After being truly struck by a couple of Iowa voters who, when interviewed, said we need "God in America" or "God in government," as I previously wrote, I want to write a bit more about what theocracy means, what a theocracy might be like.
When religion and the government are in the same hands, you have people making laws according to what they believe God likes and wants. To me it is supreme arrogance for anyone to claim to know what God wants; and certainly not everyone is going to agree about what God wants. No matter how confident this or that person is as to what God's will, wishes, likes (etc.) might be, we will have a difference of opinion in a society as diverse as America. We do, after all, have not only different religions in America and even within Protestantism we have many denominations and sects.
These differences of opinion can mean religious war; and in a theocracy, religious war is civil war. We should look at the example of the Muslim world where the two main branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia, are constantly at war with one another, bombing and murdering one another.
The Inquisition was a good example of the Church and the State, while not officially one and the same, practically being one. In Spain, once Christians had reconquered all of the Iberian peninsula from the Moors (and in fact a bit before), the Inquisition was started. Many Jews and Muslims—who had previously lived in harmony with Christians—now had three choices: leave the country, convert or at least pretend to convert, or be tortured to death.
The Framers of the US Constitution had the negative example of England one to two centuries earlier. In the period between the death of Henry VIII and the first Elizabeth, there was considerable jockeying back and forth between Catholics and Protestants. The country was Catholic one day, Protestant the next. It was hard to know which side your bread was buttered on, it changed so fast. And the consequences of who was in power at the moment were not inconsequential. For example, Catholics—at least wealthy ones with big houses—had secret rooms and passages built in their houses where priests and other artifacts of their worship could be concealed. Queen Mary, who ruled, I believe, on and off in the period between Henry VIII and Elizabeth, was known as "Bloody Mary" because of her practice of burning Protestants at the stake. And Elizabeth, once in power, executed Catholics who she believed had been plotting against her. There was armed strife and many people lost their lives. "By 1643, hundreds of thousands of Christians had been slaughtered by other Christians because of the way they worshipped Christ."*
(There was again strife later in the 17th century when King James II, suspected of being secretly more Catholic than Protestant, was forced out in the so-called "Glorious Revolution" of 1688 that installed the Protestants William and Mary.)
It seems that wherever there is not complete religious homogeneity—and there is nearly always someone with differing ideas—there is likely to be strife. Theocracy is a recipe for terrible conflicts.
You know, I just said to myself, looking over what I wrote: "God, I shouldn't even have to write this!!"
_________
This quotation is from an article, "God, Government and Roger Williams' Big Idea," Smithsonian, January 2012; adapted from the book, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul by John M. Barry, copyright 2012 by Viking.
Update: This posting was updated with additions on January 13, 2012.
Copyright © 2012 by Richard Stein
Showing posts with label English history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English history. Show all posts
Monday, January 9, 2012
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
What Happened to Ancient Civilizations?
I'm quite interested in ancient history and archeology; and I continually come across names of peoples, kingdoms, empires, civilizations that are "lost"—that is, they disappeared, and many of the names of these cultures are not even widely known today.
What happened to these peoples? Well, in one case it's pretty well known what happened. Take the Celtic people known as Britons, who inhabited England before England was invaded by the Angles and Saxons (German peoples) around 450 A.D.
These Britons were driven west, into what is now Wales and Cornwall; and also many of them fled across the English Channel to Brittany (now you know how Brittany got its name).
Also, undoubtedly, many stayed where they were and lost their cultural (and linguistic) identity by being absorbed through intermarriage or acculturation. This might be somewhat similar to what happened to native peoples in the U.S. and some other countries, except that the process had a longer time to operate so it could have been accomplished more thoroughly.
Sadly, a very common scenario is conquest where many people are killed. In the case of many kingdoms and empires of the past, it's clear that the capital city fell in war. Surviving remains show evidence of siege and burning. For example, Alexander the Great (4th century BC) wanted to avenge the Persians' conquest of Greece. So when he, in his eastward march of conquest, came to the Persian capital of Persepolis, he was quite merciless in his destruction. Pretty much any conquest involved destruction: sacking, looting, burning. Many great cities were pretty much reduced to piles of rubble.
So what became of the people? Again, many doubtless were killed: by the sword, or they perished in the widespread conflagration of their city. As one example: Genghis Khan was renowned for his ruthlessness, and when he conquered a kingdom in what is now Afghanistan, he slaughtered nearly every last inhabitant.
