Religious Authority, Sunnah and Sufi Networks in Indonesia

Muslims: Religious Authority and Ethical Improvement in Aceh, Indonesia

The Indonesian province of Aceh is known as rebellious. The most recent eruption was the civil war between the Indonesian army and the ethno-nationalist separatist movement GAM, which started in 1976 and could only be ended after the destructive Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. Aceh is also known as strictly Islamic. When Aceh is featured in the media, the focus is often on the implementation, sin...

Models of Religious Authority

The State's Authority in Religious Rights

Legal analysis of church-state relations in European countries presupposes a concept or at least a notion of the state. The concept is largely avoided in contemporary legal and political theory. Nonetheless, Western and Central European Continental legal systems, including the Croatian Draft Law on the Legal Position of Religious Communities of April 2002, tacitly presuppose the idea that the s...

Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic

137 Chapters 12–16 continue to examine the schism, events surrounding the Council of Mantua in 1064 until the deaths of Alexander and Cadalus, and, finally, the election of Hildebrand as Pope Gregory VII. It is in these subsequent chapters that the moves called to question at the end of chapter 11 are explained: to mask conspiracies. Stroll posits that the schism in the Church had not been abou...

A rational choice theory of religious authority

The rational choice literature on religion has been noticeably silent on the nature and purpose of religious authority. I first summarize the rational choice theory of authority and offer a rational choice definition of religious authority. A primary insight is that (religious) authority exists to coordinate social action. I then argue that social coordination is a fundamental aspect of religio...