The world would be better off if organized religion didn’t exist. Christianity is a prime example of a religion invented to justify the imperial impulse. The expansion of the Christianized Roman Empire, the medieval crusades, and the modern missions movement are perfect examples of using religion to justify domination and oppression. Being spiritual is alright; being religious isn’t. That’s why it’s so wonderful to imagine a post-religious world.
I’ve heard each of these arguments before in various forums. As it turns out, historical analysis shows nearly every statement on that list is wrong.
In Kingdoms of This World: How Empires Have Made and Remade Religions, Philip Jenkins, distinguished professor of history at Baylor University, affirms historical connections between religions and empires. However, Jenkins argues that the formative pressure between them pushes in both directions. His argument brings nuance to perpetual debates about the relationship between politics and religion that will benefit both general readers and specialists. Jenkins explains the nature of empires, demonstrates how the empires shape religions, and disrupts contemporary cultural narratives about the historical hegemony of empires and religions.
Redefine Empire
The connection between empires and Christianity baffles some scholars, especially when the New Testament’s anti-imperial elements are considered. John’s Revelation, for example, contains thinly veiled critiques of the Roman empire. Some theologians, especially those from the Anabaptist tradition, see Constantine’s conversion or the formal adoption of Christianity by the Roman Empire as the point when Christianity fundamentally changed.
There’s no question that empires influence religions. “Empires are an inescapable component in the making, remaking, and rethinking of the world’s faiths,” Jenkins writes. “To varying degrees, all those religions exist in what we might call a postimperial environment” (3). Yet this is true not just of Christianity but of all world religions. Even religions that have never dominated an empire have been formed by imperial realities because of the very nature of empires.
According to Jenkins, the key elements of an empire include “one society extending its power over others, diversity of populations and territories, and geographical scope” (22). This definition certainly covers traditional military empires, but it also includes economic empires where trade and finance are primary tools of influence. More broadly, it encompasses contemporary empires, where modern, secular Westerners demand traditional cultures adopt LGBT-affirming policies or face sanctions.
Historically, Jenkins argues, “imperial ideologies did matter” (36). Yet in most cases, empires were incapable of enforcing anything like total religious control. Even if rulers intended to proselytize through military might and political power, the result was often much different from what they expected. The confusing mishmash of religious influences Rudyard Kipling represents in his novel Kim is more typical of an empire than not. Imperial religions changed as they were contextualized to new cultures. In many cases, the peace and prosperity of an empire created space for undesired religions to flourish.
Empires Shape Religions
Christianity is a classic example of a religion that flourished despite imperial attempts to crush it. The Pax Romana enabled Paul’s journeys to take place along a network of roads built by the oppressor. Similarly, Jenkins writes that in the hostile Persian empire, “Christian communities flourished in the empire’s booming cities, which they made the seats of church organizations” (71). Though the Persian empire fell, Christianity has continued to grow. At the same time, Jenkins argues, imperial peace allowed the rise of Manichaeanism, which plagued Christianity for centuries.
Christianity is a classic example of a religion that flourished despite imperial attempts to crush it.
More recently, “British rule [in the 19th century] certainly expanded the reach of Christianity, but it also promoted the worldwide dissemination of other faiths, including Judaism and Hinduism” (171). The prominence of the Bhagavad Gita as sacred Hindu scripture is due, in part, to its usefulness in countering the “pocket New Testaments distributed by Christian proselytizers” (191).
Ironically, the British and Dutch dominance over pirates in the Mediterranean helped theological reforms in Islam take place in a broad geographic region. This made something like a transnational Islamic unity possible. The peace the Europeans imposed, Jenkins writes, “made it far easier for Muslims from remote territories to make the once near-impossible pilgrimage to Mecca and even to travel more widely through the Muslim Middle East” (175).
According to Jenkins, ever alert for potential sociological and geopolitical drivers of theological shifts, the dominant religions of empires were changed through contextualization. Christianity, for example, “naturally borrowed its depictions of Christ and the saints” from Greek and Roman artistic ideals (183). More significantly, there are clear cases where the cult of Roman Catholic saints was adopted syncretistically as a way to preserve elements of native religions.
Disrupt Cultural Narratives
In our cultural moment, the word “empire” has a nearly universal negative connotation. For most Americans, the word conjures images of plastic-clad stormtroopers and Darth Vader. Yet Jenkins disrupts this caricature by reminding readers of the many benefits empires have brought throughout history, displayed with satirical potency by Monty Python in Life of Brian. “Empires spark social revolutions,” Jenkins observes (32). Jenkins also reminds critics of the Great Commission as a form of imperialism that “Christian missions build and extend empires; but they also help end them” (141).
Jenkins is far from whitewashing the historical problems of religious violence and political oppression. Yet he offers an extensively researched account that disrupts the revisionist histories that either lionize or demonize religion and empires. This book, like Tom Holland’s Dominion, shows that reducing historical analysis to debates about power dynamics produces an inadequate explanation of our contemporary social realities. At the same time, though indirectly, Jenkins’s explanation of the influence of empires on the religions they sponsor should give proponents of a renewed Christendom pause. It’s unlikely to end the way they hope.
Jenkins disrupts the revisionist histories that either lionize or demonize religion and empires.
Kingdoms of This World is a reminder that history is complex. Monocausal explanations or unidirectional theories of influence are almost always incorrect. The book contributes substantially to the conversation because it’s the first attempt at a “systematic history of the relationship between religion and empire” (17). Historians, apologists, theologians, pastors, and those simply seeking to understand our world better will benefit from reading this well-written, thoroughly enjoyable volume.
