In this paper I take up the ambivalence we rightly feel toward leaders by examining the relationship between charismatic authority and moral exemplarity. Drawing on the social theory of Max Weber, and in dialogue with a case study of an anti‐militarism movement called the SOA (School of Americas) Watch, I demonstrate that through a “politics of sacrifice” leaders synchronize their own stories with those of communally recognized exemplars and act in ways that evidence a solidarity in the suffering of those exemplars thereby generating their charismatic authority. While performing crucial strategic, motivational, and pedagogical roles, this charisma also introduces problematic temptations to authoritarianism that short‐circuit the practical reasoning that exemplars supposedly help to form. In the end this leaves our sense of ambivalence intact. What is needed, I argue, are practices of critique that reopen the distance between leader and follower and thus allow the possibility of practical reason.
Though Anglican theologians, clergy, and laypeople have written and spoken extensively about the current status of the Anglican Communion, the conceptualization and practice of conflict has itself remained largely unexamined. This essay argues for the necessity of a better theology of conflict, one rooted in a Trinitarian account of unity through difference. It shows that Anglicans have tended to think of conflict-as-sin or conflict-as-finitude. The essay commends a semantic shift that develops conflict-as-communion. Conflict is a means of grace that animates the divine life of the Trinity, enables God’s work of salvation in history, and is a natural part of good human sociality. This theology of conflict can allow generative relational practices, some of which are already in use across the Anglican Communion.
Standard stories about the development of the study of nonviolent struggle characterize the maturation of the field as moving from principle to pragmatics, norm to technique. This big story about the field’s development is crystalized in the supposed dichotomy between principled and pragmatic nonviolence; a dichotomy that though common sense for those teaching and researching the repertoires of nonviolent struggle occludes the elision of critical normativity. Through a genealogical retrieval of Gene Sharp’s reading of Max Weber, this article unsettles this story. I argue that the turn to technique in the study of nonviolent struggle is itself a normative turn. Redescribing the turn to technique as itself normative, however, is not enough for a comprehensive description of the dynamics of nonviolent struggle. I develop this insight further by arguing that a recovery of the virtue of prudence, or practical reason, is necessary for a full account of nonviolent struggle.
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