Church and state

AVI asked what the relationship between the culture and Christianity is, and whether it is better if the culture supports it.

I'm going to duck out of the question of better or worse. And I'm going to duck out of Christianity and culture questions for the moment.

C.S. Lewis suggested that pantheism was the default religion people settled into. Watching how politics seems to play out here and abroad I tentatively conclude that having a chief/king is the default form of government people settle into.

It also seems that a union of religion and state is the default relationship between the two.

I'm not such a fool as to believe that all religions or cultures or forms of government are equally good or equally valid, or that the default is necessarily a good option.

Most of the small tribes I remember much detail about were led by a chief who was also one of the major religious figures in the tribe, though not necessarily the most important.

That has a kind of logic to it. The tribal culture defines what things are valuable, are to be sanctioned, are to be reverenced; and it provides legitimacy for the ruler. The cult is part of the culture, so the ruler is at least indirectly supported by the religion. Since the ruler represents the people it makes sense to involve him in those rituals that involve the tribe as a whole, so he would tend to be regularly involved in ways ordinary tribe members aren't. And since he is powerful, and since animist religions tend to look at things from a "who/what is powerful" angle, if he is involved in different ways than ordinary those ways will be important; maybe even the most important.

If instead the king's tribe rules a kingdom of other tribes, there may not be a single religion. I gather the Greeks tried to consolidate religions by equating their gods with something in the other nation or tribe's pantheon that was at least within shouting distance of being similar. I suspect that pantheons arose from accreting the different gods of different tribes into a single structure (presumably at the cost of devotion), but I don’t know where one would find evidence for this. (Did isolated tribes have more gods than trading ones?)

At any rate, the pagan king is apt to find more than one religious center. If it is possible to create an overarching pantheon, it is in the king's interest to encourage it in the hopes of generating a "we're all in this together" sense among the diverse devotees of Vishnu and Kali. Once again the king can represent all the peoples in ways nobody else can, so he should be important in the religions in ways nobody else can be, so there's some unity of religion and state, though because it is a more complicated environment who is more powerful isn't predictable. Nebuchadnezzar tried to institute a common religion, and so did the Roman emperors; presumably for the same reasons of imperial unity.

Now introduce into this kingdom a monotheist religion whose adherents won't join in the unifying rituals. If they don’t support the king they're soon gone, so assume that they do support the state, just in a different way.

The new/minority religion inevitably has different values and produces a different subculture. We can look at Jews or Gypsies to see how well-liked these groups tend to be. They find toleration sometimes, oppression and expulsion other times (especially if the group regards the majority as marks).

What happens when they proselytize, or when the cultural side effects of their religion (or its rationality) are clearly superior to those of the pagans around them? In China Falun Gong is, as far as I know, supportive of the state, but the Chinese state cannot put up with any organization or religion that does not derive its legitimacy from that state. Even if the minority religious culture is attractive and superior to the majority culture, the ruler may want to control it also, and get rid of it if he can't.

From the king’s perspective, he has two integrated sources of power in his role as king and his role as a religious leader. The growth of a new religion has to decrease that. It may not matter: "It's good to be the king." It might even help in political disputes with other cult leaders. But the more seriously he takes his religious duties the greater the risk that his representation of the people will seem inadequate when he doesn’t speak for all of them at once.

If on the other hand the kingdom is already ethical monotheist or dualist, the religious leader/king's religious duties take on a moral edge. For the safety of the kingdom and also of those the new religion he must point them to the correct path.

In Christianity or ancient Judaism or Islam the leaders can be appointed by God, and is therefore once again potentially a part of the religious order. Christianity says all leaders are so appointed, even the non-Christian or evil ones, so there's some barrier there, plus Jesus' words about Caesar and God--but even so if the leader is Christian there’s been a tendency to integrate him into the religious order of things.

In the past century various ideologies have acquired a scope previously only granted to religions. They generally don’t say much about the supernatural world, but they are emphatic that salvation comes through the state. For example "Green" environmentalists have a fairly complete set of parallels, with their versions of hell, sin, indulgences, and so on. Mere obedience is not always enough; you must not question the true faith that man is a burden to the world or that "alternative sexualities" are equivalent to traditional marriages or that the state can make all things better.

Religion and state seem to have some mutual attraction.