Gulliver's Travels: The Role of Religion in Lilliput Politics

Much has been written about the religion and politics of Gulliver’s Travels, specifically in relation to
Part I, A Voyage to Lilliput. Of all of the voyages and peoples that Gulliver, the protagonist of the
novel, meets during his several adventures, religion plays the largest role -- albeit a superficial one --
in Lilliput. This essay seeks to identify and analyze the nature of this role, its relationship with
Lilliputian politics, and the satiric implications of that relationship. The significance of this question lies
in its potential for contributing to contemporary understandings of primitive European discourse on
secularization, with Gulliver’s Travels playing a noteworthy role in that discourse. Moreover, by
presenting an alternative reading, this essay challenges conventional interpretations of Lilliputian
religious history, namely that it “is a general fable on the futility of fighting about opinions in religion”
(Lock 97) and “highlights the senseless disputes between sects about inessentials” (145). It will be
argued herein that the Lilliputian religious schism satirizes specifically those religious differences with
political origins, thus implying that secularization is a favorable solution to such schisms.

Prior to our indulging in a thorough explication of Part I of Gulliver’s Travels, it is imperative that this
essay’s arguments are first contextualized. The aim of the following remarks on eighteenth-century
Britain is to provide an intellectual precedent for this essay’s findings, and thus prove the plausibility
of such a reading. Moreover, as stated in the introduction, the aim of this paper is to suggest that
Gulliver’s Travels plays a noteworthy role in primitive discourses on secularization; thus, connecting
the essay’s analysis with contemporary intellectual influences is imperative.

Eighteenth-century Britain was characteristic of most politically tied religious feuds. Undoubtedly such
feuds stemmed from the British political system, in which the sovereign was the head of the Church.
Consequently, the Anglican Church developed as a political body. Just as they were centuries prior,
during this period, the main religious rivalries were with Catholics and Protestants, with the latter
rivalry owing to their political dominance and persecution of the former (Black 125). Moreover, politics
was an instrument of enforcing Anglican hegemony over Catholics and Dissenters. This was
accomplished by several means, including the replacement of Catholic officials and landowners with
Protestants; the Banishment Act of 1697, which drove bishops and clergy out of Ireland; and the
prohibition of mixed marriages (125). In England, sectarianism -- and specifically, Anglicanism against
Dissent -- had a much more egalitarian manifestation due to its taking a political form in the
Whig–Tory struggles (131). Whether the religious elements of such feuds were a result of differences
in the essentials or in the subsidiary branches of Christianity is a question beyond the scope of this
paper. What should be taken from the above summary is the prevalence of sectarianism perpetuated
by political power. In the background of the eighteenth-century religio–political turmoil, there
developed a distinct intellectual trend best exemplified in the works of the English philosopher John
Locke, which argue for a secular contractual political system (Sambrook 87). Such ideas were
promulgated in Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration (1689), published more than 35 years prior to
the composition of Gulliver’s Travels (1726), and thus available during the latter’s composition.
Toleration
was a clarion call for the separation of church and state. The main thrust of Locke’s argument was
that in order to preserve both religious and political (commonwealth) interests, it was imperative that
the two distinct authorities be separated. Moreover, the proliferation of schisms, he argued, was
principally owed to a conflict of interest “between those that have, or at least pretend to have, on the
one side, a concernment for the interest of men’s souls, and, on the other side, a care of the
commonwealth” (Locke 118). Thus, Locke argued that the British political system of his time was
structurally prone to religious schisms. Furthermore, the above passage suggests his belief that such
schisms were at least in some instances not the result of honest intellectual activity, but rather of
pretentious political leaders seeking to achieve commonwealth interests under the guise of religiosity.
It is upon this premise that this paper provides its unique reading of Gulliver’s Travels. It will be
argued herein that the Lilliputian egg schism is the manifestation of a structural conflict inherent in the
Lilliputian monarchy that pretends to have, on the one side, a concernment for the interest of
Lilliputians’ souls, and on the other side, a care of the commonwealth.

