Much has been written about the religion and politics of Gulliver's Travels, particularly in relation to the first part, A Journey to Lilliput . Of all the journeys and peoples that Gulliver, the novel's protagonist, encounters during his many adventures, religion plays the most important, albeit superficial, role in Lilliput. This essay seeks to identify and analyze the nature of this role, its relationship to Lilliputian politics and the satirical implications of this relationship. The importance of this issue lies in its potential to contribute to contemporary understanding of early European discourse on secularization, with Gulliver's Travels playing a notable role in this discourse. Furthermore, by presenting an alternative reading, this essay challenges conventional interpretations of Lilliputian religious history, namely that it is "a general fable about the futility of conflicts of opinion in matters of religion » (Lock 97) and “brings to light the senseless disputes between sects on inessential subjects”. » (145). We will argue here that the Lilliputian religious schism specifically satirizes religious differences with political origins, implying that secularization is a favorable solution to such schisms. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Before we indulge in an in-depth explanation of the first part of Gulliver's Travels, it is imperative that the arguments of this essay are first contextualized. The aim of the following remarks on 18th-century Britain is to provide intellectual precedent for the conclusions of this essay, and thus to prove the plausibility of such a reading. Furthermore, as noted in the introduction, the aim of this article is to suggest that Gulliver's Travels plays a notable role in early discourses on secularization; it is therefore imperative to connect the essay's analysis to contemporary intellectual influences. Eighteenth-century Britain was characteristic of most politically linked religious disputes. These disputes undoubtedly arose from the British political system, in which the sovereign was the head of the Church. Consequently, the Anglican Church developed as a body politic. Just like centuries before, during this period the main religious rivalries were between Catholics and Protestants, the latter arising from their political domination and the persecution of the former (Black 125). Moreover, the policy was an instrument for strengthening Anglican hegemony over Catholics and dissenters. This was accomplished by several means, including replacing Catholic officials and landowners with Protestants; the Banishment Act of 1697, which expelled bishops and clergy from Ireland; and the prohibition of mixed marriages (125). In England, sectarianism – and especially Anglicanism against dissent – ​​had a much more egalitarian manifestation due to its political form in the Whig-Tory struggles (131). Whether the religious elements of these disputes were the result of differences in core or subsidiary branches of Christianity is beyond the scope of this article. The takeaway from the above summary is the prevalence of bigotry perpetuated by political power. Against the backdrop of the political-religious unrest of the 18th century, a distinct intellectual trend developed, best exemplified by the work of the English philosopher John Locke, which argued for a contractual political systemsecular (Sambrook 87). Such ideas were promulgated in Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), published more than 35 years before the composition of Gulliver's Travels (1726), and thus available during the latter's composition. Tolerance was a call for separation of church and state. Locke's main argument was that in order to preserve both religious and political interests (of the Commonwealth), it was imperative that the two distinct authorities be separated. Moreover, the proliferation of schisms, he asserted, was mainly due to a conflict of interests "between those who have, or at least claim to have, on the one hand, the concern for the interests of the souls of men, and , on the other. side, the concern for the Commonwealth” (Locke 118). Thus, Locke argued that the British political system of his time was structurally prone to religious schisms. Furthermore, the passage above suggests his belief that such schisms were, at least in some cases, not the result of honest intellectual activity, but rather of pretentious political leaders seeking to achieve Commonwealth interests under cover of religiosity. It is on this basis that this article offers its unique reading of Gulliver's Travels. We will argue here that the schism of the Lilliputian egg is the manifestation of a structural conflict inherent to the Lilliputian monarchy which claims to have, on the one hand, the concern for the interest of the soul of the Lilliputians, and for the another, the concern for the soul of the Lilliputians. of the Commonwealth. Through various creative methods, Gulliver's Travels indicates that the Lilliputian Egg Schism is primarily politically motivated. It is therefore a secular schism cloaked in an ascetic cloak. This is implied both structurally and contextually. First, the text juxtaposes the “two mighty evils” (Swift 42) – that is, high and low heels and conflicts between big and small butts by mentioning both conflicts in the same paragraph, thus linking them in the