This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Religion and Political Authority gathers twenty nine doctrines describing how religious and political power have claimed each other, fused, separated or gone to war.
Sacred kingship supplies the oldest cluster. Divine Kingship in Mesopotamia and sacred kingship name the ruler as a figure standing between the human and the divine order, and Devaraja, Chakravartin and Khvarenah name three traditions' own versions of the claim, a disputed reading of Khmer sacred kingship, the Buddhist and Hindu wheel turning monarch, and the Zoroastrian glory marking a legitimate ruler. The Mandate of the Eternal Sky states the Mongol equivalent, kingship licensed by Heaven, and Divine Right of Kings states the early modern claim that a monarch answers to God alone.
Fusion and separation split the largest thread. Caesaropapism and Symphonia name two accounts of Byzantine church and empire, subordination against a claimed harmony. Established Church, Royal Supremacy and National Establishment and State Shinto name three national fusions of throne and altar, and Two Kingdoms and Two Swords are Lutheran and Catholic accounts of where each power's own writ runs. The Spiritual Independence of the Church states the Free Church of Scotland's 1843 claim to answer to no state, and Theocracy, Wilayat al-Faqih, Laicite, Secularization and Separation of Church and State name rule by God's law, a jurist's guardianship over it, and two ways of separating them.
Zionism, Religious Zionism, Religious Anti Zionism, Christian Zionism and Babylon and Zion state five positions on one claim, and Just War, Crusade, Nonresistance and Nonconformity to the World and Sulh-i-Kul close the group on force, a threshold for war, duty, a refusal of both, and Akbar's policy of peace toward every faith.