Sociology of Rulership and Religion

4. Political vs. Religious Powers

The antagonism of political and magic charisma is primeval. "Caesaro-papist" as well as "hierocratic" rulers can be found in African villages no less than in big states. Even under the most primitive conditions, or rather especially under them, the gods or saints are in part regional, in part local. Particularly at the stage of the permanent settlement in the city, local deities are preeminent; this results in a considerable coincidence of religion or, better, of cult object and political territory. The city god or patron saint is indispensable for the founding and existence of every political community, and the polytheist concessions of all great monotheistic religions are inevitable, as long as the power of the city is the basis of the individual's political and economic existence. At this stage, every establishment of a great state is necessarily accompanied by a coalition of groups in the new capital of the gods and saints of the affiliated or conquered cities and government seats. This happened as late as the unification of the Moscovite empire when the relics were transported to Moscow from the cathedrals of the other cities; there are other well-known examples. The "tolerance" of the Roman state was of a similar character: The state accepted the worship of all gods of affiliated states, if this was (qualitatively) at all feasible and, during the Empire, if they subordinated themselves in turn to the politically motivated cult of the emperor. Resistance came only from Judaism, which was tolerated for economic reasons, and from Christianity. The political boundaries and the geographical extension of a religion tend to coincide, as soon as this stage has been reached. It may be brought about by the political as well as the hierocratic power The triumph of one's own god is the definite confirmation of the ruler's triumph, an effective guarantee of political obedience, and a means of turning allegiance away from other rulers; moreover, the religion of an autonomous priesthood finds its natural missionary object in the political subjects and is eager to proceed to the coge intrare, especially if it is a religion of salvation. It is true that Islam permitted an horizontal divide the use of religion as an index of a status order, but this was connected with the economic privilege of its adherents. Ideally at least, Occidental Christianity was a political community, and this had certain practical consequences.

It is very rare that the antagonism between political and hierocratic power claims finds a simple solution in the full victory of one side or the other. The history of all churches demonstrates that even the most powerful hierocracy is continuously forced to compromise with the economic and political realities; and in general, the caesaro-papist ruler cannot afford to intervene into questions of dogma and even less, of sacred rites. For every change in the ritual endangers its magic efficacy, and thus mobilizes all the interests of the subjects against the ruler. From this perspective the great schisms in the Russian church-- over whether one should cross oneself with two or three fingers and similar issues--appear readily understandable.

Whether an individual compromise between political and hierocratic power tends more toward caesaro-papism or hierocracy depends of course upon the power constellation of the status groups concerned, and to that extent indirectly upon economic co-determinants. However, no meaningful generalizations can be made on this score. Moreover, the compromise is strongly influenced by the specific character of the religion. Especially important is whether a religion has a charismatically formed community that is separate from the secular power. This is the case only indirectly in Buddhism outside Lamaism (through the prescription of the one and only right path to salvation); it is true to a limited extent of Islam and the Eastern church, not at all of Lutheranism, but clearly of the Catholic church and Calvinism. Since Islam was linked from the very beginning to the expansionist interests of the Arabs and advocated the forcible subjugation of the unbelievers, the prestige of the caliph became so great that no serious attempt was made to subject her/him to hierocratic control. Even though the Persian Shiites reject this very role of the caliph and place their eschatological hopes in the second coming of the prophet's legitimate successor in Persia, the Shah's position is predominant; this is not changed by the fact that the mood of the local population is considered in the appointments of priests. The Catholic church has tenaciously resisted caesaro-papist tendencies; in spite of some temporarily necessary concessions, it eventually succeeded, since it had its own administrative organization, which rests on Roman tradition and is the divine law for the believers. Luther was completely indifferent toward the organization of the church as long as the divine law could be spread in its purity. This indifference, deriving from the individualist nature of her/his piety and also from an eschatological streak in her/his personal faith, in effect surrendered her/his church to the caesaro-papism of the secular power. This was facilitated by the political and economic conditions of the territories in which Lutheranism originated. For Calvinism the Biblical theocracy, in the Presbyterian form, was divinely ordained. However, it could establish a theocracy only for a limited time and only in local areas: in Geneva and New England, incompletely among the Huguenots, and in the Netherlands.

