1.4 Key Terms
1.4.1 On the term ‘Religion’
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true worship and devotion of a god.
1.4.1 On the term ‘Religion’
The term ‘religion’ is almost always poorly defined. Writers who use the term ‘religion’
and its relation to social sciences, often do not give definitions. This is true of Huntington, and it is true of Weber. Weber starts his work ‘The Sociology of Religion’ with a refusal to define it mixed with a hope that over the course of the work it will become clear what he is talking about. (Weber 1965, 1) Alternatively, writers may offer circular definitions. Zhibin Xie defines religion as ‘a system of religious doctrines, religious believers, and religious organizations.’
(Xie 2006, 3)
There is reason to believe that this inability or unwillingness to offer a concrete definition is not just because it is a difficult and contested term, like nationalism for example;
but that there is little in the way of consistent and adequate conceptual grounding for the term to be useful. Furthermore, as William T. Cavanaugh argued in his important book ‘The Myth of Religious Violence’ (Cavanaugh 2009) there is good evidence that the term is routinely used to cement power structures that allow for the persecution and discrimination of minority groups.
Talal Asad points out that the modern concept of ‘religion’ is an imposition that usually comes alongside colonial ‘modernisation’ efforts. (Asad 2003) Asad traces the concept of
‘religion’ to Western Christian theology, arguing that there is no possible transhistorical, universal definition of religion. (Asad 1993) This idea is backed up by William Cavanaugh.
The fact that the term ‘religion’ is a western invention that sparked various neologisms in East Asia, (Yu 2005, 5) (Ashiwa 2009, 43) therefore comes as no surprise.
The recognition that defining ‘religion’ is an ongoing and often, though not always, voluntary negotiation informs Ashiwa and Wank’s contribution to the topic. (Ashiwa 2009).
Cheng-tien Kuo goes one step further and talks about how the Communist government can be seen as instigating a ‘religion’ of their own. (Kuo 2017, 13-14) This is much closer to the truth, but not the approach taken in this thesis. Instead, the approach here is that the CCP is not ‘like a religion’ but that it is the priesthood of a theological system, China, and secondly that it is not unique in this way. The term ‘religion’ confuses this point, so it has been dropped.
This leads directly into the widely held assumptions that this thesis is aimed at questioning. A principal one is the assumption that the distinction between 'religion' and
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'politics' is a useful one to make. Using the term 'religion' often requires an implicit acceptance of this secularisation assumption. Seeing as this assumption is rejected in this thesis, so is the use of the term 'religion' in anything except the necessity of quoting or paraphrasing its use in other writers' work.
Another, related reason for not using the term, is the clarity that it then forces upon the author. 'Religion' can and is used as a placeholder for anything from charitable giving to irrational violence. It is therefore useful when writing to use terms that more accurately and relate to the meaning that is intended and are less open for misinterpretation.
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2 Max Weber in Review 2.1 Political Theology
The mainstream assumption is that modern nations are predicated on the separation of
‘politics’ and ‘religion’. That theology is irrelevant to political theory, and useless as far as analysing political institutions and forces. This can generally be described as the Secularisation thesis.
The strongest version of the secularisation thesis erects an insurmountable barrier between the public/rational/neutral and private/religious/subjective. A softer Habermasian theory of translation argues simply that theological concepts must be translated into secular terms in order to be relevant to the lives of the wider population. There have been multiple writers who have criticised such a position. Some have highlighted issues with how certain terms, like 'religion' (Asad 1993) (Cavanaugh 2009) and 'secularity' (Taylor 2007), are used.
Others (Milbank 2013) question and sometimes explicitly reject the very foundations of the
‘modern’ paradigm of thought, arguing that all the secularisation thesis does is block us from analysing the theological foundations of our societies.
In this thesis, almost the opposite will be taking place. Political institutions, movements and parties will be translated into a theological framework to emphasize how pointless and backwards secularisation efforts are. A point of irony about this thesis is that the secularisation thesis can in part be traced back to the work of Weber and Disenchantment. This thesis seeks to use Weber to provide a framework, which is then improved by the inclusion of more recent work in political theology, to analyse modern China as a theological unit; complete with a priesthood and theological position driving its composition and action. The analysis of Weber offered in this Chapter draws primarily from Weber’s work The Sociology of Religion (Weber 1965), but also is indebted to the interpretations offered by Joshua Derman (Derman 2012) and Wolfgang J. Mommsen (Mommsen 1989).
