Investiture Controversy of 1075-1122: root of secularism in the West?

[Roma_Victrix]

In regards to the role of the church in secular affairs and secular authorities assuming dominion over ecclesiastical appointments during the High Middle Ages, I was already well aware of the significance of the Investiture Controversy. However, in Medieval Political Theory - A Reader: The Quest for the Body Politic, ed. Cary J. Nederman and Kate L. Forhan (Routledge: London & New York, 1993), a fascinating argument is put forth that suggests this event had serious implications for the rise and development of secularism. Here's an excerpt I will take from pp 15-16 (the bold text is my own doing):

The secular character of many Church offices became controversial over the course of the eleventh century, when the Church experienced several waves of reforms. The culmination of this reforming urge came with the elevation of Pope Gregory VII (1073-85), who prohibited the appointment of clerical officials by temporal rulers (so-called lay investiture) in a 1075 decree. Gregory's prohibition was unequivocal...

This proclamation sparked off a conflict with the Roman Emperor Henry IV (1056-1106), who viewed the Gregorian position as a direct affront to his customary rights as a temporal ruler and to his ability to maintain political order within German society. In the course of the ensuing controversy, Gregory and Henry each asserted the ultimate authority of his respective office over the other, to the extent that they both issued proclamations of deposition against one another.

The emergence of this conflict was significant for the development of medieval political thought in several ways...In sum the Investiture Controversy provided an early opportunity for thinkers to begin to speculate about the nature and origins of government and rulership, and thus created an intellectual climate within which secular political thought might emerge.

The eventual resolution of the conflict was no less important for the evolution of medieval political ideas. The contest between papal and temporal authorities persisted into the early twelfth century, spreading to other Western European countries. Although it may be too simplistic to say that the views of the Gregorian reformers were victorious, the Church did succeed in establishing its independence from secular control in a manner analogous to that originally proposed by Gregory VII. In 1107 King Henry I of England renounced his rights of investiture, although on condition that ecclesiastical magnates continue to perform feudal homage to the Crown. Similar terms were accepted by the German Emperor Henry V (1106-1125) in 1122, after another prolonged period of strife between the imperial and papal powers. The effect of this resolution was more profound than it might appear. For thousands of years, the pre-modern societies of Rome, Egypt, China, Mexico, Peru and Japan, for example, were essentially theocratic, that is ruled by a God-King or by a priestly caste. The distinctively different character of Western and modern politics developed in part through the separation of secular from religious power. For in freeing the offices of the Church from the direct control of the princes, the secular rulers had also succeeded in liberating themselves from the immediate responsibility for religious and ecclesiastical affairs. Likewise, religious leaders liberated themselves from the burden of secular responsibilities. Henceforth, the world of medieval politics was understood to be composed of two mutually independent coordinate powers: the regnum (secular kingdom) and the sacerdotium (spiritual realm). Each of these spheres enjoyed its own distinct concerns and interests which, while somewhat overlapping, were fundamentally separate. This lent to temporal politics a measure of autonomy which it had not enjoyed previously during the Middle Ages. It also created a political climate within which theoretical speculation about uniquely human, earthly public affairs could commence. Thus, the resolution of the Investiture Controversy in the early twelfth century simultaneously heralded the dawning of a more strictly secular tradition within medieval political theory.

Although the British now have a Goddess-Queen in their constitutional monarch Elizabeth II, supreme governor of the Church of England, as an American I can completely identify with this strict division between church and state, as enshrined in our badass US Constitution, ratified in 1788 and put into force in 1789.


Seriously, though, for me this passage raises so many questions!

For starters, I wonder if some will take issue with the insistence that pre-modern "Rome, Egypt, China, Mexico, Peru and Japan" were all "essentially theocratic" with God-Kings at the helm. For Rome you could argue that this is alluding to the elected office of pontifex maximus, as well as the later emperors who claimed divine status while living on earth (or had such titles bestowed posthumously). This was started even with the very first emperor, Augustus. For Egypt this claim doesn't need much of an argument behind it. The pharaohs thought themselves to be the god Horus incarnate and sons of the sun god Ra. For China, ever since the Qin dynasty the emperors were titled not only as huángdì, a combination of two words referring back to the sovereign deity figures of Chinese mythology, but also as tianzi, or the Son of Heaven, serving as theocratic monarchs believed to be at the center of the cosmos. The Japanese emperors were viewed in similar fashion as the Chinese sovereigns. As for Mexico and Peru, this is an obvious allusion to the Mayans, Aztecs, Incas, etc. and their rulers. For instance, the Sapa Inca, rulers of the Inca Empire, claimed Manco Cápac as their ancestor, an earthly ruler who was considered the son of the sun god Inti. The Aztec emperor, or Tlatoani, also served as the high priest of their polytheistic religion.

If, hypothetically speaking, this event hadn't happened and secular and ecclesiastic authorities had remained entwined as they were in the Early Middle Ages, would Western Europe look more like, say, the Islamic Republic of Iran today? By that I mean the lines between church and state would be absolutely blurred, not that Europe would be Islamic.

I'd like to know a much more thorough history about the effects of this division of church and state, up until at least the Early Modern Period, in which I am knowledgeable about the most obvious examples at least. How did this formal separation decided at the Concordat of Worms affect, say, the thinking of Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Baruch Spinoza, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine? Did these Enlightenment-era philosophers and political theorists realize its importance at all?

