Introduction

Abstract

Questions of discipline are, today, no less ubiquitous than when under Foucault’s renowned scrutiny, but what does ‘discipline’ in diverse religious systems actually entail? In this article, we take ‘lenience’ rather than discipline as a starting point and compare its potential, both structural and ideological, in religious contexts where disciplinary flexibility shores up greater encompassing projects of moral perfectionism as opposed to those contexts in which disciplinary flexibility is a defining feature in its own right. We argue that lenience provides religious systems with a vital flexibility that is necessary to their reproduction and adaptation to the world. By taking a ‘systems’ perspective on ethnographic discussions of religious worlds, we proffer fresh observations on recent debates within the anthropology of religion on ‘ethics’, ‘failure’, and the nature of religious subjects.

Around Andreas Bandak's Exemplary Life: Modelling Sainthood in Christian Syria

“…In the Christian lexicon of Catholic-and Orthodox-saints, one fi nds a whole tradition of holy fools and saints embodying extreme values not necessarily for others to emulate. In Mayblin's own work, she points to the fi gure of lenience in order to understand Catholic practices, a certain fl exibility with which to engage priests, saints, and fi gures of authority (Mayblin and Malara 2018). As such, Mayblin herself points to how a response to the exemplar may be one of repose or deferral, one where the lesson is still yet to be revealed, is still yet to be drawn.…”

Future-Day Saints: Abrahamic Astronomy, Anthropological Futures, and Speculative Religion

“…In this, there are anthropological lessons here about the importance of speculative religion. In anthropology, religion is often seen as either an issue of belief (Geertz 1966), even if belief is treated as a sometimes problematic category (See Lindquist and Coleman 2008), or an issue of institutional and embodied discipline (See, e.g., Hirschkind 2006;Mahmood 2011), even if this discipline must be counterbalanced with leniency (Mayblin and Malara 2018). Additionally, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with the centrality of "having a testimony", and the importance of institutional oversight, certainly has elements that can be seen as falling into one of these categories or the other.…”