Theocracy

5 Key excerpts on "Theocracy"

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  The Political Economy of Theocracy

  • R. Wintrobe, M. Ferrero(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  This will be our understanding of the term in this chapter: a political arrangement by which the main functions of secular government are discharged by a priesthood who double as secular officials. It bears noting that Theocracy in this strict sense is by no means coterminous with overarching power of a church or religion; to take a cur- rent example, Saudi Arabia, which is ruled by a lay royalty, is arguably more tightly dominated by religion in everyday life than Iran, which is ostensibly ruled by clerics. Irrespective of whether they maximize the religious intensity of a soci- ety, theocracies in history are noted for their rarity but also, when they do come into being, for their remarkable permanence. This is one of the very few safe generalizations one can make about historical theocracies; oth- erwise they can be warlike and aggressive as well as peaceful and benign, revolutionary as well as conservative, self-enclosed and defensive as well as expansionary and proselytizing, run by a hierarchical clergy as well as 32 Mario Ferrero by an egalitarian community of “saints” or a charismatic leader. A nonex- haustive catalog of prominent examples is sufficient to illustrate all these varieties and combinations thereof: the Israelite Theocracy after the return from the Babylonian exile (the first for which we have a written record), 1 the crusaders’ kingdoms in Palestine, the Papal state in Italy from the eight century to 1870, the Jesuits’ mission system in Paraguay, Savonarola’s brief rule in Florence, Calvin’s rule in Geneva, the Anabaptist kingdom of Münster, the Mormon state of Utah, the Muslim caliphates, the con- temporary ayatollahs’ Iran, Afghanistan under the Taliban, the Mahdi state of Sudan in the 1880s, the Buddhist regimes of traditional Tibet and Mongolia. Over the long haul of history this is a very small crop, but nearly all of these instances were long-lasting and were in most cases terminated only by outside force.

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  A Theocratic Yehud?

  Issues of Government in a Persian Province

  • Jeremiah W. Cataldo(Author)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • T&T Clark

    (Publisher)

  The laws of the Church were not the laws of Geneva. In Iran, a new constitution was created in which Khomeini was named faqih . Thus, not only was he the religious authority, he was given author-ity over the social, economic, and political realms of Iran. With this authority, he (with the aid the IRP) “de-secularized” the society by imprisoning all who spoke out against the new government, purging the education system of materials deemed not sufficiently Islamic, incor-porating political policies and announcements in Friday prayers, and purging the military of those who showed any signs of disloyalty to the new constitutional structure. The constitution rooted the authority of the religious institution in the social, economic, and political realms. Religious law was incorporated into the country’s law code, which in turn made obedience to the religious institution and its leaders the obli-gation of every obedient citizen. On the basis of these common elements and on the common structural components taken from the definitions above, we can define a Theocracy principally as a social-political context governed by a dominant religious institution or authority that holds authority over and administers the social, economic, and political spheres or realms of a society. There is, in addition, no clear distinction between religious law and civic or political law because the fundamental, ideological basis for virtually all law is situated in the divine authentication of the religious institution and authority. The legitimation of a theocratic authority is rooted in not only the fundamental bases of the religion but also in the society more gener-ally—authority in a Theocracy is a socially legitimated authority. 276 In addition, this authority extends to a society’s material and physical power base. 277 A precise definition of Theocracy, therefore—and one that 276. Ibid., 815. 277. Ibid., 812–13.

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  Political Science of Religion

  Theorising the Political Role of Religion

  • Maciej Potz(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Yet, the democratic procedure in no way implied the contractual character of these political systems: it would occur to nobody that the governor’s power comes from the people in the sense of being the expression of popular sovereignty. No—his power came from God, who merely used the electorate as the instruments for revealing his choice. In this way, the concept of Theocracy, a somewhat antiquarian term used mainly for the ancient empires of the Near East, can be reintegrated into the framework of comparative politics with considerable explanatory potential. 3 3.3 Origins and Stability of Theocratic Regimes The origin of particular theocracies is, of course, an empirical question of historical enquiry which cannot be definitely resolved with a single model, just as the theories of state formation (hydraulic, conquest, patriarchal etc.) do not explain the history of each and every state. The purpose of this exercise is, rather, to conceptualize, in the language of the economic approach set out above (Sect. 2.​4), typical power relations which tend to emerge between the rulers, the religious functionaries and the society in theocracies. The following transactional model of the origins and conditions of stability of theocratic political systems is derived from sociological theories of social exchange. The social exchange theories, as developed by, among others, Blau and Emerson, conceive of all social relations as a series of transactions in the course of which various goods, material and non-material, economic and symbolic, ranging from physical objects, money and labour, to information, ideas, beliefs, to social status, prestige and power, are exchanged between individual and collective social actors. Power is conceptualized as arising from unequal exchange relation, where one party to this relation, B, is unable to return goods of equal value to goods provided by the other party, A

