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Theocracy is a form of government in which a god or deity is recognized as the state's supreme civil ruler,[1] or in a higher sense, a form of government in which a state is governed by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided.[2] In Common Greek, "theocracy" means a rule [kra′tos] by God [the.os′]. For believers, theocracy is a form of government in which divine power governs an earthly human state, either in a personal incarnation or, more often, via religious institutional representatives (i.e., a church), replacing or dominating civil government.[3] Theocratic governments enact theonomic laws.
Theocracy should be distinguished from other secular forms of government that have a state religion, or are merely influenced by theological or moral concepts, and monarchies held "By the Grace of God".
A theocracy may be monist in form, where the administrative hierarchy of the government is identical with the administrative hierarchy of the religion, or it may have two 'arms,' but with the state administrative hierarchy subordinate to the religious hierarchy.
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The word theocracy originates from the Greek θεοκρατία, meaning "the rule of God". This in turn derives from the Greek words θεός (theos, from an Indo-European root occurring in religious concepts), meaning "god", and κρατεῖν (kratein), meaning "to rule." Thus the meaning of the word in Greek was "rule by god(s)" or human incarnation(s) of god(s).
It was first coined by Josephus Flavius in the first century A.D. to describe the characteristic government for Jews. Josephus argued that while the Greeks recognized three types of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and anarchy, the Jews were unique in that they had a system of government that did not fit into those categories. Josephus understood theocracy as a fourth form of government in which only God and his law is sovereign. Josephus' definition was widely accepted until the Enlightenment era, when the term started to collect more universalistic and negative connotations, especially in Hegel's hands.
The first recorded English use was in 1622, with the meaning "sacerdotal government under divine inspiration" (as in Biblical Israel before the rise of kings); the meaning "priestly or religious body wielding political and civil power" is recorded from 1825.
The word has been mostly used to label certain politically unpopular societies as less rational or developed. The concept is used in sociology and other social sciences, but the term is often used inaccurately, especially in popular rhetoric.
In the most common usage of the term theocracy, some civil rulers are leaders of the dominant religion (e.g., the Byzantine emperor as patron of the head of the official Church); the government claims to rule on behalf of God or a higher power, as specified by the local religion, and divine approval of government institutions and laws. These characteristics apply also to a caesaropapist regime. The Byzantine Empire however was not theocratic since the patriarch answered to the emperor, not vice versa; similarly in Tudor England the crown forced the church to break away from Rome so the royal (and, especially later, parliamentary) power could assume full control of the now Anglican hierarchy and confiscate most church property and income.
Taken literally or strictly, theocracy means rule by God or gods and refers primarily to an internal "rule of the heart", especially in its biblical application. The common, generic use of the term, as defined above in terms of rule by a church or analogous religious leadership, would be more accurately described as an ecclesiocracy.[4]
In a pure theocracy, the civil leader is believed to have a direct personal connection with God. For example, a prophet like Moses led the Israelites, and the prophet Muhammad ruled the early Muslims. Law proclaimed by the ruler is also considered a divine revelation, and hence the law of God. An ecclesiocracy, on the other hand, is a situation where the religious leaders assume a leading role in the state, but do not claim that they are instruments of divine revelation. For example, the prince-bishops of the European Middle Ages, where the bishop was also the temporal ruler. The papacy in the Papal States occupied a middle ground between theocracy and ecclesiocracy, since the pope did not claim he is a prophet who receives revelation from God, but merely the (in rare cases infallible) interpreter of already-received revelation. Religiously endorsed monarchies fall between these two poles, according to the relative strengths of the religious and political organs.
The example which Flavious gave for theocracy, the rule of the Temple of Jerusalem's High Priest, would under the present definition be an Ecclesiocracy, since these (often worldly) priests did not claim to have any revelation or direct connection with God.
Secular governments can also coexist with a state religion or delegate some aspects of civil law to religious communities. For example, in Israel civil marriage is governed by Jewish religious institutions for Jews, by Muslim religious institutions for Muslims, and by Christian religious institutions for Christians. India similarly delegates control of marriage and some other civil matters to the religious communities, in large part as a way of accommodating its Muslim minority. Egypt was run in both a monarchic and theocratic fashion in which the pharaoh was the head priest.
An Islamic state is a state that has adopted Islam, specifically Sharia, as its foundations for political institutions, or laws, exclusively, and has implemented the islamic ruling system khilafah (Arabic خلافة). As such, all Islamic states are theocracies. This includes the states of Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen.
