Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History 9781108477147, 9781108753371, 9781108701952

Table of contents :
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

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