DISKUS Vol. 3 No. 2 (1995) pp.1-12 Jural and Mystical Authority in Religions: Exploring a Typology. Douglas Davies Department of Theology The University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD, UK email: HDZDJD@hzn1.halls.nottingham.ac.uk -------------------------------------------------------------- ABSTRACT Focused on the institution of the patriarch, this paper analyses religious power in Mormonism through Max Weber's sociological distinction between bureaucratic and charismatic authority and Rodney Needham's anthropological categories of jural and mystical authority. -------------------------------------------------------------- This paper uses Max Weber's distinction between bureaucratic authority and charismatic authority on the one hand and Rodney Needham's distinction between jural and mystical authority on the other, to analyse issues of religious power in Mormonism and to suggest that this kind of distinction is of great significance when considering religions in general. It concludes with some other theoretical models of power which also reflect this duality and explore the interplay between more legal forms of authority and more mystical kinds of influence within religious traditions. Power and Powers The background to types of authority in religion is very rich indeed because of the interdisciplinary nature of religious studies. Here I restrict our focus to two scholars and one religion and begin with Max Weber's historically important tripartite distinction between Rational, Traditional, and Charismatic types of relationship, which describes ways in which people accept authority, and relate it to Needham's bipartite distinction between legal and mystical authority as far as Mormonism is concerned. In so doing our discussion will, significantly, extend the argument on routinization of charisma advanced by Bates in her doctoral dissertation on The Transformation of Charisma in the Mormon Church (1991). In origin Mormonism began under the charismatic authority of Joseph Smith. His personal charisma, that attractive power to lead, resulted in the banding together of devotees. His death was followed in the later 1840s with the leadership of Brigham Young. While possessing moments when he was certainly viewed charismatically, as when he spoke in tongues and was viewed as surrounded by angels, Young was a much more pragmatic leader, and under him a more rational-bureaucratic form of control emerged within the church; a church which still retains a connection with what I will call its 'primal charisma', through a variety of channels, all of which were increasingly subjected to rational control. Here, however, we must be careful in distinguishing between charisma as an attribute of a leader which engenders devoted relationships amongst followers, and that wider sense of a mysterious power which adherents may experience in various religious contexts. Charisma proper is an attribute of the leader-led relationship but this is, I would argue, part of a continuum of perceived power, in Gerardus Van der Leeuw's sense, which is also encountered in other contexts (1967). For Mormons these other contexts are those of private prayer, of temple ritual, of genealogical work and of family life, not to mention missionary work. All points on this power-continuum are mutually influential so that, for example, through an experience in personal prayer a Mormon may, in Mormon terminology, gain a testimony that Joseph Smith really was a prophet of God and that this Church is the one true church. As I would analyse this situation, a sense of personal mystery comes to validate the status of the prophet, who thus becomes a very special kind of historic charismatic figure for the contemporary believer. This charismatic status of the first prophet is then by association, and by the interpretative tradition of the church, extended to his successors down to the present day. In other words, contemporary sources of religious experience validate the founding charisma whilst being interpreted by devotees as derived from that founding charisma. One significant channel of experience was, until very recently, the office of Patriarch to the Church; a person through whom God could speak to individuals in the course of private consultations, through the form of what is called a Patriarchal Blessing. Church members are also taught to seek private revelations and experience to help strengthen their testimony of the truth of the church and to assist them in the very offices within that rational-bureaucratic organization of the church to which they have been elected by traditionally validated leaders. Charismatic elements in Mormonism then, both primal charisma in Joseph Smith and contemporary private mystery which exerts its own form of control, have come to be part of the traditional basis for authority, itself regulated by rational organizational structures. Later Mormon prophets increasingly display bureaucratic control with a strong decrease, in practical terms, of obvious and dramatic charismatic leadership. The one major exception over the entire twentieth century lies in the admitting of Negro people to the erstwhile white priesthood through a revelation of 1978. Some recent prophets have ended their lives as very old and even quite sick men, unable to manifest anything like the ideal of active and public charismatic leadership. For these the charisma of office strongly enhances any achieved status of the individual. In practice then, the charismatic ideal has been strongly routinized and democratized by being associated with particular moods associated with distinctive rituals within the LDS church. This very real routinization of charisma has taken the form of what might be called a dispersed charisma, encountered as a personal emotional attribute