Unearthly Powers

Religious and Political Change in World History

Alan Strathern

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781108477147
• eBook ISBN: 9781108754903
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Why was religion so important for rulers in the pre-modern world? And how did the world come to be dominated by just a handful of religious traditions, especially Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism? Drawing on sociology and anthropology, as well as a huge range of historical literature from all regions and periods of world history, Alan Strathern sets out a new way of thinking about transformations in the fundamental nature of religion and its interaction with political authority. His analysis distinguishes between two quite different forms of religiosity - immanentism, which focused on worldly assistance, and transcendentalism, which centred on salvation from the human condition - and shows how their interaction shaped the course of history. Taking examples drawn from Ancient Rome to the Incas or nineteenth-century Tahiti, a host of phenomena, including sacred kingship, millenarianism, state-church struggles, reformations, iconoclasm, and, above all, conversion are revealed in a new light.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Two Forms of Religion: Being and Nothingness
• 2 Religion as the Fabric of the State
• 3 The Two Forms of Sacred Kingship: Divinisation and Righteousness
• 4 The Economy of Ritual Efficacy and the Empirical Reception of Christianity
• 5 The Conversion of Kings under the Conditions of Immanentism: Constantine to Cakobau
• 6 Dreams of State: Conversion as the Making of Kings and Subjects
• Conclusion
• Glossary of Theoretical Terms
• Bibliography
• Index