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State and Religion in Athenian Inscriptions*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2009

P. J. RHODES
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In our present-day secular society, which regards religion as an optional extra for those who like that sort of thing, it is trumpeted as a great discovery that, in classical Greece, religion was not an optional extra detached from the rest of society's working but was ‘embedded’ in the various workings of society. It is of course our society that is exceptional: religion has been embedded in most societies through most of human history. Christianity was far more effectively embedded in western societies in the past than it is now; there are still some links in England between the Church of England and the state, and there are rather stronger links in Norway between the Lutheran church and the state; some Christian festivals are still widely observed as public holidays; and, in other parts of the world (for instance, many countries in which Islam is the predominant religion), the links between religion and state are still much stronger.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 56 , Issue 1 , April 2009 , pp. 1 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2009

References

* This article is revised from the paper which I read to the meeting of the British Epigraphy Society in Durham on 3 May 2008. My thanks to Dr P. Ceccarelli and Dr T. Kaizer, for organizing the meeting and inviting me to speak at it; and to all who heard the paper and discussed it with me, expecially Dr S. D. Lambert and Prof. R. C. T. Parker.