Weber examined a distinctively different type of authority from rational-legal authority, and that was charismatic authority. In fact, “pure” charisma unleashes disruption, instigating revolutionary change.
Followers of megachurch leaders recognize charismatic authority as being a gift of grace, and it often has revolutionary potential, challenging the legitimacy of the rational-legal and traditional authorities (1968:24). This precarious form of authority many see present in the proliferation of megachurches and, I argue, better explains its drawing power. The rationalizing influence of capitalist culture remains significant to our study, as for Weber the different types of authority are dynamically
related—charismatic authority is often being routinized while rationalizing structures are being challenged and reformed by charismatic authority. These categories are ideal types, and they socially manifest in hybrid forms. From a different angle, the magnetism of a powerfully charismatic figure will require some organizational machinery in order to mobilize, direct, and contain large groups of people. As Weber insisted, some success—including numerical success in terms of membership—is necessary in order for charismatic authority to be legitimated; this requires some routinization (1968:20-23). As the adage suggests, nothing attracts a crowd like a crowd.
Charisma suggests an aura in a pastoral leader that is less associated with the role of CEO or entrepreneur in the marketplace as much as the role of a spiritual authority in a religious institution—
an extraordinary leader on an extraordinary mission. The answer to the original question, “Why do people go to megachurches such as TMH?” is they go because they perceive an exceptionally gifted visionary who provides them with a compelling sense of purpose in the midst of some malaise. This is not so much a rational choice as an emotional bond rooted in a sense of promise and hope that arises from the pastor’s public performance. Wellman puts it quite vividly: “these ‘energy stars’
attract and create a fusion of joy, delight, and motivation that create congregations that glow with what they call the ‘spirit’ of God… skilled leaders generate a collective effervescence that buoys groups and charges crowds with a kind of delirium that humans want—and even need” (2012:6). In Shils’ (1965) explication of Weber, charismatic individuals have the power to bring a new order that connects followers more intimately with the heart of the cosmos—in this megachurch scenario, it is the divine figure of Jesus.
While charisma, on one hand, can too quickly be associated with primitivist caricatures or the supposed lighter fare of sports and entertainment, and thus lack full legitimacy in modern institutions (Robbins 1998), it has on the other hand become the key in a new paradigm of corporate leadership studies called “transformational leadership” that leverages charisma for the benefit of the organization and its people rather than just for the interests of the leader (Bass and Avolio 1994). The range of meanings for charisma and diversity of attitudes towards it make it a slippery subject, equivocally used, and in what follows I will examine three different ways in which charisma has been understood in the West, ending with a dramaturgical definition of megachurch leader charisma.
The Equivocations of Charisma
The literature on charisma spans a diversity of disciplines, including anthropology (Lindholm 1990;
Lindholm 2013; Csordas 1997; P. Smith 2000; Falco 2011; Dyer and McDonald 2002), celebrity studies (Dyer and McDonald 2002), cultural studies (Horn 2011), history (W. Clark 2007; Potts 2009;
Berenson 2012), management studies (Conger and Kanungo 1988; Conger 1989; Khurana 2002), philosophy (Bro 1955), political science (Madsen and Snow 1991; Aberbach 1996; Horvath 2013), psychology (Oakes 1997; Schiffer 1973), religion (C. R. Smith 2000), and sociology (O’Dea and Yinger 1961; Berger 1963; Shils 1965; Eisenstadt 1968; Friedland 1964; Tucker 1968; Downton 1973; Wilson 1975; Barnes 1978; Zablocki 1980; Wallis 1982; Wallis 1993; Glassman and Swatos 1986; Bryman 1992; D. N. Smith 1998; S. Turner 2003; Rieff 2008; Feuchtwang 2008; Carter 2010;
Dawson 2011; Hofmann and Dawson 2014). While often the Weberian definition of charisma takes precedence, in megachurch studies especially the intended meaning of the word can be ambiguous.
In what follows, I examine what I contend to be the three most common meanings of the word in order to bring some clarity to its equivocal use. First, I will examine the spiritual meaning of the term found in New Testament texts as interpreted by John Potts (2009). Then I will elaborate more fully on Weber’s derived situational meaning of the term—charisma as the confluence of an extraordinary leader and devoted followers in a time of social distress. Finally, using Daniel Boorstin as a resource, I will describe what I am calling the contrived charisma of celebrity culture, which is created to a large degree by the proliferation of images through electronic media.