and reckoned to be derived from God's presence in and through the church organization. Having sketched ways in which Weber's rational, traditional and charismatic types of authority relate to Mormonism I want, now, to turn to Needham's dual form of power in life. Needham and Dual Sovereignty Rodney Needham's notion of dual sovereignty (1980:63ff) distinguishes between the legal or jural aspects of power controlling life on the one hand, and the mystical powers which influence life on the other. This diarchy of jural and mystical forces describes what he called 'the form of complementary governance' of people; a complementarity which could also be expressed in the oppositions between 'political and religious, pragmatic and symbolic, or secular and sacred features'. (1980:71). In fact Needham saw in the principle of diarchy or complementary governance 'a fundamental and global instance of an elementary classification of powers' (1980:88). Leaving aside Needham's speculations as to whether this formal dichotomy might be related to issues of brain laterality and the complementarity of reason and emotion, I want to argue that by adopting the principle of diarchy in respect of the powers to which some people feel themselves subject, our insight into a fundamental aspect of Mormon church organization and religious experience may be deepened. Needham's category of legal power resembles Weber's rational control, while the mystical factor mirrors Weber's charismatic element. Weber's traditional form of domination is not particularly apposite here since it may perhaps itself be qualified in terms of legal tradition or mystical tradition. This brief sketch of Needham's schema now allows us to interpret aspects of Mormon church organization by stressing the mutual relationship between legal and mystical forms of control. Latter Day Saint Authority From its inception in 1830, when God was believed to have appeared to Joseph Smith, restoring absent truths, rituals and powers, the Mormon Church instituted an extensive and developing system of church organization through which formal authority came to be administered. Believed to be a scheme of divine origin, this is reflected today in a classical pyramidal hierarchy where the prophet-leader stands amongst twelve others, who constitute the twelve apostles, each one possessing two assistants or counsellors. Below them lie seventy other individuals called The Seventy, and they too bear the name and status of general authorities of the church with responsibility for particular regions of the world. Accordingly, the pyramid hierarchy covers the planet. In national, regional and local areas there exist individuals with a responsibility to those above and for those below them. The bishop is the typical local office holder who, rather like a parish priest, is typically responsible for one church in a geographically bounded area, often that of a town or a particular suburb. We can in fact take the bishop as the ideal type of Mormon concerned with the maintenance of discipline and pure doctrine in the church; in other words the bishop represents legal or jural authority. Each person in a position of leadership possesses two advisers or first and second counsellors, in a system in which authority is corporately routinized. All male leaders are believed to have the capacity to bear authority and to engage in leadership because of the fact that they have been ordained into the Mormon priesthoods and because they support the authority of the prophet. In turn, they receive and implement the directives of the general authorities and the prophetic leadership of their church. In a direct sense this pattern expresses a classic form of legal or jural authority, in that the church possesses rules for its governance and leaders are invested with the authority to implement them. At the local level there exist, for example, bishops' courts which may try any who may have offended against these laws. Discipline may be enforced and ultimately excommunication be imposed, even though this is far from the Mormon ideal which prefers correction and improvement rather than negative expulsion. Were religion solely about rational authority and control by rule, then this pyramidal hierarchy of authority and power would provide as good an example as any in the world of religion. Certainly Mormons are well known for possessing food restrictions known as the Word of Wisdom which currently involve abstention from alcohol, coffee, tea or other intoxicants. Firm behavioural requirements also cover sexual and economic life and appropriate levels of attainment are expected before any Mormon gains a certificate granting admission to the Temple for the performance of sacred rites apart from which no full degree of salvation, or exaltation as Mormons call it, may be expected. But, as religion in general is not solely about rules, so too with Mormonism in particular. For religion also embraces inspiration, a sense of the transcendent and of the sacred which in terms of Mormonism is reported in a variety of ways. In particular it is connected with an emotional awareness of the divine heavenly father gained through personal prayer, religious meetings and other events in life including genealogical research and the subsequent sacred temple rituals performed on behalf of the dead. Sometimes Mormons talk about experiencing the sense of the presence of their dead, often in connection with the vicarious temple rites being performed on their behalf. These and other manifestations of spirit-beings are not strange to many grass-roots Mormons. Indeed I have argued elsewhere, in connection with the contemporary use of the word magic, that the current debate in Mormonism about its acceptance or rejection of the early phase when Joseph Smith encountered angels, Christ and others, is part of an on-going engagement with a form of religious experience perceived as profoundly mysterious (D.J. Davies 1996). In Mormonism it is through a form of mysterious experience, interpreted as divinely triggered, that the rational-legal programmes of church organization are accepted and affirmed. In Mormon terminology it is through some sort of an experience that a testimony is gained of the truth of this church with its new prophets, revelation, scriptures, church organization and temple rites. I described this process years ago in terms of the establishment of the ideal type of Homo religiosus in Mormonism (1987:131). As the much neglected anthropologist A.M. Hocart put it, religion is about securing life (1935:46ff). In this fostering and nurturing, a succour is given to people which helps establish their sense of identity, in return for which, as Hans Mol poignantly suggested, the source of identity may be invested with a profound sense of the sacred (1976). The emotional roots of such individual identity are fed as much by emotional tones as by authoritative commands; indeed the charisma of a prophetic leader may, within itself, be responsible both for inspirational solace and for the divine imperative bounding membership. In Mormonism the situation is slightly complex for the particular reason that this particular religion is essentially composed of the two intersecting axes of formal church organization on the one hand and of family life on the other. In terms of church organization, jural and mystical forms of authority exist in distinct, formal church offices. Melchizedek Priests acting within the pyramidal hierarchy, typified above in the office of the local bishop, manage jural power while mystical power is, primarily, vested in people called Patriarchs. We may set up these offices of bishop and patriarch to reflect the ideal types of jural and mystical power in the Mormon Church. But, in so doing I must emphasize one complexity which derives from the fact that within what I call domestic Mormonism, the religion of the family, home and lineage, the father is both Melchizedek priest serving an authoritative role and also the patriarch who blesses his children when necessary. Here Weber is important, especially his discussion of patriarchal structures pertaining to the on-going economic basis of family or institutional life, because he drew a sharp distinction between 'charisma and any patriarchal structure' (1991:247). For him a rejection of economic gain was part of the inspiring leadership of charismatic leaders amongst whom he counts, in passing, 'the chief of the Mormons' (Gerth and Mills, 1991:246). In domestic Mormonism the rational and the mystical cohere in the priest-patriarch father. With that caveat in mind, we see that Mormonism possesses these two channels within which this duality of religious power may flow. In some circumstances they may separate, in others be closely integrated and complementary. The one, the line of priestly authority, whether in the bishop or in the father as priest, helps maintain discipline by keeping the outer boundary of Mormon doctrine and practice intact. The other, whether in formal church patriarch or in the father as patriarch, fosters the inner heart of Mormon spirituality. Bishops and Jural Power The bishop is called to supervise the life of a local congregation by the Stake President who exists at a higher level of church organization with more extensive geographical responsibility. He supervises and maintains church life in his church and plays a major part in calling others to office under him. As already mentioned, he has particular responsibilities for interviewing people about their social and personal lives when they request a certificate enabling them to attend the temple for their vitally important temple rituals of endowment and baptism for the dead. In this sense he wields considerable control over the religious activity of members. He is available for consultation and may initiate contact with any who are felt not to be achieving the broad goals of church membership. As an ultimate resort the bishop may convene a court which may discipline an unruly member and even have that person excommunicated. It is in this power of exclusion that the jural power of the bishop becomes particularly clear. But the power of the bishop is definitely circumscribed by that of his regional Stake President as also by others above him in the pyramidal hierarchy culminating in the office of the first presidency. Patriarchs and Mystical Power For historical reasons it is necessary to speak about patriarchs in two ways. The first focuses on the fact that in the early days there was only one patriarch to the church existing at any one time and this person was a lineal descendant of Joseph Smith. This lineal patriarch, as I will call him, has occupied a very special place in the development of Mormonism and reflects changing power structures and patterns of organization in the church. I cannot develop this theme here except to point out that the first patriarch appointed by Joseph Smith was his father, Joseph Smith Senior, followed by some of Joseph's brothers and subsequent relatives. In 1979 a Smith descendant, Eldred G. Smith who had been an active Patriarch since 1947, was given the title of Emeritus Patriarch with no-one else being appointed to the single office of Patriarch to the Church. Sociologically speaking, this relative termination of the status of the central patriarch could be interpreted as the final phase in the routinization of a charisma which had given the Patriarch a high degree of freedom from the central prophetic office of church leadership. In a church which became increasingly rational-bureaucratic in its organization from the 1960s-1970s there