Charisma in Theory and Practice

Charles Lindholm

Charisma can be as mundane and as universal as the “naked

capacity of mustering assent," a capacity that has nothing to do

with position, or power, or advantage, but emanates solely from

an inherent personal magnetism (de Jouvenel 1958:163). All else

being equal, in any group of friends, there is likely to be one

whom the others wish to please, whose suggestions carry the day

just because he or she made them. But in its more potent forms--

as the spiritual “grace” that compels followers to submit

themselves to a deified leader--charisma is arguably the most

important driver of religious transformation and certainly one of

the most powerful emotional relationships possible in human life.

It can inspire true believers to renounce family and friends and

embrace suffering, degradation, and ostracism for the sake of

their beloved redeemer. In extreme cases, devotees may even be

willing to die--or to kill--at their leader’s command.

I first confronted charisma when I was a college student in

the late 60s and some of my classmates dropped out to devote

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themselves to exotic gurus. Meanwhile, the Manson Family was in

the news, killing innocents in order to foment a total

revolution. But the Family was only the most extreme of many

charismatic collectives that were springing up around the country

due to general discontent with the status quo. For the same

reason, members of my college class were storming police

barricades, intent on bringing down the evil establishment and

installing a new world of peace and love. I was caught up in

these political actions and felt the rush of passionate energy

generated in angry, self-righteous crowds.

Instead of following a spiritual leader or becoming a

political activist, I left the country and spent some years

traveling in South Asia, mostly in Northwest Pakistan, where I

lived with the Pukthun people and learned about their egalitarian

and highly competitive social world. There too, as I discovered,

occasional uprisings had occurred under the aegis of spiritual

leaders, while local saints, claiming divine inspiration,

attracted circles of acolytes. This all occurred under the

banner of Islam, and in a very different manner than in the West.

When I returned to the USA, I turned to anthropology to try to

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understand what I had experienced.

I found that despite its significance, despite its

universality, despite the challenge it offered to ordinary

rationality, and despite the efforts of pioneering

anthropologists like Kracke (1978), Willner (1984), and Lewis

(1986), the actual practice, content, and context of charisma

remained opaque to anthropological investigation. From my

perspective, this was a shame, since such research could

illuminate unexplored emotional motivations for belief and

action. It could also close the yawning gap between theories

based on collective authority and those stressing individual

agency. Even more importantly from a practical point of view,

ethnographic research on charisma offered the possibility of

gaining new insight into some of the most puzzling, disturbing,

and transformative events of our time.

My solution was to attempt to build a theoretical framework

that would enable the comparative study of charisma (I

recapitulate this model below) but there were serious weaknesses

in my approach. For one thing, the cases I studied came mostly

from the West and were either cataclysmic failures or only

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marginally successful: the Manson Family, the Jim Jones group,

and Nazism belonged to the first category, Scientology and Est to

the second (Lindholm 1990, 1992). In a later article, I

attempted to expand my range with a study of the international

cult surrounding the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Lindholm

2002), but like the others this analysis was still mainly focused

on Western followers, and traced the history of a movement that

met an ignominious end. Furthermore, all of my research was

strictly second-hand, drawing from the accounts of believers and

apostates, as well as on journalistic reports. I did no

fieldwork myself. In my writings, I acknowledged these limits,

and hoped that ethnographic fieldwork undertaken by my students

and others would expand the study of charisma into other cultures

while deepening and challenging my preliminary conclusions.

The following selection of essays goes a long way toward

accomplishing this goal, opening new routes to the cross-cultural

study of these extraordinary movements. They show, through

detailed case studies, some of the circumstances that construct

when, where, and how the charismatic bond is expressed, enacted,

and experienced. In particular, the papers explore how religious

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charisma is performed, how it is gendered, how it relates to

political life, and how it can survive the death of the leader.

But before getting to the specificity of the chapters, let me

provide a very rapid synthesis of some of the classic literature

on the topic.

Precursors of the Concept of Charisma: From Rousseau to Sohm

Most often in the social sciences, as well as in popular

thought, the relationship between leader and follower is

understood to be analogical to an economic transaction. The

follower hopes to attain a goal by supporting the leader.

Perhaps that goal is status. Perhaps it is monetary success.

Perhaps it is the realization of more abstract values. In

return, the leader can deploy the followers in order to gain

influence in the larger society and exploit them for their

resources. Power, fame, wealth, and influence: these are the

leader’s goals according to this practical paradigm.

The instrumental image of leaders and followers no doubt

holds true for the vast majority of cases. We follow our leaders

because of our rational calculation that their policies will

further our interests, or--in a less mercenary reading--that they

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will represent our principles. If they fail to do so, then they

are abandoned. In turn, leaders need our allegiance if they are

to gain the power to advance their own interests (and ideals).

However, reducing all leader-follower relationships to

transactional ties of computation, negotiation and advantage is a

mistake--one all too easy to make in a world dominated by the

instrumental values of capitalism, but one that does not do

justice to the emotional appeal of spiritual authority.

Something else is required to inspire a follower’s selfless and

heartfelt devotion to such a leader. That something is charisma.

Of course, as I mentioned above, in popular parlance and

practice, charisma has a less elevated meaning: Politicians,

athletes, movie stars, and others who are unusually appealing and

successful are routinely described as “charismatic.” The

entrance of charisma into the public vocabulary indicates a need

for a word that can account for individual success within a

system where status is achieved, not ascribed, but where the

reasons for achievement are opaque. This everyday notion of

charisma purports to explain why one politician is beloved,

another with the same ideology is not; why one athlete is sought

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out to endorse products while another, equally talented, remains

obscure; why one actor is a celebrity, another a journeyman; why

one person lights up a room, another dims it. Here, charisma

simply means, “star quality.”

In contrast, within social science charismatic is one among

a range of terms--messianic, millenarian, revitalization,

Prophetic, Cargo--that are used to refer to social movements that

are often pejoratively referred to as “cults.” 1 These slithery

categories are overlapping but not congruent, so that a case at

one end of the scale may appear to have little in common with

another at the opposite end. But charisma has a wider reach than

its companions, which are defined according to the precepts that

they assume. A messianic movement requires a belief in a savior

and so has a Judeo-Christian connotation, a millenarian movement

implies a linear notion of time progressing toward an end, a

revitalization movement presupposes the existence of a shining

past that can be renewed, the Prophet foretells and leads the way

1 Originally the word ‘cult’ had no negative connotation, and

referred to a group venerating a particular person, as in the

cult of Mary. It is in this sense that I use the term here.

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to a radiant future, a Cargo Cult attempts to ritually extract

rewards from the gods. Charisma requires none of these frames,

but can appear in any and all of them. A charismatic leader may

be regarded by believers as a Prophet, a messiah, an incarnated

deity, a shaman; as possessed by the gods or as possessing them;

as retrieving the glory of the past or as ushering in the future

Golden Age. As I will discuss in more detail below, the fluidity

of charismatic attribution is a consequence of the fact that the

term as an ideal type refers to a compelling emotional attraction

derived from the followers’ felt recognition of a leader’s divine

or superhuman powers, however characterized. From this point of

view, charisma is not defined by its object, but exists as an

independent variable that is engaged in a dialectical

relationship with specific cultural precepts, structures, and

histories. As such, it can serve as a valuable baseline for

conceptualizing and comparing the frameworks in which it appears.

Both the popular and academic notions of charisma emerged

from a Western preoccupation with the apotheosis of “great men”

in history. This tradition reaches at least as far back as the

ancient Greeks, who believed that some heroes had been elevated

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into gods by virtue of their superhuman deeds. These deified

heroes served as exemplars, showing ordinary individuals the

pathway to immortality. Following this line of thought, Jean

Jacques Rousseau postulated that a superhuman “Legislator” was a

deus ex machina capable of founding and uniting the community of

citizens in order to constitute an ideal republic (Rousseau

1967). Less ambitiously, but more concretely, Auguste Comte

created a “Calendar of Great Men” that was supposed to inspire

popular emulation in the post revolutionary secular religion of

modernity (Sarton, 1952). In this same vein, Thomas Carlyle

proposed the “great man theory of history” that predominated in

early 19th century social thought, (Carlyle 1912).

