted into a position of power over them” [p.249]. Politicians need to preach at the lowest common denominator which is why politicians never tend to say anything meaningful at all when they speak (which is why I can’t stand presidential or prime ministerial debates). For one, the nature of democracy would not allow a philosopher-king and secondly no-one would vote for someone that way inclined. Think about it. Wouldn’t you be suspicious of someone who actually had two brain cells to rub together asking you for your vote? Would you trust him (or her)?

At the level at which decision makers take decisions, it does not seem to matter that the actual history of Islam (or anything else) is much more complex than this thin book can encompass. So the big question may not be what the book covers and what it leaves out, but whether the WRITER of the book knew much more, understood deeply and then CHOSE (wisely?) to simplify in this manner; for the sake of actually having an impact on everyday decisions? as carefully/subtly crafted stylized facts? or is he really rather shallow and what you see is what you get?

Academics tend to write books for several reasons; 1) because they have to prove they are doing something; 2) and on a related point, to advertise their existence; 3) to make money (a paltry amount BTW); 4) to join in (when certain topics become hot the inevitable cottage industries tend to follow); 5) this could have been written merely as a course book for his students to discuss (more common than you’d think). Had Francis Fukuyama written The End of History (an execrable book if ever there was one) at any other time it would have been derided (and thankfully was later) instead of becoming a hit which spawned numerous copies and rebuttals by people who wanted the spotlight (yes, Academics also suffer from delusions of grandeur). When academics do try and influence the zeitgeist they do so either by writing books that use populist simplistic language or go in the opposite direction and feign profundity through the usage of over-complicated words. There are exceptions to that too. Some Academics often get commissioned by publishers to write on a topic that publisher thinks is going to make them money in some emerging market niche. Some are just the paid mouthpieces of others (i.e., John L. Esposito). In my experience the really good stuff hardly ever gets talked about or even mentioned or, if it does, then the author has usually been dead a while so the person ”discovering” them can take all the credit. People who are deeply versed and familiar with a subject, however, often do write introductory texts but also tend not to make sweeping generalisation unless they can back them up with proof. A Professor of mine once lamented that the Academy nowadays was more interested in quantity not quality (he himself has only ever written one book on South Africa but is an expert on International Politics and History!).

[TheCurmudgeon]

Tukhachevskii,

Thanks for the in depth response. I wish I had the time to review all the references you mention. I am familiar with Skinner having read his Foundations of Modern Political Thought and Liberty before Liberalism. The other references will go onto my “to do” list.

I also agree that over time the meanings of words and statements change to fit the needs and desires of those using them (including us). It is very difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of those who lived in the past and fully comprehend what they meant. The problem is even more pronounced for Westerners as we see European history as the sine qua non of political thinking.

Yes, I do see Catholicism and Protestantism as two separate religions at least from the point of view of political interpretations. They were different enough to go to war over (maby less in the minds of the leaders who were trying to avoid papal taxes but at least in the minds of the followers who fought and died). In my mind that makes then as least as different as as Judaism and Islam - all claiming a common source but diverging in at least a significant enough way to die over.

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?

[TheCurmudgeon]

If the religious beliefs of a group are distinctive enough to act as a distinguishable factor in defining an ethnic group …. and that group distinction is capable of being the basis of a political or national identity; or could be the basis of an in-group/out-group distinction that allows that group to be a viable enemy in a war ... then for my purposes it represents a separate religion.

[jmm99]

Monotheism is a very large tent.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Monotheism (First published Tue Nov 1, 2005; substantive revision Fri Sep 6, 2013)

Theists believe that reality's ultimate principle is God - an omnipotent, omniscient, goodness that is the creative ground of everything other than itself. Monotheism is the view that there is only one such God. After a brief discussion of monotheism's historical origins, this entry looks at the five most influential attempts to establish God's uniqueness. We will consider arguments from [1] God's simplicity, from [2] his perfection, from [3] his sovereignty, from [4] his omnipotence, and from [5] his demand for total devotion. The entry concludes by examining three major theistic traditions which contain strands which might seem at odds with their commitment to monotheism—the Jewish Kabbalistic tradition, Christianity, and Shri Vaishnavism. ...

For present purposes, I'll take Islam and Judaism to be strictly "monotheistic" and "unitarian"; and that Trinitarian Christianity meets the Stanford tests (it does according to the SEP article).

However, Christianity has three primary (and different) systematic theologies: Unitarianism, Binitarianism and Trinitarianism.

