Belief, political ideology & public action

Belief, government & public action across history

Beliefs have shaped laws and public institutions for centuries, but religious conviction, political ideology and collective action have not developed as one continuous movement. In ancient Athens, citizens debated public authority through assemblies, while the Roman Republic organized competing offices and legal responsibilities. Participation was restricted in both societies. The important historical distinction is that personal conviction could influence political choices without becoming a government program by itself.

Religious authority and political institutions, 313–1648

In 313, the Roman emperors Constantine and Licinius issued the agreement commonly called the Edict of Milan, granting Christians legal toleration. In 380, Emperor Theodosius I endorsed Nicene Christianity as the empire’s official religious position. These decisions altered the relationship between religious leadership and state authority. Medieval European rulers subsequently negotiated and fought with church leaders over appointments, property and law. During the Investiture Controversy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV contested who could appoint bishops. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia concluded major phases of the Thirty Years’ War and strengthened territorial arrangements, although it did not establish modern religious freedom everywhere. Political institutions and religious communities remained closely connected, but they were not identical.

Case to examine: Spain: housing and tenants’ rights demonstrations. [1]

Protest movements and collective demands, 1789–2026

The French Revolution began in 1789 amid fiscal crisis, unequal political representation and arguments over sovereignty. Its participants disagreed sharply over constitutional monarchy, republican government and the use of force. During the nineteenth century, abolitionists, labor organizers and suffrage campaigners developed petitions, associations, newspapers, strikes and public marches to change law. In the United States, Frederick Douglass argued against slavery after escaping bondage in 1838; the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in 1865. The 1963 March on Washington, associated with A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr., pressed for jobs and civil rights. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 followed years of organizing, litigation and political negotiation. A contemporary housing demonstration likewise may bring together tenants who agree on rent protections but differ on religion, party allegiance and other policies. A march is a public action; it is not proof that every participant subscribes to one comprehensive ideology.

Case to examine: Ennahda and Muslim democracy. [2]

Islamic jurisprudence and political programs, eighth century–present

Islamic legal scholarship developed through overlapping networks of teachers, judges and students across the early caliphates. Abu Hanifa (c. 699–767), associated with Kufa in present-day Iraq, became the namesake of the Hanafi school. His students Abu Yusuf (d. 798) and Muhammad al-Shaybani (d. 805) helped transmit and organize its legal reasoning. The school later spread through Abbasid, Ottoman, South Asian and Central Asian institutions. Its methods concern interpretation of religious law; they do not by themselves prescribe membership in a modern political party. In 1928, Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, proposing religiously informed social and political reform. Abul A’la Maududi founded Jamaat-e-Islami in British India in 1941 and advanced a different program for political order. These twentieth-century movements arose under colonial rule and during debates about modern states, constitutions and social reform. Their goals and strategies changed across countries and periods. The distinction between a centuries-old jurisprudential school and a modern party remains essential.

Case to examine: Hanafi jurisprudence. [3]

Tunisia: elections, constitutional change & Ennahda, 1981–2024

Rached Ghannouchi and Abdelfattah Mourou were leading figures in the Tunisian Islamic Tendency Movement, established in 1981 and later known as Ennahda. Under President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, political repression limited the movement’s activities. Following the 2010–2011 Tunisian uprising and Ben Ali’s departure in January 2011, Ennahda participated in elections and coalition negotiations. It won the largest share of seats in the October 2011 constituent assembly election. Tunisia adopted a new constitution in 2014 after sustained negotiation among parties and civil society groups. In 2016, Ennahda announced a distinction between party politics and religious preaching. President Kais Saied suspended parliament in July 2021 and later consolidated executive authority; Ghannouchi was arrested in 2023. This sequence shows why a movement must be studied through its leaders, elections, institutional decisions and changing legal environment rather than through its religious label alone.

Case to examine: Catholic social teaching. [4]

Christian social thought, labor & party politics, 1891–present

Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum in 1891 as industrialization intensified disputes over wages, property and workers’ associations. The encyclical defended private property while arguing that workers deserved protection and that employers and governments had social responsibilities. Later Catholic social teaching addressed economic development, labor rights and political participation, including in the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). In postwar Europe, Christian democratic parties helped shape parliamentary coalitions and welfare institutions. Konrad Adenauer, West Germany’s first chancellor from 1949 to 1963, led the Christian Democratic Union through reconstruction and European integration. Catholic teaching, a church institution and a Christian democratic political party therefore represent related but distinct forms of activity. Their positions have also differed across countries and decades.

Institutions, citizenship & Western public life

The development of representative government created formal channels through which religious organizations, trade unions, political parties and independent civic associations could influence policy. The United States First Amendment, ratified in 1791, protects religious exercise, speech, assembly and petition while prohibiting a federal establishment of religion. In Britain, the Reform Acts of 1832, 1867 and 1884 expanded parliamentary representation in stages, although equal suffrage came later. After 1945, the United Nations Charter and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights supplied international reference points for political participation and freedom of conscience. These arrangements have not eliminated conflicts over religion and government. They do, however, make it possible to distinguish an individual’s belief from the legal authority of a state, the platform of a party and the conduct of participants at a demonstration.

Related learning

Spain: housing and tenants’ rights demonstrations

Ennahda and Muslim democracy

Hanafi jurisprudence

Catholic social teaching

External Resources