But a more direct paradigm for the concept of charisma is to

be found, rather unexpectedly, in the writings of the 19th

century Utilitarian philosopher, John Stuart Mill. Discouraged

by the difficulty of validating morality within a strictly

Utilitarian framework, Mill found refuge in the concept of the

“genius.” More ardent than the rest of us, the genius is a

"Niagara River" that cannot be constrained by the "Dutch Canals"

of ordinary rules and norms. As a result, geniuses have the

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"freedom to point the way" for the rest of humanity (Mill

1975:61, 63). Mill’s image of the great man as a deluge echoed

that of Goethe’s most famous literary creation: young Werther,

the wandering sketch artist and doomed lover, who asks:

Why does the stream of genius so seldom break out as a

torrent, with roaring high waves, and shake your awed soul?

Dear friends, because there are cool and composed gentlemen living on both

banks, whose garden houses, tulip beds and cabbage fields would be devastated

if they had not in good time known how to meet the threatening danger by

building dams and ditches.” (Goethe 1990:15 emphasis in the

original)

Mill claimed that the great man provided moral uplift

through the positive influence exerted by his naturally poetic

soul, while Goethe more ambivalently portrayed the self-

proclaimed genius as a suicidal depressive, unable to survive in

the alienating world of “cool and composed gentlemen.” Friedrich

Nietzsche went in a different and far more radical direction.

For him, human history is nothing but the story of the smoldering

resentment of armies of slaves against the ruthless will of the

few who are supermen. The difference between the two categories

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of humanity is simply that the ubermensch accepts and embraces

his mighty passions and pursues expansion of his will with all

his energy, while his inferiors vengefully justify their weakness

by forcing their slave morality onto their betters. Far from

being an ethical paragon or a visionary artist, Nietzsche’s

superman is a fiery warrior whose virtue lies in his sheer

overwhelming vitality. "Great men, like great epochs, are

explosive material in whom tremendous energy has been

accumulated" (Nietzsche 1977:97). This explosiveness is defined

"above all an affect and specifically the affect of the command"

(Nietzsche 1966:25). Those who express the elemental power of

command are the heroes who stand above the crowd, making their

own laws based on personal desire. For Nietzsche, a “people is a

detour of nature to get six or seven great men” (1966:277).

However, none of these writers referred specifically to

charismatic leadership, nor were they particularly interested in

the emotional dimensions of the leader/follower relation.

Rather, they spoke of heroes, artists, geniuses, and “blond

beasts,” all of whom were loners, isolated by their superiority

from the common herd of weaklings and shopkeepers. It was the

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late 19th century German jurist and Lutheran theologian Rudolph

Sohm who introduced the term charisma into modern parlance. 2

In so doing, Sohm consciously resurrected St. Paul’s usage in

which charismata ()--the gifts of grace--were the signs

and miracles indicating that Christ was indeed imbued with the

spirit--the (pneuma)--of the one true God.

For Sohm, charisma was the only way to explain why Jesus’

disciples gave up their wives, families, and occupations to

dedicate themselves completely to Him. Because of His radiant

charisma they intuitively recognized that He was indeed the

savior sent to redeem humanity. Sohm argued that the compulsive

spiritual appeal of Jesus had to be evoked once again in order to

re-establish the Christian faith as the guideline for action in a

desacralized world torn apart by social unrest. Much like the

Salafists of modern Islam, Sohm thought the Church, and society

itself, must abandon bureaucratic trappings or rationalistic

interpretations and return to pure beginnings of faith, based

solely on loving trust in the power of the Holy Spirit. For

those who followed Sohm’s definition of charisma, evil persons

2 For more on Sohm, see Joosse (in press; n.d.), Haley (1980).

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cannot be charismatic (Friedrich 1961). Furthermore, charisma is

inextricably attached to Christian theology and the Jesus cult.

Therefore, no comparative theory of charisma is possible.

Weber (and his Interpreters) on Charisma

Max Weber credited Sohm with introducing the concept of

charisma into social thought, but in Weber’s comparative

historical sociology charisma is neither good nor evil, and the

Jesus cult is just one example of an ideal type of authority

based on the loyalty of followers to a divinized leader. At

first glance, it is rather odd that Weber should have made

emotional commitment part of his theoretical apparatus, since his

fundamental assumption is that human beings are rational actors

who consciously and intelligently seek to maximize culturally

valued goals. The task of the social scientist is to reveal the

rationality of apparent irrationality through supplying "the

interpretive understanding of social action and thereby. . . a

causal explanation of its course and consequences" (Weber

1978:4). Any action orientation in which the actors' motives and

goals are not self-consciously calculated is outside the realm of

meaning, therefore unintelligible, and as such excluded from the

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central interpretive task of social theory.

It is from within this meaning making orientation that the

influential sociologist and Weberian Edward Shils argued "the

charismatic propensity is a function of the need for order"

(Shils 1965:203). Charisma appears automatically whenever one

draws near the entities and institutions thought to embody and

emanate from the necessary order. This paradigm was explicitly

followed by Clifford Geertz, who described charisma as a

manifestation of "the inherent sacredness of sovereign power"

(1983:123). There is no room in this paradigm for any vision of

charisma as a radical spiritual force. Rather, as Harriet

Whitehead has written, "cultural anthropology has chosen the

conservative route of merely noting that religious practices seem

to have some intensifying or disordering effect upon experience,

and retreating back into the realm of culturally organized

meaning manipulation" (1987:105). 3

However, Geertz’s reliance on the quest for meaning as the

source of religious devotion was contested by a number of

anthropologists. The most notable was Talal Asad (1983, 1993),

who used the example of Medieval Christian monasticism to argue

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that religious faith, at least in some circumstances, was

inculcated through habitual submission to rigorous discipline.

Ideas were less important than performance, pain, and

participation. In sum, where Geertz placed piety within a

culturally constituted framework motivating the actor’s rational

search for meaning, Asad understood faith as a consequence of

embodiment, obedience, and ritual. But in arguing for the

centrality of ceremony and asceticism, Asad ignored the influence

of the personal sacred aura radiated by Medieval saints. So even

though Geertz’s notion of the sources of belief contrasted

radically with Asad’s, neither had much to say about the

irrational power of emotional attraction.

Weber did not make this error. He was well aware that a

great deal--in fact the majority--of human life is not

produced by self-conscious agents striving to achieve their

3 In Weberian terms, this “retreat” has an “elective affinity”

for intellectuals, because it is founded on faith in the

possibility of approaching ultimate meaning through the rational

interpretation of meaning systems--something that scholars are

best equipped to accomplish.

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valued goals within the “webs of meaning” provided by the

dominant ideology. Nor is the disciplined repetition of

ritualized austerities the sole motive for devotion. Rather,

Weber divided what he calls “action orientations” into three

ideal types. 1.) Rational-legal--the organized codification of

values. 4 2.) Traditional--an unthinking adherence to custom.

3.) Charismatic--commitment to a specific person. These

correspond to the three primal motivations for action:

cognition, habit, and emotion (Weber 1978:215-6). For Weber, the

first category is the aspect where the calculated maximization

of values can occur, and therefore it is only in this domain

that social analysis is appropriate. This is where Geertz and

Shils grounded their understanding of charisma. Asad

concentrated instead on the second form of action

orientation--unthinking habitual repetition--and showed how it

too could inspire faith. In both theoretical paradigms,

emotional attraction to a person--the third type of action

orientation--is written out of religious experience.

