Religion and Society: The Risk of Theocracy

Religions are not only metaphysics. They are major expressions of the social reality as well. Metaphysic and social functions mix and determine each other in a moving historical dialectic.

For those willing to answer the above mentioned question, that is whether the three major religions of the Book are basically one or multiple, it may be useful to analyse their respective conceptions of historical time.

Judaism believes in the end of times. When the Messiah comes who shall organise on the earth His Realm, that is to say a society at last just and happy, eternity will begin and time will end. The man of faith does not believe that human strivings can bring about this just world before the ascribed end of times. However the Messiah has not yet come. Therefore we are still awaiting the end of times.^[28]

Islam on this major issue has adopted a completely different stance. The prophet has indeed organised on this earth, in Medina, a just society. To this extent and although he has been named himself the Prophet, even though he is the last one and though there won’t be any Prophet after him, this Prophet may be considered as what the Jews call Messiah for he is the one who establishes the Realm of God on this earth. I am aware that this interpretations of Islam and of the time of the Prophet is not the only who prevails among Muslims. Many Muslims and not only a minority of them who would like to be regarded as learned, have never said, and don’t say now that the structure of the Medina society should be reinstated. They underline that from this for ever bygone time you can only derive general lectures, moral values, examples and inspiration.

Christianity has adopted a third view of this question of the end of time, a view which separates it from Islam and Judaism and endows it with its specificity as well as a metaphysical interpretation of the world as a power which partakes in the modelling o social reality. But to bring out this difference, I must proceed to the analysis of the above mentioned social reality.

Judaism is not only an abstract from of monotheism, it was as well as struc­turing for of an historical society, the society of Jews in Palestine and this partially, the inspiring and structuring principle of the Jewish communities of the Diaspora.

The real history of the Jews in Palestine is not well known. Considerably less than the history of the other communities of the region, may be because those communities were stronger and more advanced and have left more written testi­monials than the Jews.

May be this all embracing formalism regarding law, rules and rituals, has been instrumental in preserving the Jews of the Diaspora from being ‘contaminated’, assimilated, by other cultures, or converted to other forms of religion. That it may be one of the reason of the hostility directed towards them (but explanation is by no means an excuse!).

What is certain however is that such a social involvement of religion does not allow a laic conception of society to develop. It produces only a theocratic concept of power, which the Jews did not implement only because they were living in the Diaspora. For, owing to this conception, political power is not allowed to produce laws; it may only interpret those laws which God has established once and for all. Nowadays one tends to call theocratic a form of power structure which operates through a religious caste who claims it has a monopoly on power because it is the only one which knows the laws that are admissible, whether this caste is called synod, church or anything else, or may be has no name at all.

The Jewish law is not, as it seems, very explicit regarding the organisation of the power structure, public law as we say now. Contrary to the more evolved states of the region—the Egypt of the Pharaohs, achemenidean and later sassanidean Iran, Mesopotamian countries, Greece and Rome which worked out very detailed models for the political and administrative structure of society (and it matters little in this respect whether those societies were democratic or not), Jews have kept to more primitive forms of political organisation which does not define exactly the limits of the power of Kings or Judges. But this very vagueness is one more argument in favour of theocracy. The power of God does not care about a precise outline of legislation.

Long forgotten among the Jews owing to the Diaspora, this natural propensity to theocracy was due to emerge once again in the framework of the contemporary Jewish state. Only those who don’t want to see Judaism as a social organisation with a religious basis will be surprised.

In all those respects Islam offers a rigorous parallel with Judaism. Islam has regulated, in exactly the same manner, in details, and in its holy text, all the aspects of individual law. It did the same as regards the penal code, as harsh and formal as the penal code of the Jews (once more even in the provisions the similarity is perfect: thus adulteresses should be stoned...). It provides for the same rituals, circumcision, alimentary prohibitions, prayer at fixed times (not at any time) and in a unique repetitious form (which excludes any personalisation). Therefore one has to deal with a body of rules and practices which hold society together tightly and leave little or no space to innovation or imagination.

