ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for the conceptual unity of religion and politics. It suggests that founding fatherhood and charisma belong indifferently to religion and to the politics of nation and of party because these three seemingly distinct sectors of human activity share characteristics that belong to sociality as such. A good starting point is an extended version of the conceptual apparatus of Weber’s Sociology of Religion, not simply because the original habitat of charisma and founding fatherhood was religion, but because all the binary oppositions this chapter intends to deal with are in the nature and dynamics of sociality itself. At least that has been the case since the rise of cities, along with writing, texts and the religious changes of the Axial Age, including the embodiment of the spirit in a charismatic narrative. The spirit takes up its abode in the letter; and the letter, the charismatic narrative, the mythic text, permeates religion, nationalism and politics alike, alongside charisma and founding fatherhood.