In contrast, far from eliminating charisma from his theory,

Weber portrayed it as the most potent, dangerous, and vital of

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the three motives for action. When successful, the volcanic

primary form of charisma is experienced by the followers as an

explosive and compulsive force radiating from a deified leader.

This type of personal and immediate charisma melts the old world,

making a new one possible. But because it is based on impulse

primary charisma is by definition opaque to analysis by any

meaning centered sociology. It is only when the fire flickers

and subsides, and when the movement coalesces into a secondary

institutional form of charismatically justified order, that its

significance can be grasped (Greenfeld 1985).

These two ideal types of charisma have an inverse valence.

Secondary institutional charisma--the Shils/Geertz version--is

conservative. It always reflects and buttresses the social order

and points down the path to the second type of action

orientation: Irrational tradition, ritualized performance, and

eventual petrification. In contrast, primary personal charisma

is ecstatic and revolutionary. It breaks out of the rigid mold

of tradition’s meaningless repetition and the calculating

rationality of instrumental self-interest. As Weber writes:

By its very nature [charisma] is not an “institutional” and

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permanent structure, but rather, when its “pure” type is at

work, it is the very opposite of the institutionally

permanent. In order to do justice to their mission, the

holders of charisma, the master as well as his disciples and

followers, must stand outside the ties of this world,

outside of routine occupations. (Weber 1978:248).

In Weber’s famous formula, charisma in its primal anti-

institutional, anti-traditional form is based on

a certain quality of an individual personality by virtue of

which he is considered extraordinary and treated as endowed

with supernatural, superhuman or at least specifically

exceptional powers or qualities. These are such as are not

accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of

divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them the

individual concerned is treated as a “leader.” (Weber

1978:242)

4 Weber divides this orientation into value-rationalities that

are built upon distinctive theodicies, and the capitalist form of

instrumental rationality, in which efficiency of production is

the value subsuming all others.

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Such primal charismatic leaders feel themselves inexplicably

“called” to their role; their calling is ratified insofar as

followers are drawn to them. It is the followers’ “duty to

recognize his charisma” (Weber 1978:1113 my emphasis). Charisma

cannot exist without true believers. It is a relationship in which

leader, follower, and circumstances fatefully intertwine.

In tune with his own faith in rationality, Weber was always

careful not to impute any innate sacred authority to charismatic

figures. He did not believe human beings were gods or the

messengers of the gods, though he did not deny certain persons

the possession of extraordinary dramaturgical powers. But Weber

also recognized that, no matter how absurd it may seem for an

outsider, the leader’s sacredness exists if followers believe in and

experience its existence. “If those to whom he feels sent do not

recognize him, his claim collapses; if they recognize it, he is

their master as long as he ‘proves’ himself” (1978:1112-1113).

Weber’s insistence on proof has led many commentators to conclude

that charisma is indeed a transactional relationship of advantage

masquerading as irrational attraction. However, Weber was vague

about the nature of “proof.” Can the leader’s personal emotional

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appeal be sufficient to maintain commitment, even when

substantive rewards are minimal, illusory, or even negative?

The answer is yes. In the ideal typical cases Weber cites,

primal charismatics attract followers by their intensity and

expressivity, in complete opposition both to the traditional

authority of the patriarch or priest and to the rational

efficiency of the judge, businessman, or bureaucrat. Rather,

paradigmatic charismatics are imagined by Weber to be berserk

warriors, pirates, demagogues, and--above all--the shamans who

incorporate the spirits and display divine powers through

convulsions, trembling and intense effusions of excitement, which

are symbolic of spirit possession. To him--following the

contemporary theories of crowd psychologists and early studies of

hypnotism and shamanism--the public display of these highly

intensified and emotionally labile states of consciousness had a

contagious effect, infecting the audience members with sensations

of enhanced vitality. These expansive sensations flowed outward

from the entranced shaman, who was then attributed with magical

powers of rejuvenation. Because of this capacity for entering

into dramatically intoxicating trance, the shaman served as

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instigator of the orgies Weber took as the original sacred

experience (Weber 1978:242, 400-3, 535-6, 554, 1112, 1115; 1972:

279, 287, 327).

In Weber’s historical sociology, the flame ignited by the

charismatic figure is likely to burn out after the leader’s

death. The few cults that endure do so only if surviving

devotees are somehow able to turn the hot primary charisma of

their leader into the cool secondary charisma of the institution.

If this is accomplished, the rites of a church substitute for the

immediacy of the passionate commitment to a person, the text

takes the place of the prophecy, the corporation subsumes

communion. According to Weber, the most common modes for

transitioning from primary to secondary charisma are genealogy (a

blood offspring inherits the mantle), appointment (the Prophet

designates a disciple as successor), and magical signs (as when a

new Dalai Lama is chosen because a child candidate picks up

certain sacred objects). At first, this transitional phase

retains aspects of the original enlivening charisma of the

founder, but over time sacred values and actions sink into mere

rote, the priests become bureaucratic placeholders, and the faith

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loses its hold on the believers. Charisma thus gives birth to

moribund tradition, enduring merely out of habit. The time is

ripe for the upsetting advent of another vehicle or messenger of

the divine. 5

So, even though both tradition and charisma are defined by

Weber as "on the other side” of the border between meaningful and

irrational action (Weber 1978:25), they are nonetheless of

crucial importance to his historical narrative. As Weber writes,

in “prerationalistic periods, tradition and charisma between them

have almost exhausted the whole of the orientation of action"

(1978:245). But with the arrival of modernity, that cycle is

over. "Under the technical and social conditions of rational

culture, an imitation of the life of Buddha, Jesus, or Francis

seems condemned to failure for purely external reasons" (Weber

1972:357). For Weberians, the efficient instrumental reason

characteristic of capitalism has killed the revitalizing passion

of charisma. In this, as the papers in this collection

5 For Weber, the two ideal types of prophecy are the exemplary

(personified by the Buddha) and the emissary (personified by

Muhammad).

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conclusively prove, Weber was wrong.

Durkheim and Freud on Charisma

Weber’s theory has significant differences from Émile

Durkheim’s portrait of the orgiastic effervescence of the

collective gathered around the totemic object that symbolizes the

sacred power of the clan (Durkheim 1965). Durkheim’s interest

was in the group dynamic fueling the cycle from the profane,

mundane world of the weak, selfish, and ephemeral individual to

the sacred moral universe of the eternal collective. In his

paradigm, the leader is nothing but an empty symbol, a human

totem, or what Canetti (1978) called a “crowd crystal,” that

serves only to focus the energy of the surrounding group so it

can be released in ecstatic performance. In contrast, for Weber

the leader is a magician whose emotional appeal and healing

powers are the source for group unity. Durkheim’s emphasis is on

the empowering group dances, songs, chants, and other ceremonial

activities that stimulate the individual’s immersion in

collective effervescence. Weber’s is on the capacity of the

charismatic to display “overflowing” emotionality and in the

reciprocal tendency of the audience to participate in that

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effusion.

But despite these differences, the result is the same. A

central, sacralized, heightened, and embodied emotional force

binds the collective together, blurring the separate identities

of the participants in rapturous unity. So even though Durkheim

downplayed the part of the leader while Weber focused on

leadership, both agreed that what is essential and gripping in

charisma is not its meaning (though explanatory meaning systems

are inevitably generated after the fact). Rather, the

participatory communion engendered by the charismatic performance

experientially and immediately releases the onlookers from their

mundane sufferings. "For the devout the sacred value, first and

above all, has been a psychological state in the here and now.

Primarily this state consists in the emotional attitude per se.”