Yet Jews and Muslims alike others are practical people. They need a business law to complete the personal laws. They borrowed it consequently from the environment. Muslims gave an Islamic tinge to the practices and laws they dis­covered in the civilised area they conquered; on this level Islamic law translates sometimes literally Byzantine law. They gave it Islamic clothing but it is only a clothing.

Muslims like Jews don’t have a sophisticated public law. This is not regarded as a handicap, for the same reason as among the Jews. Yet it was necessary to fill up this gap and they did it by inventing the caliphate (which is posterior to Islam as professed by the Prophet) and by introducing the administrative Byzantine and sassanidean institutions. The conceptual vagueness surrounding the absolute power, which it is impossible to define as it lies only in the hand of God, will therefore never allow to go beyond pure and simple autocracy.

Autocracy and theology go along. For who can speak in the name of God, if not to make the law, (nobody is entitled to that) but to enforce the law? Interpret it or compensate for its lack? The Caliph or his representative, the Sultan, will do that without further ado. And the people will regard him as the shadow of God in this word, although the doctors of faith are cautious not to say so.

In this respect power in Islamic countries was always theocratic even though in practical terms this feature is toned down by the fact that it is not wielded by a special caste of religious men. The states where Muslims live can only be Islamic. In order to change this rule in the only Islamic countries which decided to become laic (Turkey and the former Soviet Central Asia) it was necessary to officially and forcibly break with Islam.

At this level, the contemporary political Islam is not an innovator. It only goes further, and it would like to transform these theocratic ‘soft’ states, contaminated by the surrounding modernity, into theocratic states in the strong sense of the word, that is to sat, give the entire and absolute power to a religious cast, almost a Church, like in Iran or the Azhar in Egypt, which would have the monopoly of the right to speak in the name of ‘the’ law (of God), to purge the social practice of all, which, in their eyes, is not authentically Islamic, in the law and in the rites. Instead, that means that if that cast cannot impose itself as the sole holder of Islamic legitimacy, then anybody can pretend it—that is to say, in practice political leaders or whosoever. That is the permanent civil war, like in Afghanistan.

At its beginnings Christianity avoided theocracy, then it went that way until the Christian peoples moved away from it later.

At the time of his foundation Christianity does not seem to break up with the Jewish heritage as far as the end of times is concerned. The announcement of the Last Judgement and that of the Messiah has most certainly an eschatological purport which has been underlined in the Apocalypse for instance. It is certainly the reason why in the history of Christianity there have been numerous messianic and millenarian movements.

Yet because of the very nature of his message, Christianity is actually a departure from Judaism. This departure is fundamental since what is so dramati­cally expressed in the history of Jesus Christ is obvious: the Realm of God is not on this earth and never will be. The reason the son of God was defeated on the Earth and crucified is obvious: His Father God never intended to establish His Realm on this Earth, the everlasting Realm of Justice and happiness. But if God does not intend to substitute Himself to His Creatures to settle their problems, they must assume this responsibility themselves. The end of time is no longer con­ceivable and Christ does not proclaim it as established whether now nor in the future. But in this case He is not the Messiah as announced by the Jews and Jews were right not to recognise Him as such. The message of Jesus Christ may then be interpreted as a summon to human beings to be the actors of their own history and if they act properly, that is if they let themselves inspire by the moral values which he enacted by his life and death, they will come closer to God after whom they have been created. This interpretation has eventually prevailed and given to modern Christianity its specific features which bases on a lecture of the Scriptures which enables us to image the future as the ultimate coming together between history as developed by human beings and the Realm of God as the final instance beyond history. The very idea of the end of times as brought about by an inter­vention from outside history has vanished.

The departure extends then to the whole area which was till then under the way of the holy law. Arguably Jesus Christ takes care to proclaim he has not come to this earth to upset the Law (of the Jews). This is in accordance with his core announcement: he did not intend to change ancient laws in order to replace them by better ones. It is man’s concern to put these laws to trial. Jesus Christ will himself set an example by putting in question one the most harsh and the most formal penal laws that is again the hurling of stones at the adulterous wife. When he says that those who never sinned should throw the first stone, he opens the debate. What if this law was not just, what if its only purpose is to hide the hypocrisy of the real sinners? Christians will then give up the Jewish laws and the Jewish rituals: circumcision disappears, the rules of law adapt to the diversity of the situations all the more so because in its expansion beyond the Jewish world proper Christianity must adapt to different status and rituals, but by so doing does not enforce a Christian law which does not exist. For instance the alimentary taboos are no longer implemented.