Thus far, it has not formally espoused "Quadranianism" (though some devotees of the Virgin Mary have approached that theology). Apparently, a small Christian sect, both proximate in space and time to the Quran's revelation, did exactly that.

Shakir trans. (U of Mich)

The Dinner Table

1.[5.116] And when Allah will say: O Isa son of Marium! did you say to men, Take me and my mother for two gods besides Allah he will say: Glory be to Thee, it did not befit me that I should say what I had no right to (say); if I had said it, Thou wouldst indeed have known it; Thou knowest what is in my mind, and I do not know what is in Thy mind, surely Thou art the great Knower of the unseen things.

Maududi, snip 5.116 and commentary:

[115-119] Allah answered, "I am going to send it down to you,[129] but whoever among you shall disbelieve after that, I will surely give him such a chastisement wherewith I will not have chastised any other creature in the world." (After reminding him of these favors), Allah will say, "O Jesus, son of Mary, did you ever say to the people, 'Make me and my mother deities besides Allah'?"[130]...

129. The Qur'an is silent as to whether the `tray' was sent down or not and there is no other authentic source of information. Possibly it was sent down, but it is equally possible that the Disciples themselves might have taken back their request after the warning in verse 115.

130. This refers to another error of the Christians. They had made Mary an object of worship along with Christ and the Holy Ghost, though there is not a word or hint in the Bible about this doctrine. During the first three centuries after Christ, the Christian world was totally unaware of this creed. Towards the end of the 3rd century, the words "Mother of God" were used for the first time by some theologians of Alexandria. Though the response which these words found in the popular heart was great, yet the Church was not at first inclined to accept the doctrine and declared that the worship of Mary was a wrong creed. Then at the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D., the words `Mother of God' were officially used by the Church. As a result `Mariolatry' began to spread by leaps and bounds both inside and outside the Church. So much so that by the time the Qur'an was revealed, the exaltation of the 'Mother of God' had eclipsed the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Her statues were set up in Churches and she was worshiped, implored and invoked in prayers. In short, the greatest source of reliance of a Christian was that he should obtain the help and protection of the `Mother of God.' Emperor Justinian in the preamble to one of his laws bespeaks her advocacy for the empire and his general, Narses, looks to her directions on the battlefield. Emperor Heraclius, a contemporary of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, bore her image on his banner and believed that because of its auspicious nature it will never be lowered. Though the Protestants after the Reformation did their best to fight against Mariolatry, yet the Roman Catholic Church still adheres to it passionately.

See, Madrid, Collyridianism (1994):

Most of the early heresies were Trinitarian and Christological in nature, but Collyridianism stood alone as a heresy that sought to deify the Blessed Virgin Mary. Little is known about the movement's theology. Not even the names of the group's leaders are mentioned by writers of the time. This sect's excessive Marian devotion developed into the idolatry of Mary worship. This aberration grew out of the Church's rightful veneration of Mary as ever-virgin, Mother of God, and powerful heavenly intercessor, but crossed the line of orthodoxy when certain Christians began to worship Mary as divine. Details about the Collyridians are scanty, but one of the few specifics we know of them is that at their liturgical service bread was offered as a sacrifice to Mary.

See also Epiphanius, Panarion II-III, sect. 78, Letter to Arabia(ca. 374-377 CE) (link).

Of course, at that time, Arabia (esp. that part in or near Roman-Byzantine borders) had a thriving orthodox, trinitarian Christian Church. That dominant systematic theology is reflected in most Quranic verses dealing with Christians.

The Quran is very clear in its unitarianism; equally clear that God never begat a Son; and that God is not part of "three" - as summed in a magisterial sura:

Shakir trans. (U of Mich)

The Unity

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

[112.1] Say: He, Allah, is One.
[112.2] Allah is He on Whom all depend.
[112.3] He begets not, nor is He begotten.
[112.4] And none is like Him.

Attached is a pdf, Quran - One & Son, with several dozen verses to the same effect; as well as the proper place of Isa, son of Marium, in its systematic theology. See also, Stacey, Jesus and Mary in the Qu'ran - A Selection of verses from the Qur’an (2007).

We'll turn to the major Christian systematic theologies in the next post of this multi-part series.