(Weber 1972:278 italics in the original). The result is a

collective dissolution of selves in "the objectless acosmism of

love" (Weber 1972: 330). Originally, this ecstatic experience

was the vital core of human life, as the individual ego was

experientially and immediately fused into the congregation (Weber

1978:467, 487).

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The third great classical theorist of charisma, Sigmund

Freud, made the same points even though he argued from a very

different explanatory model and moral perspective. In Weber's

actor centered theory there was no notion that the irrational

intensity of the charismatic relationship could evoke hatred as

well as attraction. Durkheim too disallowed conflict, since for

him collective effervescence served only to blend the individual

into the group. This experience was completely positive and was

the fountain, he thought, of all self-sacrificing morality. But

in Freud's theory, the elimination of the rational self in the

collective was greatly to be feared, since it allowed people to

"throw off the repression of the unconscious instinctual

impulses" and to revel in "all that is evil in the human mind"

(1959:10).

To reach this dismal conclusion, Freud relied on his insight

that human beings everywhere are products of Oedipal family

constellations that necessarily leave us burdened with guilt over

our irreconcilable and unrealizable impulses to both love and

hate those closest to us-- our parents. We experience this

fundamental tension in intimate relationships throughout our

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lives, and continually seek to escape the pain it causes. Losing

the self in a crowd consisting of "many equals, who can identify

with one another, and a single person superior to them all"

(1959:53) offers relief from this existential suffering. Within

the embrace of the group, the ache of ambivalence can be soothed

by collective adoration of and abject submission to a

narcissistic primal father figure "who loved no one but himself,

or other people only in so far as they served his needs" (Freud

1959:55). Under the patriarch’s orders, forbidden rage can be

projected outward and expressed with impunity. As Freud remarks,

"it is always possible to band together a considerable number of

people in love, so long as there are other people left over to

receive the manifestations of their aggressiveness" (1962:61).

But this psychic stratagem is never completely successful, and

internal scapegoats are often required to absorb the group's

excess hostility. If the leader fails to direct hostility

elsewhere, the crowd’s excessive love can turn into its opposite,

and the enraged former disciples may then tear their dethroned

leader to shreds.

To conclude this short survey: according to the classic

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theories of Weber, Durkheim, and Freud individuals are drawn to

charismatic groups because such groups stimulate powerful and

intoxicating states of dissociation and self-loss. These

ecstatic states occur as the crowd unites in its shared love for

the dramatic leader who is at its center, and who directs its

fears and aggression outward. Yet beneath the delirious surface

deep ambivalence remains, which can stimulate polarization,

denial, and scapegoating. None of these perspectives really

brought culture into the picture. For Weber, charisma in its

ideal form was beyond interpretation; culture entered only with

rationalization. Durkheim was interested solely in universal

aspects of collective exhilaration, while Freud was concerned

with equally universal psychic processes. Later theorists, such

as Shils and Geertz, utilized the meaning-centered Weberian

paradigm to explore the cultural specificity of institutionalized

charisma, but at the cost of ignoring the emotional force that is

the burning heart of primary charisma. Although starting from a

different direction—that of tradition---Asad’s embodied model had

the same failing. These one-sided theories that stressed either

meaning or routine offered little to advance the anthropological

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understanding of the raw emotional power or the trajectory of

charismatic relationships. In consequence, the study of

charismatic movements remained to a great extent outside the

range of ethnography.

Studying Charisma Today

Until recently, anthropological reticence about charisma

stood in contrast to the other social sciences. When

counterculture values were strong and American charismatic

religious communes were flourishing there was a serious effort by

sociologists to study charismatic groups (examples include Kanter

1972, Bainbridge 1978, Zablocki 1980, Wallis 1984, Kephart 1987).

At the same time, well-known political scientists searched for

ways to operationalize versions of Weber’s paradigm (e.g. Rustow

1970, Glassman 1975). Important psychologists influenced by or

in reaction against Freud also were inspired to write about

charismatic leadership (e.g. Bion 1961, Erikson 1969, Halperin

1983, Kohut 1985). And there were a number of solid journalistic

histories and fascinating personal biographies that shed light on

the charismatic dynamics within some of the extreme cults of the

era. 6

28

But today even these efforts have receded. Many

sociologists, political scientists and other commentators have

taken Weber at his word: primary charisma no longer exists and so

cannot be studied without resort to anachronism. Thus Bensman and

Givant argue charisma today is “a continuous, rationally

calculated strategy by the staffs and agencies of bureaucratic

and political machines and elites in large-scale mass

bureaucratic societies” (1986:54-5). 7 Others have claimed that

“charisma has become mundane, or everyday, and has lost its

special force not because it has become rare but because it has

become commonplace” in the form of the worship of pop idols

(Turner 2003:20).

Oddly, while the general academic interest in charisma

declined, history simultaneously witnessed the appearance of

personality cults surrounding political leaders who were clearly

6 For examples, see Lindholm 1990.

7 In this, they echoed political theorists such as Arthur

Schlesinger who portrayed charisma as a “mischievous

contribution,” that was “clearly a pre-industrial concept

(1960:6).

29

charismatic in the primary sense, inspiring selfless devotion

among followers with their promises to eliminate evil and bring a

new dawn for humanity. France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen, Al-Qaeda’s

Osama bin Laden, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, and Venezuela’s Hugo

Chávez are a few obvious examples. 8 True to their vocation as

miniaturists, anthropologists left the exploration of the

relationship between such leaders and their movements to

political scientists, who in turn tended to downplay charismatic

aspects in favor of more trendy and more quantifiable means-ends

analyses. 9 At the same time, alongside the well-publicized

charismatic politicians strutting on the world stage, charismatic

figures more suited for anthropological interrogation continued

to appear within the religious realm, either encapsulated in

established annunciations or inaugurating autonomous up-swellings

8 J.P. Zúquete and I have termed these “aurora movements” and

have documented the history and similarities of a number of them

in Latin America, Europe, The USA and the Middle East (2009).

See also Zúquete (2007) for examples from the European New Right.

9 An important exception is Weller’s fascinating anthropological

account of the Taiping rebellion (1994).

30

of faith. Some anthropologists did turn their attention to these

figures. The best-known examples are Csordas’ influential

phenomenological exploration of Catholic charismatic possession

(1994), Srinivas’ ethnography of the international cult based

around Sai Baba, who proclaimed himself “God on earth” (2010),

and Huang’s pioneering study of the Taiwanese Tzu-Chi movement

founded by the charismatic Buddhist nun, the Venerable Zhengyan

(2009)--of which more below. Anthropologists also continued to

add to the copious literature on charisma-related topics such as

possession trance, liminal states, social movements, ritual

performance, the rise of new religions, and the like. But these

latter explorations, creative and important as they were, rarely

referred directly to charisma or to the Weberian paradigm. 10

10 For example, in a collection of essays about anthropological

studies of healing (Laderman and Roseman 1996), charisma is

mentioned only in a chapter on Charismatic Catholicism, and then

only as a modifier. Weber is mentioned in passing in another

chapter, where he is referred to solely as an influence on

Geertz. Thanks to Eric Kelley for bringing this citation to my

attention.

31

Why this relative dearth? Aside from the misunderstandings

about the nature of charismatic relationships that I have

outlined above, and aside from a disciplinary antipathy for the

grand theory and weak fieldwork that anthropologists (wrongly)

associate with Weber, another reason may be the psychological

pressures of doing research with charismatic groups. For

example, participation in charismatic performances where

believers fall into trance, or are possessed, or discharge

powerful emotions, may well arouse deep, unwanted, and unnerving

psychological reactions that threaten to derail the

ethnographer’s objectivity and even sanity. Furthermore, as the

price of admission into the cult, the believers may demand that

researchers submit to mind-bending initiatory procedures and

promise to unthinkingly obey the leader’s commands. Critique or

resistance can result in exclusion, while acquiescence can

challenge the investigator’s integrity and psychological

equilibrium. No such demands occur during traditional fieldwork

in remote villages or urban neighborhoods. Life in these

settings is mostly devoted to mundane tasks and ordinary

interactions, and the major dangers are physical sickness and

32

occasional waves of culture shock. In short, participant

observation within charismatic collectives can be a psychically

perilous and emotionally draining business, with no results

guaranteed. But, as the studies to follow amply demonstrate,

these risks are well worth taking.

