Disenchantment, Rationalisation and Collective Self-Sacralisation. Reply to Siniša Malešević

My book ‘The Power of the Sacred’, originally published in German in 2017 and in French translation in 2020, has become the subject matter of controversial discussions in both countries. As the author of it I certainly have no intention to complain about this fact even if I do not experience all contributions as sympathetic or plausible. In Germany, a discussion volume has come out to which internationally renowned philosophers, sociologists and theologians like Charles Taylor, Björn Wittrock and Hermann Deuser have contributed (Schlette et al . 2022). In France, another such volume is currently in preparation, and it remains to be seen how the echo in the English-speaking world will be. The Harvard historian James Kloppenberg has taken this book as the point of departure for a wide-ranging presentation of my whole intellectual biography (Kloppenberg 2022), and the first extensive American review by the sociologist Richard Madsen, a prominent member of the so-called Bellah group, has treated my work thoroughly and fairly (Madsen 2022). I am fortunate that the same can be said about the present contribution. Its author and I have for a long time shared an interest in the historical sociology of war and organised violence, and more recently have been brought together in the debate about religion and (neo-) nationalism in Europe (Höhne and Meireis 2020). I do not see our exchange here as a controversy, but I have accepted the invitation to respond because this allows me to clarify a few points in a review that undoubtedly attempts to do justice both to my critique of Max Weber and to my proposed alternative to his narrative of disenchantment.