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483 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 9 (1986)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0483 and id is 1 raw text is: PREFACE The struggle between religions and states has been a long one. For much of human history the ruler has played both a temporal and a priestly role, and the dualism was, in those times, resolved. At other times, however, political leaders have needed religion as a popular motivating force to legitimize their power. Religious leaders, in turn, have extracted from political leaders, and from society as a whole, whatever price they could in favor of their beliefs. This mutual dependence-or exploitation-has led each to sacrifice a measure of power, sometimes to the point where religious and political leadership have become, once again, identical. Religion being by definition concerned with God and the supernatural, and belief being the evidence of things unseen, there is always room for the creation of new religions and for reinterpretations of the old. Politicians, on the other hand, are committed to the stability of their rule. Consequently the conflicts between the religious impulse and the state's conservative power are perennial, as is the tension between competing religious ideologies.' The situation at any moment remains in flux. It is the work of political scientists and theologians, respectively, to clarify the role of politics and religion in a given society. RELIGION AND SOCIETY For many Westerners, the classic statement on relations between religion and the state is found in Matthew 22: 21: Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. This neat division, however, did not settle the matter for all Christian societies, as some of the articles in this volume illustrate, and the relationship between religion and the state is equally unsettled in other parts of the world, whatever the dominant religion. Even in states where the Muslim religion is the established, state religion, these kinds of tensions continue to arise. For Alexis de Tocqueville, the American method of dealing with this relationship seemed the surest and most felicitous. The United States' founding fathers, mindful of the history of Europe, had said in the First Amendment to the Constitution that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. By 1835, Tocqueville believed, this arrangement was working smoothly and had actually strengthened religion in America: When a religion seeks to found its sway only on the longing for immortality equally tormenting every human heart, it can aspire to universality; but when it comes to uniting itself with a government, it must adopt maxims which apply only to certain nations. Therefore, by allying itself with any political power, religion increases its strength over some but forfeits the hope of ruling over all.2 1. See, for example, Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p. 321. 2. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1969), pp. 294-301. 9

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