As I mentioned at the outset, the chapters in this book go a

long way toward remedying the weaknesses of my early research,

since they all offer detailed ethnographic accounts of religious

charisma as it appears in a wide variety of cross-cultural

settings and religious annunciations. Catholics, evangelical

Protestants, Sufis, Hassidic Jews, Buddhists and native American

religions are included in examples that extend from Massachusetts

to Syria; from Taiwan to the Dominican Republic; from Angola to

the jungles of Paraguay, from Rome to Brooklyn. 11 The

contributors also come from a wide range of backgrounds: two are

11 Much has been left out, of course. I especially regret the

absence of case studies from India, where the guru/chela

relationship has such a long history and a copious accompanying

literature. My regret is somewhat alleviated by the appearance of

the recent study by Srinivas (2010).

33

Chinese (from Taiwan and the PRC), two are Brazilian, one is

Portuguese, one is Israeli, the other three are Americans. With

such a variety of cases, places, and contributors, it was

necessary to keep a fairly tight focus in order to make

comparison possible. Ideally, I would have preferred a volume of

studies that engaged with all three classic models of charisma

produced by Weber, Durkheim, and Freud. But I soon realized that

it was better for all of the chapters to focus upon the Weberian

theory of charisma, assessing the validity and weaknesses of his

model by applying it in actual field conditions. I asked the

authors to use Weber in particular not only because his work has

been the most influential with anthropologists but also because,

even though the cases vary greatly in their location, structure,

ideology, and size, they all share the essential characteristics of

charisma, as Weber defined them. All revolve around individuals

who are deified or who are thought to have special connections to

the divine. In each, the devotees are empowered and united by

their faith. And in every instance, heightened emotions, rather

than instrumental reason or shared value orientations or

traditional loyalties, bind the follower to the leader.

34

Furthermore, these aspects of charisma are congruent with both

Durkheimian and Freudian models of leadership. Therefore,

ethnographic study of them must inevitably have wider theoretical

implications, if only implicitly.

For the purposes of this book, I have organized these varied

and yet overlapping cases into four segments. The first consists

of two studies that reveal the subtle dialectic between

charisma’s primary (emotional) and secondary (institutional)

forms through close observation and analyses of ritual

performances. The next group of three papers focuses on gender--

an aspect of charisma completely neglected by Weber and the vast

majority of studies of charisma ever since. Two more papers

explore the complex and often contradictory relationship between

religious charisma and political authority. The final two papers

investigate the institutional appropriation, manufacture and

heightening of primary charisma posthumously--which Weber thought

impossible.

In structuring the studies according to the aspects of

charisma they problematize, I am following Weber’s own

fundamental methodological proposition, that is, that there is

35

not now and never has been any fully rational, fully charismatic,

or fully traditional social order, but only a combination of

different elements with differing weights, trajectories and

effects. The ideal type is a formal conceptual model--a

baseline--to be used as a heuristic tool for tracing and

explaining variations from the ideal, thereby not only permitting

meaningful analysis of the case at hand, but also making

significant comparisons possible. Each of these papers serves

this purpose by providing solid ethnographic data to test the

sufficiency and range of the Weberian ideal type charismatic

model, and to offer examples and, if possible, explanations when

the model is insufficient.

Charisma in Practice

The book begins with Wu’s paper, which reveals in

comprehensive detail precisely how the American Catholic priest

Father Tom combines aspects of the traditional mass and rosary

with charismatic effusions, glossolalia, and healing, moving from

traditional ritual to healing ecstasy via an artfully

orchestrated sequence--alternating between slow and frenzied

rhythmic movements, coordinated by music and pause, marked by

36

switches between formal and colloquial language, and other

symbolic cues. By fulfilling his orthodox duties before he

invokes and embodies the Holy Spirit, Father Tom simultaneously

stays inside yet rebels against the protective but restrictive

Church structure. At the climax of the ritual, overtaken by the

Holy Spirit, the congregation bursts into shouts, “holy laughs,”

and “holy tears.” Some speak in tongues, others sing, dance,

clap, jump, or stamp loudly on the floor. While any of the

believers may in principle be touched by the Holy Ghost and

exhibit these spiritual gifts, it is Father Tom whom they all

encircle and whose energy uplifts them. In turn, the responsive

flow from his congregation ignites Father Tom’s own fusion with

the sacred. Surrounded by his adoring flock, he lays his hands

on the sick, channeling God’s healing power into them. Whether

his flock will survive after his death is questionable, even

though he is attempting to show visiting seminarians how to

follow his example. But for the moment, Wu provides us with an

unusually rich portrait of the central ritual performance of a

successful and growing charismatic movement, one that

simultaneously builds upon and transgresses the bureaucratic

37

authority of the Catholic Church.

Pinto’s chapter deals with a similar performance--the

charismatic ritual (dhikr)—that is practiced in two Qadiri Sufi

lodges in Aleppo, Syria. His case not only shows the mechanisms

for the maintenance of charisma within the institutional

framework of Sufism; it also demonstrates that despite sharing

the same history and belief system, the same institutional

structure, and the same dhikr, the shaykhs (spiritual leaders) of

the two lodges perform their duties and express their baraka

(embodied and transformative spiritual power-analogous to

charisma) completely differently. Shaykh Hilali is famed for his

measured aloofness, elevated genealogy, asceticism, and

unparalleled knowledge of religious texts, both esoteric and

exoteric. He refuses to initiate new members into his lodge

because, he says, Islamic knowledge is now too debased to permit

entrée to the mystical path. The only exception to this rule is

his son and spiritual heir. Paradoxically, his stance has

increased his authority. His followers recognize him as the pre-

eminent guardian and exemplar of spiritual tradition. And, since

he refuses to teach, the only way his devotees can gain access to

38

his charisma is through physical proximity, and by seeking,

accepting, and internalizing his advice. The result is an

egalitarian membership that rotates around the pinnacle of

Hilali’s absolute moral and spiritual authority.

Shaykh Badinjki follows an alternative method for

instantiating his charisma within the framework of the Order. He

accepts and even pursues new disciples, who are arranged in a

hierarchical system based on their degree of mystical knowledge,

as verified by the shaykh. Each is pledged to absolute obedience

to his master who supplies every follower with a secret mystical

formula (wird). The shared secret heightens the shaykh’s power,

which is further validated through his ability to perform

miracles (karamat), his esoteric knowledge, his ability to

mediate disputes, and his possession of a sacred relic (one of

the Prophet Muhammad’s hairs).

Pinto strikingly illustrates these differences by comparing

the dhikr of the two sects. In each, the form is exactly the

same, with the goal of leading the congregation to directly

experience the reality of divine love. But the Hiliaiyya

devotees perceive the ritual as a beautiful and orderly

39

progression toward mystical harmony, as revealed under the calm

guidance of their shaykh. Shaykh Badinjki, in contrast, performs

miracles and cures the sick by laying on of hands. His disciples

focus their emotions on him in a manner very much parallel to the

ritual performance presided over by Father Tom. The result in

both cases is a collective immersion in the love of Allah and

submissive recognition of the shaykh as the gateway to

transcendence, but the way that divine love is experienced and

expressed is completely different. As Pinto shows, the persona

and attitude of the shaykh is the significant factor in

manufacturing this experiential distinction.