On a more theoretical level, Christianity acts the same way. It does not break openly with Judaism, since it refers to the same holy scripture: the Bible. But it adopts it without criticism: neither is it reread or corrected. But by doing so it deprives the Holy Book of its strength and one might say of its scope. It is one holy scripture among others and more important are the new scriptures specific to Christianity—the Gospel. Moreover the morals of the Gospel (love they fellow creature like themself, forgiveness, justice...), are substantially different from those of the Ancient Testament. Additionally the Gospel are not precise enough to found a positive law regarding personal rights or a penal law. From this point of view those texts radically break with the Torah or the Koran.

Legitimate power and God (Give Caesar what belongeth to Caesar) can no longer be confused. But this precept cannot be pursued when after three centuries of prosecutions the rulers change their persuasion and become Christians. But even before, when Christians secretly founded churches to defend their faith and later when the Emperor himself became their armed protector a new law is worked out, a law which claims is Christian. First of all on the level of personal rights, what is a Christian family? This concept had to be defined. It will take time, their will be set­backs and a final agreement will never be reached. Because those taking part in the process recognise in fact only different previous laws. Slowly however those new laws will be recognised as sacred: the canonical law which is different for the western and oriental Catholic Churches and the juridical forms of the different Orthodox and Protestant Churches are the end of this slow process.

As far as the organisation of the power structure is concerned, the relationship between power and religion, the same fluctuations and evolution towards sacral­isation can be observed. The churches which had been created after the model of clandestine political parties (as we would say today) remain as churches after Christians have taken up power. Although they had been democratic, be it only to be close to their followers, they must now depart from this feature. They integrate themselves into the power structure, go at some distance from the workshippers because from now onward they have to exert a control on them on behalf of the political power. The political power on the other side does not allow itself to be subservient to the churches. It maintains its own rules of dynastic inheritance, it institutionalises the requirements of the new system which is feudal in the Western world due to the Romano barbaric mixture and imperial in the Eastern part of the former Roman Empire and subjects the churches as much as possible to its own requirements. The melting between those two institutions proceeds further how­ever and exactly as the Caliph, the Lord and the King acquire a quasi divine quality.

The Christian world becomes a kind of soft theocracy led by a coalition of priests and by lay people who, however, proclaim themselves exactly as religious as the priests. The same has happened in the Islamic world; but when in the Christian part of the world, the bourgeois revolution will put into question the eternity of the social establishment, which allegedly is founded on Christian principles allegedly intangible themselves, when this revolution opens the doors to modernity and invents the new democracy, however limited its implementation was, when the Enlightenment declares that men (and not women at this time!) are the main actors of their history and must choose their laws and have the right to strike them down, the defenders of the old order rebuke this mad ambition of liberating mankind of all bonds. It is then easy to understand that Joseph de Maistre as a typical representative of the France of the Restoration can rant against democracy as a nonsense, a dangerous and criminal dream because God only is the lawmaker and God produced the laws which the only duty of mankind is to implement without going out of its way to invent new ones. Ayatollah Khomeini or Sheik El Azhar could just as well have written those lines! It is of no importance that at the time when Joseph de Maistre writes, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, nobody knows anymore what exactly those laws are which God estab­lished for the Christians. The Tables of Moses? Or, more prosaically, all those Roman, German and Slavic traditions, which were in that respect very little Christian, which are at the core of those European and allegedly Christian societies.

When Joseph de Maistre writes it is however too late. European societies have got used to making their rules themselves without referring to Christian principles, which are nevertheless put forward here and there but without great emphasis nor rigidity. Those societies are faced anyway with other problems that lead them to act this way. The theocratic risk belongs for ever to the past.

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