Consider those who might have survived: What would you do if your house was burnt along with all your possessions? You'd pick up your family and try to escape and flee to some place that you considered safe, or that you knew about (and had an idea in what direction it lay) or where you might have had friends or relatives.
Of course the people who fled war and found refuge somewhere else would have been immigrants in their new home and would have eventually been absorbed, learning the new language and customs and so losing their original cultural identity.
The last scenario for the fall of an empire or kingdom might be called internal collapse. Two examples are the Hittites and the Maya. In these instances, the people did not necessarily or literally simply disappear off the face of the Earth.
The Hittites had a great kingdom in Anatolia (roughly modern Turkey) up to around 1100 B.C. Why their empire fell has only recently come to be understood, and it looks like it's pretty much a matter of internal strife, more or less civil war. In this case we know that the Hittite Empire was succeeded by smaller "Neo-Hittite" kingdoms. In other words, the people were still there, and they tried to pull things together after the great tragedy of the fall of their empire and get an organized society going again.
The Maya, who had a complex civilization in Mexico and Central America, are another case to look at. They (like a great many peoples) built "city-states." Some of these were rivals so again there was war and conquest. But even before the Spanish arrived to do their conquest thing, some of the great Maya city states apparently simply collapsed, their great ceremonial cities abandoned. Exactly what happened is not completely clear (one idea is that the people just sort of kicked out their kings). But the people, the race and language, are very much still alive.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
What happened to these peoples? Well, in one case it's pretty well known what happened. Take the Celtic people known as Britons, who inhabited England before England was invaded by the Angles and Saxons (German peoples) around 450 A.D.
These Britons were driven west, into what is now Wales and Cornwall; and also many of them fled across the English Channel to Brittany (now you know how Brittany got its name).
Also, undoubtedly, many stayed where they were and lost their cultural (and linguistic) identity by being absorbed through intermarriage or acculturation. This might be somewhat similar to what happened to native peoples in the U.S. and some other countries, except that the process had a longer time to operate so it could have been accomplished more thoroughly.
Sadly, a very common scenario is conquest where many people are killed. In the case of many kingdoms and empires of the past, it's clear that the capital city fell in war. Surviving remains show evidence of siege and burning. For example, Alexander the Great (4th century BC) wanted to avenge the Persians' conquest of Greece. So when he, in his eastward march of conquest, came to the Persian capital of Persepolis, he was quite merciless in his destruction. Pretty much any conquest involved destruction: sacking, looting, burning. Many great cities were pretty much reduced to piles of rubble.
So what became of the people? Again, many doubtless were killed: by the sword, or they perished in the widespread conflagration of their city. As one example: Genghis Khan was renowned for his ruthlessness, and when he conquered a kingdom in what is now Afghanistan, he slaughtered nearly every last inhabitant.
Consider those who might have survived: What would you do if your house was burnt along with all your possessions? You'd pick up your family and try to escape and flee to some place that you considered safe, or that you knew about (and had an idea in what direction it lay) or where you might have had friends or relatives.
Of course the people who fled war and found refuge somewhere else would have been immigrants in their new home and would have eventually been absorbed, learning the new language and customs and so losing their original cultural identity.
The last scenario for the fall of an empire or kingdom might be called internal collapse. Two examples are the Hittites and the Maya. In these instances, the people did not necessarily or literally simply disappear off the face of the Earth.
The Hittites had a great kingdom in Anatolia (roughly modern Turkey) up to around 1100 B.C. Why their empire fell has only recently come to be understood, and it looks like it's pretty much a matter of internal strife, more or less civil war. In this case we know that the Hittite Empire was succeeded by smaller "Neo-Hittite" kingdoms. In other words, the people were still there, and they tried to pull things together after the great tragedy of the fall of their empire and get an organized society going again.
The Maya, who had a complex civilization in Mexico and Central America, are another case to look at. They (like a great many peoples) built "city-states." Some of these were rivals so again there was war and conquest. But even before the Spanish arrived to do their conquest thing, some of the great Maya city states apparently simply collapsed, their great ceremonial cities abandoned. Exactly what happened is not completely clear (one idea is that the people just sort of kicked out their kings). But the people, the race and language, are very much still alive.
Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein
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