{"id":57707,"date":"2019-06-19T10:00:42","date_gmt":"2019-06-19T07:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=57707"},"modified":"2023-01-12T13:16:05","modified_gmt":"2023-01-12T11:16:05","slug":"the-instrumentalization-of-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-instrumentalization-of-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"The Instrumentalization Of Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[423,503,839,885],"acf":{"old_id":"57707","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":56443,"related_cahpter":"245","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Samuel used his religious prestige to demoralize and deflate the person he viewed, with very little justification, as his undoer","content":"

Besides providing a telling and astute commentary on the complex role of religion in stabilizing and destabilizing political authority, the trap that Samuel arguably laid for Saul in order to undermine his confidence in the future also lets us glimpse the particularly problematic form of instrumentalization that will play such a prominent role in the narrative to come. Following Saul\u2019s first and clandestine coronation, we are told that Samuel commanded Saul to wait at Gilgal for seven days until he arrived to officiate over a burnt offering to God\u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime, the Philistines were mustering for war, and Saul, who had enlisted the people of Israel, was waiting with increasing impatience for Samuel, whose delayed arrival was encouraging rampant desertion among the soldiers\u2026 <\/span><\/p>\n

A sacrifice had to be offered to restore the soldiers\u2019 sagging morale by eliciting God\u2019s assurances about the outcome of the battle, and Saul, who by now despaired of Samuel\u2019s arrival and who was laboring under the pressure of his disintegrating army and the threatening Philistines, initiated the offering without the presence of the prophet. As recounted in the story, the timing of Samuel\u2019s arrival seems far from accidental. He arrived at Gilgal almost immediately after the frantic Saul had offered the sacrifice on his own. (13:10-12). To Saul\u2019s reasonable, distressed, and apologetic account, Samuel offered a rebuke fashioned deliberately to inflict maximum psychological distress (13:13-14). Thus did a venial cultic transgression that could have been excused given Saul\u2019s parlous military posture provide Samuel the opening he was apparently seeking to bring Saul down.<\/span><\/p>\n

Turning worthy ends into dispensable means, including the instrumentalization of religion and the sacred by rivals for power, is a central theme in Samuel, and it surfaces already in this short and harsh encounter\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

After Saul\u2019s first stumble as king, orchestrated by Samuel and wrapped in a religious aura, Samuel, who had anointed Saul, now ominously prophesied the end of his reign… Samuel claimed that a substitute for Saul had already been picked by God, anticipating a divine decision that the reader knows has not yet been made, in order, as it were, to nail Saul\u2019s coffin shut in advance. God\u2019s own voice is notably absent from the drama because, at this moment, God and cult have become mere instruments in a struggle between contestants for power.\u2026Relinquishing power, including the dynastic power to pass on one\u2019s authority to one\u2019s male heirs, is difficult even for a religious virtuoso like Samuel. That competitive emotions swirl violently around the winning and losing of hereditary power seems to be the principal lesson of this episode. <\/span><\/p>\n

Samuel used his religious prestige to demoralize and deflate the person he viewed, with very little justification, as his undoer. What the author of Samuel conveys by this striking episode is how religion, even when sincerely believed, can be instrumentalized in power struggles and how political rivals can shed moral qualms about treating the sacred as just another weapon to be opportunistically deployed in a competitive struggle for prestige and power. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Excerpts from \u201cThe Beginning of Politics: Power in the Biblical Book of Samuel\u201d \u2013 Moshe Halbertal and Stephen Holmes, Princeton University Press, 2017, pp.24-7. By permission of the author.<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":56668,"id":56668,"title":"halbertal-book cover.jpg","filename":"halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/halbertal-book-cover.jpg.png","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/the-fine-grained-phenomenology-of-political-power\/halbertal-book-cover-jpg\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"halbertal-book-cover-jpg","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":56661,"date":"2019-06-02 14:58:58","modified":"2019-06-03 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