Through various creative methods, Gulliver’s Travels indicates that the Lillliputian egg schism is
essentially politically motivated. Thus, it is a secular schism dressed in an ascetic cloak. This is
implied both structurally and contextually. First, the text juxtaposes the “two mighty Evils” (Swift 42) --
i.e., the high and low Heels and the Big- and Little-Endian conflicts by mentioning the two conflicts in
the same paragraph, thereby connecting them in the reader’s mind. Moreover, the two distinct
conflicts are paralleled, in both cause and effect, in the historical account of Reldresal, the Principal
Secretary of Private Affairs, who explains that both conflicts stem from different levels of adherence to
tradition. The high Heels, owing to their being “most agreeable to ancient [Lilliputian] Constitution,”
are virtually excluded from government (42). Similarly, the Big-Endians have been 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. Notwithstanding the obvious differences in
severity, in both cases a policy of exclusion enforced by the dominating group has suppressed the
meaner of the two. The Secretary tells us that the King “hath determined to make use of only low
Heels in the Administration of the government” (42); and with respect to the Big-Endians, they have
been “rendered incapable by Law of holding Employments”; in addition, their “Books ... have been
long forbidden” (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 gross gap between cause and effect. This gap, and its implications to the reader, can be seen as
analogous to a defendant arguing in court that his murder spree was sparked by missing the express
bus: anyone listening to such an outrageous claim will instantly assume that there must be a more
potent cause due to the greatness of the effect. Similarly, the text’s implicit assertions of the gross
triviality of the religious schism, when juxtaposed with its great destructive effects, leave the reader
searching for an unstated alternative cause. This cause seems to be the Lilliputian monarch’s secular
ambitions, which are pretentiously perpetuated and maximally trivial in pursuit of political autonomy
and hegemony. Thus, this explanation serves to fill the “logic gap” produced by Gulliver’s satiric
account of Lilliputian history. This point is further enforced by the text’s implicit suggestions of the
triviality of the schism, thus reinforcing the unstated cause. For example, Reldresal suggests that the
matter 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
fundamentality of the doctrine. That is, the suggested significance of the doctrine is refuted in the
same clause by his 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 “logic gap” is the
suggestion that the Lilliputian political authorities, with whom religious authority also rests, have
amplified and perpetuated this triviality for political means, such as justifying imperial aggression
against the rival empire, in the name of upholding divine laws.

Even if the Lilliputian monarch’s persecution is taken at face value and thus deemed a purely
religiously natured struggle, their application of the aforementioned scriptural passage reveals their
ulterior political motives of asserting political dominance for secular goals. This suggestion is made
through an apologetic clause following the Secretary’s “official” interpretation of the verse in question:
he tells Gulliver that insisting on breaking the egg on the big end is “a meer (sic) Strain upon the Text:
For the Words are these; That all true Believers shall break their Eggs at the convenient End: and
which is the convenient End, seems ... to be left to every Man’s Conscience, or at least in the Power
of their chief Magistrate to determine” (43). The secretary is effectively saying that Lilliputian political
authority overrides 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 their chief Magistrate” and not in any interest in upholding a true, scripturally sound
religious orthodoxy. This revelation undermines interpretations such as those presented in the
introduction, which argues that the Lilliputian history is a satire on religious controversies and conflicts
over trivialities. Rather, in addition to affirming the absurdity of schisms about religious trivialities, the
satire identifies its sources and drives in the secular realm, thus rendering religious trivialities secular.

Last, the political or secular motives of the schism are shown through the monarch’s convenient
religiosity. The matter of religion is absent in discussions and descriptions of Lilliput and Lilliputians
throughout Part I with the exception of the last few pages of Chapter Four. On the surface, this
omission appears unimportant; however, this apparently trivial fact is indicative of the monarch’s
convenient religiosity. To elaborate, religion is irrelevant to the governing of the state in religious or
even secular matters except when it can conveniently serve secular goals. More specifically, the
reader is only informed of Lilliputian religion when such information is a necessary means for
Redresal to convince Gulliver to aid the empire in their imperial efforts against “two mighty Evils.” If
true religiosity is absent in the political realm in matters not tied to imperial interests, such as those
covered in Chapters One through Three, then it seems suspicious that they will only suddenly gain
primacy when land, money, and power are at stake. Thus, Gulliver’s Travels is indeed more of a
satire of secular-based “religious” schisms, or scrambled schisms, than a satire of earnestly religious-
based schisms over trivialities like broken eggs.

By situating this reading within the eighteenth-century context in which it belongs, and in which
Lockeian thoughts of governmental secularization also belong, the greater message behind the
scrambled schism satire becomes obvious. Part I portrays the monarch’s endowment with religious
authority as being detrimental to the religion, its practitioners, and the nation as a whole; Gulliver’s
Travels thus serves to suggest that the solution to this dilemma is structural, meaning that it may only
be rectified by means of structural changes -- namely, the separation of secular and religious
authority as proposed by Locke’s Letter Concerning Toleration. This final rung in the interpretation of
the Lilliputian schism adds to the greater significance of Gulliver’s Travels as a novel that helped to
usher in the age of secularization. Moreover, this novel can thus be considered as a significant source
of knowledge about primitive discourse on modern Western secularization.

Works Cited
1. Black, Jeremy. Eighteenth Century Britain: 1688-1783. England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. Print.

2. Lock, F. P. The Politics of Gulliver’s Travels. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. Print.

3. Locke, John. The Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration. New York:
Dover Publications Inc, 2002. Print.

4. Sambrook, James. The Eighteenth Century: Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature
1700-1789. London: Longman Publishing Group, 1993. Print.

5. Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver’s Travels. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Print.

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