“Charis” is an ancient Greek term that was used to describe the favour of the gods falling on someone, bestowing them with an attractiveness, beauty or charm, which in turn made the recipient beholden to the god (Potts 2009:13). A form of this word appears in the Septuagint version of the Hebrew scriptures (Zech. 12:10) where God says he will pour out a spirit of grace (“pneuma charitos”) on the house of David. But since the original manuscripts are in Hebrew, the use of the Greek word comes from a much later period. Still, scholars consider the concept of charisma as analogous to moments in the Hebrew scriptures when the “Spirit of God” falls or rests on a prophet or a judge such as Samson in Judges 14:19 (Sanders 2000; Potts 2009:15).
It is not until Paul’s letters in the New Testament,56 however, that the word “charisma”
receives more definitive meaning. Potts (2009:35) cites numerous references to demonstrate a scholarly consensus that while derivatives of the word “charis” were in use before Paul’s time, Paul adapted the word “charisma” in an original way for the early Christian context (Dunn 1975:206;
Schatzmann 1987:4; Harrison 2003:280). While the term “charisma” appears 16 times in New Testament texts (such as Romans 1:11, 5:15-16, 12:6-8, 1 Timothy 4:14, 2 Timothy 1:6), the most frequent and extended discussion comes in the first letter to the Corinthians. Chapter 12:1-11 is a key
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56 I recognize there are debates on the historicity and authorship of the New Testament epistles, as well as the nature of the Pauline tradition, but I am following the interpretation of Potts, which resonates with assumptions of charisma in some of the megachurch literature.
text in the letter, where Paul explains the democratic distribution and diverse character of spiritual charisma (charisma1):
Now about the [charisma] of the Spirit, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed… 4 There are different kinds of charisma, but the same Spirit distributes them…7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.
8 To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another…
knowledge… 9 to another faith… to another charisma of healing… 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues… and to still another the interpretation of tongues… 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines (NIV with Greek term charisma in italics).
“Charisma” in this passage refers to spiritual gifts or talents not innate to the person but which are perceived to come from the Spirit of God in Jesus Christ. These charismata (plural) are given not to one particular leader but to everyone in the spiritual community—as interdependent gifts in a
“pneumatocracy” (Joosse 2014:269). Finally, the charismata are characterized not as attractiveness or charm—or even leadership per se—but as different “gifts of grace,” including faith, wisdom, healing, and miraculous powers.57
After the time of the early church, as Christianity spread and developed institutionally, the terminology of charisma (understood as a spiritual charisma I call “charisma1”) finds marginal use in the church (Potts 2009:51-84). Almost two millennia pass before the word resurfaces in a significant way, partly because of the wave of charismatic movements begun in the early 20th century but spreading most visibly in the 1960s and 1970s (Cox 2001). Since then, use of the word
“charismatic” in discussion of megachurch leaders in some cases means both “spiritually gifted” and potentially “member of the charismatic movement.” One example would be the language in the edited book honouring the pastor of the world’s largest church: Charis and Charisma: David Yonggi Cho and the Growth of Yoido Full Gospel Church (Myung and Hong 2003). While Max Weber is mentioned twice in passing (2003:181, 197), most of the implicit meanings of the word “charisma”
refer to an inner spiritual authority possessed by Rev. Cho. I would argue this is actually not Paul’s broader meaning of the many “charismata” but specific reference to just one charisma: the charisma of leadership mentioned in Romans 12:8.
Because charisma1 refers to a diversity of spiritual gifts distributed through the church and intended for harmonious interdependence within the church, it lies on the periphery of my analysis of megachurch charismatic leadership. It is important, however, in understanding the history of the word
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57 The Romans 12 text includes more ordinary gifts such as teaching, mercy, aid, service, and encouraging. Because the lists are different, I would argue they are not intended to be considered as rigid lists or exhaustive in their scope.
“charisma” and it also informs the perceptions of many of those who follow megachurch leaders: they perceive their pastor as having the spiritual gifts of teaching, administration and/or leadership.
