emperor worship

121:5.42. Em­peror wor­ship. This de­ifi­ca­tion of man as the sym­bol of the state was very se­ri­ously re­sented by the Jews and the early Chris­tians and led di­rectly to the bit­ter per­se­cu­tions of both churches by the Ro­man gov­ern­ment.

92:6.20An­ces­tor wor­ship one­time con­sti­tuted a de­cided ad­vance in re­li­gious evo­lu­tion, but it is both amaz­ing and re­gret­table that this prim­i­tive con­cept per­sists in China, Japan, and In­dia amidst so much that is rel­a­tively more ad­vanced, such as Bud­dhism and Hin­duism. In the Oc­ci­dent, an­ces­tor wor­ship de­vel­oped into the ven­er­a­tion of na­tional gods and re­spect for racial heroes. In the twen­ti­eth cen­tury this hero-ven­er­at­ing na­tion­al­is­tic re­li­gion makes its ap­pear­ance in the var­i­ous rad­i­cal and na­tion­al­is­tic sec­u­larisms which char­ac­ter­ize many races and na­tions of the Oc­ci­dent. Much of this same at­ti­tude is also found in the great uni­ver­si­ties and the larger in­dus­trial com­mu­ni­ties of the En­glish-speak­ing peo­ples. Not very dif­fer­ent from these con­cepts is the idea that re­li­gion is but “a shared quest of the good life.” The “na­tional re­li­gions” are noth­ing more than a re­ver­sion to the early Ro­man em­peror wor­ship and to Shinto—wor­ship of the state in the im­pe­rial fam­ily.

185:1.3Pi­late’s dis­fa­vor with the Jews came about as a re­sult of a num­ber of un­for­tu­nate en­coun­ters. First, he failed to take se­ri­ously their deep-seated prej­u­dice against all im­ages as sym­bols of idol wor­ship. There­fore he per­mit­ted his sol­diers to en­ter Je­ru­sa­lem with­out re­mov­ing the im­ages of Cae­sar from their ban­ners, as had been the prac­tice of the Ro­man sol­diers un­der his pre­de­ces­sor. A large dep­u­ta­tion of Jews waited upon Pi­late for five days, im­plor­ing him to have these im­ages re­moved from the mil­i­tary stan­dards. He flatly re­fused to grant their pe­ti­tion and threat­ened them with in­stant death. Pi­late, him­self be­ing a skep­tic, did not un­der­stand that men of strong re­li­gious feel­ings will not hes­i­tate to die for their re­li­gious con­vic­tions; and there­fore was he dis­mayed when these Jews drew them­selves up de­fi­antly be­fore his palace, bowed their faces to the ground, and sent word that they were ready to die. Pi­late then re­al­ized that he had made a threat which he was un­will­ing to carry out. He sur­ren­dered, or­dered the im­ages re­moved from the stan­dards of his sol­diers in Je­ru­sa­lem, and found him­self from that day on to a large ex­tent sub­ject to the whims of the Jew­ish lead­ers, who had in this way dis­cov­ered his weak­ness in mak­ing threats which he feared to ex­e­cute.

185:1.4Pi­late sub­se­quently de­ter­mined to re­gain this lost pres­tige and ac­cord­ingly had the shields of the em­peror, such as were com­monly used in Cae­sar wor­ship, put up on the walls of Herod’s palace in Je­ru­sa­lem. When the Jews protested, he was adamant. When he re­fused to lis­ten to their protests, they promptly ap­pealed to Rome, and the em­peror as promptly or­dered the of­fend­ing shields re­moved. And then was Pi­late held in even lower es­teem than be­fore.