Religion and Power by Martin David

Religion and Power by Martin David

Author:Martin, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ashgate Publishing Ltd
Published: 2014-03-14T16:00:00+00:00


Conclusion

In contemporary usage charisma has broken free from its specific theological and social scientific meanings to become a floating signifier, and that immediately implies the central relevance of charisma to all kinds of power – whether malign or benign, whether religious, national or political. Charisma indicates the presence of power and the power of presence, and the two are often one.

If I were to pursue the issue of Founding Fathers and their relationship to charisma and narrative, I would look at rival claims to succession and alternative genealogies: for example in Hungary, where one genealogy goes back to St. Stephen and St. Stephen’s crown; one to Louis Kossuth, nationalist hero drawn from the marginal religion of Lutheranism; and one to Béla Kun, the Jewish communist. I would also look at the revival of semi-mythic Founding Fathers, as part of a nationalist move to displace more recent genealogies, defined as alien and oppressive, whether religious or political. This move is congruent with neo-primitivism in modern art and iconography. I am thinking of the quasi-worship of figures like Genghis Khan and Timur the Lame in the Central Asian republics; the reference back to folk narratives in Europe, such as the Kalevala; and the revival of pre-Columbian figures in Central and South America. The revival of the Kalevala in Finland reminds us that a Founding Father of a nascent nationalism can be a musician, as was Sibelius, the writer of the national hymn, Finlandia. Curiously enough, one recognised Founding Father of Finland was actually the Tsar Alexander II, who, on taking Finland into his empire and building its capital on the model of St. Petersburg, declared Finland should be a nation like other nations, which is why his statue still stands in Senate Square in Helsinki.

Finally, I would look at the varying constellations of national Founding Fathers: some with military heroes, like General Mannerheim; some with political leaders; and some with saints, monks and poets. As a sociologist of religion I might find the monks, saints and poets particularly interesting. The semi-mythic saints are assigned to the origins as Founding Fathers; the monks salvage the history and the language; and the poets write or rewrite the national script. But ‘ill fares the land’ where saints, monks and poets take on these roles. It is all too likely that they have been long under foreign domination, and have achieved independence very late in the day.

1 Elleke Boehmer, Nelson Mandela: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

2 Allon Gal, David Ben-Gurion and the American Alignment for a Jewish State (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991).

3 Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence, Introduction by Edward Shils (Glencoe: Free Press, 1950).

4 T.S. Eliot, ‘Choruses from The Rock’, in Collected Poems 1909–1935 (London: Faber and Faber, 1936, p. 164).

5 Ernest Gellner, Thought and Change (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964).

6 John Chalker, The English Georgic: A Study in the Development of a Form (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969).

7 Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood.

8 Stephen Spector, Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).



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