My investigation lies more firmly in the sociological tradition of Max Weber, who is another reason for the popularization of the word “charisma,” as his works were translated into English by the mid-20th century. Weber borrowed the word from the theological writings of Rudolf Sohm and transposed the meaning into a universally applicable secular political key and “value-neutral”
typology (D. Smith 1998; Weber 1968:19). The Christian term describing the gifts of grace to all believers was both broadened and narrowed by Weber: broadened to apply to all extraordinary leaders but narrowed insofar as it referred only to leadership ability, not other talents or graces such as those named in the New Testament epistles. Weber defines charisma (charisma2) as a form of authority:
… a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities. These are not accessible to the ordinary person, but are regarded as of divine origin or as exemplary, and on the basis of them, the individual concerned is treated as a leader (Weber 1968:48).
Weber contrasted this charismatic authority with two other kinds of legitimate authority: bureaucratic authority (also called rational/legal) which is based on rules and efficient procedures such as those found in democratic governments; and traditional authority—customary ways of doing things as seen in families, religious groups and monarchies (Weber 1968:46). Charismatic leadership challenges these other two stable, if not sterile, authorities with revolutionary force, upsetting the “iron cage” of bureaucracy and legalistic tradition and ushering in a new social order. Whether prophets, shamans, war lords or heroes, charismatic leaders disrupt the given rules and rituals to emancipate people into a creatively inspired future. They have both an extraordinary mission and extraordinary powers by which to complete their mission (S. Turner 2011). Weber said charisma2 always proceeds from the declaration: “It is written… but I say unto you…” (Weber 1968:24).58
If we stop our analysis of Weber here, charisma2 appears as a spellbinding personality trait that elicits deep devotion in people, and it comes with a Romantic (anti-modern) bias.59 This is too simplistic for Weber, who elaborates immediately after the above definition of charisma: “What is
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58 Even within the Weberian concept of charisma2 are numerous distinctions and debates. For example, Riesebrodt (1999) claims Weber is inconsistent, and subsequent interpretations have defined Weberian charisma as heroic leadership (Joas 1996) or as an impersonal sacred force (Eisenstadt 1968; Shils 1972). While I can imagine an argument for some overlap between the two, my definition rests more in the former notion.
59 Many uses of the word “charisma” do in fact understand it to be a form of personal magnetism. While some find traces of this in Weber (Friedland 1964; Horn 2011:7) and others level the charge at social psychology (P. Smith 2000), it is best compared to the “Great Man” theory of history, a theory dating back to the 1840s and the Scottish writer Thomas Carlyle, who declared, "The history of the world is but the biography of great men" (and he meant
“males”). His book entitled On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (1840/1993) assumes that by learning about Great Men, one might come to find one’s own inner hero.
alone important is how the individual is actually regarded by those subject to charismatic authority, by his ‘followers’ or ‘disciples’” (Weber 1968:48). Charisma2 is thus not as much a personality trait as it is a bond, a strong emotional tie between leader and followers that obligates followers to obey the leader, whom they see connecting them more directly with the fundamental order of the cosmos (Shils 1965). In other words, there are no charismatic leaders apart from the recognition and submission of followers. Not a gift of grace, “the locus of power is in the led, who actively (if perhaps unconsciously) invest their leaders with social authority” (Joosse 2014:271).
For Weber, this relational understanding of charisma2 is more accurately understood by what I am calling “situational” charisma, for the charismatic bond is strongest in the context of social crises— “times of psychic, physical, economic, ethical, religious, political distress” (Weber 1968:18).
When social tensions rise and people feel anxious or uncertain, they look for someone who can connect them to the core of reality and empower them with a vision of a hopeful future. The charismatic leader is a hero with extraordinary gifts who compels people to follow and obey as part of a journey towards a new social order. Weber did not make clear that charisma2 can have oppressive, if not horrific, manifestations, such as in the cases of Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and Jim Jones (Lindholm 1990; Feuchtwang 2008). Significantly, Weber’s notion of charisma as a legitimate form of authority was used by political theorist Theodore Abel to make a “persuasive case” in 1938 for Hitler’s rule, even if Weber himself may have objected to such use if he had lived to see the rise of the Nazi regime (Potts 2009:129).
This completes what Pinto and Larsen (2006) have called the “charismatic triangle”—the dynamic interplay of the individual leader, followers, and a triggering event or crisis at the core of the charismatic moment. In fact, they use the term “charismatization”60 to communicate that charisma is both a process and event—a dynamic interplay of these three factors that cannot be precisely predicted or controlled. This makes Weber’s notion of charisma inherently unstable, and its precariousness generates motivation for the “routinization” of charisma into either bureaucratic or traditional forms of authority. Again, because Weber’s three concepts of legitimate authority are ideal types, they rarely empirically appear in pure form, and the notion of “the routinization of charisma”
effectively demonstrates their overlapping social dynamism.
