The Encyclopedia of World Religions

474 S Weber, Max

the new, heavenly J ERUSALEM contains “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal.” Ponce de Leon sought for the Fountain of Youth in Florida, and the quest for an elixir of life based on water has been a staple of MAGIC and ALCHEMY everywhere. Water is also purifying, as the flood of Noah purified the world, and rites of purification involv ing water are very common. After ritual or other pollution, bathing is recommended as a sacred as well as practical act. S HINTO priests bathe before a sacred ceremony, and shrines are often located by the purifying waters of a rapid stream. In the Catholic mass, the priest ceremonially washes his hands. Symbolically, water is often linked with the moon because of the tides, and with women because of their related cycles ( see M OON AND RELI GION , THE ). In psychology, it is also often taken to represent the unconscious out of which come dreams and intuitions. Water is thought to be as pervasive and mysterious as God, and the prophet Isaiah foresaw a time when the glory of God would cover the Earth, “as the waters cover the sea.” Weber, Max (1864–1920) German scholar who helped found the area of study known as sociology Weber’s contributions to the study of religion were immense. His most famous book is The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. There he argued that P ROTESTANTISM and its values were responsible for the rise of capitalism. As capitalist structures had begun to arise before the Protestant R EFORMATION , this particular thesis is probably wrong. Nevertheless, many still find Weber’s ideas significant tools for studying religions. One powerful set of ideas concerns the author ity on which religions depend. Weber identified three different kinds of authority: charismatic (the personal authority of particularly striking individu als), traditional, and legal-rational. He also identi fied a typical historical progression from one type to another. Many religions, he suggested, begin with striking individuals, that is, they depend at first upon charismatic authority. Think of the B UDDHA

for B UDDHISM , J ESUS for C HRISTIANITY , and M UHAM MAD for I SLAM . When these figures die, authority shifts. It may shift to people whom tradition recog nizes as authoritative, for example, Jesus’ APOSTLES . Or it may shift to certain legal-rational procedures for ordering the community, such as councils or meetings of bishops. Each type of shift to another authority is called “routinization.” Wesley, John (1703–1791) a minister in the Church of England who founded Methodism John Wesley was the son of a priest of the Church of England ( see A NGLICANISM ). He studied for the ministry and was himself ordained a priest in 1728. At the time he was also a fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford. John’s brother Charles had started a study group among Oxford students. Members of this group met regularly to study Christian devotional literature; they took communion frequently; and they fasted on Wednesdays and Fridays. In time they also took an interest in working among the poor. Other students labeled them “Methodists,” because they went about their religion so methodi cally. The name was meant to be a putdown. John Wesley eventually became leader of the group. In 1735 Wesley was appointed to minister to settlers in the colony of Georgia. He spent almost two years there, but his ministry was not effective. He discovered that the settlers had little interest in his own “high church Anglicanism.” At the same time, Wesley became impressed by missionaries of the Moravian Brethren. The Brethren emphasized a personal experience of the certainty of salvation. Back in England in 1738, Wesley had such an experience. He was listening to a reading from Martin L UTHER ’s writings, and he became convinced of Luther’s fundamental teaching that people are justified by GRACE through FAITH apart from anything they might do. At the same time, his heart was touched by the feeling that J ESUS had indeed died for him. Wesley traveled to the continent to confer with the head of the Brethren, Nikolaus von Zinzendorf. Then he started out on his own mission.