Also, in fleshing out the First Amendment to the US Constitution that guarantees separation of church and state by not establishing a state religion, did the founding fathers refer back to this event and were they fully aware of its importance in setting precedent? From what I recall, the founders frequently cited the examples of successes and failures in ancient Greece and Rome as those to follow or avoid, but what of medieval society and the lessons it also had to provide? Obviously the English Bill of Rights established in 1689 had the greatest impact on the drafting of the US Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the US Constitution. However, given the context of the English Bill of Rights as largely the product of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and Protestant backlash against Catholic authority personified by James II of England (the last Catholic monarch ruling England, Scotland, and Ireland), could it be said that the founders drafting the US Constitution looked elsewhere for inspiration on this topic?

There is, of course, the worthy discussion we could always have about the potential reversion of this separation by those who would have it so:

[Ecthelion]

It is because of threads of this caliber that I still come here even though I’ve stopped playing Rome 2 long ago.

I hesitate to support the assertion that the Investiture Conflict laid the foundations for secularism.

The IC conflict turned Western Europe from a caesaropapist system to one where the Church and State had clear lines drawn in the sand and neither had the authority to directly intercede in the investiture of the other’s offices.

In Byzantium and later the Orthodox East, the system remains caesaropapist to this very day. And in some ways, it lends the Orthodox Church more influence as the secular government benefits directly from the Church’s continued relevance in modern society.

Following secularism’s final victory in the 1960s (this is when people really stopped going to church), the Western governments didn’t really care as their legitimacy was in no way tied with the Church.

So I suppose is more a matter of Investiture Conflict and the subsequent division of Church from State that allowed the Church to decline in the West without support from the secular state.

But what I find to be the far more interesting is the idea put forth by Francis Fukuyama that the Investiture Conflict started the Western tradition of “rule of law”. Prior to this, it was still very much a matter of “rule by law”. Even though the sovereign was nominally under the authority of God, without a defined set of practical Church laws, there was nothing to define the “authority of God”.

Following the separate of C and S, the Church sought its own written legal code to regulate itself now that it was a fully independent, non-hereditary institution. The Justinian Code was used as the framework for new set of laws that would stand more or less until the present day.

If this sounds an awful lot like a constitution to you, you’re right. The idea of using a comprehensive written body of law which stands above any earthly sovereign was born.

The British sovereign, thanks to a strong Parliament and bad decision making on the part of Charley, was the first to be taken down a peg. The rest of continental Europe followed, thanks in no small part to the Enlightenment which fatally weakened the idea of the Divine Right of Kings, the last real barrier to constitutionalism in the West.

And in this process, we see why it is nearly impossible to transplant Western rule of law and constitutionalism to other non-Western cultures and nations. They lack the foundation of the Catholic Church which had for hundreds of years indoctrinated the Western world in the idea that God rules over all, and God’s will can be printed on A4 paper (or on Kindle now).

[Cyclops]

I would distinguish the weltreligionen that seek to establish a complete worldview in the sense of ethical but also legal codes, and encompass the totality of a believers behaviour (eg Christianity, especially medieval Catholicism, extreme Islam, state Buddhism, arguably Judaism, etc) and cultic practices (classical Hellenic/Punic etc religions, disestablished christianity, most forms of pre-1948 Judaism, folk religions).

I realise Patricians and the pentacosiomedimnoi controlled certain aspects of state function through religious "pretexts" or justification (eg the Areopagus judged murder cases as a religious crime and the Priesthoods (memership of which was at one point a defining characteristic of the patrician order) varying controlled aspects of state function like the calender (including court dates) and eligibility for office, but I would see those cultic beliefs as socially determined rather than socially determining.

I don't think Caser's claim to divine ancestry was the cause of his elite social standing, rather an expression of it. I don't think people aspired to the rank of Patrician so they could be Pontifex Maximus, rather the reverse.

Islam and Christianity overturned the existing social orders and offered advancement on their own terms within the existing political set up. Like the Communist party they exerted control over eleigibility for pre-existing political posts: the communists through the nomenclatura, the church through excommunication.

Chinese religions might philosophise about the mandate of Heaven, but it didn't prevent the Mongols and Jurchen from ruling part/all of China and patronising Tibetan buddhist monks.

I would posit that the Orthodox church, in particular the patriarchates of Constantinople and Moscow were pragamatic governemnt officials usually and only exercised decisive political direction in periods of government weakness.

The power of the Western church stems from the temporal independence (rebellion) of the Patriarch of Rome from his Emperor, butressed by forged donations and rewritten history.

The seeds of higher culture and "legitimacy" inherent in the church placed them at an administrative advantage over the barbarian kingdoms that mopped up the WRE, and placed them in a compromised political situation only resolved through serious warfare, principally I would argue the 30 years war, which was not the beginning but was for many states the end of practial attempts at religious universalism even within Europe (although rulers like Cromwell, William III and Louis XIV still harried religiously diverse subjects-I would argue for pragamatic political and strategic reasons but nevertheless intimately religious ones).

Islam offered a comprehensive administrative and social code from almost the outset, based on a single source code 9the Quran) and buttressed by hadiths etc. Membership of the religion and political/military power were established from the outset: Islam did not "think" its way into political power, it was armoured inpower from the moent of establishment.

Nevertheless Islam managed pragamtic religious accomadations as did early modern Christianity, especially in the Caliphates of Baghdad and Constantinople. Resurgant religious eruptions occur in both Islam and Christianity, such as the Shiite Safavids and various Protestant states, but they often correspond to discrete cultural and politcal groupings so i'd see religion as the junior partner to political pragmatism there.

