Symbolism and Power in David Martin’s Sociology of Religion

This article suggests that symbolism and power are central concepts in the massive volume of David Martin’s work, which is underpinned and sustained by a dynamic dialectic tension between the religious and the secular. For Martin, the core characteristic element of the religious is the transcendent which is in constant dialectic with the secular in history and society through the functions and uses and abuses of power. Politics and religion, thus, are explored within the same mythic symbolic theoretical/methodological framework as, according to Martin, ‘there is no logos without mythos’. All this is theoretically depicted and empirically documented mainly in his General Theory of Secularization (1978), his Religion and Power (2014) and in his Breaking of the Image (1980). The latter is a masterpiece of symbolist analysis and interpretation of Christian theory and practice with a universal sociological application and significance. This specific hermeneutic symbolist approach of Martin is original and promotes a diachronic and synchronic sociological and theological understanding of religion as such and of religion in society. Within this framework Martin also provides us with a wider understanding of social change beyond the context and the limits of modernity.