Religion And Power Research Paper

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In what ways does religion mobilize believers? How are they empowered by their beliefs, and to what end? Religion, as a phenomenon, has always contributed to both social conflict and social cohesion. It has the power to mobilize individuals, communities, and nations. Within religious institutions, power is as inevitable and ubiquitous as anywhere else. It can be the power of good, or morally ambiguous potency. Equally, it can come vested or masked as unction or inspiration. To speak of religion is always to speak of some kind of notion of power, whether it be attributed to divine, human, elemental, or cosmic sources. Relations of power are amongst the most significant aspects of any religion, especially when considering its context and cultural intercourse.

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The study of power and mobilization in relation to religion must be rooted in theory, history, and praxis. For example, any consideration of church–state relations inevitably is concerned with control, legitimacy, and authority. It is impossible to conceive of a discussion concerning the origins of the Church of England that does not involve power–relations: those between the Pope and King Henry VIII; between the Reformers and Roman Catholicism; between competing powers at court; between competing ideological and political convictions on the nature of individual salvation and the centrality of the church; vernacular liturgies and scriptures, and their overall hermeneutical control and its centralization; between individual states and their subjects, and their right to any kind of religious choice, including that of dissent. The Church of England—‘by law established’—is a form and exercise of power in nearly every era of its history and at every level of society, from government to parish, from individual to state. To study the church is to study power, in periodic, dispositional, episodic, and latent forms.

Globally, religion operates as a form of power and mobilization almost everywhere. In the USA, although no religion is established (the Constitution separates the churches and State), the outcome of increasing pluralism and secularisation has seen, amongst other phenomena, the mobilization of the New Right, and the movement of Roman Catholicism from a private to ‘public’ denomination, both on a select range of moral issues. As a number of scholars (Haynes, Casanova, etc.), have shown, this is a form of counterpower: the secularization theories (so prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s) have had to capitulate to the rise of a new religious consciousness in industrialized nations. They see modernity not as the harbinger of secularization, but rather of privatization, a by-product of late capitalism. Religion has fought against being squeezed into the private and subjective realm by recovering and reconstituting a public role. It is now a potent force for mobilization on a range of public issues in the political and social spheres. The example of the USA shows that the forces of pluralism, industrialization, and secularization can be combated by religious power at many levels.




In the last quarter of the twentieth century, the competition and association of powers between religion and society (e.g., Bosnia), church, and state (e.g., Ulster) has operated differently but no less dynamically in Europe. In Eastern Europe, religion (mostly Christianity and Islam) played an important role in the diffusion of the communist monopoly. The vociferous activity of some Muslims in Western Europe has questioned the limits of liberalism in politics and education; in Northern Ireland, religious polarization has attempted to hold out against political reconciliation; the conflicts in Bosnia suggest that the purity of religious and ethnic enclaves is prized above any peaceable settlement. Added to this, there is a discernible rise in new religions, sectarian movements, and a patchy but popular inculcation of ‘ordinary’ spiritual ideology, indicating that religion remains a perennial public force.

In Africa, the Middle East, South America, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent and South East Asia, religion has found itself harnessed to many nationalist causes. The symbiosis has often been so intricate as to make the political power play indistinguishable from that of the religious: Lebanon, Israel, Sikh nationalism in India, and Buddhism in Burma are perhaps the most notable examples. The origins of Pakistan lie in religious conflict and differentiation, as does civil war in Rwanda. Equally, it is also important to note that the resurgence of religious identity threatens existing religious powers, especially those allied to the State. Islamic movements in Turkey, Algeria, and Egypt demonstrate that religious fundamentalism is a powerful and popular force for social mobilization. In South Africa, religion has played a vital role in securing peace and democracy following the end of Apartheid; the ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ was birthed in Christian theology, and chaired by an Archbishop (Desmond Tutu).

1. Religion And Power

Sociologically, distinctions between authority and force, and between violence and resistance, will and desire often cluster around the study of power. In political science, power usually is configured in terms of the ability of its holders to carry out their will, exact compliance, exert force, and compel obedience. To touch on authority, as part of power, is to study of relations, rules, and regulations. To focus on force, as another arm of power, is to consider compulsion, threats, and violence. In any consideration of politics, religion, or society, the subject of power (and its legitimacy) is never far from the surface.