2.2 Weber’s Framework
Weber is foundational to social science theory, and his work can be seen as a significant bridging point between work done in political theology and work done in social science.
However, his work on political theology is often overlooked both by social scientists and political theologians, albeit for different reasons. The important thing to note for the purposes
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of this thesis is the sheer difficulty of drawing only one coherent framework from Weber. Eric Voegelin wrote the following to Talcott Parsons on Weber’s Method:
The prerequisite for having a school in science seems to me the development of a
“method,” of an “approach” on the part of the man who functions as the “head” of the school … Weber’s work is grandiose in its results, but the “approach” is precisely its weak point. Anybody who wishes to follow on the path of Weber, has first of all to create a new instrument for dealing with his materials. And the man who can do that is no “disciple” but inevitably a “head” in his own right.’ (Derman 2012, 167)
I have no interest in setting myself up as the head of a new school on Weber. Instead, this thesis is probably better seen as the latest in what Guenther Roth described as 'a series of "creative misinterpretations"' of Weber's thought. (Derman 2012, 216)
Weber’s framework of analysis shifted to fit whatever he was analysing. His study of
‘religion’ deployed ‘ideal types to model the macro-causal effect of differences in religious ethics on economic development.’ (Derman 2012, 157) It was for this reason that critics like Dietrich Bonheoffer argued Weber’s work on the topic should be seen as a work of history, as it traced developments within groups over time. (Derman 2012, 158-159) This seems to miss the plethora of causal connections that Weber drew between theological conceptions and sociological configurations. This thesis will build on this work in particular and turn it into another ‘creative misinterpretation’ that can help with the analysis of modern China as a theological system.
2.2.1 Weber’s basic assumptions
In his analysis of Max Weber’s work ‘on Chinese Religions’, Su-Jen Huang rightly points out that Weber’s work is focused and built around answering the question of why modern capitalism developed in Europe and not in China. (Huang 1994) C.K. Yang confirms this in the introduction to the 1968 edition of Weber’s ‘Religions of China.’ He argues that the biggest question of the day concerned the ‘causation of this mighty [industrial] revolution and the destiny of human society under its inexorable controlling influence.’ (Yang 1964, xiv) A keen concern of Weber was that the historical materialism of Marxism had become the dominant paradigm for answering these questions. The Protestant Work Ethic Thesis was meant as a counter to this Marxist outlook. ‘The Religion of China volume was intended as a
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part of the substantiation for this thesis.’ (Yang 1964, xv)
Huang and Yang both point to the structure of Weber’s book; the first half of which looks at socio-political reasons and the second at theological reasons. (Yang 1964, xix) Huang’s criticism lies here; he points out a contradiction between ‘[Weber’s] official conclusion that the ultimate reason for the absence of rational capitalism in China (and, inversely, its rise in the West) was to be found in religion,’ (Huang 1994, 4) and the political analysis which ‘indicates that politico-legal conditions alone were sufficient to prevent the rise of rational capitalism in China.’ (Huang 1994, 4) This makes Weber’s further discussion of the theology of China interesting, but largely irrelevant. Huang writes that ‘This inconsistency mirrors the tension between Weber’s institutional and religious explanations for the rise of rational capitalism in the West that has long confused Weber scholars.’ (Huang 1994, 4)
Huang describes this as a ‘tension between his [Weber’s] political insight and his religious passion.’ (Huang 1994, 14) He notes that ‘abandoning the primacy of a religious argument in the Chinese case would not only have devastated his Economic Ethic of World Religions, but also jeopardized his Protestant ethic thesis.’ (Huang 1994, 14) Yang disagrees, for him Weber’s argument is that the material conditions do not favour either China or the West.
So the differentiating factor is the ‘passive and traditionalist character of Confucian and Taoist values explaining why capitalism developed in the West but not in China.’ (Yang 1964, xix)
For Yang, the material and theological factors cannot be so clearly disassociated.
