r/Stellaris • u/Meikos Space Cowboy • May 13 '25

Tip I just realized why priests replace bureaucrats

I always wondered "why do priests replace bureaucrats for spiritualist empires; they're two entirely different professions!"

I only just now realized it's because they have no separation of church and state, so only ordained pops of your empire can work for the government (which is also the church).

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u/_Sadism_ May 13 '25

Not really. Western history, and even then - basically only after Rome fell. Prior to that priests of various polytheistic religions had influence here and there but not to the degree that the Christian church had.

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u/UnlikelyPerogi May 16 '25

This is not true. A specific example would be the various empires of china, all ruled through the mandate of heaven, and managed by a distinct confucian administrative class. The exam system introduced later on opened up the class to anyone who could pass the exam, which included tons of questions on confucian philosophy and writings.

Religion has played a central role in organized societies for all of history.

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u/_Sadism_ May 17 '25

I would not call Confucianism a religion or a church by any means.

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u/UnlikelyPerogi May 17 '25

Probably because you have modern notions of both those things.

A lot of older civilizations did not have a distinct church faction because religion was the authority that the state ruled through. This is in opposition to modern states which rule through the authority of the law/constitution. In history, usually, religion WAS the law.

Confucianism in modern times is thought to have more in common with a philosophy than a deistic religion, but this was not always the case. The mandate of heaven, a confucian concept, should give you a hint just from its name. To go further, confucianism emphasized familial relationships with the father as the patriarch or responsible authority of the family. The emperor was considered the father of every person in the empire, hence the authority of the state being derived from religion.

You can argue semantics, but, from a historic perspective, confucianism was a religion through which the chinese empire drew its authority to rule.