The lapsed and the laity: discipline and lenience in the study of religion

Abstract

This article cautions against an 'earnest turn' within the anthropology of religion, pointing up the tendency for anthropologists of religion to over-emphasize the role of discipline in the construction of the religious subjecthood over mechanisms of leniency and compromise. Taking the Catholic Church as an example, I show how discipline and lenience have been co-constitutive of Christian subjectivities, as different movements in a gigantic choreography which have spanned and evolved over several centuries. By looking at certain technologies of lenience that have emerged over the course of Catholic history, I trace an alternative genealogy of 'the Christian self'; one in which institutional growth, power, and survival depended not only upon the formation of disciplined bodies and interior dispositions but also upon a carefully managed division of labour between clergy and laity, as well as upon a battery of legal commutations and practical avoidances aimed at minimizing the effort and pain of the ascetic approach. Taking the concept of 'lapsedness' as cue, I ask to what extent the 'lapsed Catholic', rather than indexing an ever-increasing tendency towards secularism, might already be contained and accounted for within Catholicism as a living, evolving form.

Introduction

“…In religious systems where a clerical or priestly caste is defined, 'ethics' in the form of intellectual reflexivity or a heightened sensitivity to the presence of moral contradiction can also be thought about as labour divided across differing categories of people (cf. Bandak & Boylston 2014;Khan Forthcoming;Laidlaw 1995;Malara & Boylston 2016;Mayblin 2017). Actual divisions of ethical labour may not map perfectly onto formal designation (i.e.…”

“…In other words, just as lenience gives rise to ethics, so it can entail its own kind of politics. As Mayblin (2017) has described, extreme technologies of lenience in the form of Catholic indulgences allowed for a kind of social elasticity and institutional growth throughout the late Middle Ages which might otherwise have been impossible. And yet, the incredible leniency provided by indulgences was not, we know today, infinite.…”

Density and domination

“…In critiquing anthropologists’ preference for density, Graeber and Mayblin (2017) identify a variety of problems. First, attention to density, according to Graeber, who relies on the work of hooks (2015), might exacerbate the gap between the surplus knowledge of the minutia of White Christian European lifeworlds and the “bottomless silences” that surround Black and Brown histories.…”

On secularity: Marxism, reality, and the Messiah in Brazil

“…77Despite critiques of the ‘popular’ over the years, many agree that it remains useful to refer to traditional popular Catholicism (Steil ). Moreover, attending to popular Christianity is arguably another way to push against the trend whereby anthropologists focus on religious ascetics rather than on the less devout (Mayblin ). See also Keane (: 31) on why it is helpful to speak about ‘Christianity’ generally: its common elements, including that faithful recognize a shared tradition despite denominational diversity.…”