Religion and Power: No Logos Without Mythos

by David Martin

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.

Genres: Religion, Nonfiction

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Reviews

[Jared Donis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is way too advanced sociological analysis for me. It requires a solid background in the human sciences, especially sociology and history. It thought it was an introductory work, but once I read through chapter 1, I realised my mistake. It was too late; I had to finish it.

The book is deeply comparative and analytically sophisticated. If you are interested in purely academic sociological discussion on religion and power, this is the book! But as said, I found it quite complex and the arguments forwarded are not easily grasped (some of them flew over my head, I admit).

Even if you know something about sociology, you would have to struggle with D. Martin’s text and style of writing. He uses weird syntax and confusing sentence constructions in a number of paragraphs. I was beginning to think that either his English is way to advanced or it is not his native tongue (first language) — or may be it’s just the nature of academic sociological writing.

Another observation from my reading was that the first 2 or 3 chapters sound like long introductions. He uses ‘I will… , I will…’ a lot. Nevertheless, the content was profound.

Overall, the work is truly remarkable. His narrative shows the depth and progress of social scientific debates on the subjects (religion and power). His analysis, at many instances, shows the complexity and refinement of his thought process. The criticisms and claims he presents are sublime. Although I struggled to understand some of his positions, the way he articulated them signals his brilliance. The book showed me there’s just so much to explore out there in social science. Thank you for that, David Martin.

I will definitely return to this work.