Regards

Mike

[jmm99]

The three primary Christian systematic theologies: Unitarianism, Binitarianism and Trinitarianism, are addressed in the following references:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Trinity (First published Thu Jul 23, 2009; substantive revision Fri Sep 13, 2013)

The traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity is commonly expressed as the statement that the one God exists as or in three equally divine “persons,”, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Every significant concept in this statement (God, exists, as or in, equally divine, person) has been variously understood. The guiding principle has been the creedal declaration that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of the New Testament are consubstantial (i.e. the same in substance or essence, Greek: homoousios). Because this shared substance or essence is a divine one, this is understood to imply that all three named individuals are divine, and equally so. Yet the three in some sense “are” the one God of the Bible. ...

Supplement to Trinity - History of Trinitarian Doctrines

1. Introduction

This supplementary document discusses the history of Trinity theories. Although early Christian theologians speculated in many ways on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no one clearly and fully asserted the doctrine of the Trinity as explained at the top of the main entry until around the end of the so-called Arian Controversy. (See 3.2 below and section 3.1 of the supplementary document on unitarianism.) Nonetheless, proponents of such theories always claim them to be in some sense founded on, or at least illustrated by, biblical texts. ...

Supplement to Trinity - Unitarianism

1. Terminology

The term “unitarian” was popularized in late 1680's England as a less pejorative and more descriptive term than “Socinian”for Christians who hold God to be identical to one and only one divine self, the Father. It has since been used as a denominational label for several distinct groups, but it is here primarily used in the descriptive, generic sense just stated. (The capitalized “Unitarian” is occasionally used here in the denominational sense.) All these groups have been labeled “antitrinitarian”. Although many unitarians have proudly flown the antitrinitarian banner, others strenuously argued that they expounded the correct trinitarian doctrine, the difference being that the former were promoting rival denominations, while the latter sought to be included in mainstream groups (i.e., traditionally trinitarian churches, or ones which were often assumed to be).

Wiki - Binitarianism

The link jumps to this section, which is material because of its timeframe - before the revelation of the Quran:

Larry W. Hurtado of University of Edinburgh uses the word binitarian to describe the position of early Christian devotion to God, which ascribes to the Son (Jesus) an exaltedness that in Judaism would be reserved for God alone, while still affirming as in Judaism that God is one, and is alone to be worshiped. He writes:

…there are a fairly consistent linkage and subordination of Jesus to God 'the Father' in these circles, evident even in the Christian texts from the latter decades of the 1st century that are commonly regarded as a very 'high' Christology, such as the Gospel of John and Revelation. This is why I referred to this Jesus-devotion as a "binitarian" form of monotheism: there are two distinguishable figures (God and Jesus), but they are posited in a relation to each other that seems intended to avoid the ditheism of two gods" (Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, William B. Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, 2003, pp. 52–53).

Hurtado does not cite "binitarianism" as antithetical to Nicene Christianity, but rather as an indication that early Christians, before Nicea, were monotheistic (as evidenced by their singular reference to the Father as God), and yet also devoted to Jesus as pre-existent, co-eternal, the creator, embodying the power of God, by whom the Father is revealed, and in whose name alone the Father is worshiped. He writes,

"The central place given to Jesus…and…their concern to avoid ditheism by reverencing Jesus rather consistently with reference to "the Father", combine to shape the proto-orthodox "binitarian" pattern of devotion. Jesus truly is reverenced as divine." (Ibid, p. 618).

...

Before Hurtado's influential work, one classic scholarly theory of binitarianism was that the Holy Spirit was seen as in some sense identical to the Son, or uniquely embodied in him. The Shepherd of Hermas, among other sources, is cited to support the theory. In one of the parables, for example, an angel declares:

The preexistent Holy Spirit, which created the whole creation, God caused to live in the flesh that he wished. This flesh, therefore, in which the Holy Spirit lived served the Spirit well, living in holiness and purity, without defiling the Spirit in any way. … it had lived honorably and chastely, and had worked with the Spirit and cooperated with it in everything.

The classic theory of Christian binitarian theology, assumed by most dictionary definitions of binitarianism, asserts that some early Christians conceived of the Spirit as going out from God the creator, and is the creator: an aspect of God's being, which also lived in Jesus (or from other sources, appears to be thought of as Jesus's pre-existent, divine nature).
...
By the time of the Arian controversy, some bishops defended a kind of dual conception of deity, which is sometimes called "Semi-Arianism". The Macedonianism or Pneumatomachi typifies this view, which some prefer to call binitarian. The Semi-Arian view at that time was the Father and Son were God, but not the Holy Spirit;[citation needed] but none of the Arian views were strictly monotheistic (one being) [JMM: here, "unitarian" seems a better term than "monotheistic"].