The concept of power in social sciences interfaced with any confessional theology has no unity of discourse. Social scientists assess the ‘power of God’ through its social and observable outcomes: constructions of reality, rhetoric, sociality, and activity. On the other hand, believers claim to know and experience this same power personally and communally, in ways that appear to be either inaccessible to or immeasurable for social scientists. Part of the problem is this: ‘power’ is what we call ‘something’: it is primarily a noun, not a verb (Morriss 1987).

Although the verb does exist in the sense that we may speak of empowering, the fact that it is mainly a noun has implications for the way in which ‘power’ is described and studied. All too commonly, power is run together with verbs that are deemed to be its associates. For example, from a sociological perspective, a theoretician like Dahl (1957) describes power by contrasting it with near-synonyms like ‘influence,’ so that power becomes like influence. This becomes more obvious in May’s Power and Innocence: A Search for the Sources of Violence, in which the noun again assumes the characters of the nearest relevant verbs. For May, power is exploitative, manipulative, competitive, nutrient, or integrative (1976). Each of these types of power represents a different level of threat, force, or coercion, ranging from the mutually empowering (integrative) to the potentially violent (exploitative). Thus, ‘power’—at least so far as religious believers are concerned—loses its reality in some sense here, precisely because the verbs are allowed to project on to a passive noun. Perhaps this is why deconstructors of power such as Foucault (1984) have looked at power and seen ‘nothing’—only reciprocal relations. On the other hand, ‘realists’ such as Weber (1947) have seen the concept of power as a ‘highly comprehensive’ schema within sociology for the analysis of circumstances and situations.

Van der Leeuw’s (1938) phenomenology of power also recognises that one cannot prove there is such a ‘thing.’ He suggests that sensitivity to power has been largely forgotten in ‘modern’ society, but in primitive society, power developed into religious monism, which reached its climax in monotheism. In contemporary society, power is not encountered in nature or personality, but in the dispersed forms of social organization. However, the essence of religion is power, driven towards monism, which has a tendency to conflate the psychological with the cosmological, the sociological with the theological: religion is a description of concepts of power and their use.

More recently, and from an anthropological viewpoint, Lewis (1996) has also argued that although religious power assumes many different forms (which may appear to be unrelated or mutually exclusive), it is an appropriate ‘theme’ through which to approach religion holistically. For Lewis, religious power is best understood as a negative force that opposes malign spiritual powers. Thus, the shaman assumes the charismatic role par excellence—being able to exorcize the evil and prepare the way for blessing. In effect, the shaman stands between negative and positive power as a broker, a fixed point of passage and determinacy that both creates and obviates power. Like Van der Leeuw, Lewis cannot ‘see’ power, except in the way that it is related to, and in the social and ritual structures that are based on its assumption.

Thus, and sociologically, the conceptions of power can be divided into two very broad categories. On the one hand, there are those which are asymmetrical, stressing conflict, will, resistance, and the like: social relations are assumed to be competitive, conflictual, and dialectical. A Jihad (‘fighting against unbelievers’) may be understood in this way (Peters 1996). On the other hand, there are conceptions that imply that all may make some gain through power. Here, power is a collective capacity or achievement, born not out of conflict, but communal welfare (Lukes 1978). As McGuire (1992), many forms of Christian nationalism offer ‘social cohesion.’

Although it is helpful to be mindful of these two broad categories, it should be noted that they are somewhat inadequate in the analysis of religion. To an extent, all religious movements have elements of both categories within them. This must be because the religious–social system itself is one of exchange alongside being one of power, which therefore allows for conflictual and communal action together. Beyond this, however, there is no account of subliminal power, which is so critical for an understanding of religious behavior. Power is not just attached to structures and positional personality, but also to nonstructural interaction and roles. Parsons therefore eschews ‘canonically correct’ definitions of power: it actually covers more than it can define. It must take account of magnitude, distribution, scope, domain, and outcomes. Moreover, it must consider resources, skills, and motivations. In considering power and mobilization in religion, the investigator is always close to the analyses of causality, which in turn refers to power; its measurement, exercise, distribution, and impact.

