Workshop

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26‒27 May 2025
Institut français de Jordanie, Amman
Is preaching consubstantial with crisis? This is what is suggested by Max Weber’s sociology of religious work, which distinguishes between “pastoral care” (religious edification of the individual), characteristic of ordinary situations, and “preaching” (collective religious instruction modelled on the prophetic episode), that takes place in contexts of profound upheaval, when a religious tradition is expanding or, conversely, is being threatened by competing doctrines. This Weberian scheme applies perfectly to the major contemporary Islamic preaching movements (e.g. jama’at al-tabligh, the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists), all of which present their actions as a solution to the regression into which Muslims were plunged by European colonialism and the secularist political regimes that succeeded it. Similarly, the Coptic revival in Egypt from the late 19th century onwards emerged against a backdrop of British colonialism, political crisis, nationalist effervescence and, later, the rise of political Islam.
Continuer la lecture de Crises and Preaching: Lexis, framing, timings, 19th‒21st century in the Middle East