Voting On or About God

Mario Ferrero

A chapter in Power and Responsibility, 2023, pp 185-201 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This study surveys a range of historical instances of collective decision-making about the choice of god(s) or the theological attributes of divinity. The instances include theological disputations summoned by the Khazar king and by the Mongol khan among representatives of different religions, councils held by several Germanic peoples over the question of conversion to Christianity, and a sequence of councils held by the early Christian church over the theology of Christ and the Trinity. Somewhat unexpectedly, the study finds that familiar concepts and models of voting and social choice can be readily pressed into service to interpret these events, from the Condorcet winner to the lack of it, or the Condorcet paradox, from the Borda count to Condorcet’s jury theorem.

Keywords: Theological disputations; Religious conversion; Christian church councils; Condorcet winner; Condorcet paradox; Condorcet’s jury theorem; Borda count (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-23015-8_10

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-23015-8_10

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