One could argue for Communism as a secular religion as it seems to have required "purity of thought" from political aspirants, with show trials as offensive as the trial of the Templars or the Inquisition.

[Caligula's_Horse]

I believe the root of secularism in the west is simply result of power hungry monarchs and other men of influence which didn't buy into religion all that much, and realizing that power is a zero sum game, simply tried to remove the competition. Though having a precedent to fall on was surely a great help, a particular incident in the HRE probably wasn't that much use to anyone who wasn't German, seeing how ethnocentric people used to be (and still are to a great extent).

It also helped a great deal that Christianity is not inherently political, like say, Islam, which offers up its own set of laws and codes of social conduct from the get-go. This is the reason why religion is still not properly separated from the state anywhere in the middle east (with the exception of Israel, which lacks separation for a completely different set of reasons).

Another major culprit is the 30 years war, the last of Europe's religious major conflicts (not to say it was all about religion, the war is pretty much a grab bag of every possible dispute a man can have with another, but it was the last time religion was one of the major factors). An international 30 year long trauma on a scale that would not be seen again until 1914 really can change the nature of a people, or peoples in that case.
The result, the modern nation state, alongside separation of church and state, as religion was now considered an internal matter. At least something good came out of that horrific mess...

[Ecthelion]

I believe the root of secularism in the west is simply result of power hungry monarchs and other men of influence which didn't buy into religion all that much, and realizing that power is a zero sum game, simply tried to remove the competition. Though having a precedent to fall on was surely a great help, a particular incident in the HRE probably wasn't that much use to anyone who wasn't German, seeing how ethnocentric people used to be (and still are to a great extent).

It also helped a great deal that Christianity is not inherently political, like say, Islam, which offers up its own set of laws and codes of social conduct from the get-go. This is the reason why religion is still not properly separated from the state anywhere in the middle east (with the exception of Israel, which lacks separation for a completely different set of reasons).

Another major culprit is the 30 years war, the last of Europe's religious major conflicts (not to say it was all about religion, the war is pretty much a grab bag of every possible dispute a man can have with another, but it was the last time religion was one of the major factors). An international 30 year long trauma on a scale that would not be seen again until 1914 really can change the nature of a people, or peoples in that case.
The result, the modern nation state, alongside separation of church and state, as religion was now considered an internal matter. At least something good came out of that horrific mess...

You missed the plain fact that the divorce between the Church and State was brought on by the Church, not the State.

States will always seem to incorporate a degree of divine mandate into their legitimacy. This is a universal goal of all states that we are aware of. No enduring state will deliberately attempt to distance itself from religious, or pseudo-religious (AKA modern political "-isms") pretensions to legitimacy.

Western Christianity began its life as fugitive of the state (1st century to Constantine I) -> then a partner of the state (Constantine I to the fall of the WRE) -> then a survivor of the state (5th century to the rise of the Carolingian Empire) -> then a tool of the state (Charlemagne to Pope Gregory VII) -> then a competitor to the state (Pope Gregory VII to the rise of modern nation states in the 16th and 17th centuries) -> slow decline and irrelevance.

[Caligula's_Horse]

You missed the plain fact that the divorce between the Church and State was brought on by the Church, not the State.

States will always seem to incorporate a degree of divine mandate into their legitimacy. This is a universal goal of all states that we are aware of. No enduring state will deliberately attempt to distance itself from religious, or pseudo-religious (AKA modern political "-isms") pretensions to legitimacy.

Western Christianity began its life as fugitive of the state (1st century to Constantine I) -> then a partner of the state (Constantine I to the fall of the WRE) -> then a survivor of the state (5th century to the rise of the Carolingian Empire) -> then a tool of the state (Charlemagne to Pope Gregory VII) -> then a competitor to the state (Pope Gregory VII to the rise of modern nation states in the 16th and 17th centuries) -> slow decline and irrelevance.

It goes both ways, depending on the when and the where.
Though I will fully admit that I more easily miss the instances of separation at the insistence of the church. I live in the middle east, I've grown used to thinking about religion in politics in certain ways that aren't entirely compatible with the European history of the subject.

As for states always going for a divine mandate, not sure I'd call it that. In practice, the modern political ideologies serve very much the same role, but they're fundamentally different from religion. A combination of no claim of the supernatural, and no priesthood makes for a world of difference.
It also tends to make people less fanatical; religion breeds zealots more readily then secular ideology, and inevitably, some of the rulers start believing their own nonsense about their legitimacy. Better having a ruler that believes he's the chosen of the people or protector of the working class then one who believes himself divine, no?

[Roma_Victrix]

But what I find to be the far more interesting is the idea put forth by Francis Fukuyama that the Investiture Conflict started the Western tradition of “rule of law”. Prior to this, it was still very much a matter of “rule by law”. Even though the sovereign was nominally under the authority of God, without a defined set of practical Church laws, there was nothing to define the “authority of God”.

Following the separate of C and S, the Church sought its own written legal code to regulate itself now that it was a fully independent, non-hereditary institution. The Justinian Code was used as the framework for new set of laws that would stand more or less until the present day.

If this sounds an awful lot like a constitution to you, you’re right. The idea of using a comprehensive written body of law which stands above any earthly sovereign was born.

Thank you very much for pointing this out! Especially since it was not stressed or even included at all in the passage I shared. That's +1 rep to you, sir. So with that in mind, it appears the Investiture Controversy had more than one enormous legacy in terms of impacting the course of Western civilization.