All asserted that the God who speaks and the Word who creates are two beings similar to one another, of similar substance (homoiousia), and denied that they are one and the same being, or two beings of the same substance (homoousia) in which two are distinguished, as Nicaea eventually held. Nevertheless, the term binitarian is considered to be a more descriptive term than Semi-Arian, by current scholars, because the latter term has no precise meaning.

The Middle East, before the Quran's revelation, had a bountiful supply of Christian heresies. See, Wiki - List of Christian Heresies; and Latourette, A History of Christianity: Beginnings to 1500 (1997; 792pp.)

All this background is useful in considering the term "People of the Book" in early Islam; but, I'm not contending that the early Muslims concerned themselves with parsing the varieties of the Christian herd (nor that they should have).

I'll argue, in the next parts, that the early Muslims took the passages material to the People of the Book (which focus on sacred texts, and little on comparative systematic theologies); and then applied them to the Jews and Christians according to the pragamatism called for by the then-current political environment. The early (and later) Muslims were very aware of the basic "we-they" distinction; and they governed the Jews and Christians accordingly.

Regards

Mike

[Tukhachevskii]

If the religious beliefs of a group are distinctive enough to act as a distinguishable factor in defining an ethnic group …. and that group distinction is capable of being the basis of a political or national identity; or could be the basis of an in-group/out-group distinction that allows that group to be a viable enemy in a war ... then for my purposes it represents a separate religion.

No disagreement from me there. That was never my quibble; (are you code-switching?) I thought we were arguing about the supposed perversion of religion into its opposite, politics (&c.)

I’m dizzy, I want to get off.

[jmm99]

Regards

Mike

[Tukhachevskii]

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)

[Tukhachevskii]

Also, as Winston King states in the Encyclopaedia of Religion, 2nd Ed., Vol. 11,

“Many practical and conceptual difficulties arise when one attempts to apply such a dichotomous pattern [ sacred / profane ] across the board to all cultures. In primitive societies, for instance, what the West calls religious is such an integral part of the total ongoing way of life that it is never experienced or thought of as something separable or narrowly distinguishable from the rest of the pattern. Or if the dichotomy is applied to that multifaceted entity called Hinduism, it seems that almost everything can be and is given a religious significance by some sect. Indeed, in a real sense everything that is is divine; existence per se appears to be sacred. It is only that the ultimately real manifests itself in a multitude of ways—in the set-apart and the ordinary, in god and so-called devil, in saint and sinner. The real is apprehended at many levels in accordance with the individual’s capacity.” p.7692, my italics)

Of course, I would argue that the so called “Western” phenomena is of recent and local provenance and hardly universal.

Seeing religion as a subset of la politique or “the political” also gives new meaning to Easton’s famous description of politics as “the authoritative allocation of values” (The Political System: An Inquiry into the State of Political Science, p. 117). The question for me then isn’t so much why religions become political but rather why isn’t religion considered a political force in the first place (at least according to my idiosyncratic schema)? To borrow a quote from Carl Schmitt (Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty ) I would argue that

“the political is the total and as a result we know that any decision about whether something is unpolitical is always a political decision” (p.2)

My real gripe, therefore, is that religion has come to mean something non-political (like economics) when IMO the reverse is true. It is from that PoV then that I take issue with theorists of “political religion” and I might be in good company (the complicated debate is excellently set out and explored in Norris & Ingelhart, Sacred & Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide, 2nd Ed.). The indistinguishable religion / politics matrix is explained by Paul Radin, Primitive Religion: Its Nature and Origin in connexion with early societies,

”Where there is little trace of a centralized authority, there we encounter no true priests, and religious phenomena remain essentially unanalysed and unorganized. Magic and simple coercive rites rule supreme”.p.21

George Simmel is also instructive in his “Contribution to the Study of Religion”[no link available], The American Journal of Sociology, 60: 6, 1955, (his portion was excised due to length and I’m sure many of you wish more had been).

This begins to change with complex societies that display social stratification and a division of labour. Says Jack Eller, Introducing Anthropology of Religion (Op. Cit.)