was less place for such a central office. On this interpretation whatever mystical messages would come from God would come through the key prophet-leader and not from the complementary patriarch. But this change occurred at a time when the church was increasing in size so that access to a single, preferred, patriarch was less feasible. The growing change of emphasis of church Authorities shifted to regional patriarchs who are not lineal descendants of the Smith family at all. The role of the patriarch was, traditionally, to bless church members in a private ceremony. The patriarch would lay hands on the person's head and would then proclaim a blessing believed to be given by direct divine revelation. An official scribe wrote down the message, one copy of which was, and is, given to the blessed individual and another of which went, and goes, into church records. These blessings are regarded as private and generally are kept secret and are not open for ordinary research purposes. Many Mormons treasure their patriarchal blessings, seeing in them a significant comment on their life and work. Church leaders are keen to discourage anyone from viewing the blessing as a piece of fortune-telling, being well aware that it is a practice open to superstitious interpretation. In a way which makes sense within Mormon belief and the history of Mormonism's development, patriarchs also declared the lineage to which the believer belonged. In practice it meant that the believer would be said to belong to one of the ancient tribes of Israel. As John A Widtsoe once explained it: 'in the great majority of cases LDS are of the tribe of Ephraim, the tribe to which has been committed the leadership of the Latter Day work' (Brough and Grassley 1984:35). Many Mormons will seek their patriarchal blessing as young or mid-teenagers or before they serve their mission as nineteen year-olds or else before they go to college or get married. They will occasionally share the contents with family, spouse or friend but blessings are not allowed to be read in church meetings or the like. Weber spoke of the way in which charismatic characteristics are seldom associated with financial considerations. The intrinsic nature of the gift being, perhaps, one that should simply be passed on without payment. This is interesting as far as Mormon patriarchs are concerned for they are expressly forbidden to accept money for their work. At the self-conscious level of community interpretation this can be explained as a means of ensuring that the patriarchal blessing is not viewed as fortune telling but as a divine gift which cannot be bought. Sociologically it reinforces Weber's notion of the self-authenticating nature of charismatic authority. But, and this is a significant point, while the patriarch is officially forbidden to take money it was traditionally expected that the official scribe or stenographer should be paid. Symbolically this offers a sociological vignette of authority in Mormonism as the charismatic element of divine immediacy and freedom, enshrined in the patriarchal blessing is framed or complemented by a bureaucratic-rational process of record keeping for which payment is proper. Bishop and Patriarch: Complements of Power In the two offices of bishop and patriarch we can see, then, how jural and mystical power are controlled and administered through proper institutionally formulated authorities. The jural power of the bishop maintains the formal boundaries of behaviour and, in my schematizing of the process, maintains the outward boundaries of Mormonism. The mystical power of the patriarch stimulates an inner source of religious strength in the intimacy of sacred power. Both kinds of power are necessary for the maintaining of a large religious movement which prides itself both on an integrated bureaucratic system and on the necessity for all members to experience the direct action of the spirit for themselves. As we have seen, the sense of personal identity grounded in contact with spiritual power is expressed verbally and emotionally in displays of controlled performance, as Mormons, whether from the Twelve Apostles or any ordinary church member, speak about the church or its doctrines. To relate sociological and Mormon terminology, charisma has in these contexts become testimony. The stronger the testimony the more likely it is that a person will be appointed to increasingly senior church offices, and the more likely it is to foster a supernaturally framed world-view. What is interesting from a sociological perspective is that Mormons have fostered the mood of testimony and the idea that the other world touches closely on this world by fixing both mood and idea within particular ritual contexts. This is especially important in the reduction of the role of the patriarch to the church at the centre of church organization and the increased control of higher numbers of patriarchs dispersed throughout the church membership. Also of great dynamic significance is the idea of the patriarch as applied to the role of each Mormon father within his family, within domestic Mormonism. To speak of the patriarch-father as a charismatic figure would, in a direct sense, contradict Weber's classification, just as it would appear that contemporary Mormon prophets contradict Weber's ideal type of charismatic prophet. Once it is realized, however, that in the development of Mormonism charismatic and bureaucratic statuses are set within a complementary framework, or are two aspects of a single process, all becomes more intelligible. To state this formally the charismatic and the bureaucratic are two modalities of Mormon identity. Historical Note There are important historical questions relating to the sociological analysis of Mormon authority which cannot be explored here. Central to these