The main theme of The Fall of the Priests and the Rise of the Lawyers by Philip R. Wood (2016) is that religious authority had declined and was replaced with the rule of law, which is now central to how modern societies define morality, order, and stability.
He uses a catchy phrase, “The Fall of the Priests and the Rise of the Lawyers,” to give us readers the essence of his thesis.
However, like any overarching thesis, there are flaws and exceptions to his thesis.
Firstly, his thesis is very much about the current Western world, which is post-Christian societies which had turned secular.
Secondly, laws had always existed and existed prominently since ancient times.
Laws like the Code of Hammurabi had already existed side by side with religious authority.
The Code of Hammurabi was enacted by King Hammurabi of Babylon, the sixth king of the First Babylonian Dynasty, circa 1754 BCE/BC.
There was already an informal enactment of law in China beginning with the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE/BC).
The first formal law codes in China were already promulgated in the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods (c. 7th–4th century BCE/BC).
Thus, Wood overstates the “decline” of religion.
His thesis assumes a fairly linear fall of religious authority, especially in shaping morality and the rule of law.
That works for the Western world, but not elsewhere, like Asian and African countries. For example, the Islamic religion still plays a major role, and increasingly an outsized role, in Islamic countries.
We see a similar weakness in the highly praised 2025 book by Dan Wang titled Breakneck China’s Quest to Engineer the Future.
A critic says this is ‘The best book on China and America, and, arguably, the best book of the year, flat out.’ With respect, this critic overstates his praise.
Wang’s sole thesis is that China has grown tremendously post-Deng, as “China is an engineering state” ruled by a Politburo of engineers.
He says Deng promoted engineers to the top ranks of government in the 1980s and 1990s. By 2002, all nine members of the Politburo’s standing committee had trained as engineers. (P 2, hardcopy).
In contrast, he posits that America had stagnated as it had become a lawyerly society, blocking everything it could, good and bad. (p xv)
This simplistic dichotomy, while attractive, is seriously flawed. Growth in the US is blocked by partisan politics and by politicians who do not think of national interest but self- interest.
This thesis is also outdated, even as the book comes out in 2025, due to Trump winning the presidency.
Trump’s energetic changes to US policy, like tariffs and military strikes, give the impression that the Biden Administration under Joe Biden was sleepwalking for 5 years.
LWH, 5 Feb 2026, 6 am