Unearthly Powers
Religious and Political Change in World History

This ground-breaking study sets out a new understanding of transformations in the interaction between religion and political authority throughout history.

Alan Strathern (Author)

9781108701952, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 21 March 2019

404 pages, 7 b/w illus.
22.8 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.66 kg

'… Strathern has with considerable brilliance opened up a rich ?eld for debate and re?ection.' Brian Stanley, Journal of Ecclesiastical 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.

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: divinization 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.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], General & world history [HBG], History [HB]