I believe the root of secularism in the west is simply result of power hungry monarchs and other men of influence which didn't buy into religion all that much, and realizing that power is a zero sum game, simply tried to remove the competition. Though having a precedent to fall on was surely a great help, a particular incident in the HRE probably wasn't that much use to anyone who wasn't German, seeing how ethnocentric people used to be (and still are to a great extent).

This led to a reform of the church in every Catholic kingdom, principality, and republic of the Middle Ages, not just the Holy Roman Empire. It was the latter that experienced a destructive civil war over the matter, but other Catholic monarchs obeyed this decree of the papacy. For the Church, they thought it a victory since they could now ensure that the election and appointment of bishops and archbishops wouldn't be subjected to the whims of the various local monarchs. What they certainly hadn't anticipated was that, much later, in the Age of Enlightenment onward, the role of the Church in secular society would actually diminish greatly because of this.

The reason why monarchs wanted to interfere in the appointment of ecclesiastical figures was obvious. Bishops and archbishops who ran large monasteries did so like a large corporation and were often fantastically wealthy compared to most people, comparative to the nobility. They also often controlled large tracts of land like the nobility, adding to their influence and prestige. This was one of the many reasons why, even after the papal victory in the Investiture Controversy, Catholic monarchs were able to gain the concession that these elected church officials should still pay homage to the Crown like any other vassal under their suzerainty. It was in the interest of the monarchs to rein in the power of the bishops and archbishops, because at this time there truly was a competition between church and state. That might sound strange to us in modern times, but it is a historical fact of Western Christendom.

[Roma_Victrix]

It goes both ways, depending on the when and the where.
Though I will fully admit that I more easily miss the instances of separation at the insistence of the church. I live in the middle east, I've grown used to thinking about religion in politics in certain ways that aren't entirely compatible with the European history of the subject.

The modern State of Israel is a parliamentary republic that, like other Western nation-states since the fall of monarchies, grants all its citizens regardless of ethnic or religious background universal suffrage and does not have a state religion despite the obvious and overwhelming Jewish majority. Benjamin Netanyahu is not an elected supreme rabbi or high priest of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and he is not a King of Judea like Herod the Great. He is the Prime Minister of Israel, an officially secular nation. However, the secular nature of modern Israel is a direct extension and consequence of the rise of secularism in Western civilization. There are officially secular nations in the Islamic world, like Turkey, but alongside them are complete theocracies like Iran. This list of countries also recognizes Islam as the official state religion:

Afghanistan (State religion)
Algeria
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Brunei
Egypt (State religion)
Iran (State religion)
Iraq
Jordan
Kuwait
Libya
Maldives (State religion)
Mauritania
Morocco
Oman
Pakistan (State religion)
Qatar
Saudi Arabia (Religion of the Kingdom)
Somalia
Somaliland (Religion of the nation)
Tunisia
Turkey
United Arab Emirates (Religion of the Kingdom)
Yemen

Yet not to single out the Islamic world, there are still some countries in the West and Latin America that recognize Catholicism or Protestantism as their official state religions. When the United States broke from that tradition in its Constitution, it was the first nation to establish that precedent. Here's a handy map showing states that are secular (green), states that are ambiguous on the matter (grey), and states that have an official religion (red):



Notice how Syria is greyed out because Bashar al-Assad is technically a secular leader of the Ba’ath party. Yet that, along with Lebanon, is a somewhat rare example in the Arab world according to the map.

[Rinan]

Western Christianity began its life as fugitive of the state (1st century to Constantine I) -> then a partner of the state (Constantine I to the fall of the WRE) -> then a survivor of the state (5th century to the rise of the Carolingian Empire) -> then a tool of the state (Charlemagne to Pope Gregory VII) -> then a competitor to the state (Pope Gregory VII to the rise of modern nation states in the 16th and 17th centuries) -> slow decline and irrelevance.

Yes, the Investiture Controversy was of momenteous importance for the West and it's one characteristic that sets medieval western (or Latin) Christendom apart from other ones. Still, it's always dangerous and too convenient to simplify history. I think the phases you give above are way too "neat" to be actually true. Did the role of Christendom really differ that much between Constantine, Clovis, Charlemagne and Henry?

Christianity wasn't just a "partner" to Constantine, he definitely used it as a tool. But at the same time, it was already a competitor to the Roman state as well; think of all the different heresies not merging into one orthodox school as the emperor had demanded. Or think of the bishop Ambrosius, who in the 390s opposed the imperial family when he raised the masses to prevent a church from being closed by the empress. And later, the pope already had competition with wordly rulers. He wasn't very powerful yet around 800, but he did prove himself to be a pain in the ass for the Byzantines. And his elevating of Charlemagne to emperor was also a political tool for him. Also later there were conflicts between the patriarch of Constantinople and the Byzantine Emperor, and the patriarch of Moscow and the Russian emperor.

So, I'd say the friction between church and state is far older than the 11th and the 12th century, and not exclusive to the West. Still, the chasm between the two did deepen during the Investiture Controversy. Somehow, the west took a different route than the rest of the World? We also see a similar thing going in medieval universities, by the way. From the 13th century IIRC professors from the Faculty of Arts were not allowed to mingle into theologian matters, which set a sharper division between theology and secular science.

