ABSTRACT
Norms and values justify and direct government policy and administration. Norms are fundamental to government legitimacy and help direct power and interest considerations. One powerful source of norms lies in the experience of the holy or sacred that manifests through religious authority and belief. The world view and norms of religion can define a world of good and evil and place government, policy, and administration within that world. Forms of theocracy invoke God to legitimize and guide government action. Holiness sanctifies state action, and state actors are controlled by either accountability to the religious institutions or by religious control of official posts. Theocracy resolves many normative tensions in the state by uniting sacred and secular, and government expresses the norms and project of the sacred. The clerical estate and government class conflate in making and implementing laws, and government ethics carries both divine and secular warrant and sanction.
