Just as Shakespeare weaves the birth of Christianity into his Roman plays, he weaves conflict over the secularisation of politics prompted by Renaissance humanism and Protestantism into two plays that hinge on the nature of contract and bond(age). The traditionalism of the Judaic covenant, represented by The Merchant of Venice's Shylock, clashes with the Venetian commercial–political order that had previously accommodated it. Measure for Measurerevolves around disturbances of entrepreneurial holiness represented by the conflict between Angelo and Isabella. This continues my general account of the rise of secular nationalism, and political professionalism, out of a struggle between its representatives and opponents with anti- or suprapolitical values. Here the victors are Merchant's Portia, who expropriates Shylock's estate by disguising herself as a loophole-hunting litigator, and Measure's Duke, who manages the threat of Vienna coming apart due to erotic and thanatotic extravagances by incorporating Angelo, Isabella and others into matrimonial institutions.

Contemporary resurgences of religious fundamentalism have reinvigorated examination of the ‘theological–political problem’, which has, Steven Smith explains, ‘two dimensions: Should religion rule politics, or should politics rule religion?’ In the West, this originates in Christianity's peculiar history.