Ekklesia: Three Inquiries in Church and State

This volume from the University of Chicago Press's Trios series offers three essays that complicate Eurocentric treatments of church-state relations. These case studies demonstrate that in the New World religion and government were inescapably entangled in the constituting of new peoples. The Greek concept of ekklesia, a called-out community, with its rituals, ceremonies, symbols, and exclusions, provides the central theme. The authors, a trinity of established scholars, were brought together by the American Academy of Religion and mutual interests in religion, anthropology, and comparative and legal studies. Paul Christopher Johnson, in the first essay, details the creation of the Brazilian community drawn to the prophet-like Antônio Conselheiro at Canudos and the suppression of this group by the new republic in 1897. Johnson analyzes the material culture, rituals, poetry, and songs of rival ekklesia, one claiming to be the people of the new republic and the other unfairly labeled a horde. Conflicts over taxation, race, monarchy, civil marriage, and the authority of church and state led to the sacrifice of thousands. Now part of Brazil's national narrative, the story of Canudos's destruction by church and state demonstrates the complexity of their relationship. As does Pamela E. Klassen's essay in which she analyzes treaties between Canadian authorities and Native Americans and their significance in creating unique church-state relations. Klassen also focuses on material culture, detailing the physical description of King George III's Royal Proclamation of 1763 and Elizabeth II's ring of reconciliation ceremony in 2016. Indigenous peoples' celebration of these objects as ongoing, sacred promises demonstrates the significance of treaties in defining a people and fits nicely with the ekklesia theme. Already complex by the nature of the commonwealth government, Canadian church-state relations are even messier when native people are considered, as they must be. The third essay, by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, argues that banning Bibles from the jury room in the penalty phase of a trial gives the illusion that decisions will be rational and uninfluenced by religion. The real concern, however, is not the presence of a Bible that may unduly influence jury members and thus violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment, but that the jury called out from among the people to make life and death decisions are given little guidance for how they should make such decisions. Some figures, such as Antonin Scalia, have argued that Americans still favor the death penalty because of their largely Christian sensibilities about sin, punishment, and personal responsibility. But Sullivan suggests it is instead uncertainties of sovereignty that perpetuate the death penalty in America.

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