Also don't forget there were many more groups competing for power in Medieval society.. Society got divided into three groups: "Those who fight" (the nobility), "those who pray" (the priests) and "those who work" (the rest). The political game between these three groups and the king also led to new laws and priveleges (e.g. Magna Carta), curtailing royal power and establishing parlements throughout Europe (whatever name they had, Diet, staatenvergadering, etc.) Cities founded received special charters giving special rights to the bourgeosie. The bourgeosie and royalty sometimes worked together to curtail aristocratic power. Interestingly enough, this too was absent from medieval countries like (Muscovit) Russia. Towns there had no special rights and the nobility were more subservient to the monarch. For example, the Russian dumas were more consultative and did not nearly have the power that the western nobility had.

So, is western Europe a special case? I can definitely see all the competing groups for power (monarch, aristocracy, priesthood, civilians) having their role to play in the establishment of the rule of law. If there's one conclusion I can draw, it's that ancient and medieval history is a lot more relevant than a lot of people (outside TWC ofc. ) seem to think!

(By the way Ecthelion, not everything is a reply to you. But I found the question raised by OP to be so interesting as to bother you all with my brainfarts. My apologies for any incoherent blabbering!)

Edit:

I'd like to know a much more thorough history about the effects of this division of church and state, up until at least the Early Modern Period, in which I am knowledgeable about the most obvious examples at least. How did this formal separation decided at the Concordat of Worms affect, say, the thinking of Denis Diderot, Voltaire, Baruch Spinoza, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine? Did these Enlightenment-era philosophers and political theorists realize its importance at all?

Thought I should add my two cents to this. I'm not well-versed enough in enlightenment philosophy to really say whether they were aware of the importance of the investiture controversy. But anyway, I'd like to point out that they didn't need to. They are heirs to its effects, products of a Europe that has lived with this "proto"division of church and state for centuries. They merely had to think out how to improve their current situation. As in, it is because western European medieval history is characterised by this rivalry between the secular and the spiritual (also within the academia, as I pointed out above)that they could have even thought of the idea to make the next step and really cut all the connections. Same thing for the rule of law; the medieval parlements stood as a precedent for the early modern ones. For example, when the Dutch Republic declared itself independent in 1581, it was the Staaten-Generaal (Estates-General, the 'national assembly', composed of the three estates I talked about earlier) which did this. Similarly, the British parlement essentially has gradually evolved from its medieval forebear, gathering more rights and powers over the centuries.
See what I mean? You can be part of a tradition without even being aware of it, and still that tradition has an enormous impact on your thoughts.

[Roma_Victrix]

See what I mean? You can be part of a tradition without even being aware of it, and still that tradition has an enormous impact on your thoughts.

I have to wonder then who first made this connection between the Investiture Controversy and the later rise of secularism. Perhaps someone during the Age of Enlightenment appreciated its role and importance, but I simply do not know. I haven't read Nederman and Forhan's book fully, but that was basically the end of their introduction before they dived into the details of various unrelated primary sources spanning from the 12th to 15th centuries. I'm not sure if they speak any further about the subject of church and state, although that topic is bound to come up again somewhere in their later chapters, I hope.

[Caligula's_Horse]

The modern State of Israel is a parliamentary republic that, like other Western nation-states since the fall of monarchies, grants all its citizens regardless of ethnic or religious background universal suffrage and does not have a state religion despite the obvious and overwhelming Jewish majority. Benjamin Netanyahu is not an elected supreme rabbi or high priest of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and he is not a King of Judea like Herod the Great. He is the Prime Minister of Israel, an officially secular nation. However, the secular nature of modern Israel is a direct extension and consequence of the rise of secularism in Western civilization. There are officially secular nations in the Islamic world, like Turkey, but alongside them are complete theocracies like Iran. This list of countries also recognizes Islam as the official state religion:

Yet not to single out the Islamic world, there are still some countries in the West and Latin America that recognize Catholicism or Protestantism as their official state religions. When the United States broke from that tradition in its Constitution, it was the first nation to establish that precedent. Here's a handy map showing states that are secular (green), states that are ambiguous on the matter (grey), and states that have an official religion (red):

Notice how Syria is greyed out because Bashar al-Assad is technically a secular leader of the Ba’ath party. Yet that, along with Lebanon, is a somewhat rare example in the Arab world according to the map.

I'm an Israeli, and know my own countries policies just fine.
The lack of separation of church and state in Israel isn't as deep as what you'd find in say, Iran, but its certainly imperfect, especially by western standards. The law of return is the most famous example, but its actually for nationalist/demographic as opposed to religious reasons. The real problems involve the orthodox religious special interest parties, the sole authority of the orthodox Rabbies under the law, disparity in budgets given to non-Jewish populations, and so on. Just because a country is officially unaffiliated with any one religion (something the right wing parties are currently trying to change actually), doesn't mean church and state actually are separated in practice.

As for the rest of the Islamic world, as I've said, Islam and politics have always been much more closely intertwined then politics and Christianity. Even in nations today where Islam is a majority religion but not an official state religion, Sharia law and Islamist political parties and movements are still highly relevant, as opposed to Christianity which politically speaking, is on its last legs in Europe, relatively weak in the US (except the south), and only still truly potent in parts of Latin America.
Turkey is not officially Islamic due to western influence (and growing more Islamic in recent years as that western influence is slowly being pushed out), and Lebanon due to large non-Muslim minorities. They are however the exception, not the rule.

Then there's the whole communist bent against religion, though given how different its outlook and area of influence is, I wouldn't count it as part of the Western secularization process. Karl Marx might have been a European, but that's where communism's connection to western style secularism end.
Western secularism developed slowly and in parts accidentally to reach its modern form which seeks peaceful co-existence; communist secularism was developed quickly and with full intent to seek out the brutal repression of the church, and not only as a political entity.