“Civilizations are characterized by large and/or interconnected communities which are socially heterogeneous. Social relationships cannot remain personal but become “practical” and “rational.” (Weber said the same thing about modern societies, as we will consider in the next chapter.) Kinship as an organizing principle gives way to “politics,” in the shape of formal government, contractual relations, and the stratification of power and wealth. Specialization and differentiation within the society comes to include religion itself, which becomes an institution among other social institutions, albeit one that supports the political institutions. In the process, religion becomes more “professional,” with religious specialists, and more reflective, self-conscious, and systematic”. (p.190)

The process of religion becoming universalist and thus un-tethered from a particular community is a complex but not unrelated factor. However, I would still see that as part of a political process with an admixture of other causes (usually persecution). There are also more prosaic reasons. Witness the relative ease with which the Roman Empire was able to pacify larges areas. When a legionary confronted his opposite defeated number he would ask “who is your God”. The phrase “your God” does not mean what entity outside of the world and its affairs do you personally, on an individual level, believe in. It means what God represents your existence, what God defines who you are as a people....&c? “What?”, says the Legionary ,“Oh, that sounds like Mithras to my ears. Brother! We have the same god but by another name in our pantheon! (And thank the gods below they did have a pantheon). Come, brother, join the Empire”. The mirroring of the divine stage upon the earth (Caesar as God Emperor) is obvious (and, again, later appropriated by Catholic political philosophy). Michael Mann in The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1 has an excellent overview of these issues (I just couldn’t find the book for an actual quote; you’re welcome!). His IEMP (Ideology, Economics, Military, Political) model is also pregnant with possibilities. In sum, as religions form a social function, by regulating the affairs of man, they are at base political. In Islam, for instance, one does not see political factions without also seeing religious sects.

2. Religion dethroned: The de-sacralisation of the Political: Man becomes God

Political thought (and scientific thought I might add) from the late 17th century onward is an attempt to grapple with a disentangling of religion from social life in an age in which (pace Nietzsche (pbuh)) “God is Dead”. This is evident in the work of explicitly Catholic political thinkers like de Maistre or his nineteenth century “secular” Catholic compatriot Durkheim. Indeed, aping Schmitt we can say that all sociological concepts are merely an attempt to fathom the absence of a transcendent moral centre in human life. Concepts such Marx’s alienation and Durkheim’s anomie are the fruits of such a process. The great age of political thought is great precisely because of the innovative new ways that the relationship of man to man was rethought in the absence of a transcendent lodestar. The Liberals satisfied themselves with the rather queer notion of a social contract drawn up between free, sovereign individuals (which found fertile soil in the U.S. again, via, Locke and his ilk) where as in Europe where ethnic and territorial states had already developed a nascent sense of nationalism fell back on that (racism is a perversion of nationalism, attributable to trends in nineteenth century biology, not a logical outgrowth).

Secular politics, so called, thus replaces the transcendent vision with an immanent one; the nation, or the people or the law, or the constitution now becomes the ultimate regulating principle. What is a politician doing if not promising a paradise on earth? Thus Nazism’s manic “faith” in “race” is a form of religious politics (in which the divine is replace with the immanent sanctity of the genome). As is America’s Manifest Destiny an expression of a supposedly Chosen People (but by whom?). We can see the same set of theological reasoning underpinning Communism in the idea of dialectical materialism. As Carl Schmitt once said in Political Theology,

“All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularised theological concepts‟ (p. 36)

or again in The Concept of the Political that

“The juridic [sic] formulas of the omnipotence of the state are, in fact, only superficial secularisations of theological formulas of the omnipotence of God‟ (p. 42).

Hobbes’ Leviathan, then, is perhaps rightly designated as the first truly modern (secular) vision of politics in which the state itself becomes God (for later Liberals it is the sovereign Man which takes the place of the transcendent as the pole around which politics revolves). Not for nothing did Nietzsche (pbuh) call the state the “new idol” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra, p. 48). Now it is not so much in the name of god but in the name of the people or even, humanity (gulp!). What is nationalism but each people declaring itself to be “the chosen people”? (more so in America I find). Indeed, the logical corollary is the need for a messianic figure (a Fuhrer, or President, or Supreme Leader) to lead them.

