Power and Authority in Organized Religion: Disaggregating the Phenomenological Core

Power and authority in organized religion are characterized by two countervailing forces. One of the forces seeks to preserve the definitiveness of the foundational religious experience by means of external authoritative mechanisms of centralized control. The other attempts to preserve the living relationship of the core religious encounter through an internal radical dispersion of religious power. Theories which postulate the source of religious power as relation with a numinous presence cannot rely upon a reductionistic epistemology for empirical analysis. Endorsing a basically phenomenological and therefore antireductionist theory of religion, this paper discusses the need to integrate positivistic, dialectic, and phenomenological approaches. Religious social action is tied to a historical dialectic between externalizing and internalizing movements of religious power that unfolds within a concrete political economy. Analysis of political economic power in religion must focus on how symbol systems affect the structuring process and therefore must emphasize the importance of professional clergy as critical culture bearers. These assumptions and conclusions are extrapolated beyond the context of religion to the study of power and beliefs in other complex organizations.