[sumskilz]

I'm an Israeli, and know my own countries policies just fine.
The lack of separation of church and state in Israel isn't as deep as what you'd find in say, Iran, but its certainly imperfect, especially by western standards. The law of return is the most famous example, but its actually for nationalist/demographic as opposed to religious reasons. The real problems involve the orthodox religious special interest parties, the sole authority of the orthodox Rabbies under the law, disparity in budgets given to non-Jewish populations, and so on. Just because a country is officially unaffiliated with any one religion (something the right wing parties are currently trying to change actually), doesn't mean church and state actually are separated in practice.

I agree that it's imperfect, but it's not really that there is a state religion, but that there is a state Judaism, and that there is no secular marriage unless it takes place outside the country or if someone renounces their religion. I think people would be surprised to know that Israel has sharia courts that preside over Muslim family law. The law of return operates on an ethnic/non-denominational definition of Jewishness. Of course, the rabbinate doesn't recognize a lot of olim as Jewish. Functionally nothing really seems different than in the US though, other than the rabbinate's monopoly on Jewish marriage and burials, and the population is much less religious than in the US (which makes the former issue even more ridiculous).

[Rinan]

I'm not sure if they speak any further about the subject of church and state, although that topic is bound to come up again somewhere in their later chapters, I hope.

If you find anything, let us know! I'm starting to get curious now.

As for the rest of the Islamic world, as I've said, Islam and politics have always been much more closely intertwined then politics and Christianity.

I don't think that's true. In the late Roman and Byzantine state christianity and politics were definitely very close buddies. The emperor legitimised himself through christianity, but himself also took an active role in organizing the oecumenical councils and supervising them (thus influencing theological issues). The other way round; christianity crept into secular law-giving. Why do you think gladiatorial games were banned in the 5th century? In the Middle Ages, we have secular authorities issueing laws to uphold christian ethics. For example, secular laws setting punishment for going to a brothel, or for gambling, or for running an illegal pub. I think Venice enacts laws against clothing that is deemed too "luxorious". For Russia, Tsar Nicholas II still in the early twentieth century resists setting up a legislative, elective body because that'd interfere with his divine "God-given' autocracy over "Holy Russia"

Then there's the whole communist bent against religion, though given how different its outlook and area of influence is, I wouldn't count it as part of the Western secularization process. Karl Marx might have been a European, but that's where communism's connection to western style secularism end.
Western secularism developed slowly and in parts accidentally to reach its modern form which seeks peaceful co-existence; communist secularism was developed quickly and with full intent to seek out the brutal repression of the church, and not only as a political entity.

Then I suppose the French revolution wasn't very European either, since it had an aggressive stance towards the catholic church; arresting priests; confisquating church property, pulling down churches (even the beautiful monastery of Cluny!!) and even dechristianising the calender.

Just because a lot of European countries changed slowly and over time, slowly bit by bit adding liberal, then democratic and even socialist measures, doesn't exclude the excesses from European history (sadly). Revolution is part of the European story.

[Caligula's_Horse]

I don't think that's true. In the late Roman and Byzantine state christianity and politics were definitely very close buddies. The emperor legitimised himself through christianity, but himself also took an active role in organizing the oecumenical councils and supervising them (thus influencing theological issues). The other way round; christianity crept into secular law-giving. Why do you think gladiatorial games were banned in the 5th century? In the Middle Ages, we have secular authorities issueing laws to uphold christian ethics. For example, secular laws setting punishment for going to a brothel, or for gambling, or for running an illegal pub. I think Venice enacts laws against clothing that is deemed too "luxorious". For Russia, Tsar Nicholas II still in the early twentieth century resists setting up a legislative, elective body because that'd interfere with his divine "God-given' autocracy over "Holy Russia"

Then I suppose the French revolution wasn't very European either, since it had an aggressive stance towards the catholic church; arresting priests; confisquating church property, pulling down churches (even the beautiful monastery of Cluny!!) and even dechristianising the calender.

Just because a lot of European countries changed slowly and over time, slowly bit by bit adding liberal, then democratic and even socialist measures, doesn't exclude the excesses from European history (sadly). Revolution is part of the European story.

I'll start with the simple and move on to the more complex.
I meant to say that communism wasn't a continuation of an existing European trend, but rather a new phenomenon. There were trends in Europe like the French revolution that displayed much of what communism later would. Karl Marx's writing and the Russian revolution definitely took some ques from the French revolution, but they were not trying to imitate it or even followed along a similar ideological path, even if the end results of both were remarkably similar.

Now for the complex. Islam was from the get go designed as a more political religion then Christianity. Christian theology deals with the individual, with relatively little dealing with the community at large, never mind the national level. Practically speaking, its basically a missionary version of Judaism, easier to spread and adhere to, but not really looking to shift the world order.
Of course Christianity would over the years evolve and go beyond the mere text of the bible to encompass things like the community and the state, though not being in the core body of the text, these changes were rarely universally adopted, and more often then not grew to reflect convenience or social norms more then purpose. The right of divine rule for example, was not ingrained into Christianity. It was something the Roman empire gradually made up and dark age kings adopted. And once the Enlightenment movement came along, the idea of divine rule went out the window, despite the vast majority of Europe still being devoutly Christian at the time, because it wasn't ingrained in the religion itself, it was tacked on. And the population was fine with that, because again, its a matter of interpretation.