Chegas’ paper blends with Pinto’s in that she too studies

the organization and modes of charisma maintenance in Syrian Sufi

sect, in this case the Damascene Kuftariyya, which in tone and

attitude much resembles the textually oriented, low-key Sufism of

the Aleppine Hilali. Chegas lays out the tree-like structure of

the Order, tracing its origins from the revelations of a founding

ancestor whose teachings have ramified over time into many

branches, from which other, smaller branches grow and spread.

The spiritual tree is watered by the constant inflow of disciples

40

who gather around local leaders selected on the basis of lineage,

textual knowledge, and seniority in the sect, but also, and

crucially, on the basis of their spiritual aura and ability to

attract a devoted following. Thus, Sufism combines aspects of

bureaucratic institutionalization with primal charisma, producing

a resilient hybrid. As such, it perpetuates itself over

generations in a way that Father Tom’s highly personal ministry

will be hard-pressed to do.

Having outlined the distinctive charismatic-cum-bureaucratic

structure of this branch of Sufism (which is very typical of

Sufism in general), Chegas then turns to the worshipful circles

(halaqat) of women gathered around beloved female religious

teachers. Such teachers must go through a long initiation,

proving their knowledge of canonical sacred texts while also

learning, embodying, and exemplifying the norms and values of the

Order. This process may begin by teaching the children of other

members of circle, then the prospective leader slowly moves up

the spiritual ladder through the study of texts, undertaking a

regimen of emotional control, and cultivating sincere devotion to

the shaykh of the Order. But she should also “know the hearts”

41

of her disciples and unite them in love for her. Only when her

baraka has been concretely expressed by attracting a devoted

following is she officially recognized as leader of her own

halaqa. After reading Chegas’ finely tuned account of the

master-disciple relationship, we can understand why one devotee

says: “I cannot explain my love for her. I just feel it.”

Next, Huang builds upon her groundbreaking ethnography

(2009) and continues the nuanced analysis of gender in her paper

on the international Buddhist Compassion Relief Foundation (Tzu

Chi). This group began modestly as a tiny all female cult of

disciples following the “supreme person,” the charismatic

Buddhist nun Zhengyan, but it has grown since into a huge multi-

national organization in which men have a large role to play.

Under these changed circumstances, Huang traces the complex and

sometimes ambiguous gender performances that occur at the level

of the embodied representations of the leader, the follower, and

the collective (which she calls the “three bodies” of charisma).

The leader’s body, Huang shows, is frail and weak; her watery

eyes seem always ready to burst into tears, though she never

cries. She appears overwhelmed by the burden of helping others;

42

her voice is frail, pleading, and sorrowful. Yet she bears more

moral weight and is more successful in the world than all but the

most powerful male political leaders and businessmen in Taiwan.

She is an androgynous figure--a compassionate mother who

nonetheless abandoned her home and family and become “like a man”

in order to fulfill her divine mission of mercy.

The followers are overcome with love for their self-

sacrificing leader. They wish to devote themselves wholly to her

mission. To do so, they must learn to control themselves in her

service, which means wearing uniforms, disciplining their

behaviors, assuming proper demeanors. These “templates” of

conformity differ according to gender. Male converts are

expected to exert more bodily discipline and refrain from worldly

temptations, while women are expected to show more emotional

control--continually smiling and tender. Yet, over time the male

and female templates are becoming more alike in their uniforms

and behaviors. Women now can do heavy labor. Men are allowed to

proselytize. Furthermore, women are expected to “break out” of

their domestic roles and follow Zhengyan’s example by working in

the male domain. Also men can now participate in the unified

43

androgynous collective body expressed in hand song--the spiritual

art form of the sect, which stands in symbolic contrast to the

uncontrollable crying that the appearance of Zhengyan often

stimulates, especially among women.

In this setting, popular Buddhist traditions of sainthood

made it possible for the nun Zhengyan to form an autonomous and

successful cult, but without the framework that maintains and

transmits charisma in Catholicism and Sufism, there seems to be

little likelihood or means of passing down her spiritual power to

a successor. Rather, her personal legacy is likely to be the

highly effective charitable institution she has built, to be

maintained by followers whose worth is measured by their capacity

to maintain and expand a complex bureaucratic structure that is a

monument to the leader’s unstinting love and compassion.

Another pattern of “gender convergence” has been found in

Pentecostal movements in Latin America, where Brusco (1995) and

others have persuasively argued that embracing the precepts of

this highly egalitarian charismatic faith empowers oppressed

women and domesticates macho men by feminizing them. Thornton’s

paper looks at the other side of this equation. He notes that in

44

the Dominican Republic a very substantial number of converts are

male, and that they fill the highest offices in the Pentecostal

churches. The most successful and charismatic of these men

stress their histories of crime, sexual voraciousness, and

addiction. The more violent and sinful the history, the more the

convert is given authority within the church. The “negative

charisma” of these converts also allows them to retain a highly

valued masculine identity among their former cronies and to

evangelize successfully among them. Scarred and tattooed, but

now with the light of God in their eyes, they exemplify in their

persons the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit to transform and

redeem even the most fallen sinners.

Women, in contrast, are not thought to have such sinful

pasts, nor do they need to offset their gender when they join the

“female” church. Their status in the religion is not measured by

the depths from which they have risen, but from their spiritual

“gifts” they display: an ability to be “slain by the spirit,” to

speak in tongues, to heal and prophecy. The more institutional

male form of authority is given charismatic legitimacy because it

is based on the convert’s miraculous moral transformation. The

45

second form of authority is a transient consequence of the

expressive female performances of spiritual inspiration that

punctuate services. Both forms of spiritual empowerment are

understood as a direct consequence of God’s grace, but in

contrasting forms. What they share is that neither is

hereditary, nor are they based on textual knowledge or

apprenticeship, though that may change as generations pass and

conversion becomes less of a rupture, more of a convention.

The next two papers are concerned with the complex

relationship between religious charisma and political authority.

Blanes traces the history, dogma, and eschatology of Tokoism, an

indigenous Protestant charismatic cult that arose in the middle

of the last century surrounding the self-proclaimed Prophet Simão

Gonçalves Toko. Tokoism, as Blanes shows, was one of the most

successful of a number of charismatic movements that appeared in

response to Portuguese colonialism in Angola. Of particular

importance in this case was Toko’s emphasis on “remembering”

certain passages of the Bible while inspired by the Holy Ghost.

The newly remembered passages contradicted official Baptist

teachings. For Toko’s followers, this demonstrated that the

46

Bible transmitted by the white missionaries was false! Other

miracles--such as spiritual telephones that connected the

faithful without the aid of wires and an ability to handle

poisonous serpents--verified Toko’s vision. A new temporal order

was therefore proclaimed by possessed Tokoist “foreseers” who

announced that the original doctrines had been perverted by white

interpreters. As Toko explained, “this is not about the end of

the world, but the changing of things.” The prophesied change

implied political transformation, since the promised utopia could

only come about with the expulsion of the colonial powers.

As a result, the Portuguese authorities cracked down on the

Tokoists, banishing some, harassing and jailing others. For a

time, shared hopes for a new world and experiences of suffering

united the Tokoists with the numerous political liberation

movements sprouting in the region. But after the establishment

of an independent Angola, a new official religion of nationalism

was installed by the state, built upon the largely manufactured

charisma of the official “heroic liberator” Agostino Neto.

Tokoists, along with other alternative spiritual messengers of

utopia, were targeted for persecution. Relegated to the shadows

47

in the brave new world of Marxist nationalism, the Tokoists took

comfort in another form of remembrance--recalling the greatness

of their Prophet and their own continued steadfastness in

suffering for the faith. But, as Blanes informs us in an

endnote, after the founder’s death the Tokoist cult has been torn

apart by internal divisions, conflicts, and recriminations.