Morriss (1987) suggests that careful attention to the etymology of power reveals its own diversity, prior to any linkage to verbs. Power is ‘ability to do or effect something or anything … energy, force, effect … an active property, capacity of producing … possession of control or command over others … dominion, rule, legal ability, commission, faculty … political or national strength.’ That there is an overlap with verbs about power is clear: but that there is not complete synonymity is also clear. Morriss argues for a dispositional understanding of power. That is to say, power is seen as a relatively enduring capacity within any given object. Dispositional views of power are held in contrast (but not necessarily in opposition) to episodic ideas, that see occurrences or events as specific exercises of power. Morriss (1987) does point out that this power is not something that can be observed. Power is known only by its reification, which is ultimately an indirect but material way of inferring what power might be at work. This conclusion underlines his plea for power not to be studied in isolation: the subjects and objects of power require a methodological tolerance in the spheres of theory and evidence.

Clegg (1989) syncretizes the work of the previous theorists discussed, and effectively constructs an ‘open’ theory of power based on the concept of circuits, nodal points, and agency: it has political, organizational, and theological resonance. Clegg begins his work with an overview of earlier theoreticians such as Hobbes and Machiavelli. This is followed by discussion and critiques of Dahl, Russell, Bachrach, Baratz, Weber, and Wrong, revolving around the ‘two faces’ of power, namely the relationship between ‘intention’ and ‘structure,’ and which enjoys supremacy in society. According to Clegg, these debates, naturally enough, were eclipsed by more substantial models. Lukes proposed a three-dimensional model of power by identifying the centrality of ‘interests’; Habermas focused on ideal speech situations, ideology, and hegemony; Giddens on the relationship between agency and structure in terms of power. Each of these speaks to the religion–mobilization axis.

But Clegg moves beyond each of these explications, working in Parsons, Foucault, and Mann (among others) into an overall integration that respects the dispositional and facilitative approaches to power, besides stressing the vital role of strategic agency. As he states, ‘a theory of power must examine how the field of force in which power is arranged has been fixed, coupled and constituted in such a way that, intentionally or not, certain ‘‘nodal points’’ of practice are privileged in this unstable and shifting terrain’ (1989). This is a critical observation in the field of mobilization, religion, and power, for change is neither predictable or necessary, yet its occurrence is beyond question.

Any discussion about the true nature of power and where it lies will be at the heart of all religious belief. Liberation theology, feminist theology, and other new ‘disciplines’ within religion could be read by some as being mainly in terms of reconstituting the balance of power in ecclesastical and social structures. The Nation of Islam has done the same within a North American context, although this is still developing. These theologies are effectively a form of Revolution and resistance. The effect of the stress on power has led to more self-conscious questioning by some writers, who are beginning to question the nature of the power, that would generally be uncritically appealed to.

With respect to Clegg and Morriss, one of the difficulties of studying ‘pure’ power is that it is not one ‘thing’ to be observed. For example, a nationalist uprising in India may have a religious dimension functioning at many different levels: provision of identity, ideology, legitimization, coupled with notions of sacrifice, taboo, and salvation. Equally, an examination on the origins of Methodism would need to consider the power of mass meetings, the appeal of hymns, testimonies, and religious experience, not to mention the mobilization of displaced rural and agrarian populations in their search for meaning and community. Discerning power in such scenarios is a complex task.

Given the myriad of studies on power and attendant methods, the most practical way forward, especially given the multifarious nature of ‘power’ that occurs within religious movements, is to return to the agents or ‘nodal points’ of power identified by Clegg, and focus on their relationality. The advantage of Clegg’s conceptualizing of power in terms of circuits, flow, and agency is that one can often identify the delimited ‘field’ of power (such as an organization), the directionality of power within the structure (‘flow’ or hegemony), and the specific nodal points of power such as a guru, infallible text or law, or episode (e.g., ‘flashpoint’), as well as the latent forms of power embedded in culture, ethnic identity, and political situations.