Islam comes with Shariah law that deals with individuals, communities and entire nations right out the box. Divine rule dates back to the founding of the first caliphate, right around the time Islam first came about. Need to wage a holy war? No need to invent the concept like the Christians did, Islam comes with a little patent called Jihad. Need to set up a state? Shariah law gives you a workable structure to follow that not only doesn't require you re-invent the wheel, but will also be readily accepted by the religious commoners.
This organized structure is obviously a hindrance if a concept comes up short when faced with an ever changing reality, but social and economic conditions during the pre-modern period were quite stagnant, so it wasn't the issue it is today. Throw in being at a major trade's crossroad, and there's a good reason Islamic civilization was considered technologically, economically and militarily on par with China and Eastern Rome until crossing swords with the Mongols and being subjected to the bloodiest beating a civilization ever took, from which their status still hasn't recovered to this day.

But I've strayed off topic. My original point is that Islam, through Sharia law and the history of how it came about with the first caliphate is purpose built to meddle into politics, whereas Christianity is not. What little I know of Hinduism, Buddhism and most other less common religions suggest they're also relatively a-political compared to Islam.

[Roma_Victrix]

As for the rest of the Islamic world, as I've said, Islam and politics have always been much more closely intertwined then politics and Christianity. Even in nations today where Islam is a majority religion but not an official state religion, Sharia law and Islamist political parties and movements are still highly relevant, as opposed to Christianity which politically speaking, is on its last legs in Europe, relatively weak in the US (except the south), and only still truly potent in parts of Latin America.

Islam and politics are far more intertwined in today's world than Christianity and politics, but the same cannot be said for the pre-modern world, at least before the Age of Enlightenment and the 18th-19th century nationalist revolutions across Europe (and of course the American Revolution before them). Take for instance the Spanish Inquisition that purged the Iberian peninsula of Jews and Muslims, forcing them to convert to Catholicism or be exiled from the country. Unlike the earlier medieval inquisition that was handled by the papacy, this was decreed and carried out in the name of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the holders of temporal government authority. They were not church figures, they were political figures!

There are other examples abound, too. Although the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of England in 1290 by Edward I of England was obviously the result of their loss of economic utility to the English Crown (after Henry III had squandered all their wealth with predatory tallages and crushing taxes), it was dressed up in religious terms. The King's Jews of England once handled the royal Exchequer but were now forced into other occupations that didn't suit them at all (especially considering the mandatory Christian oaths of working guilds). Now they were forced into exile to continental Europe, mostly settling in France, and Jews didn't return to England en masse until the 17th century. Leading up to their expulsion they had been harassed repeatedly by church authorities trying to link them to supposed ritualistic murders of young Christian boys who became martyrs. Yet it wasn't the church that expelled them for their alleged crimes, it was the the King! And the kings of England, as well as monarchs of other Catholic kingdoms, were keen to sometimes bother enforcing the 13th-century papal decree that Jews should wear the yellow star of David on the sleeves of their garments, which immediately summons to the mind the Jews of the ghettos in Nazi Germany.

One only needs to consider the Crusades of the 11th-13th centuries to the Holy Lands to see the involvement of religion with politics. It wasn't just Europe's regular nobility who went on crusade and pilgrimage to the Middle East, it was also Europe's monarchs, the kings of England and France, Holy Roman Emperors, etc. To say that the religious orders, like Hospitallers and Templars, had no political connection with the Christian King of Jerusalem would be a false statement. Before the Investiture Controversy, monarchs frequently interfered with the affairs of monasteries and the election of ecclesiastical figures too. I had hoped the OP would have made that sufficiently clear.

But I've strayed off topic. My original point is that Islam, through Sharia law and the history of how it came about with the first caliphate is purpose built to meddle into politics, whereas Christianity is not. What little I know of Hinduism, Buddhism and most other less common religions suggest they're also relatively a-political compared to Islam.

Right. Islam isn't just Christianity on steroids, it is a fundamentally different ideology and didn't need these gradual add-on features that you described, such as holy war. It came in a nice neat package all at once (if we discount the birth of new sects like Twelver Shia). For the most part, this was unlike Christianity, which had its traditions evolve and grow over time. Yet I would still argue that Christianity was burrowed into the daily lives of people in the Middle Ages, where the church was the center of social life very much how the mosque is the center of social life in an Islamic town or city.

[Cyclops]

On a broader note of state/religion seperation, its no surpise societies adopt systems of thought and action that support their existence. States use churches to support their rule, churches derive protection and resources in return from states they support.

The specific point of papal superiority to the Emperor and the particular question of appointing bishops is a symptom of state weakness in the West. I was extremely rare for an ERE emperor to be dictated to by a churchman, and ven rarer for the churchm,an to survive the experience. Likewise the Russian Orthodox hierarchy did not see fit to dictate matters to Tsars and Supreme Autocrats often: dissenters were forcibly shaved and otherwise publicly humiliated.

The investiture crisis demonmstrates the Ottonian and other post-Carolingian state systems lacked the administrative sophistication and legal/philosphical justification for rule to sustain themselves without ecclesiastical support.

In short, it was no Bishop, no King six hundred years early.

...
But what I find to be the far more interesting is the idea put forth by Francis Fukuyama that the Investiture Conflict started the Western tradition of “rule of law”. Prior to this, it was still very much a matter of “rule by law”. Even though the sovereign was nominally under the authority of God, without a defined set of practical Church laws, there was nothing to define the “authority of God”....

I find the snippets of Francis Fukuyama that I read to boneheaded bungfoodling nonsense. Canon law long precedes the investiture controversy and stood seperate to the rehgional legfal systems in the Catholic sphere. Francis also needs to read up on Solon and the twelve tables regarding the rule of law.

