ABSTRACT
If for the sake of argument we agree there has been a return in sociology to culture and cultural analysis, then we are once again given full permission to visit the classical sites excavated by Max Weber concerning the great issues of Christian civilization. The issue I raise here could hardly be more fundamental: the language of Christianity about power, politics and violence in the context of secularization. One of my founding texts is Max Weber’s ‘Politics as a Vocation’ because in that great essay he analyses the characteristics and constraints of the political role as contrasted with the religious and the academic roles.1 The religious, the political and the academic form the triangle in which I conduct my enquiry.