This theory of circuits of power does not attempt to marry the ‘nonrealist’ tendencies of Foucault with the ‘realist’ or ‘identification’ trends of someone like Weber or Wright-Mills (although a focus on relations steers a middle course between realist and nonrealist accounts of power). Instead, it describes power in terms of circuits, which are organized through agencies. However, it does allow that the agencies cannot be seen as ‘effortlessly rational or powerful,’ since their ‘carrying capacity is itself opened up for scrutiny in power terms.’ This view of power is more contingent than monolithic. It has space for dispositional, facilitative, and episodic power within the same or overlapping frameworks. This has implications for the study of mobilization.

Dispositional power, as its description suggests, is the tendency or habit of an individual or group: in many religious movements, this is reflected in the ‘grammar of power as a concept’ that helps form the social and religious community, possibly even the State (its identity and constitution). Appeals to an ‘almighty’ God, or the ‘monarche’ of God, or to a ‘Lord,’ or to more specified concepts of omnipotence, have direct social and political consequences. Kings, Queens, dictators, and rulers in many faiths, past and present, have depended on such conflations. Any present sociopolitical governance can be a divine instrument and referrent that is used in the furtherance of subjugation and legitimization.

Facilitative power describes the points of access through which power can be reached, reified, and exchanged. Episodic power can be used to describe the ‘surges’ or ‘events’ of power that may alter the shape, perceptions, or behavior of individuals and groups. Central to these three ‘circuits’ is organization, and many a religious movement is able to demonstrate systematic configuration in each field. For example, the ideology present in postmodern charismatic worship could be said to be dispositional; the charismatic leaders are facilitative; the ‘invocation’ of the Holy Spirit a ‘cue’ for episodic manifestations of power to be unleashed (Percy 1996, 1998).

Episodic power is less easy to identity as a factor within mobilization. Any seminal moment can turn an ordinary crowd into a passionate army. A martyrdom, miracle, or the raising up of a messiah can provide a single moment from which power flows. The declaration of Jihad, the proclamation of a fast, or the threat of heresy to authority can do the same. The very genesis of religious mobilization can be traced back by believers to an event that revealed, defined, and motivated a new community to hold, channel, and disperse power in new and particular forms.

Charisma is also a factor within mobilization. One way of understanding the place of agencies in circuits is to see them as process of power-exchange, a mechanism where power is given up or received, or raw material transformed into a type of ‘power.’ In other words, John Wesley may have been a charismatic religious leader, but he also functioned within a charismatic situation, which he could not entirely control, although he might have directed.

An account for the resurrection of the charismatic religious leader in postmodernity lies, in part, in Weber’s own writings (which in turn is indebted to Nietzsche’s notion of ‘will to power’). Weber differentiated between ‘religion’ and ‘magic’ in the way that he differentiated between ancient and modern. Religion was rational, organized, and functional. Magic was primitive, a legitimate form of domination, and placed power outside ordinary temporal spheres (1947). Within magic, there were prophets, magicians, and shamans. Weber saw the prophet as the most significant bearer of charisma, since their claims were based on personal revelations that ultimately developed a personal following (1965). Yet these distinctions are to be understood as fluid: priests and prophets practiced magic, and there was routinization in the prophetic as much as in the religious. As nearly every preacher knows, propaganda is the highest form of political authority: aims and objectives are seldom met by organization or negotiation, but rather by power and mobilization.

2. Summary: Power And Mobilization

Recent civil strife in Northern Ireland illustrates religion’s capacity to promote both social cohesion (e.g., Corrymeela Community) and conflict (e.g., Ian Paisley’s anti-Roman Catholic rhetoric). Behind this aspect of sociality lies a complex history of the struggle for power and factors in mobilization—both for war and peace. In terms of power, the divisions between Protestant and Catholic are simultaneously elementary and complex. The ‘two traditions’ do not just represent different religions, but rather different politics, histories, and ideologies. In terms of mobilization, the preservation and flourishing of Protestant and Catholic communities has often been cultivated through episodic and dispositional conflict, which has seen many casualties and fatalities. Power and mobilization are deeply intertwined through armed hostility, marches of protest or ritual (Orange Day Parades), sectarian division, and political aspiration. Two ‘civil religions’ effectively have promoted civil division.