Iran's government is described as a "theocratic republic".[5] Iran's head of state, or Supreme Leader, is an Islamic cleric appointed for life by an elected body called Assembly of Experts.[5] The Council of Guardians, considered part of the executive branch of government, is responsible for determining if legislation is in line with Islamic law and customs (the Sharia), and can bar candidates from elections, and greenlight or ban investigations into the election process.[5]
Following the unification of Italy, The Holy See (commonly known as the Vatican or Vatican City) became the last surviving territory of the former Papal States.[6] In 1929, the Holy See was formally recognized as an independent state through treaties with the Italian government.[6] The head of state of the Vatican is the pope, elected by the College of Cardinals, an assembly of senior Catholic clerics.[6] A pope is elected for life, and voting is limited to cardinals under 80 years of age.[6] A secretary of state, directly responsible for international relations, is appointed by the pope.[6] The Vatican legal system is rooted in Canon Law, and subject to the dictates of the pope and changes to Canon Law made by conferences of senior clergy.[6]
Israel is not a theocracy, but rather operates under a parliamentary system as a democratic republic with universal suffrage.[7] Regardless, Israel is frequently accused of being a theocratic state.[8]
Over 3,500 years ago, according to the Torah and the Bible, the region was promised by God to the descendants of Abraham through his son Isaac and to the Israelites, descendants of Jacob, Abraham's grandson. This Holy or sacred Land is part of an eternal Biblical Covenant between God and the Jewish people..." Since Israel was founded by the Zionist movement as a Jewish state, and Judaism as a religion is often conflated Judaism as a nationality,[8] Israel can have the semblance of guiding theocratic principles in its government. Mitchell Bard writes:[8]
| “ | By blurring the distinction between nationality and religion, Israelis find themselves frequently accused of living in a theocratic state and in many ways it would seem Israel fits the mold of a sacred state. | ” |
Indeed, Israeli writer Gideon Levy writes in a Haaretz op-ed, "Between Stockholm and Tehran, Israel of 2009, with its many religious attributes, is closer to Tehran," closing with "Let's admit that we live in a country with many religious and halakhic attributes. Let's remove the concocted secularist guise with which we have wrapped ourselves."[9] Others point out that Israeli citizens have diverse religions, even as the country only grants instant citizenship to Jews.
Still, such attributes, while appearing somewhat theocratic do not qualify the country as a theocracy. Emanuel Gutman refutes the charge:[8]
| “ | The organs of government and state power neither derive their legal authority from religion or church nor their legitimation from any divine source. It cannot be claimed with any semblance of realism that state and church are coequal partners in the governance of the state. Indeed, all legal powers of the religious institutions and organs are ultimately devolved upon them by the state. | ” |
Though having a state religion is not sufficient to be a theocracy, it is a theocratic aspect. Many countries have a state religion without government directly deriving its powers from a divine authority. The following states, for example, recognize some form of Christianity as their state or official religion (by denomination):
Jurisdictions which recognize Roman Catholicism as their state or official religion:
A number of countries, including Andorra, Argentina,[14] Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Italy,[15] Indonesia, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay,[16] Peru,[17] Poland,[18] Portugal, Slovakia, and Spain,[19] give a special recognition to Catholicism in their constitution despite not making it the state religion.
Jurisdictions which recognize one of the Eastern Orthodox Churches as their state religion:
Jurisdictions which recognize a Lutheran church as their state religion:
Jurisdictions that recognise an Anglican church as their state religion:
Jurisdictions which recognize a Reformed church as their state religion:
The largest and best known theocracies in history were the Umayyad and early Abassid Caliphate, and the Papal States. And as with any other state or empire, pragmatism was part of the politics of these de jure theocracies.
The king in Pharaonic Egypt was a divine or semi-divine figure who ruled largely through priests. Properly speaking this was originally a caesaropapist order, rather than a theocratic one, since the worldly rulers took charge of religion, rather than vice versa, but once the pharaoh (since Ramses the Great) was recognized as a living (incarnated) god both definitions concurred.
Denying the gods of the ancient Greece and Rome was a crime. Furthermore the emperors of Rome were often deified.
In China (until 1911) and Japan (until 1946) the emperor was also regarded as a god.
Geneva, during the period of John Calvin's greatest influence and the Massachusetts Bay Colony of the "Puritans" had many characteristics of Protestant theocracies.
During the short reign (1494–1498) of Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican priest, the city of Florence could have been considered a theocracy. During his rule, un-Christian books, statues, poetry, and other items were burned (in the Bonfire of the Vanities), sodomy was made a capital offense, and other Christian practices became law.
