Religion and Power

There are few more contentious issues than the relation of faith to power or the suggestion that religion is irrational compared with politics and peculiarly prone to violence. The former claim is associated with Juergen Habermas and the latter with Richard Dawkins. In this book David Martin argues, against Habermas, that religion and politics share a common mythic basis and that it is misleading to contrast the rationality of politics with the irrationality of religion. In contrast to Richard Dawkins (and New Atheists generally), Martin argues that the approach taken is brazenly unscientific and that the proclivity to violence is a shared feature of religion, nationalism and political ideology alike rooted in the demands of power and social solidarity. The book concludes by considering the changing ecology of faith and power at both centre and periphery in monuments, places and spaces.

David Martin is Emeritus Professor of Sociology, LSE, UK, and Fellow of the British Academy. He was born in Mortlake, in 1929 and attended East Sheen Grammar School and Westminster College, In the latter part of a seven year period in primary school teaching he took a first class (external) degree in sociology in his spare time and won a post-graduate scholarship to the LSE. He became a lecturer in the LSE sociology department in 1962 and professor from 1971-89. After his first book on Pacifism (1965) he produced the first critique of secularisation theory (1965) and the first statement of a general theory of secularisation (1969 and 1978). From 1986-90 he was distinguished professor of Human Values at Southern Methodist University and turned to the study of global Pentecostalism, producing, the first summary statement of the world-wide Pentecostal phenomenon in 1990. He also returned to the issue of religion and violence and explored issues in music and nationalism and sociology and theology. His intellectual autobiography The Education of David Martin appeared in 2013.

Introduction; Chapter 1 Secularisation, Secularism and the Post-Secular: The Power Dimension; Part I Religion, War and Violence; Chapter 2 The Problematic; Chapter 3 The Rhetorical Issue of Sentences about Religion and Violence; Chapter 4 Modes of Truth and Rival Narratives; Chapter 5 The Rival Narratives; Part II Religion and Nationalism, Religion and Politics; Chapter 6 The Political Future of Religion; Chapter 7 Nationalism and Religion: Collective Identity and Choice; Chapter 8 Charisma and Founding Fatherhood; Chapter 9 Religion and Politics; Chapter 10 Religion, Politics and Secularisation; Chapter 11 No Logos without Mythos; Part III Religion, Power and Emplacement; Chapter 12 The Historical Ecology of European and North American Religion; Chapter 13 Inscribing the General Theory of Secularisation and Its Basic Patterns in the Space/Time of the City; Chapter 14 England and London; Chapter 15 Moscow and Eurasia: Centre and Periphery, Ethno-religion and Voluntarism, Secularisation and De-Secularisation;