[Tukhachevskii]

Before Hitler, there was Napoleon. On the 13th October 1806 following the defeat of Russia and Prussia by Napoleon’s forces Hegel wrote that

“I saw Napoleon, the soul of the world, riding through the town on a reconnaissance. It is indeed wonderful to see, concentrated in a point, sitting on a horse, an individual who overruns the world and masters it” (quoted in C. Schmitt, The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy, p. 105n7)

;
To this end, as de Maistre pointed out -though, admittedly in a different context-

“institutions are only strong and durable to the degree that they are, so to speak, deified” ( Considerations on France, p. 80, my italics)

Durkheim would seem to agree (from Elementary Structures),

“in the present day just as much as in the past, we see society constantly creating sacred things out of ordinary ones. If it happens to fall in love with a man and if it thinks it has found in him the principal aspirations that move it, as well as the means of satisfying them, this man will be raised above the others and, as it were, deified. Opinion will invest him with a majesty exactly analogous to that protecting the gods. This is what has happened to so many sovereigns in whom their age had faith: if they were not made gods, they were at least regarded as direct representatives of the deity. And the fact that it is society alone which is the author of these varieties of apotheosis, is evident since it frequently chances to consecrate men thus who have no right to it from their own merit. The simple deference inspired by men invested with high social functions is not different in nature from religious respect”. (p.213, 1915 Ed.)

What I think we see from the renaissance onward is the gradual de-sacralisation or secularisation of the political in Western Europe (Eastern Europe and Orthodox Christianity present a different kettle of fish) with the rise of humanistic, rationalistic and post-Reformation political philosophies. It is also a period that Eric Voegelin describes exhibiting the “secularisation of history”. In Voegelin’s words from ‘Secularised History: Bossuet and Voltaire’, in (From Enlightenment to Revolution) this trend

“becomes revolutionary by its implication that the sacred history' the "theology;' is unimportant and that profane history has the monopoly of determining the relevance of peoples and events. The centre of universality is shifted from the sacred to the profane level, and this shift implies the turning of the tables: that the construction of history will, in- the future, not be subordinated to the spiritual drama of humanity, but that Christianity will be understood as an event in history. Through this shift of the centre of interpretation the dualism of sacred and profane history disappears. The profane history is profane only as long as sacred history is accepted as the absolute frame of reference and when this position is abandoned, the two histories merge on the level of secularized history. By secularization we mean the attitude in which history, including the Christian religious phenomena is conceived as an inner worldly chain of human events, while, at the same time, there is retained the Christian belief in a universal, meaningful order of human history”. (p. 7)

The consequence of this is a liminal vacuum described by Weber (‘Science as a Vocation’) as stemming from a “disenchantment with the world”. As Clifford Porter explains regarding Voegelin (‘Eric Voegelin on Nazi Political Extremism, Journal of the History of Ideas, 63:1, 2002)

”With spiritual reality denied or obscured, something must take its place to respond to the human need to express the feeling of being created. Voegelin argues that modem philosophy had gradually attributed to the state the redemptive power that belongs to God”. (p.160)

.
Your correspondent agrees with Voegelin. The loss of the central Metanarrative of human existence provided by religion (as a part of “the political”) resulted in what Karl Jaspers (in the Origin and Goal of History, I think, but can’t be certain) identified as the age of totalitarian ideologies each of which vies to replace lost certainties (metanarratives) with appeal to a deified humanity (either that of the liberal individual, the nation or the race, etc.) beginning with the French Revolution. All of these are Western European phenomena (encompassing its offshoots). But the key point is this process of de-sacralisation never occurred in the rest of the world with such intensity if at all except, perhaps, where European empires made their mark. What we see with Islam is merely a continuation of a process which we in Europe abandoned long ago. Islam and Muslims, then, have not re-discovered or perverted their religion but merely sloughed off the secular ideologies that they believed failed them (i.e., pan-Arab nationalism, communism, etc.,) and reverted to type (as it were). As Khomeini put it (Velayat-e Faqih) before the revolution of 1979;

“The colonialists have spread the insidious idea that religion should be separated from politics and that men of religion are not qualified to act in political and social matters. In the Prophet’s times, was the church separate from the state? Were theologians distinct from politicians?” (p. 190 in my bootlegged copy)

It wasn’t that Islam became political but rather that the failed revolutionaries, and those who had been marginalised because they insisted on Islam-centric action, rediscovered Islam was political (the Islamic reformation you all fantasise about has already occurred, but not in the way you hoped). The consequence of this kehre for us, and our ability to understand our foes, is profound. It means we are confronted with a language and a system of meaning that we only rarely comprehend (especially when we try and translate it into similar but ultimately different systems of thought). And that may have been deliberate.


3. The re-sacralisation of the Political; Or, on the Fuzziness of “Political Religion

Political religion as a notion (is it coherent enough to be a concept?) - usually taken to mean that a religion has come off the reservation allotted to it and is meddling in affairs that don’t concern it -isn’t the stable signifier we assume it is either given the multiplicity of meanings attached to it. If you have access to the Journal Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions you’ll see what I mean.