Religion and the Nation-State

As we have seen, religious faith and the clerical class not only helped societies prevail over other societies, but also contributed to their internal stratification, with each class having a markedly different share of political power and wealth and enjoying rights unequal to those of other classes. As long as this was the prevailing order throughout the world, such classifications were not necessarily a weakness. They may even have contributed to the organization and strengthening of societies and to their ability to dominate others. Today, however, this mechanism has changed, and countries are organized around the structure of the nation-state.

In the nation-state structure, all the people of a country live within a defined territory, under the authority of a state, as citizens with equal legal rights. Equal rights among citizens are not, strictly speaking, part of the definition of a nation-state. Yet because nation-states tend to regard all their people as members of a single nation and seek to unite them around concepts such as “nationalism” and “national interests,” modern nation-states have in practice tended toward greater legal equality among their citizens. Equal rights have thus become a characteristic closely associated with the nation-state.

In this respect, the nation-state has an advantage over older systems of classification based on sex, profession, caste, race, or religion. Under the old structure, the strongest support for the government and the wars it waged came from the most privileged classes—that is, from the race or the believers who, according to religious authorities and sacred texts, were the chosen people and were entitled to the greatest share of everything. When ancient kingdoms came under attack, it was likewise these privileged groups that had the greatest incentive to defend them. For the rest of the population, at least in economic and legal terms, it often made relatively little difference who ruled over them. They had minimal rights in any case, received the smallest share of production, and enjoyed the least protection from the government. Under religious commandments and the laws of the realm, they had little hope of a better future.

In modern nation-states, by contrast, almost everyone has equal rights, and the law provides an approximately equal opportunity for people—men and women, members of different races, and followers of different religions and denominations—to advance and prosper. Combined with development based on technology and trade, the nation-state structure reduces the incentive for war, territorial expansion, and the conquest of neighboring lands, while maximizing the incentive to defend the country against foreign invasion. It creates the potential for a larger population and a broader coalition, encompassing a much greater proportion of the country’s people, to put up a relatively determined resistance against an aggressor if they are armed and organized.

Within the modern nation-state and a model of development based on trade, the clerical class not only loses its former developmental function, but the social classifications imposed by religious authorities on the basis of religious beliefs—and the unequal rights traditionally assigned to men and women, religious minorities, and enslaved and free people—come into conflict with the foundations of the nation-state itself. On the one hand, maximizing the strength of a nation-state requires everyone to regard themselves as legally equal in their entitlement to wealth, opportunities, and the benefits of citizenship, so that they see the country as belonging to them and themselves as belonging to the country. On the other hand, the clergy, because of the ancient nature of religion, may find such equality of rights difficult to accept and may regard it as incompatible with their religious beliefs.

Within a nation-state, the presence of a clerical establishment therefore amounts to the presence of a relatively organized group whose members’ beliefs and worldview may often be at odds with the mechanisms of the nation-state.

By an organized group, I mean a group whose members know one another, maintain relationships with one another, trust one another, obey certain members of the group, and possess an internal hierarchy. Yuval Noah Harari, author of Homo Deus, argues that an organized group of a few hundred people can rule over millions, even when those millions oppose the group. Those millions do not know one another, do not trust one another, and possess no hierarchy through which some obey others and, ultimately, all follow a common leadership. They therefore cannot move effectively toward their shared objective or act collectively. In practice, each of those millions stands weak and isolated before a few hundred organized individuals. [1]

Unity is not achieved through slogans; it is achieved through organization. And organization develops over time, as trust and hierarchy emerge among people who cooperate in pursuit of a common goal.

Such organization can exist within political parties. It can also develop within a clerical establishment. Large numbers of younger clerics may follow a senior cleric who possesses prestige and sanctity, receives greater amounts of religious contributions, and distributes some of those funds among younger clerics. They, in turn, can extend his power and influence among believers, recruit devoted followers for him, and bring them into the organization.

Given this organizational potential of the clerical establishment, together with the particular worldviews inherited by clerics from ancient religions—worldviews under which the equality of all citizens may be rejected—it can be argued that the clerical class always presents a potential threat to the durability of the nation-state structure. This does not mean, of course, that individual clerics cannot, for personal or religious reasons, support the nation-state of their country and endorse equal rights for all citizens regardless of belief, social class, or sex.

Organizations formed within a clerical establishment may always be capable of seizing power when a power vacuum emerges within a nation-state. I think the events following the 1979 Iranian Revolution can be regarded as an example of this possibility. The Taliban in Afghanistan were likewise an organized group of religious clerics who gained access to weapons and, after recruiting extensively among their supporters, have so far succeeded twice in taking control of Afghanistan.