Without their leader’s personal charismatic influence, and under

pressure from the outside world, Tokoism may lack the inner

cohesion, recognized modes of charismatic succession, and the

successful institutional legacy, that would allow it to survive

and thrive.

The exact reversal of this trajectory is traced in Kelley’s

story of Pedro, an ambitious young Avá-Guaraní shaman. Charisma

and structure are closely interwoven in the Avá-Guaraní religion,

where all shamans must follow rigid formal rules in their ritual

re-enactments of the dance of the sun across the sky and their

journeys to the hidden worlds of the spirits. At the same time,

the shaman’s vocation is not a consequence of heredity or

favoritism or membership in a hierarchical order. Rather, it is

wholly personal--a result of being chosen by the gods, Successful

48

shamans like Pedro gain devotees as a result of their individual

improvisations and the dramatic emotional intensity of their

healing performances. Yet Pedro also respectfully imitates the

songs of his illustrious predecessors and acts according to the

cultural expectations of his role.

As a result, despite his youth he has been hailed as one of

the “grandfather” shamans who have the ability to enter the

spirit world, retrieve the names of the afflicted, and heal their

illnesses. By his ability to combine precedent and inspiration,

Pedro was in a good position to leverage his religious charisma

into political authority by asserting his own “natural” power of

the spirits and challenging the corrupt local cacique, who

wielded the “common” authority of the pen. As Kelley documents,

Pedro was indeed able realize his aim of becoming both a common

and natural leader--though in the long run the spiritual demands

of his “natural” role were in contradiction to the bureaucratic

requirements of “common” power.

Of special interest here is Kelley’s description of

shamanism. Far from the ecstatic explosion envisioned by Weber

(and Durkheim), the shamanic performances of the Avá-Guaraní are

49

highly stylized and tightly controlled. It is clear that

sensationalist early portraits of primeval religion influenced

Weber’s image of the shaman, just as Durkheim was influenced by

early accounts of an orgiastic Aboriginal corroboree in his

feverish representation of collective effervescence. Yet, even

though Pedro’s performance is relatively tame, the underlying

emotional logic of charismatic attraction remains. A “rock star”

among shamans, Pedro stands out from the others because of his

virtuoso musicianship and theatrical personality. Kelley argues

that charisma in this instance is best understood as a product

Pedro’s compelling capacity for improvisation over a set ritual

pattern, much like the ability of a jazz musician to improvise on

a head arrangement. From this perspective, the shaman then may

indeed be the original artist, as well as the first charismatic,

just as some early commentators believed. 12

The final two papers turn in a different direction,

demonstrating how personal charisma can be maintained,

12 For the link between the 18th century rise of the notion of the

genius/artist/charismatic and the discovery and study of

shamanism, see Flaherty (1992).

50

manipulated, and even expanded posthumously. In the first study,

Bergstresser shows that the modern Catholic saint mediates

between unruly personal charisma and institutionalized sanctity.

This ambivalent status is physically signaled when the saint’s

dead body miraculously resists decay and even emits a pleasant

odor. Mingling life and death, person and thing, combining

immanence with transcendence, the dead saint’s bodily presence

magically “re-enchants” the world, yet that enchantment is tamed

by being subjected to juridical church procedures of

verification. To help make her case, she compares the

canonization processes of two recent Italian candidates for

sainthood. The first is Padre Pio, an unorthodox mystic,

stigmatic, miracle-worker, and healer whose popularity has soared

after his death. Images and souvenirs of him are collected by

millions of believers, while his once isolated church is now a

site of mass pilgrimage. The second is Pope John XXIII (Papa

Buono), a rationalizing reformer who opposed and suppressed the

Pio cult and actively downgraded the symbolic power of saints.

Yet, despite their completely opposed worldly trajectories,

the church put both of them on the path to sainthood--though

51

Padre Pio has moved up the ladder more quickly (he was canonized

in 1999), while Papa Buono still requires one more proven post

mortem miracle before achieving official recognition. 13 By

canonizing Padre Pio, the church appropriated some of his primary

charisma, and so has reinvigorated itself while ignoring the more

radical evidences of his union with Jesus, such as his stigmata.

At the same time, Papa Buono’s memory was enhanced when he was

attributed with magical healing powers. Although not a

charismatic in life, he has become one in death. Thus the church

seeks--and to a degree succeeds--in domesticating and yet

retaining the charisma of deceased mystics, while also adding

charismatic elements to the memories of institutional leaders.

In the final paper in this volume, Bilu investigates how the

Habad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement has managed to expand

exponentially despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that its

zaddik (master), Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, has been dead

13 The ironic flowering of a posthumous cult around a reformer who

opposed such cults is common in Islam. The tomb of Ibn Hanbal,

the most famous iconoclast of his time, became a place of

pilgrimage only forty years after his death in 855.

52

for eighteen years. This has occurred, Bilu argues, because the

faithful refuse to admit that their leader has left them.

Rather, they have cultivated a variety of signs that aim to

“render him present.” 14 Of course, this required the zaddik to

earn his followers’ devotion while alive. Like many the Sufi

shaykhs documented earlier, the Rabbi accomplished this by a

combination of factors, both institutional and personal. He had

the proper genealogy. He married his predecessor’s daughter and

was anointed his successor. He also demonstrated remarkable

learning--both secular and mystical--fulfilled prophecies, and

gave a powerful impression of superhuman infallibility and

holiness. Like other charismatics, he looked the part, with his

bright and preternaturally penetrating blue eyes.

Although Rabbi Schneerson never claimed to be the Messiah,

his followers believed him to be the promised redeemer--a belief

14 This is reminscent of the hidden Imam of Shi’ite Muslims, who

is omnipresent, but invisible to all but the most spiritually

attuned. Becauae Judaism, unlike Islam, is not iconoclastic,

Rabbi Schneerson can take advantage of modern technology that

replicates his image.

53

he did nothing to dispel. After his apparent death, his

disciples turned his Brooklyn residence into a temple where the

faithful suppose the Rabbi still lives, though he is now

invisible. His artifacts, photos, books, and videos are on

display, and continue to inspire ecstatic devotion, tears, and

15 Pious Muslims follow the same practice (sunnut). For example,

dying their beards red in imitation of the Prophet.

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54

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55

virtual presence, on film or video, in the room that remains

exactly as it was when he was alive. Just as has occurred with

Padre Pio, the Rabbi’s charismatic aura has not diminished, but

rather has spread wider and wider as he has become more available

in mediated form. Disciples wear his portrait, name children

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1992 Shamanism and the Eighteenth Century. Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Freud, Sigmund

1959 [1921] Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego.

New York: Norton.

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Norton.

Friedrich Carl

56

after him, consult him, show his videos, repeat his phrases, and

generally try to “live him.”15 Death has not diminished his

appeal; it has enhanced it. Whether this will continue to be so

depends on the degree to which the charismatic authority of the

relics and simulacra can remain convincing, in spite of the

1961 Political Leadership and the Problem of Charismatic

Power. Journal of Politics 23(1) 3 24.

Geertz, Clifford

1985 Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the

Symbolics of Power. In Rites of Power, Symbolism, Ritual, and

Politics Since the Middle Ages. Sean Wilentz, ed. Pp. 13-38.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,.

Glassman, Ronald

1975 Legitimacy and Manufactured Charisma. Social Research

42 (3):615-36.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von

1990 [1774] Sorrows of Young Werther. New York: Vintage.

Greenfeld, Liah

1985 Reflections on the Two Charismas. British Journal of

Sociology 36(2):117-32.

57

inevitable increased expansion of time and space between follower

and leader.

Conclusion

In my discussion of the chapters I have briefly compared the

ways that the various charismatic movements strive to keep the

Haley, Peter

1980 Rudolph Sohm on Charisma. The Journal of Religion

60(2):185-197.