You missed the plain fact that the divorce between the Church and State was brought on by the Church, not the State....

I think the Church clung to temporal authority like a barnacle to a whale. Despite being a geopolitical irelevance for centuries the papacy only signed the Latern treaty in 1929. Even know the Papacy has a recognised statehood.

[Rinan]

Now for the complex. Islam was from the get go designed as a more political religion then Christianity.

Interesting arguments but I think we disagree on one fundamental thing: of course it's true that a certain religion is more predisposed to certain practices (be they political, social, etc.) than others by foundation. But I think the mistake you're making is that you're giving the religions a sort of Platonic "Idea", a true "Essence" that makes up the core of a religion (and the same for "Europe" and "Marxism"). Of course Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. all have their holy books that expound their core ideology. But at the same time, these books need to be interpreted and over the centuries have been interpreted in manifestly different ways. Not to speak of the "add ons". It doesn't matter whether by fusing religion and politics more closely, the late Roman emperors were doing something that wasn't core to Christianity before. They made it so. A religion is defined by the total sum of rituals and beliefs of its followers. So, today's Christianity may be disengaged from politics, medieval Christianity certainly wasn't.

And, as I rambled on previously, people are continuously shaped by the tradition they're in. So, that way, backed up by hundreds of years of tradition and the teachings of the holy book, Islam may be more disposed to "theocracy" than Christendom, but doesn't need to be. If tomorrow's muslims decide that secularism is the new thing, then tomorrow's Islam is a secular Islam. Why not?

Edit: To clarify, I see tradition as the social forces that influences your personality as you grow up. Your person is molded to the society you're born in. Of course, you have a certain matter of individuality, but you can't help being shaped by the people around you; their social norms, expectations etc. (Perhaps this is a hard idea to grasp, because it undermines a lot of our basic intuitions on freewill, but I think it's nevertheless true) To illustrate; many enlightenment thinkers who criticise tradition forget that they themselves were formed by tradition to be suspicious of tradition and to instead like innovation (This was, after all, the Zeitgeist of the Enlightenment). Similarly, Marxists do not need to conciously model their ideas and actions on the French Revolution; they are still being influenced by it. They are the very children of the French Revolution, and arguably, without it Marxism would have never been possible

(Well, I guess that's enough postmodernism for today )

[Ecthelion]

[QUOTE=Cyclops;14227203]
I find the snippets of Francis Fukuyama that I read to boneheaded bungfoodling nonsense. Canon law long precedes the investiture controversy and stood seperate to the rehgional legfal systems in the Catholic sphere. Francis also needs to read up on Solon and the twelve tables regarding the rule of law.
[QUOTE]

I think that before actually reading his book, I would have agreed with you. I’m referring to the first book in the “Origins of Political Order” series.

He deals with how political order as defined by:
1. State formation
2. Rule of Law
3. Accountability
Was achieved, or rather not achieved as in most cases, by civilizations around the world.

Conspicuously missing was discussion regarding the Classical Mediterranean civilizations. And he does this for 2 reasons:
1. It’s been discussed to death
2. He believes that neither Republican Rome nor the Greek city states ever formed states beyond the city state level, which is essentially a glorified village, and proved itself incapable of being scaled up to rule an Empire, which lies at the heart of the fall of Republic.

And… he’s right. I’ve heard of the Twelve Tables being described as an early constitution, but this is simply not a defensible assertion. A constitution is more than just a set of rules regarding behavior (which is what the surviving fragments of the TT tells us). If that’s all it is then pretty much every civilization with writing would have their own constitution.

Church canon prior to the merger with the Justinian Code was focused on the spiritual matters. Only after the incorporation of the JC did it become something that can be applied to holistic institutions.

Moreover, the Church had recently banned the clergy from marriage and having heirs. Prior to this point, there was little that separated land owning priests from land owning secular nobles. This effectively made the Church into Europe’s first true modern bureaucracy, which is the first step in forming a modern state as the Chinese had done 1,300 years prior.

[Cyclops]

If Fukuyama thinks the classical Roman Empire was a glorified village he's exercising his right to be an imbecile. The Roman Empire (as well as the ERE) had dynasties that lasted longer than many modern states have existed.

The church was practically a fragment of Roman administration, albeit in the Dark Ages a severely diminished one.

The relation of institutions in running human society is more complex than anything I've seen Fukuyama express (I admit I've opnly read the lame and puerile "Trust" he lost me with his utterly ignorant discussion of private charitable acts in Southern Italy that seemed oblivious of the role of the Church). His famous soundbite "this is the end of History" about the fall of the Soviet Union seems to display shallow, one dimensional and naive thinking.

[Ecthelion]

If Fukuyama thinks the classical Roman Empire was a glorified village he's exercising his right to be an imbecile. The Roman Empire (as well as the ERE) had dynasties that lasted longer than many modern states have existed.

The church was practically a fragment of Roman administration, albeit in the Dark Ages a severely diminished one.

The relation of institutions in running human society is more complex than anything I've seen Fukuyama express (I admit I've opnly read the lame and puerile "Trust" he lost me with his utterly ignorant discussion of private charitable acts in Southern Italy that seemed oblivious of the role of the Church). His famous soundbite "this is the end of History" about the fall of the Soviet Union seems to display shallow, one dimensional and naive thinking.

Please re-read the post.

And please read the book. It's arguably the best book on the subject I've ever read. I don't agree with everything, but all the major points are spot on.