reader's mind. . Furthermore, the two distinct conflicts are paralleled, both in their causes and in their effects, in the historical account of Reldresal, the Principal Secretary of Private Affairs, who explains that the two conflicts arise from different levels of membership in the tradition. High heels, because they are “most consistent with the old [Lilliputian] Constitution,” are practically excluded from government (42). Similarly, Big-Endians were persecuted due to their strict adherence to traditional religious interpretations (43). Furthermore, we are told that the effects of the two schisms are also essentially the same. Despite the obvious differences in severity, in both cases a policy of exclusion imposed by the dominant group removed the villain from both. The secretary tells us that the king “decided to use only low heels in the administration of government” (42); and as for the Big-Endians, they were "rendered incapable by law of holding employment"; furthermore, their “books…were long banned” (43). Thus, this juxtaposition serves to structurally or visually secularize the apparently religious schism. In identifying the true causes of the egg schism, it is helpful to resolve the text's implicit emphasis on the glaring gap between cause and effect. This gap, and its implications for the reader, can be seen as analogous to a defendant claiming in court that his killing spree was triggered by missing the express bus: anyone listening to such an outrageous claim will instantly assume that there must be a more powerful crime. cause because of the magnitude of the effect. Likewise, the text's implicit assertions about the gross triviality of religious schism, whenare juxtaposed with its great destructive effects, leaving the reader searching for an unspoken alternative cause. This cause appears to be the secular ambitions of the Lilliputian monarch, which are pretentiously perpetuated and extremely insignificant in the pursuit of political autonomy and hegemony. Thus, this explanation serves to fill the “logical gap” produced by Gulliver’s satirical account of Lilliputian history. This point is further reinforced by the text's implicit suggestions of the triviality of the schism, thereby reinforcing the unstated cause. For example, Reldresal suggests that the question of breaking the egg is a "fundamental doctrine of the great prophet Lustrog, in the 54th chapter of the Brundrecal" (43). When examined closely, this statement satirizes the expressed fundamental character of the doctrine. That is, the suggested meaning of the doctrine is refuted in the same clause by saying that it is found in the fifty-fourth chapter. How important can a doctrine be if it is mentioned only once and so late in the text? Again, a likely solution to filling this "logical gap" is to suggest that the Lilliputian political authorities, on which religious authority also rests, amplified and perpetuated this triviality for political purposes, such as justifying imperial aggression against the rival empire, in the name of respect for divine laws. Even if the persecution of the Lilliputian monarch is taken literally and therefore considered a struggle of a purely religious nature, their application of the aforementioned scriptural passage reveals their political ulterior motives of asserting political dominance for secular purposes. This suggestion is made through an excuse clause following the Secretary's "official" interpretation of the verse in question: he tells Gulliver that insisting on breaking the egg at the big end is "a better (sic) tension on the text: For the words are these; Let all true believers break their eggs at whatever end suits them: and what end suits them seems... to be left to each man's conscience, or at least to the power of his chief magistrate to determine. (43). The secretary is actually saying that Lilliputian political authority trumps scriptural and religious authority. This passage contains one of the clearest indications that the monarch's obsession with the egg schism is rooted in his desire to assert the "power of his chief magistrate" and not in any interest in maintaining religious orthodoxy true and scriptural. This revelation undermines interpretations such as those presented in the introduction, according to which the Lilliputian story is a satire of religious controversies and conflicts over trivialities. On the contrary, in addition to asserting the absurdity of schisms over religious trivialities, satire identifies its sources and motivations in the secular domain, thus rendering religious trivialities secular. Finally, the political or secular motivations for the schism are demonstrated through the convenient religiosity of the monarch. The question of religion is absent from the discussions and descriptions of Lilliput and the Lilliputians throughout Part One, with the exception of the final pages of Chapter Four. On the surface, this omission seems unimportant; However, this seemingly trivial fact is indicative of the monarch's convenient religiosity. To be more precise, religion has no relevance to state governance in religious or even secular domains, except when it can conveniently serve secular purposes. More specifically, the reader is only informed of the Lilliputian religion when this information is a necessary means for Redresal to convince Gulliver to help the empire in.