Chapter 2 expands on the alertness of Christian intellectuals to the question of cultural prestige by reading the orations composed by Julian as Caesar (355–60) in the context of the rhetorical and cultural discourse at the imperial court. Drawing on the current re-assessment of Constantius II as pursuing a reputation as a patron of culture and philosophy, the first section argues that Julian’s early panegyrics reinforce this self-image by celebrating the intellectual synergy between the Augustus and his (famously highly cultivated) new Caesar. I further show that Constantius’ imperial propaganda relied on the assumption that allegiance to Christianity was a key factor in establishing his intellectual authority. The second section considers the writings Julian composed during his Gallic campaign (Second Panegyric to Constantius; Consolation to Himself), when his relationship with Constantius was deteriorating. As Julian increasingly exploits philosophical rhetoric to challenge rather than celebrate the Augustus, the identification of Christianity with intellectual authority becomes a polemical target in his writings, marking Julian’s first expressed disagreements with the idea of Christianity as highest philosophy.

This chapter analyzes how the distinctive institutional environments and their corollary ramifications on religious authority drive religious movements to adopt different strategies in shaping their political activism and creating religious parties, focusing on religious competition and conflict. Islamist movements, unperturbed by a hierarchical religious authority, found the liberty to pursue hybrid organizational structures. This carte blanche to assume religious authority enabled Islamist movements to operate both as a religious movement that serves in religious, social, and educational areas and as a religious party in the political arena. The Church hierarchy, by contrast, forced Catholic mass movement leaders to choose between expulsion and avoiding political activism in the name of Catholicism. Catholic political activists largely responded to this challenge by formally parting ways with mass movements and creating their own Catholic parties without the Church's blessing, ultimately deprived of the ability to rely on religious authority in their political ventures. In addition, this chapter focuses on the implications of distinct organizational trajectories on the electorate.