Hans JOAS. The Power of the Sacred: An Alternative to the Narrative of Disenchantment. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2001. Pp. 390. Translated by Alex Skinner. ISBN 9780-1909-333272. Reviewed by Michael McCALLION, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Detroit, MI 48206.

The Power of the Sacred reconstructs theories of religion from the eighteenth century to the present by examining the works of Hume, James, Durkheim, Troeltsch and others in order to reconsider Weber’s views on disenchantment. Hans Joas’ analysis finds the concept of disenchantment profoundly ambiguous. Hans believes the narrative of a progressive process of disenchantment needs debunking or, better yet, an alternative. Joas writes: “Despite the dominance of the narratives of secularization and disenchantment—which we cannot, of course, simply equate, but which are not entirely independent of one another either—the two perspectives were never entirely uncontested or unopposed. Those seeking to develop a coherent alternative, therefore, must build on the legitimate aspects of these other thinkers’ observations” (p. 1).

Chapter one deals with Hume’s understanding of religion and its consequences. Most important to Hans is Hume’s methodological approach which Joas believes is “of epochal importance” (p. 13). After Hume, scholars can no longer cite divine revelation as a causal explanation but only be the object of further investigation. It was Hume, then, that was part of the rise of the secular option.

Chapter two analyzes the turn to experience and William James’ The Varieties of religious Experience (1902) which is the text used as an exemplar of this turn. James established the notion of “religious experience” according to Hans, as an object of scholarly inquiry. What Joas finds missing in this discussion is the linking of religious experience with a theory of articulation. Joas proposes that what is needed is the linking of religious experience with a theory of signs (its articulation) as a scholarly way forward.

Chapter three, “Ritual and the Sacred,” is a fascinating chapter that deals with the turn to ritual. Durkheim’s work is central. Joas’ discussion of the prehistory of Durkheim’s theory of ritual is most interesting as is the next section of this chapter on the persistence of ritual. The question of ritual practices preceding ideas, however, is analyzed thoroughly by examining James, Fustel, and Robertson Smith. Joas, in the end, writes “much that is sacred is individual and much that is collective is profane” as a means of critiquing Durkheim’s narrowness in relying mostly on collective ecstasy or collective effervescence as empirical evidence of collective forces at the beginning of time. In arguing for the persistence of ritual, however, Joas shows that there is no linear progressive historical tendency toward deritualization (disenchantment).

Chapter four focuses on the scholarly engagement with religion that was at this time highly idiosyncratic, a situation needing synthesis. JoAS examines Weber and Troeltsch’s attempts to do just that, with Troeltsch asserting he established a new discipline. Troeltsch’s point of departure is the fact of ideal formation – the empirical fact that ideals necessarily emerge in historico-social life. This requires study of the dynamic processes through which such ideals emerge, and this is why he conducts a historical sociology of Christianity. Weber is equally ambitious, and yet Joas shows Weber’s weaknesses and argues the entire notion of disenchantment needs revision. He proposes an alternative narrative of religious history, arguing that along with processes of disenchantment or secularization there are ever new and powerful processes of sacralization. Powers of the sacred are erupting into life to this day (ever new sacralizations).

Chapter five deals with the axial age as a turning point in religious history. Joas draws on many works that focus on the axial age including Robert Bellah’s last book Religion in Human Evolution. Here the idea of transcendence plays a central role. In chapter six, Weber’s “intermediate reflection” is thoroughly examined. The concept of disenchantment is entangled with other nouns of process that lead sociologists astray. Specifically, the nouns of process of differentiation, rationalization, and modernization. As Joas states: “the objective of this chapter is clear-cut. It is to sound the alert about dangerous nouns of process, nouns that lead sociologists astray whenever they try to use them to place their analyses of the contemporary world on a historical foundation” (p.195). As for Weber’s intermediate reflection, Jaos writes: “The goal of the ‘Intermediate Reflection’ is thus explicitly to achieve an understanding of how such religious renunciation of the world could ever have come about, to clarify ‘the motives from which religious ethics of world abnegation have originated, and the directions they have taken’” (p. 208). But as in the previous chapter, Joas argues that scholars will fail if they remain captive to the idea of disenchantment and not consider dynamics of new processes of sacralization or “ideal formation” as he calls it.

In chapter seven, “The Sacred and Power,” Joas writes: “In several chapters of the present book I have discussed the emergence of intensive affectively charged commitments to such ideals through extraquotidian individual experiences or ecstatic-collective physical practices. This fact, it seems to me, furnishes us with an uncontroversial foundation for an appropriate understanding of religion” (p. 235). In other words, Joas understands the power of ritual, the affective, religious experiences, bodily practices as solid starting points for a historical, sociological account of religion. Indeed, such a starting point will reveal the historical diversity of religious and secular ideal formation as he likes to name it. There is a complex interplay between religious physical experiences (collective effervescences) that create religious innovations and efforts to give them institutional form.

The author admits at the end that although his book was not focused on normative issues, his ideas nonetheless are not devoid of normative elements – two in particular. First, in accepting the hypothesis of the axial age he is assuming that moral universalism is superior to moral particularism (tolerance over intolerance). Second, the notion of collective self-sacralization (emphasizing the sacredness of the person), an alternative to the narrative of disenchantment, is not value-free in that it pays heed to all living people now and in the future. A thoroughly argued, intriguing book.