Charisma in Theory and Practice

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 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 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 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 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 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 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.” 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. 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 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 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 "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 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 late 19th century German jurist and Lutheran theologian Rudolph Sohm who introduced the term charisma into modern parlance. For more on Sohm, see Joosse (in press; n.d.), Haley (1980). In so doing, Sohm consciously resurrected St. Paul’s usage in which charismata (carismatwn)--the gifts of grace--were the signs and miracles indicating that Christ was indeed imbued with the spirit--the pneuma (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 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 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). 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. 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 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 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. 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. 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 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 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) 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 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 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 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. For Weber, the two ideal types of prophecy are the exemplary (personified by the Buddha) and the emissary (personified by Muhammad). 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 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 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). 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 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 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 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. For examples, see Lindholm 1990. 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). 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). 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 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. 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. 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. An important exception is Weller’s fascinating anthropological account of the Taiping rebellion (1994). 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 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. 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. 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 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. 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). The contributors also come from a wide range of backgrounds: two are 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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” 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; 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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). The final two papers turn in a different direction, demonstrating how personal charisma can be maintained, 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 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. 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. 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 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.” 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. 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 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 awe among his thousands of followers. The believers can even continue to consult with him via bibliomancy, as the petitioner randomly slips a question into one of the Rabbi’s many publications and then discerns an answer in the surrounding pages. The Rabbi still presides over ritual occasions as a 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. 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In so doing, I meant to suggest some of the range of possibilities available for the maintenance or dispersal of 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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: PAGE 1