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Theocracy
A theocracy is a form of government in which a single ruler or a group of rulers are legitimised by religion. A state ruled by theocrats is also referred to as a theocracy. Theocratic rulers include pharaohs, the Pope, the Ayatollah, caliphs and the Dalai Lama.
The rulers of the Maya, Inca and Aztecs were also theocratic rulers. This was also observed in the development of states in Central and Northern Europe. The rulers in Central Europe from Charlemagne onwards (from 800) were both secular and ecclesiastical rulers. They appointed imperial bishops and abbots, and even influenced the election of the Pope in Rome. This only came to an end with the Investiture Controversy between 1075 and 1077, began again in 1080 with the appointment of the antipope Clement III, and then ended in 1122.
The emperors in China were theocratic during the Shang dynasty (1617 BC to 1046 BC) and declared the imperial family to be sons of heaven. From the Zhou dynasty (1046 BC to 256 BC) onwards, the title of the emperors was also Son of Heaven.
The emperors of Japan were also theocrats. They were seen as descendants of the goddess Amaterasu. Amaterasu is the most important god in Shintoism. She is the personification of the sun. Her grandson Ninigi was sent to earth to grow rice and rule the land. His great-grandson, in turn, was the first emperor of Japan and the ancestor of all subsequent Japanese emperors. It was not until 1945 that Emperor Hirohito (1901 to 1989) declared, at the request of the occupying forces in Japan at the time, that he was not divine.
Advantages and disadvantages of a theocracy
The advantage of a theocracy over a monarchy is its stronger legitimacy as the child of God, successor to God or representative of God on earth, compared to the pure legitimacy based on descent from the royal family. No one can question the rule of a person that is deeply rooted in the understanding of the population and based on religion without coming into conflict with the population. This also includes influential individuals and groups within the state who support the ruler of a country with money, resources, services or military force. They, in turn, can justify their own position of power by claiming that they have been legitimised by the ruler, who is divinely legitimised. This means that their own position of power is also not questioned. In the case of a monarch, legitimacy is weaker, as monarchical dynasties have repeatedly been replaced with little difficulty. This also weakens the stability of the position of power of influential individuals and groups.
The disadvantage of theocracy is that rulers were usually elected by a group of defined individuals. This repeatedly led to civil wars, which various influential families repeatedly supported. As a result, electoral systems were often converted to hereditary systems for rulers. But even in the dynasties of the pharaohs in Egypt, where the children of the pharaohs were chosen as successors, the dynasties did not remain stable in power. There were 30 dynasties from Pharaoh Aha of the first dynasty (c. 3000 BC) to the last Egyptian pharaoh, Nectanebo II (359 BC to 341 BC). This means that, on average, a dynasty remained in power for less than 100 years. The pharaohs also repeatedly died unnatural deaths, which suggests a certain instability of rule, even though theocracy conferred a very powerful legitimacy.
In addition, there were repeated conflicts between the influence of religious leaders on political decisions and the influence of secular rulers on religious organisations. This promoted the separation of state and religion in order to separate the spheres of power of religious leaders and secular leaders.
Secularism and theocracy
Secularism, i.e. the separation of secular and religious matters, began as early as ancient Greece in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. At that time, cultic and religious content began to be separated from the art of acting in the theatre. Separations between secular rule and religious leadership occurred, for example, through the division of spheres of influence between the Pope and the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation in the 12th century. Secularisation also refers to the confiscation of church property through the dissolution of monasteries in England in the 16th century and during the French Revolution in the 18th century.
However, secularisation in the sense of demanding a separation between state and religion only began with the transition of monarchies to democracy and not with the transition of theocracies to monarchies.