Indeed, this is indicative of Weber’s thought ‘especially regarding his theory of religious values as independent voluntaristic influences on the nature of socioeconomic development.’ (Yang 1964, xiv) He notes the peculiarity of separating ‘Weber’s discussion on literati as a status group in the first chapter on Part II’ away from the other structural factors in Part I. (Yang 1964, xx) On this point Huang notes with interest that ‘Weber presents a historical insight concerning the causal relation between political and religious development – one which is usually overlooked by Weber scholars.’ (Huang 1994, 11).
Both authors seem to be hinting at a key basic assumption of Weber’s: the nature of this overlap between the socio-political and the theological. A key point of Weber is that people are proactive in how they understand reality, not reactive. This imaginative, theological, activity continues to shape socio-economic activity in direct ways. This was the point that made Weber’s thesis about the Protestant Work ethic so provocative.
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The “inner affinity between the old Protestant spirit and modern capitalist culture”
was to be found “not in its more or less materialistic or at least anti-ascetic enjoyments of life (as it is called), but rather in its purely religious features.” Seen from this perspective, the argument of The Protestant Ethic would have appeared entirely counterintuitive to Weber’s contemporaries. The sociologist Othmar Spann likely spoke for many when he declared that Weber’s thesis was as paradoxical as trying to “explain coldness from fire.” (Derman 2012, 88-89)
The point to make is that the causal chain does not flow from ideal to material or from material to ideal. It runs both ways with these factors co-influencing and combining to shape society in ways that are often impossible to separate. Weber’s separation of the socio-political and the theological should not be seen as him trying to identify independent strands of causation.
For Weber, these things are separable in the same way that the proverbial chicken and the egg are separable. It is no surprise to Weber, as it seems to be for Huang, that we see great overlap both conceptual and institutional analysis of both the socio-political and the theological because for Weber these things endlessly feed into each other. A core principle for Weber was that you cannot have one without the other. (Parsons 1965, xxvii) In this way Weber’s broader project is more than offering a sociological methodology, it was an attempt to ‘explore one of the central problematics in the European tradition of moral and political thought: die entwicklung des menschentums (the development of the “human”), or how values and social orders shape individual personalities and capacities.’ (Derman 2012, 223)
Weber starts The Sociology of Religion by emphasising that the theological considerations he is focusing on are oriented towards this world and should be seen as fundamentally rational behaviour. (Weber 1965, 1) The question that Weber laboured over was not this, but rather how to analyse the connection between the theological and the socio-political. As Talcott Parsons tells us:
The central problem was whether men’s conceptions of the cosmic universe, including those of Divinity and men’s religious interests within such a conceptual framework could influence or shape their concrete actions and social relationships, particularly in the very mundane field of economic action… But Weber early became acutely aware, as many participants in the discussion still are not, that the problem of causation involved an analytical problem, one of the isolation of variables and the testing of their significance in situations where they could be
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shown to vary independently of each other. (Parsons 1965, xxi)
In The Sociology of Religion, Weber does offer a starting point for what these variables that allow for such an analysis might be; it is to these considerations that we now turn.
2.2.2 A New Approach: Ideal Types as variables in Institutional development
Based upon the assumption that our theology influences and shapes our actions;
specifically, the institutions we build to govern ourselves. Weber left himself the task of tracing the development of governing institutions. Such a project needed a new approach than the ones that were on offer. Weber’s work can, to some extent, best be understood as a reaction against the German Idealism of his intellectual background ‘which distinguished different or opposed methods as appropriate to the natural sciences and to humanistic studies.’ (Parsons 1965, xxii) Weber’s ‘famous dictum that “not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s social conduct”’ (Mommsen 1989, 147) stands in stark contrast to this.
