Sacred kingship has been the core political form, in small-scale societies and in vast empires, for much of world history. This collaborative and interdisciplinary book recasts the relationship between religion and politics by exploring this institution in long-term and global comparative perspective.
In Sacred Kingship in World History, contributors from a remarkably diverse array of disciplinary backgrounds reconsider the relationship between religion and kingship by assessing, testing, stretching, and complicating Alan Strathern's model of kingship under immanentist and transcendentalist circumstances. The volume stands out because of the intellectual virtuosity of the editors and contributors.