As introduced in chapter 1, I have turned the charismatic triangle into a diamond, re-conceptualizing the “leader” as the creator along with a production team, and adding the dramatic web as the cultural object in question. Three points of the diamond—social context, creators, and followers—form the structure of the next chapter and demonstrate the complexity and dynamism of
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60 This term is also used by Barker (1993) and Glassman (1975).
charismatic authority; it is fundamentally a show in which star, stagecraft,61 spectators, and setting work in concert. To illustrate, consider Rick Warren, who was a young man with some exceptional leadership skills and an ambition to lead a megachurch. He grew a following of people who saw him as a man with exemplary vision, as he was able to address the malaise of postsuburban middle-class life in the region of southern California (Wilford 2012). But it was not until he published The Purpose Driven Church (1995) and even more significantly The Purpose Driven Life (2002) that his charismatic authority exploded to international range. The role of media—books, magazines and all electronic forms—become especially important when examining an additional popular meaning of charisma: celebrity aura.
Before shifting to the next meaning of charisma, however, it is significant to note megachurch literature often invokes a form of Weber’s notion of charisma2. A study such as Donald Miller’s (1997) explicitly states the relevance of the routinization of charisma for the Calvary, Vineyard, and Hope church movements. While all three aspects of the charismatic triangle are implicit in Miller’s discussion of charisma, he emphasizes charisma2 as a prophetic revelation that is routinized by disciples over time (1997:25-26, 123, 148). In other parts of the text, he refers to “personal charisma”
as a personality trait of a leader (1997:14, 149, 163). Yet in other places he refers to charismatic gifts and charismatic worship in a clearly Pauline sense, in one instance stating that their religious expression was “too charismatic” (1997:36, 43, 48). In sum, Miller uses three different meanings of charisma—as a personality trait, as a movement lead by a spiritual leader, and as a tradition of expressive worship. In terms of usage, this is certainly legitimate; my goal in this chapter, however, is to bring these variations to a higher level of awareness.
This leads to my third meaning for “charisma” (charisma3)—one derived originally from Daniel Boorstin but elaborated through much of the growing discipline of celebrity and fandom studies (Dyer 1987; Gledhill 1991; Lewis 1992; Gamson 1994; Marshall 1997; Braudy 1997; Rojek 2001; Dyer and McDonald 2002; G. Turner 2004, 2010; Ferris 2007). Boorstin’s lament, The Image:
A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), is an original and seminal text in celebrity studies and serves here as a paradigmatic model and prototypical expression of a late-modern form of charisma.
The book elaborates on a series of contrasts—between illusion and reality, images and ideals, and, mostly significantly here, celebrities and heroes. Heroes, argues Boorstin, have charisma, understood as “divine favour, a grace or talent granted them by God” (1961:50). The historical presence of such
“greatness” has been recently levelled by democracy, cynically undermined by the social sciences,
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61 Bensman and Givant (1975) use this term in a discussion of the fabricated nature of charisma in mass media. They believe Weberian charisma belongs to a previous age, while I suggest the potential blurring of charisma2 and charisma3 as the latter can shape and magnify the former, while making it more vulnerable to critique.
forgotten by literature, and, most importantly, “lost in the congested traffic of pseudo-events”
(1961:54).62 Pseudo-events are social happenings manufactured artificially to meet the extravagant expectations of the modern public, says Boorstin, and their main character is the celebrity, defined as
“a person who is known for his well-knownness” (1961:57). As “human pseudo-events,” these people are creations of press agents and mass media for an Age of Contrivance.63 Summarizes Boorstin:
The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark.
The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media. The hero was a big man;
the celebrity is a big name… While heroes are assimilated to one another by the great simple virtues of their character, celebrities are differentiated mainly by trivia of personality. To be known for your personality actually proves you a celebrity. Thus a synonym for “a celebrity” is “a personality” (1961:61, 65).
Boorstin does not use the term “charisma” to describe celebrities, for celebrities’ charisma is at best contrived, or pseudo-charisma, the illusion of divine gifting.64 Spiritual charisma is a gift, and situational charisma precariously rests on follower recognition, but contrived charisma arises from calculated marketing and manipulation.65
One need not accept all the sharp binaries of Boorstin’s critique nor its normative assumptions
One need not accept all the sharp binaries of Boorstin’s critique nor its normative assumptions