ABSTRACT
This chapter is the small beginning of a larger enquiry into the changing meanings since the sixteenth century of categories such as 'religion', 'superstition', 'politics', 'civil society', 'secular', 'sacred', 'profane' and 'economics'. One aspect of this enquiry is the influence of the colonial context on ideas. Probably the most famous theorist of the essential difference between religion and politics was the philosopher John Locke. He was by no means the first writer to articulate a distinction, and he was adding his voice to a long-running, complex argument among the European elite concerning the nature of the state and civil society. The more general encompassing discourse against which individuals such as Locke and Penn were arguing was that religion means Christian Truth, that Christian Truth is all-encompassing and universal, and that nothing exists or could exist outside religion. For many centuries in English, and deriving from Latin, there was a distinction between canon or church law and secular or common law.