Weber was famously against the materialism that would come to dominate the field of social sciences under the influence of Marx as ‘he was convinced that the social action of particular groups is never determined solely by economic interests.’ (Mommsen 1989, 62) However, he also ‘repeatedly repudiated any imputation of an intent to “explain” all social developments as emanations and consequences of “idealistic” elements. His general position was as far removed from idealistic “emanationism” as it could possibly be.’ (Parsons 1965, xxii) His protestant work ethic thesis was not trying to show that theology alone shapes society, but that it is a factor that cannot be ignored. (Mommsen 1989, 57) In Weber’s mind, relying on materialistic or ideational explanations alone was too weak a position to maintain the complexity of the process of social development. This is paralleled by Weber’s insistence that although ‘values and scientific deductions were to be examined for their validity on a separate basis’ it does not make sense to think of science as ‘value-free’ or even in the radical sense as
‘value-judgement-free’, that is, removed from politics or values.’ (Mommsen 1989, 8)
This basic principle for Weber is tied to his rejection of ‘approaches that claimed to discover objective historical laws or even an inner meaning to history’ which he labelled
“charlatanism.” (Mommsen 1989, 55) His position was that interpreting reality was essentially impossible for the average person to do without a conceptual framework to rely on. ‘Only when specific concepts and categories, formulated from the perspective of ultimate cultural values,
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are applied to a limited segment of reality (which in itself is limitless), does it [reality] become meaningful.’ (Mommsen 1989, 55)
The methodological concept of ideal types should be interpreted in this context:
ultimate values that can be used in analysis to notice patterns of change, not based on material or ideological factors alone, but how reality is constructed by the observer in relation to these fundamental, theological, constructions of reality. Through them we are thus able not to uncover objective laws of sociology, but law-like patterns of social development. (Mommsen 1989, 55) These ideal types are ‘nomological’ in nature, (Mommsen 1989, 123) meaning they do not have real form, they are useful interpretative constructions. Used for showing differences and trends in social development. And to do so without making ‘value-judgements.’
(Mommsen 1989, 123)
This accentuation is seen as value-neutral because ideal types are considered no more than instrumental in achieving the clearest possible conceptual understanding of given circumstances in the light of ‘ultimate’ viewpoints (Mommsen 1989, 124)
Mommsen tells us that ‘two categories of ideal types can be distinguished in Weber’s methodological writings.’ (Mommsen 1989, 124) The first he identifies as ‘Structural types’;
i.e. constructs which represent structures, either ideal or material, that give shape to how reality is interpreted. To flesh out a framework, this set of ideal types are often presented as antinomies,
‘insoluble contradictions’, (Mommsen 1989, 66) between which lie spectrums that specific concepts and realities can be plotted. The second type of ideal types are ‘Types of social change’; i.e. constructs which represent historical processes in time, most specifically for our purposes social development. (Mommsen 1989, 124)
Both of these can be identified in Weber’s The Sociology of Religion. In this work, Weber attempts to develop his methodology by focusing on the process of change and how institutional changes are influenced and shaped by theological concepts and considerations.
(Parsons 1965, xxii) In the distinction between different ideal types, we see the basis for the two parts of his methodology. One looking at the institutional process of change, which follows generally the same pattern regardless of the context; and the other looking at the theological concepts that inform the composition and direction of that change. This general structure informs the next two sub-sections of this analysis of his methodology.
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2.2.3 Religious Virtuoso, Prophecy and Breakthrough
Weber’s methodology focuses on the process of dominance, change and breakthrough.
Put simply, the religious virtuoso is an office that represents the establishment and the prophet is a figure of change for Weber. The established order of a society inevitably involves some form of dominance of the general population under that order. The reason for this being tied to the ‘religious virtuoso’ is because it is theological constructions, produced by the ‘religious virtuoso,’ that give a society shape, people consent to their domination because of the sense-making work of the ‘religious virtuoso’. Prophecy refers to strands of thought that rise up to challenge that order, and breakthrough refers to reform or revolution that comes as a result of more successful prophetic movements. This subsection will focus on outlining the relationship between them and therefore the basis of institutional dynamics that are present in every human society.
Domination and the Religious Virtuoso
For Weber, it seems that social formation begins with the search for questions.1 In an imagined pre-history, Weber talks about those people who are able to answer questions and offer solutions to the wider society. An implicit assumption here is that such a role is necessary;
that no society could do without answers to these fundamental questions. The one who provides
that no society could do without answers to these fundamental questions. The one who provides