“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Growing up under that Constitutional law, even as an amendment, gave me the idea that there were two things, one called religion and the other called government, and that they existed in nature separate from each other. A working knowledge of history shatters that separation, and Philip Jenkins, in his recent book Kingdoms of this World: How Empires Have Made and Remade Religions, shows just how varied and how complicated the interactions between crowns and churches and technology and pilgrimages have been. Christian Humanist Profiles is glad to talk about politics and religion today with Dr. Jenkins.
