Thirty years of scholarship on Saudi Arabia has assumed a fused relationship between religious and political authority at the helm of a petro-state. This chapter questions the fundamental theoretical assumptions about that relationship both historically and in the contemporary era. By examining the tensions between religious violence, the state’s political authority, and the liberal solutions that have emerged to resolve them, the chapter both draws out the ideological lineage of Saudi reformism for the post-Islamist era, while suggesting new ways to conceptualize political power as distinct from religious authority or economic capacity. In the process, the chapter takes stock of Saudi Arabia’s puritan tradition as its monarchy leads the regional drive against Political Islamism.