Yet the hopelessness of this situation, in which two forms of ‘civil religion’ (in terms of their power and mobilization) have failed to cancel each other out, has given rise to a third option: a peace process. Here, religion has been no less involved, although the forces for power and mobilization have recognized that a political solution should bring a degree of peaceable co-existence between competing religious–sectarian convictions. The emerging and fragile detente serves to remind that the goal for many who first engage in hostilities is actually to end conflict; whether they succeed or not, power and mobilization often end in some kind of settlement.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it still remains the case that some of the bloodiest conflicts known to humanity have been inspired by or utilized powerful religious symbols and ideas. Keeping the faith ‘pure’ and protecting the sacredness of the Koran has given rise to Jihad and fatwah. Promised lands and sacred sites continue to call communities and nations to arm, from Judaism to Hinduism, and from Ulster to Amritsar. Equally, faith and fear in the shadow of the Millennium remain a source of violence and violation, from Jonestown to Waco, from Aum Shinrikyo to the Manson murders, and from the Solar Temple and Cargo Cults through to Heaven’s Gate. In the midst of this, ‘established’ religions continue to war in regions such as the Balkans, at great human cost. The history of power and mobilization in religion is, all too often, a litany of tragic events, a requiem for the human race.

Yet to see religion like this is only to view it from the dark side. Religion remains a vital force in much of the world. Millions if not billions of the world’s population have a ‘religious impulse’; this involves a quest for meaning ‘that goes beyond the restricted empirical existence of the here and now’ (Haynes 1998). Religion inspires; it binds together, creating communities of affinity and affectivity. It offers revival, Revolution, and surprise; and then again respect for the past, remembrance and ritual. Gandhi, Pope John Paul II, and Martin Luther King have been instrumental in turning back tides of nationalism, communism, and racism (even though they have all used a reconfigured form of nationalism and religion to achieve political and social ends). Religion can be an irresistible force that can move the apparently unmoveable. For many, religion remains a viable form of liberation; some hope in the midst of despair.

In spite of the attempts of some sociologists of religion to retain substantial elements of a secularisation thesis (e.g., Wilson, Bruce), religion stands, in many parts of the world, as a protest against and an alternative to ‘secular’ life. Will American Christian fundamentalists, Egyptian and Algerian Islamists, or Hindu nationalists someday become nonreligious? It seems unlikely: religion retains its power, and its capacity to mobilize, evangelize, and scandalize.

Any discussion of power and mobilization in religion must take account of the following dynamics. First, religious groups and communities will perceive themselves as vessels or bodies that somehow hold, manifest, or reify divine power in a particular way, distinguishing themselves from ‘society,’ or perhaps their enemies, or other groups deemed to pose a threat or competition. Second, the structure of the group or community will most likely ‘mirror’ a proposed divine order; there will invariably be a conflation between the offices of leadership and the concepts of deity. Leaders of religious communities are supposed to resemble their gods. Many social communities attempt to correspond to a higher order that has theistic resonance. And yet, no democracy is immune from theocratic comparison; no theocracy can escape the process of routinization, as well as a degree of secularization. Third, there will be some sort of theology of power that will account for how divine power is to be reified and passed on: this is a key determinant in mobilization. Here, leadership, sacred texts, rituals, symbols, or stories play a vital part in moving believers from passivity to passion, and then to power. Every form of transcendence, no matter how ‘other,’ is received individually and communally, and worked out in social and political spheres. Fourth, the power that is witnessed to will be antisocial or suprasocial, requiring believers to be mobilized for change and social transformation whenever they perceive their own sense of divine order to be under threat, or require a new order to be imposed. It is against this background that an Islamic nationalist uprising, or Catholic and Evangelical picketing of abortion clinics, or the work of reconciliation and peace in South Africa and Northern Ireland, are to be ultimately understood.

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