A considerable degree of hierocratic development, especially the existence of an autonomous office hierarchy and education, is the normal precondition for the rise of systematic theological thought; conversely, the emergence of theology and of theological training is one of the strong buttresses of hierocratic power, compelling even the caesaro-papist state to permit an hierocratic influence on the subjects. A fully developed ecclesiastic hierarchy, with an established body of dogmas and particularly a well-organized educational system, cannot be uprooted at all. Its power rests upon the principle that "We must obeyed God more than humans," [Act 5:29] for the sake of spiritual welfare both in the here and the hereafter. This has been the most ancient check on all political power, the most effective one up to the great Puritan Revolution and the declarations of the Rights of Human.

As a rule, a compromise is concluded between the secular and the hierocratic powers; this is indeed in their mutual interest. The political power can offer exceedingly valuable support to the hierocracy by providing the patron of the orthodoxy for the annihilation of heretics and the exaction of taxes. In turn, two qualities of the hierocracy recommend an alliance to the political authorities. First of all, as a legitimating power hierocracy is almost indispensable even (and especially) to the caesaro-papist ruler, but also to the personally charismatic (for example, the plebiscitarian) ruler and all those strata whose privileges depend upon the "legitimacy" of the political system. Furthermore hierocracy is the incomparable means of domesticating the subjects in things great and little. Just as in Italy the most anticlerical radical parliamentarian does not like to do without the domesticating influence of the convent schools on women, so the Hellenic tyrannic furthered the cult of Dionysus; most importantly, hierocracy has been used for the control of subjugated peoples. Lamaism pacified the Mongols and thus stopped forever the continually renewed barbarian invasions from the steppe into pacified, civilized areas. The Persian empire imposed the "law" and hierocratic domination upon the Jews, in order to render them harmless. The quasi-ecclesiastic development in Egypt also appears to have been advanced by the Persians. In Hellas all oracles of Orphic or other prophets expected and hoped for a Persian victory, in order to offer themselves for the same purpose. The battles of Marathon and Plataea were also a decision in favor of the secular character of Hellenic civilization.

The domesticating role of hierocracy is even greater with regard to internal control. It is true that military or commercial notables resort to religion only in a strictly traditionalist fashion, since it creates a dangerous competing power based on the emotional needs of the masses; at any rate, they divest religion of any charismatic-emotional character. Thus the Hellenic aristocracies rejected, at least in the beginning, the cult of Dionysus, and the centuries-old rule of the Roman Senate systematically erased ecstasy in any form, degrading it to the level of superstition (the liberal translation of the Greek ekstasis) and suppressing all its means, especially the dance. This happened even in the rites: the dance of the salii was a procession, and the Fratres Arvales, significantly, performed their age-old dance behind closed doors. This has had the greatest consequences for the characteristic differences between Roman and Hellenic culture (for example, in music). In contrast to this rule by notables, the personal ruler everywhere seeks the support of religion.

The resulting compromise between secular and religious power may vary greatly, and the actual distribution of power may shift without any formal modification of the compromise. Fateful events play a tremendous role: Perhaps a powerful hereditary monarchy would have turned the Western church into a similar direction as the Eastern, and without the Great Schism the decline of hierocratic power might never have occurred in the way it actually happened.

Since the outcome of the struggles between political and hierocratic power depends so largely upon historical "accidents," it is not easy to generalize about their determinants. In particular, these struggles are not determined by the general degree of religiosity among the people. Roman and, even more, Hellenic life was permeated by religion, and yet hierocracy did not succeed. If we wanted to stress the dualistic development of transcendentalism, which was absent there, we would have to say that it was also completely absent in Judaism at the time the hierocracy emerged; conversely, it may be said that the rise of transcendental speculation resulted at least in part from the rational development of the hierocratic system, as appears certain for Egypt and India.

Neither are some other presumptive determinants really decisive. The extent of dependence on natural conditions, on the one hand, and on one's own labor on the other does not provide a universal explanation. It is true that the inundations of the Nile were important for the development of hierocracy, but only insofar as they helped to link the parallel rational development of state and priesthood with astronomical observation and transcendental speculation. The rule of the alien Hyksos over Egypt [ca. 1650-1550 B.C.] apparently preserved the priesthood as the only guarantor of internal unity, just as in the West the tribes of the Teutonic Migration retained the bishops. The perpetual danger of earthquakes in Japan, for example, did not prevent the feudal clans from forestalling any extended hierocratic rule. "Natural" or economic factors were as unimportant for the rise of the Jewish hierocracy as for the relations between feudalism and Zoroastric hierocracy in the Sasanid empire or for the historic accident which provided Arabian expansionism with a great prophet.