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  Breaking Monotheism

  Yehud and the Material Formation of Monotheistic Identity

  • Jeremiah W. Cataldo(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • T&T Clark

    (Publisher)

  Despite the different political ideologies of communities taking part in the revolution the political structure as determined by the society remained largely intact (cf. Mohammed Amjad, Iran: From Royal Dictatorship to Theocracy [New York: Greenwood, 1989], 131). 124 Breaking Monotheism 1 of theocratic communities within liberal democracies do not receive appropriate treatment under popular legal standards, and they need a new framework under which to be treated by law.” 34 Such statements are not adequately aware of what is meant in such political terms as “political structure,” “political behavior,” or even “law.” And we must be clear on this, “Theocracy” is , without variance, a political term. 35 It does not, as some seem unwilling to relinquish, designate a religious institution with political aspirations or a religious community living under the authority of a non-theocratic political government. Theologically minded de ¿ ni-tions cannot hold sway, a Theocracy is not a theology, nor can any discus-sion of one reject the material realm, as monotheistic views of the world tend to do. 36 Understanding the parameters of a Theocracy is important for identifying the nature of restored order according to monotheism. “Theocracy” best describes the end-goal of the restorative process. Each monotheistic identity considers of theocratic organization as the truest form of social organization, and an ideal form from which humans in their agency originally À ed. Hall, writing from a Christian vantage point, describes this in terms of the preservation of membership in contrast to outsiders, or non-members—in short, social relationship as understood by monotheism. He states, for instance, 34. Lucas A. Swaine, “How Ought Liberal Democracies to Treat Theocratic Communities?,” Ethics 111, no. 2 (2001): 302. 35. The importance of recognizing that Theocracy is without fail a political term has been discussed at length in Cataldo, A Theocratic Yehud .

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  Premodern Rulership and Contemporary Political Power

  The King's Body Never Dies

  • Karolina Anna Mroziewicz, Aleksander Sroczynski, Aleksander Sroczynski, Karolina Anna Mroziewicz(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Amsterdam University Press

    (Publisher)

  As the ruling elites of a world interpreted through religion, the individual identities of these Christian lords must have been shaped to some extent by Christian concepts and social expectations. Political actions carried out by religious individuals within a divinely-ordered environment cannot be considered secular, even if those actions concern mundane matters. While performing their earthly tasks, the lords established emotional, intellectual, and pious links between ‘here’ and ‘there,’ 54 thus transforming their political actions into something more theological-political. This transformation becomes even more apparent if one accepts Fr. Józef Tischner’s assertion that a theologian is a person who looks at the world through the eyes of God, 54 Merio Scattola, Teologia polityczna , trans. Paweł Borkowski (Warszawa: Instytut Wydawnic-zy Pax, 2011), 10. ‘INTERNATIONAL’ CHRISTIAN SOCIETY 131 and strives to interpret the world from the highlands of divine perspective. 55 The majority of thirteenth-century lords were not trained in theology; however, the political world in which they operated was filled with refer-ences to Christian theological worldviews. The final section of this study will, therefore, provide some insight into specif ic features of ‘international’ political theology. ‘International’ Political Theology ‘Internationalising’ Political Theology Political theology is a capacious term, and much has been written about both its scope and content. Here I will limit myself to a handful of observa-tions relevant to the present study. The approach of Ernst Kantorowicz, which in many ways underpins the entire Rex nunquam moritur project, was guided by legal reasoning, asserting that political theology was pri-marily a theological justif icat ion of political authority. 56 Marek Cichocki and Dariusz Karłowicz proposed a considerably broader understanding, claiming that political theology involved viewing political matters from the perspective of ultimate goals.

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