Building Religions 11: Authority

Building Religions 11: Authority

My last few posts were a little light on the practical side for anyone designing a religion, so I thought I'd move back in the other direction and offer something that could be fit more easily into the worldbuilding process. It means going back to Max Weber's work again, particularly his discussion of how religious institutions develop over time. Most of this, I've drawn from Weber's The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, but a little is from Sociology of Religion.



Authority, for Weber, comes in three forms: traditional, which takes its power from longstanding beliefs or customs; legal, based on a rational system of agreed-upon codes; and charismatic, derived from the belief in the power of a particular individual. When it comes to institutions, legal authority is the principle behind administrative jobs, the bureaucracy that keeps groups running while not being directly involved in any sort of production.

Candidates are selected according to their knowledge of the system, and their pay is fixed according to their position. Traditional authority lends itself better to administration by favourites, with the person who is ultimately in charge handing out positions and paying those that fill them however he deems fit. Knowledge is no longer an issue, since the right to grant a place in the administration is considered part of the traditional ruler's domain. Both of these sets of structures should be familiar, either from the modern workplace or a quick look at historical bureaucracies. It's with charismatic authority that things get interesting.

A charismatic leader holds authority through the devotion of followers and evidence of power. In religious terms, this means miracles, prophecies, revelations, and similar demonstrations of a divine connection. This can put this sort of leader outside of the usual institutions, circumventing whatever hierarchies are in place by claiming direct authority from a supernatural source, and that position can, in turn, cause friction between the leader and the established religious systems. At the same time, however, the charismatic leader can act to revitalize or innovate an existing religion by challenging the authority of its leaders and gathering a sufficient following. So long as she can continue to demonstrate divine favour, her influence over others remains intact.

The founders of religions generally fall into this category, as do those who introduce new ideas or spark new movements within established religions, but what happens when the founder dies? What happens to the community of devotees when that charismatic focus is gone? There are a few possibilities.

The simplest is that the movement dies with her, literally or figuratively. While some of her innovations might linger, the community dissolves or its members return to the groups from which they came. Needless to say, this result doesn't often make for good stories (although you could write something compelling about the shock in the aftermath of such a death, and the struggle of followers to make sense of it).

(As a tangent: I've long thought that the history of the major Western religions is, essentially, a history of things going wrong. The Babylonian Exile and the destruction of the Second Temple shaped Judaism; the humiliating execution of the supposed messiah created Christianity; Muhammad's death without a clearly-named successor set Islam on its own course. If you're creating a religion, sometimes it's more interesting to introduce events that aren't at all what its followers expect.)

If a movement doesn't fade away after the loss of its leader, Weber suggests that it's because the followers don't want to abandon the community that they've created. If the former leader named a successor or had a recognized heir, then some measure of charisma might be assumed to have been transmitted from one to the other. It's in the best interests of the followers to ensure that such a successor be identified, both to preserve the continuity of the religion and to keep their own status intact.

Where the original leader created a community through the demonstration of charisma, successive ones only require that the people who act as the group's administrators -- the religious bureaucracy -- recognize her as such. In fact, it's the bureaucracy that gradually takes charge of recruitment, education, economic concerns, and anything else that has to do with maintaining continuity. This isn't to say that they can't be motivated by genuine religious devotion, but there's a part of Weber's approach that makes it seem like the chief motivating factor in religious organizations is actually job preservation.

Over time, a formerly-charismatic institution can become virtually indistinguishable from one of the other types. And, eventually, a new charismatic leader might appear, raise new challenges, attract new followers from the group, and begin the cycle again. When you're writing the history of a religion, especially one that's been entrenched in its culture for a long time, think about this cycle of authorities, and what points in its past could have seen the rise and fall of charismatic leaders.

On a more mundane level, it's also worth answering the question of how the religious bureaucracy is sustained: tithes, begging, donations? How extensive is the administration, and how much power to they have over the whole of the institution? How do they interact with the other authorities of the culture, and where do they set their boundaries?