Religious institutions, values and cosmologies played a central role in establishing the foundations for and production of knowledge in medieval and early modern societies. In part, this control over knowledge production was a function of the special status of religious functionaries in largely illiterate societies, the role of religious institutions in preserving languages (Greek, Latin and Arabic), and the role of religious beliefs in legitimating political power. The original language of revelation has subsequently played a dominant social and cultural role, especially in terms of religious missions. In Islam, the Arabic of the Qur’an is held to be untranslatable and hence Arab-speaking intellectuals in Muslim countries have significant prestige and authority. Religion has also for a great variety of different political regimes normally played a major role in legitimating power through its collective rituals and institutions. This relationship between state and religion can be very close – in what Max Weber called, for example, ‘caesaropapism’ – or it can be somewhat distant – in the majority of modern liberal democracies, especially in the constitutional monarchies. The parallel between God and people, king and subjects and husbands and their families formed the basis of patriarchal theories of power throughout the West (Schochet, 1975). But whether close or distant, the relationship appears to be resilient, despite the process of secularisation. Although there is a general impression, especially in the United Kingdom, that with secularisation religious issues and perspectives have been excluded from public debate, in recent history religion has continued to play a powerful political role in societies as different as Poland and the United States (Casanova, 1994; Zubrzycki, 2006).