Beyond secular leadership frameworks: spiritual authority, social capital crisis, and institutional legitimacy in faith-based schools – evidence from Islamic education with implications for Catholic school contexts

Conventional social capital theory inadequately explains institutional crisis in faith-based educational institutions – whether Catholic, Islamic, or other religious traditions – where spiritual authority and moral legitimacy constitute the foundation of community engagement. This study develops Social Capital Crisis Theory through cross-case analysis of four Indonesian madrasah experiencing divergent institutional trajectories over 18 months, employing interviews with 61 stakeholders, participant observation, and document analysis. Findings identify five critical interdependent dimensions determining institutional sustainability: spiritual authority, community integration, trust differentiation, social network activation, and value-practice alignment. Religious legitimacy functions as a foundational prerequisite that enables or constrains all other dimensions, while communities engage in sophisticated multidimensional trust differentiation that conventional unidimensional frameworks cannot explain. Parallels are drawn with Catholic school leadership literature, particularly regarding congregational charism, mission integrity, and community embeddedness as drivers of institutional sustainability. The framework challenges secular assumptions in mainstream educational administration literature, offering transferable analytical tools for Catholic and other faith-based educational leaders navigating analogous tensions between spiritual authenticity and contemporary administrative demands internationally.