Religious Transformations and Socio-Political Change (Eastern Europe and Latin America) ||...

Luther Η. Martin

Introduction

Over a century ago, Fustel de Coulanges emphasized the intimate relations which existed in Greco-Roman antiquity between religious notions and socio-political relations (1979: 12). "At Rome, as well as at Sparta and Athens", he concluded, "the state and religion were so completely confounded, that it was impossible even to distinguish the one from the other" (1979: 167). Those practices, both discursive and non-discursive, that today we consider to be "religious" were not discrete but were embedded in socio-political structures and relations; they belonged to the politeia, the corpus of criteria that defined the relation of a citizen to the polis, or state (Herodotus 9.35; Thucydides 6.104). Specifically, these criteria included "adherence to the cult of the gods of the Polis, as well as military and economic service to the State and obedience to its laws" (Ehrenberg 1970: 852). Religion belonged, in other words, to the res publica or, in any case, should belong, as is exemplified, for example, in Euripides' "The Bacchae", his dramatiza-tion of the tragic consequences occasioned in ancient Thebes when Dionysian practice and state policy were perceived to be in conflict. A similar perception of the Bacchanalia in Rome resulted in its proscription by the Senate in 186 B.C. (Livy 39). Roman writers such as Polybius, Cicero, Livy, Seneca and Varro simply took it for granted that religion was in the service of politics and government (de Ste. Croix 1972: 69; 1981: 343). As late as the fourth century A.D., Symmachus, Prefect of Rome and one of the last influential defenders of traditional Roman religion, eloquently argued that when religion is slighted, the entire state suffers (Symmachus, Relatio 3. 15).

Perhaps the most explicit example of the intersection between relig-ious and socio-political practice, however, is the Biblical account of the

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2 Luther Η. Martin

Exodus. Whatever one concludes about its facticity, this story remains, as Michael Walzer has emphasized, "a paradigm of revolutionary poli-tics" (1985: 7), that has been central to such diverse ideologies as Puritanism (e.g., Oliver Cromwell 1845, Pt. 8: 19, 34), Communism (e.g., Ernst Bloch 1972; Lincoln Steffans 1926), and liberation theology (e.g., Severino Croatto 1981) —that is, ideologies that have been so influential in those cultural areas upon which the papers in this volume are focused.

The account of the controversy that finally resulted in the deporta-tion/liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt (Ex. 12: 31—32) can be read socially, as the charter for collective self-awareness as it developed among an increasingly prolific class of immigrant workers (Ex. 1: 7; 2: 13 — 14) that were despised and materially subjugated by the indigenous landowners (Ex. 1: 1 — 14) (the social meaning of revolution is empha-sized by Arendt 1963: 14, 86). Or, it may be read economically, as the confrontation of those who controlled the means of production by those who produced the wealth (Ex. 5: 6 — 8) and who sought to reappropriate the surplus value that had been produced by their labor (Ex. 3: 2 1 - 2 2 ; 11: 2 - 3 ; 12: 3 5 - 3 6 ; Ps. 105: 37; (S imone-Sugarman 1986: 163). Or, it can be understood politically, as a struggle of those victimized, not by the market but by the state, the absolute power of the pharaoh (Ex. 1: 8; Walzer 1985: 30), who imposed "forced labor upon the male population for long and indefinite terms of service under degrading and brutal conditions" (Sarna 1986: 21).

Again, the story might be read theologically, as "the unfolding of. . .divine purpose in human affairs" (Ex. 6: 6 — 8; Anderson 1986: 52), or, from a history of religions perspective, as a tale of conflict between the Israelite deity of which Moses was the commissioned emissary (Ex. 3: 10) and the Egyptian pantheon of which the Pharaoh, as son of Amon-Re, was the incarnate representative (Ex. 12: 12; Sarna 1986: 65, 7 8 - 8 0 ) .

All of these readings of the Exodus account are not only possible, but are, in fact, systemically related. To reduce such events to economic or political explanations is to neglect possible religious implications,



Introduction 3

even as reductions of these events to "hierophany" neglect the rich economic and political conditions that are also constitutive of human societies. For despite the expression or description of these events in religious terms, there was in antiquity, as Cristiano Grottanelli reminds us, "no ideology other than what we call ' rel igion'" (1985: 15). Even for those modern societies in which a notion of religion has been formally differentiated from other social systems, understandings of religion as sui generis, whether formulated as the autonomy of subject matter or discipline, represent the franchised constructs of ideology or theology rather than analyses of real social practices.

A second problem raised by the theme under consideration is the theoretical problem of social change. Social scientists have often attrib-uted conservative tendencies to religion—not always incorrectly, whereas they credit innovation to political strategy. But explanations of change cannot be limited to political initiatives, as the paradigm of the Exodus exemplifies; nor can conservatism be restricted to the religious, as is shown, for example, by the policies of Euripides' King Pentheus.

The theoretical problem of social innovation remains. Connoisseurs of French existentialist films will know that all revolutions are plotted by intellectuals in coffee houses. But a revolution plotted is not a revolution fomented. The unanswered question of revolutionary theory is how practice results from idea; how collective identity and practice is effected among a critical mass of a heterogenous, if not positively alienated, population. It is at this point of understanding collective identities and practice that analyses of the religious and the political intersect. The point is not whether a political or economic system might operate or function as a religious system, but that the confluence of two or more such systems constitute an almost irresistible locus of power, the recognition of which has characterized successful leaders from Alexander, Augustus and Constantine to those modern leaders who invoke religious power to reinforce their own political ends. Our task should not be to trivialize power by claiming an alleged religious function for the political, or a political function for the religious, but



4 Luther Η. Martin

to recognize, describe and produce an analytic of the formations and distributions of power that such confluences of systems have con-structed, and continue to construct.

Bibliography

Anderson, Bernard W. 1986 Understanding the Old Testament, 4th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:

Prentice-Hall. Arendt, Hannah

1963 On revolution. New York: Viking. Bloch, Ernst

1972 Atheism in Christianity: The religion of the exodus and the kingdom, trans. J. T. Swann. New York : Herder and Herder.

Croatto, Severino 1981 Exodus: A hermeneutics of freedom, trans. S. Attanasia. Maryknoll,

NY: Orbis Books. Cromwell, Oliver

1845 Oliver Cromwell's letters and speeches, ed. T. Carlyle. New York: Wiley and Putnam,

de Coulanges, Numa Denis Fustel 1873 The ancient city. A study on the religion, laws, and institutions of Greece

and Rome, trans. W. Small. [1979] [Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.]

de Ste. Croix, G. Ε. M. 1972 "The religion of the Roman World", Didaskalos 4: 61-74 . 1981 The class struggle in the ancient Greek, world. Ithaca, NY: Cornell

University Press. Ehrenberg, Victor

1970 "Polis", The Oxford classical dictionary, 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 851-852.



Introduction 5

Grottanelli, Christiano 1985 "Archaic forms of rebellion and their religious background", in:

B. Lincoln (ed.). Religion, rebellion, revolution. New York: St. Mar-tin's Press.

Sarna, Nahum M. 1986 Exploring Exodus. The heritage of Biblical Israel. New York:

Schocken Books. Simone, R. Thomas and Richard I. Sugarman

1986 Reclaiming the humanities: The roots of self-knowledge in the Greek and Biblical worlds. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Steffans, Lincoln 1926 Moses in red: The revolt of Israel as a typical revolution. Philadelphia:

Dorrance and Company. Walzer, Michael

1985 Exodus and revolution. New York: Basic Books.



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