Caesar, God and the Sword

David raises an interesting question "How many religions are still both a religious entity and a political/governing entity?" He goes on to point to examples of blending of the sword and Christian faith (Catholics in Europe, Anglicans in England, Puritans in the U.S.; others could be cited).

Benard Lewis makes a couple of relevant observations.

1) Christianity was in it's early centuries unique in it's distinction between Christ and Caesar. While it's history displays the contrary at times, it retains this as a central core.
"The persecutions endured by the early church made it clear that a separation between the two was possible; the persecutions inflicted by later churches persuaded many Christians that such a separation was necessary" (Bernard Lewis, "What Went Wrong," Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001, p. 96). And again, "Throughout Christian history, and in almost all Christian lands, church and state continued to exist side by side as different institutions, each with its own laws and jurisdictions, its own hierarchy and chain of authority" (p. 98).

2) Middle-Eastern Islam has struggled to make such a distinction in the past century and has only really succeeded in Turkey.
In the Muslim subjugation of Roman provinces, Lewis observes, "Since the state was Islamic, and was indeed created as an instrument of Islam by its founder, there was no need or any separate religious institution. The state was the church and the church was the state, and God was head of both, with the Prophet as his representative on earth" (p. 101).

This observation is also found in Daniel J. Boorstin's "The Discoverers" (New York: Vintage, 1983). He writes, "The all-embracing character of the Muslim faith, which saw no distinction between the realm of Caesar and the realm of God, made the reach of the faith coterminous with the reach of the sword" (p. 123).

The first great secular reformer of the Muslim world, Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, and those who have followed in his wake (in Egypt, Syria and Iraq) have been "denounced as the most dangerous enemies of Islam, enemies from within" (p. 107) by Islamic radicals and militants. And secularization of temporal power is not faring well in the Middle East.

But to David's question, "Can you think of any other religion today that still attempts to govern by force?" It seems to me that apart from Arabic Islam, there doesn't appear to be any other significant blending of faith and state into the sword in the modern world.