is the issue of whether the patriarchal office in the Mormon Church emerged as a means by which Joseph Smith could validate his own father by giving him status devoid of much authority in the church. In more concrete terms the LDS Patriarch to the Church could be described as a person possessing mystical authority devoid of jural power. The prophet, by contrast, especially at the outset, possessed jural power by virtue of his mystical authority. In contemporary Mormonism the stake patriarchs stand as symbols of Mormonism's charismatic foundation and of its mystical present. Through contact with the local patriarch the individual may feel a direct command from God and thus be in touch with the heart and centre of the faith. The fact that all patriarchs are still appointed, albeit formally, by the twelve apostles and are not selected for office by the local bishop reinforces this point. But members are encouraged to seek advice from the bishop, and not from the patriarch as far as their personal and church life are concerned. In other words there is a sharp division of labour between bureaucratic and spiritual activities. The very fact of the continued existence of the patriarchs, albeit under increased formal constraint, emphasizes the fact that the Church considers this aspect of life to be of deep significance. Sociologically speaking, this office may be one which contributes to the success of Mormonism and will perhaps be especially important in newly proselytized areas, where pre-existing religions involve some sort of spiritual power brokerage between devotee and shaman. Though the modern Mormon patriarch is far removed from the shaman, with no mystic journey and no drumming, he does constitute an individual who is expected to live in a way which keeps the channel to the divine open for the good of others. Summary In this paper we have seen how Weber's categories of charisma and bureaucratic rationality have their parallel and extended application in Needham's idea of mystical and jural authority in religion. Doubtless other models could have been adopted to reflect something of this dual process of authority. In fact the use of additional perspectives would almost certainly bring to light aspects which are not so obvious in the scheme we have followed. So for example Victor Turner's (1969) dynamic concept of hierarchy and communitas could be used as a way of describing human experience within social processes, showing how the mode of hierarchy provides the framework for bureaucratic organization and the legal mode, while communitas aptly describes one element of that charismatic and mystical dimension of life which appears, for example, in the Mormon testimony meeting or in the temple ritual, when devotees are clearly separated from the ordinary domain of worldly divisions. The usefulness of Turner's model lies in his belief that a processual flow from hierarchy to communitas and vice-versa constitutes the fullness of human experience. This adds a dynamic element to Weber's outlook and also shows how the same people can function in different ways in various contexts. It also gives a suitable framework for Needham's perspective on diarchy. From a quite different perspective Maurice Bloch's (1992) important thesis enshrined in his notion of rebounding violence or rebounding vitality could also be explored, to suggest that the encounter with the transcendent sense of a mystical point brings the devotee to a higher order sense of identity than prevailed prior to the exposure. Applying this to both patriarchal blessings and to temple ritual we could argue that the mystical authority of Needham resembles the encounter with the transcendent in Bloch's central phase of rituals of rebounding conquest. The question would be whether rebounding violence adds a mystical edge to otherwise jural rites? These are but thumb-nail sketches of possible additional forms of interpretation of patterns of authority and power in religions. The Religious Continuum It could of course be argued that the Mormon case is ideally suited to the jural-mystical scheme and that other religions would not yield so easily to this configuration. There might be some truth in that, and a comparative study would need to deal with many cases. What I suggest is that a typology needs to be established comparing and contrasting the relative complementarity of the two modes in relation to the nature and success of different groups. The nature of the balance might even be related to degrees of success in mission, growth and the maintenance of groups. The Charismatic movement within the Church of England offers interesting examples where, recently, the Nine o'Clock Service at Sheffield turned out to involve high levels of enthusiasm and relative lack of control by the wider church. Here the mystical overtook the jural for a period. The interpretative power of models often shows their strength or weakness in comparative study, so that wider studies must, inevitably be pursued. The case of Sikhism, for example, offers easy historical and emic models of the jural and mystical dimensions through the motifs of the soldier and saint pictures of Sikh gurus. My hypothesis would be that groups which maintain a balance between the jural and the mystical will survive and flourish, while those which accentuate one over the other will be less advantaged. I argue this on the a priori assumption that individuals commit themselves to religions for the emotional benefit of identity, for a degree of existential excitement, and for an ordered world-view. Such perspectives, as I have argued some time ago in terms of the sociology of knowledge of salvation, constitute a maximization of plausibility which is encountered as salvation (Davies 1984). 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