Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History

Half title
Title page
Imprints page
Dedication
Contents
Figures
Preface and Acknowledgements
Introduction
	A Language of Religion
	An Overview of the Book
	Some Matters of Methodology
	The Axial Age
1 The Two Forms of Religion: Being and Nothingness
	The Characteristics of Immanentism
		(1) The promiscuous attribution of personhood
		(2) Cosmology is relatively monistic
		(3) The afterlife is relatively undifferentiated and insignificant
		(4) The purpose of religion is to access supernatural power for the flourishing of existence in the here and now
		(5) Morality is communal, local, and unsystematised
		(6) Metapersons (and their relations with persons) are defined by power rather than ethics
		(7) Religiosity tends to the empirical, pragmatic, and experimental
		(8) Dynamism, mutability, orality, and continuous revelation
		(9) The concepts of ‘religion’, ‘belief’, and ‘belonging’ have little emic resonance
		(10) Localism and translatable universalism
	The Characteristics of Transcendentalism
		(1) An ontological breach opens up between a transcendent realm and a mundane one
		(2) Escape from mundane existence – or salvation – becomes the definitive goal
		(3) Religious activity is profoundly restructured according to a process of ethicisation
		(4) The inversion of worldly values and the soteriological virtuoso
		(5) Individual interiority rather than ritual action becomes the privileged arena of religious life
		(6) Truth, belief, and offensiveness
		(7) The closure and textualisation of the canon and the historical singularity of primary revelation
		(8) Intellectualisation and conceptual control
		(9) Self-conscious identity and pugnacity – albeit construed differently by the Indic and monotheistic variants
		(10) Universalist creeds fashioned for export as coherent packages
		(11) The establishment of hegemony through the monopolisation (monotheism) or inferiorisation (Buddhism) of metapersons.
		(12) The ambivalent status of magic
		(13) Clerisies form institutions with great organisational power, potential autonomy from state structures, and independent moral authority
		(14) Transcendentalist traditions emerge outside the development of state ideology
		(15) The dynamic of reform
	An Unstable Synthesis
		The Immanentisation of Buddhism
		The Immanentisation of Christianity
		A Few Notes on Reform
		Supplementary Note: Christian Readings of Immanentism
2 Religion as the Fabric of the State
	The Social Power of Religion
		Status and Stratification
		Moral Authority and Legitimation Theory
		The Discipline, Motivation, and Cohesion of Subjects
		The Dispersal and Agglomeration of the Social Power of Religion
	Centralisation under the Conditions of Immanentism
		Political and Religious Specialists Distinguished and Conflated
		Expansion and the Struggle Over Supernatural Power
		The Consolidation of the Religious Field
	Centralisation under the Conditions of Transcendentalism
		The Sovereignty of the Sky and the Sovereignty of the Earth
		Supernatural Power Subdued
		Moral Authority and Community
		Pacification and Governability
		Administrative and Institutional Power
	The Instabilities of Transcendentalism
		Ethical Arbitration and Dissent
		Clerisies and Rulers Steal Each Other’s Clothes and Plunder Each Other’s Realms
		The Challenge of Millenarianism
		Schism, Plurality, and Reform
		The Gamble of Monotheistic Consolidation
	Conclusion
3 The Two Forms of Sacred Kingship: Divinisation and Righteousness
	Some Notes on How to Think About Sacred Kingship
		Sacralisation from Below and the Isomorphic Languages of Hierarchy
		Pluralities of Disposition and Cognition
		Mere Metaphor, Meaningful Metaphor, and Beyond Metaphor
	The Divinised King
		Heroic Divinisation and the Instability of Charisma
		Cosmic Kingship
		The Ambiguities of Divinity
		Intimacy with the Gods
		Remoteness from Humanity
		The Ritualisation Trap and the Diarchical Escape
		Non-Euphemised Kingship: Strangers, Transgressors, and Aggressors
		Human Sacrifice
	The Righteous King
		An Emphatic Moralisation
		A Subtle Disenchantment?
	The Inevitable Synthesis
		(1) Both the Indic and monotheistic modes make their peace with the sphere of immanent divinity, albeit in different ways
		(2) Royal magnificence, status and authority compel divinisation
		(3) Divinisation follows from the broader accommodation of immanentism
		(4) Divinisation is associated with attempts to consolidate the religious field under royal control
		(5) All ideologies of royal legitimation must make peace with the realities of human politics
	Conclusion
4 The Economy of Ritual Efficacy and the Empirical Reception of Christianity
	Some Reflections on the Function of Ritual
		Ritual Efficacy: Instrumentalism and Openness
		Conceptual Control
	Missionaries and the Impression of Ritual Superiority
		Christianity as a Vehicle of Immanent Power
		The Mana of the Exotic: Hope and Threat
		Inequalities of Wealth and Power
		Iconoclasm: Inequalities of Scepticism and Confidence
		Healing and Exorcism
	Prophetic, Millenarian, and Cargoist Responses to the Missionary Stimulus
5 The Conversion of Kings under the Conditions of Immanentism: Constantine to Cakobau
	A Model of Ruler Conversion
		Conversion and Group Identity
	War and Healing as Turning Points
		Source Criticism and the Problem of the Miraculous
		The Religious Meaning of Survival, in War and Healing
		Constantine
		Early Medieval Europe
		Nineteenth-Century Oceania
	Overcoming Resistance: Immanentism Recreated and Destroyed
		The Immanentist Priesthood: A Wall or a Gateway?
		Iconoclasm as a Strategy of Rulers and Auto-iconoclasm as a Movement of People
		Pushback: Post-Conversion Instability
		Transcendentalisation and the Containment of the Economy of Ritual Efficacy
6 Dreams of State: Conversion as the Making of Kings and Subjects
	The Consolidation of the Religious Field
	Loyalty, Governability, and Pacification
	Conversion and Dilemmas of Sacred Kingship
	Conclusion
Conclusion
Glossary of Theoretical Terms
Bibliography
	Abbreviations
	Bibliography
Index