Document Type
Article
Version
Working paper
Publication Date
7-2026
Abstract
Sociologists, anthropologists, cognitive scientists, and others have shown that religion is a feature of life in every known human society (Bellah 2011). While the cultural contexts, organizing principles, and values of each religion differ greatly – so much so that “religion” is a problematic universal category (Asad 1993) – many religions do share certain characteristics. One of those characteristics – shared among most social groups regardless of their purpose – is leadership, variously defined. Spiritual and religious groups, gatherings, and collectives have specific individuals that they turn to for wisdom, spiritual or moral guidance, fostering community, and/or ritual facilitation. We call these individuals, locally understood by many names and taking many forms, formal or informal religious leaders. Religious leaders are and have always been diverse because they are specific to their context, reflecting the culture, era, location, and demographics of the population. They are also specific to different theological or ontological explanations of human nature. A religious leader who believes in the inherent sinfulness of human beings is a very different type of religious leader, for example, than one who believes that sin is a human construct. A leader of a pantheistic or polytheistic tradition likely engages with adherents differently than one understood to be mediator between human and a monotheistic deity.
Citation
Lawton, Amy; Akova, Feyza (2026). “Investigating and Re-imagining Contemporary Religious Leadership: A Working Paper.” Spiritual Infrastructure of the Future Project, Bryn Mawr College.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.