Another ecclesiocracy was the administration of the short-lived State of Deseret, an independent entity briefly organized in the American West by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Its original borders stretched from western Colorado to the southern California coast. When the Mormons arrived in the valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847, the Great Basin was still a part of Mexico and had no secular government. As a result, Brigham Young administered the region both spiritually and temporally through the highly organized and centralized Melchizedek Priesthood. This original organization was based upon a concept called theodemocracy, a governmental system combining Biblical theocracy with mid-19th-century American political ideals, including heavy reliance upon the U.S. Constitution.
The treaty of Guadalupe Hildalgo resulted in the Mexican Cession by which Deseret was incorporated into the United States. In 1849, the Saints organized a secular government in Utah, although many ecclesiatical leaders maintained their positions of secular power. The Mormons also petitioned Congress to have Deseret admitted into the Union as a state. However, under the Compromise of 1850, Utah Territory was created and Brigham Young was appointed governor. In this situation, Young still stood as head of the LDS Church as well as Utah's secular government.
After the abortive Utah War of 1857-58, the replacement of Young by an outside Federal Territorial Governor, the eventual resolution of controversies regarding plural marriage, and accession by Utah to statehood, the apparent temporal aspects of LDS theodemocracy receded markedly. However, — like many Christians, Jews, and Muslims — Latter-day Saints regard some form of theocracy with God as the head (king) of a chiliastic world government to be the true political ideal. But, until the Second Coming of Christ, the Mormons teach in their 12th Article of Faith: submission to the powers that be. But true to their beliefs in individual liberty and moral accountability, they exhibit a strong preference for democratic-republican, representative government as embodied in the Constitution of the United States. See also Theodemocracy.
Montenegro offers a singular example of monarchs willingly turning their power to ecclesiastic authority (Montenegrin Orthodox), as the last of the House of Crnojević (styled Grand Voivode, not sovereign princes) did, in order to preserve national unity before the Ottoman onslaught as a separate millet under an autochthonous ethnarch. When Montenegro re-established secular dynastic succession by the proclamation of princedom in 1851, it did so in favor of the last Prince-bishop, who changed his style from Vladika i upravitelj Crne Gore i Brde "Vladika [bishop] and Ruler of Montenegro and Brda" to Po Bozjoj milosti knjaz i gospodar Crne Gore i Brde "By the grace of God Prince and Sovereign of Montenegro and Brda", thus rendering his de facto dynasty (the Petrović-Njegoš family since 1696) a hereditary one.
The period when Medina was ruled by the Islamic prophet Muhammad is occasionally classed as a theocracy. By 630, Muhammad had established a theocracy in Makkah. Most Sunni Muslims believe that only the Prophet Muhammad was able to be both a governmental as well as religious leader. Other plausible examples of Islamic theocracy might be Mahdist Sudan and the Taliban state in Afghanistan (1996–2001). Most irregular was the non-permanent rule of the Akhoonds (imams) in the later princely state of Swat, a valley in (first British India's, later Pakistan's) North-West Frontier Province. Theocratic movements arose in the Arab world in the 1970s.
Unified religious rule in Tibet began in 1642, when the Fifth Dalai Lama allied with the military power of the Mongol Gushri Khan to consolidate the political power and control centered around his office as head of the Gelug school.[27] Prior to 1642, particular monasteries and monks had held considerable power throughout Tibet, but had not achieved anything approaching complete control, though power continued to be held in a diffuse, feudal system after the ascension of the Fifth Dalai Lama. Power in Tibet was held by a number of traditional elites, including members of the nobility, the heads of the major Buddhist sects (including their various tulkus), and various large and influential monastic communities.[28] Tibet during this period existed as a feudal theocracy, with a large class of serfs (consisting largely of non-noble Buddhist laymen) working on estates owned by monastic leaders and members of the secular aristocracy.[29]
Political power was sometimes used by monastic leaders to suppress rival religious schools through the confiscation of property and direct violence.[27][29] Social mobility was somewhat possible through the attainment of a monastic education, or recognition as a reincarnated teacher, but such institutions were dominated by the traditional elites and governed by political intrigue.[28] Non-Buddhists in Tibet were members of an outcast underclass.[28]
Depictions of a fictional society dominated by a theocracy are a recurring theme in science fiction, speculative fiction and fantasy. Such depictions are mostly dystopian, and in some cases humorous or satyrical.
Christian:
Islamic: