(still a work in progress)
prior to studying about the history of religion and its political aspects, i was born into a family of christian missionaries, and was for a short time part of a group which is now under investigation as a cult, tried studying the koran and also the lotus sutra (the eight-fold path, etc.)
but further introspection into the aforementioned historical and political aspects of religion (along with inspiration from my favorite legal theorist) has persuaded me that religion is no different from politics in that it serves as a tool of legitimization and assertion of power; a tool which relies on a fear of the unknown, mystical, and powerful.
before diving into the religion part of my argument, it is probably best to ease some qualms the last statement may have generated–or otherwise stated, “the government [those who exercise politics] may be powerful, but how are they unknown and mystical?”
although there are many possible reasons as to why people eventually abandon an anarchic way of life and decide to conform to the legal and social standards as set by each respective government, my opinion on it is simple: people are afraid of the government.
just as the founding minds of liberalism likened the government to a powerful mystical monster in the middle ages, even now in modern times the government remains but a powerful yet curious entity. although it is seemingly bound to a set of regulations and restrictions, it from time to time transcends those boundaries and asserts its supra-legality; although its stated purpose seems to be that serving the people that it reigns over as protector, its actions oftentimes only seems to benefit itself.
so what, then, gives the government the right to be so capricious? what is the source of the government’s legitimacy and why should it be respected? one theory states that it is because the government has the power to declare a sovereign exception (of the schmittian kind)–that is, the government has the power to suspend all other law to regulate or commit an action thought to be necessary. (see suspension of habeas corpus, state of emergency for details) although this theory may not seem all that scary, seeing as how there is a trend of thought that agrees with the idea that “the government does whatever it wants,” but once one is reminded that the government holds society’s monopoly on violence — that is, the government has a legal right to commit acts of violence and murder, whereas the layman does not — the idea becomes awfully terrifying.
and this is where we can draw the parallel between religion and politics; people, when concerned with the government, fear it because it is perfectly capable of arbitrarily depriving people of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. (government spying on its citizens for suspected terrorist activity; signing sedition acts for denizens in “suspect” of treason to country; the holocaust, as examples of arbitrary government policy) in the same way, people of the old, if one were to take the words of “holy scriptures” at face value, feared deities because they too, did in fact deprive people of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness for seemingly arbitrary reasons (the 40-year torture of the israelites in exodus; the holocaust of jezebel’s “false prophets” committed by elisha; jesus’ damnation of the fig tree, to name a few christian references)
the reason why the word arbitrary is highlighted above is not to say that these acts by the ruling sovereign–whether he be god or the government–were completely capricious and unreasonable (although some may disagree on a few of the examples) but to say that these were acts that were considered legitimate by the government, and consequently by the people it was governing, although such legitimacy is objectively questionable.
let’s take for example the holocaust. the genocide of those with jewish ancestry was carried out by the third reich under hitler’s belief and desire of forming a pure aryan nation. under the guise of ultra-nationalism, hitler carried out a plan to expel the non-aryan populace from germany through methods and powers vested to him by the reich under the fabled enabling act. i claim hitler’s “method” of expulsion to be arbitrary because where a mass exile order punishable by death could have sufficed, he went a step further and opted for mass execution instead; the fact that his actions at the time were considered legitimate (legitimate defined here as “carried out by the government so at least considered legitimate”) and fulfilled despite an obvious lack of absolute reason to do so makes it arbitrary.
in religion, the phrase “god works in mysterious ways” seems to ease unsettling minds when the question of legitimacy of action is brought up.
now that the framework of how religion and politics can be considered similar in terms of legitimacy, it’s now time to explore instances where said similarity was deftly recognized and utilized for the purpose of gaining legitimacy — for this we can look into religion (or the lack thereof) in the japanese archipelago during its yayoi to heian periods for one example, and the shift of religion from paganism to christianity in the roman empire.
japan isn’t a country that’s normally considered to be religious and that is for a good reason — religion in ancient japan, rather than being a system of personal beliefs and moral righteousness that it is today, was a legitimizing force which conferred power upon those who were regarded as their figureheads. examples of this idea can be found within the traditional idea of “kami” in shintoism; the effect of shamanistic/shinto beliefs in the tomb and late asuka periods; and the effect of buddhism int he yamato/soga vendettas and the nara period.
people of the japanese archipelago from as early as the jomon and yayoi periods were said to have celebrated and worshipped the existence of “kami”–supernatural beings that were incomprehensible and inexplicable through methods of this world, who frequently communicated from other dimensions through intermediaries such as shamans and miko. evidence from the sannai maruyama ruins in the form of religious artifacts and relics found in the key-shaped tombs of the tomb period suggest that the utmost value was placed in items that were thought to be in any way pertaining to the “kami.”
more worshipped and cared after than the relics/treasures related to the “kami” were the representations of kami on earth, or intermediary beings that were thought to be closest to “kami” themselves; the most notorious of these being the shamans and the priestesses of the times. the influence of these intermediary beings were so great that they often assumed positions as heads of state (such as the fabled queen himiko) and so revered were their influence that they came to be used as a form of legitimization.