Halperin, David, ed.

1983 Psychodynamic Perspectives on Religion, Sect and Cult.

Boston: John Wright.

Huang, Chien-Yu Julia

2009 Charisma and Compassion: Cheng Yen and the Buddhist

Tzu-Chi Movement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Joosse, Paul

In Press; N.d. Becoming a God: Max Weber and the Social

Construction of Charismatic Power. Journal of Classical

Sociology.

Jouvenel, Bertrand de

1958 Authority: The Efficient Imperative. In Authority.

58

spiritual fires burning while accommodating themselves to

rationalizing and bureaucratic pressures, and conversely how

institutions seek to adorn themselves with charismatic

legitimacy. In so doing, I meant to suggest some of the range of

possibilities available for the maintenance or dispersal of

Carl Friedrich, ed. Cambridge: PAGE Harvard University Press.

Kanter, Rosabeth Moss

1972 Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in

Sociological Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kephart, William

1987 Extraordinary Groups. New York: St. Martins Press.

Kohut, Hienz

1985 Self-Psychology and the Humanities. New York: Norton.

Kracke, Waud

1978 Force and Persuasion: Leadership in an Amazonia Society.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Lewis, I.M.

1986 Religion in Context: Cults and Charisma. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.

Lindholm, Charles

59

charisma. Clearly, charismatic leaders who arise within an

already existing religious system are constrained in the messages

they can convey and the demands they can make on believers, but

they also can use existing institutional secondary charisma to

buttress their own personal authority.

1990 Charisma. New York: Columbia University Press.

1992 Charisma, Crowd Psychology and Altered States of

Consciousness. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 16(3):287-310.

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Lindholm, Charles and Jose Pedro Zúquete

2010 The Struggle for the World: Liberation Movements for the

21st Century. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

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Nietzsche, Friedrich

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Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

60

The Catholic charismatic Father Tom is a perfect example, as

he oscillates between official and unofficial garb, integrates

traditional services with ecstatic communion, and asserts his

bureaucratic authority as a priest to validate his personal

appeal. Nonetheless, Father Tom remains outside the mainstream

1967 [1762] The Social Contract. In The Social Contract and

the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among

Mankind. New York: Washington Square Press.

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1970 Philosophers and Kings. New York: Braziller.

Sarton, George

1952 Auguste Comte, Historian of Science: With a Short

Digression on Clotilde de Vaux and Harriet Taylor. Osiris

10(4):328-357.

Schlesinger Jr., Arthur

1960 On Heroic Leadership: and the Dilemma of strong Men and

Weak Peoples. Encounter 15(6):3-11.

Shils, Edward

1965 Charisma, Order, Status. American Sociological Review

30(2):199-213.

61

of the church. He has little or no official support for his

message, nor any standardized means to perpetuate his charisma,

although he is trying to indoctrinate visiting seminarians in his

methods. Unless, like Padre Pio, he succeeds in developing a

massive cult around himself, substantiated by miracles, it is

Srinivas, Tulasi

2010 Winged Faith: Rethinking Globalism and Religious

Pluralism Through the Sathya Sai Movement. New York: Columbia

University Press.

Turner, Stephen

2003 Charisma Reconsidered. Journal of Classical Sociology

3(1):5-26.

Wallis, Roy

1984 The Elementary Forms of the New Religious Life. London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Weber, Max

1972 From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Hans Gerth and C.

Wright Mills, eds. New York: Oxford University Press.

1978 Economy and Society. I. Roth and C. Wittich, eds.

Berkeley: University of California Press.

62

likely that his congregation will melt away after he is no longer

there to guide it. The same fate seems to be in store for the

Angolan Tokoists who, unlike Father Tom’s congregation, are the

product of their leader’s active rebellion against an established

religious tradition. Eschewing any connection to a sustaining

Weller Robert

1994 Resistance, Chaos and Control in China: Taiping Rebels,

Taiwanese Ghosts and Tiananmen. Seattle: University of

Washington Press.

Whitehead, Harriet

1987 Renunciation and Reformulation: A Study of Conversion

in an American Sect. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Willner, Ann Ruth.

1984 The Spellbinders: Charismatic Political Leadership. New

Haven: Yale University Press.

Yeats, William Butler

1994 [1920] The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats. London:

Wordsworth Editions.

Zablocki, Benjamin

1980 Alienation and Charisma. New York: Free Press.

63

larger institutional system, their Prophet relied on miracles and

a message of liberation to convince his followers of their

mission, but they have been thwarted at every turn by the

predominance of the competing national ideology. Tokoism, as a

marginalized and wholly personal annunciation, looks doomed to a

future of internal rivalry and slow diminution.

In contrast, the followers of Rabbi Schneerson are more

fervent than ever, even after his death. This is certainly due

to the devotees’ sophisticated use of media to maintain his

presence, but his postmortem longevity also owes much to the

elaboration of sacred lineages within the Hassidic tradition.

The Rabbi’s sacredness is an extension and expansion of an

existing template for sainthood, and so is well understood and

fairly easily maintained within the community. This is even more

Zúquete, José Pedro

2007 Missionary Politics in Contemporary Europe. Syracuse:

Syracuse University Press.

64

the case among Sufis, who have a long history of the embodiment

of the sacred in their shaykhs, and many models for the

performance and maintenance of charisma. As a result of this

rich mystical tradition, present day Sufi mystics can

substantiate their sacred authority by any number of routes:

genealogy, intellectual ability, training in spiritual

disciplines, designation, ability to perform miracles, and, most

of all, by their God-given baraka which attracts followers to

their circle. Like the Hassidic orders, the hierarchical and

expansive structure of Sufi lodges also provides an arrangement

whereby an individual’s charismatic potential, nurtured by his or

her shaykh and teacher, can eventually be realized by founding

and leading of a new branch of the order. Charisma here, while

thoroughly personal and primary, is also thoroughly structured

and systematic.

I leave the reader to decide how the values, motives and

expectations of charismatic Taiwanese Buddhist nuns, Paraguayan

shamans, Catholic Popes and Caribbean Pentecostals might, or

might not, fit within my sketch of the dialectic between

structure and agency that I’ve outlined above. My point is

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simply that the chapters in this volume begin an investigation of

many aspects of the charismatic relationship that would reward

more intensive ethnographic case studies. Other worthwhile

topics include: The gendering of the “three bodies” of charisma;

comparative analysis of the types of love and devotion evoked

within the cult; the favored forms of emotional expressivity of

leader and follower (tears, humor, suffering, detachment, etc.);

characteristic templates for staging, framing, controlling and

intensifying the charismatic experience (rhythm, music,

recitation, uniforms, lighting, and so on); disciplinary regimes

required of followers and leaders; the self-presentation and

group perception of the leader; internal organizational patterns,

divisions of labor, hierarchies, and modes of communication

within and outside the charismatic collective; the implications

and limitations of mechanical, technical transmission of charisma

(videos, tapes, telephones, portraits, radio and television

performances and the like); the relationship between cult

leadership or followership and an individual’s psychological

make-up, personal history, and predispositions. All these

factors, and the exploration of the complex relationships between

66

them, could form the basis for a future social science of

charisma.

Clearly, the questions to be asked and the variations to be

discovered through such a science are endless. But nonetheless

the theme remains recognizable. Charisma, in its many forms, is

a real and potent factor in human life. And whatever the future

vectors and valences of various charismatic movements may be, one

thing is sure. In a world where all that is certain seems to be

melting into air and where personal identity is buffeted on many

fronts, immersion in a charismatic collective offers a

revitalizing cure to modern anomie. If anthropologists (and

others) wish insights into “what rough beast, its hour come at

last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born” (Yeats 1994:158-9),

they would do well to consult the papers presented in this

collection.

Endnotes:

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