ABSTRACT
When Baudrillard declared that God has departed but left his judgement behind, he ironically echoed the classic statement on disenchantment.1 The world was no longer seen as being under the influence of sacred or supernatural forces. God’s judgement merely represented abstract principles to be interpreted and contested over by different groups and individuals in society. Social power replaced the belief in the immanence of charisma. Religious experiences in a disenchanted world were constituted by a hegemonic relationship between ecclesiastical orders that claimed mediation of the divine will and neophytes who submitted to their authority. What became disenchanted were not so much the magical and charismatic worldviews of the masses, but the rechannelling of those beliefs into specific structures of power maintained exclusively by representatives of the ecclesiastical orders. This was the instrumental view of disenchantment offered by Weber who saw ‘sacramental’ or ‘corporate grace’ as the ritual property of the priesthood and not of the lay individual.2