the yamato kingdom, which came to power during the tomb period, often altered their history to claim descendence from a lineage of “kami” and even established a system of clans (”uji” and “be“) which established a “kami” at the head of every clan. one legitimizing attempt by the faction in power saw the association of the yamato with the sun goddess amaterasu, while conferring their opposing clans with the status of being descendants of the malicious deity susanoo — this was later characterized as a fictitious battle of the “ise vs. izumo“; with the amaterasu-friendly ise faction being written off as victors and the original legitimate rulers of the land.
religion in the japanese archipelago shifted gears, albeit remaining within the same framework, with the advent of buddhism during the dawning years of the tomb period. religion again was not received as a system of personal/moral beliefs, but as again a tool of political influence: emperor kinmei, upon receiving buddhism as a gift from the kingdom of paekche apparently “leapt in joy” and was in reverence of the “magical powers” it possessed. although kinmei acknowledged the great powers and influence that could be wielded through buddhism, he feared the backlash of rebellion that might follow through the sudden adoption of this new religion, as the shamanistic/shinto influence at the time was still very great; a parallel perhaps, could be drawn to the council of nicaea, which aimed to secularize christianity after presenting and adopting it as the official religion of the roman empire.
kinmei instead charged the immigrant soga clan with experimenting and adopting the new religion, which soon after became a constant threat and a source of influence to the yamato “royal” clan. thus began a quasi-vendetta between the soga and its opposition forces on whose religion was to be regarded as supreme, with the end result being the amalgamation of the old shinto and the new buddhist in a process called honji suijaku which saw old shinto “kami” taking the form of buddhist gods and botthisavas–reified during the reign of suiko tenno and shotoku taishi during which buddhism enjoyed an elevated status as state religion.
even the status of “state religion” did not change the view of religion from that of a political tool–the governing body held the monopoly in all things religious (through a “department” of the government known as the jingikan) and laymen/commonfolk were prohibited from the study of the holy texts; the rise of “rogue missionaries” such as gyoki and the great popularity with which they were received suggests that religion at the time was still being used primarily as a means to confer authority to those who held the power to control and distribute it.
thus as seen in the three different japanese eras and the treatment of and in regards to religion in each, it cannot be denied that religion held a great stake in the amassing and conferring of political power in the archipelago–similar parallels can of course be drawn to the european middle ages, where a similar situation of an amalgated church and state brought forth similar results (see divine right of kings), and also where limited access to holy canonical texts provided the government with what almost seems like the relentless support from the people through the legitimacy that religion conferred upon them as its chief propagator/source. this charade continued both in japan and europe until a vulgarization of religion took place; in japan with the popularization of the kana/gana scripts and the “translation” and vulgarization of the holy scripts that took place in the late heian and kamakura periods — in europe with the protestant revolution and the closing of the elite-proletariat divide that took place soon after.
addendum:
as a mercantilist society emerged from the originally thought to be “self-sustaining” shōen estates of the kamakura period, the practice of making into business what was considered to be “evil” by the government—or to quote amino yoshihiko, practices that were related to the “magical powers of coinage and currency” —was booming. whereas the buddhism that was given rise by heavy government influence during the nara and heian periods simply propagated the political views of the government toward these “evils”, the new kamakura religions embraced these so-called “evils” with a forgiving eye, and preached universality while the old religions strictly called for condemnation.
the reason why the new kamakura religions took flight, therefore, was not because they were “easy” to understand and practice, but because unlike the buddhism of previous periods which mandated that all followers of the religion must adhere to a life of good-deeds, devoid of kegare, in order to throw oneself into a cycle of reincarnation in the hope of one day attaining buddhahood, the new “kamakura religions,” especially shinran, rennyo and nichiren, postulated that salvation without the complicated cycle of repeated births. furthermore, the new kamakura religions—rennyo in particular—also made it possible for women to achieve enlightenment and salvation, where previous beliefs in Buddhism stated that women were to cumulate good deeds in their current life cycle in hopes of being born male in their next life cycle; the rennyo faith specifically states that faith should be extended out to women as amida tathagata “made a vow to save women ” because of their evil karma, and even goes on further to sanction the marriage of priests [in charge of lodgings] contrary to the long-held idea that priests adhering to the buddhist faith should stay celibate.
another aspect of kamakura religion that earned them the admiration of the people was perhaps the fervency with which they were practiced. the nichiren sect, for example, challenged its believers to become like martyrs willing to give up their lives for faith, evident in the story of its founder nichiren, who accepted his execution order after slandering the imperial government for not heeding his words of impending doom in the face of mongolian invaders with joy, claiming that there could not be a “greater joy” than to die as a martyr. on a less fanatical note, the religious practices of the shinran sect also required a degree of fervency from its believers, as each believer was expected to chant the nembutsu until the moment they achieved shinjin [a state of a believing heart], even though the canonical script on the subject of nembutsu is divided on the frequency and the intensity with which one should chant the nembutsu (or in the words of shinran himself, at the moment when one achieves shinjin, one should be able to chant the nembutsu “without a doubt” )
therefore, the new kamakura religions gained the favor of the people not because they were in their entirety “easy to understand and practice,” but because they were best suited for the needs and the requirements of the times; whereas the government-sponsored buddhism called for a return to an agrarian lifestyle under the shogunate and soon-to-be feudal lords, the new kamakura religions and their doctrines of universality made it possible for people whose lifestyles and very livelihood depended on those things preached against by the government to live wholesome, fulfilling lives.
