Weber’s missing mystics: inner-worldly mystical practices and the micro potential for social change

Abstract

Weber’s typology of religious orientations is incomplete. Much more attention has been paid to the other-worldly mysticism of monastic or contemplative withdrawal from society than the neglected category of inner-worldly mysticism. In Weber’s brief treatment, he concludes that inner-worldly mysticism results in passive acquiescence to social conditions. Alternately, we draw on examples from Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day to demonstrate not only how mysticism can be tightly linked to the social world, but how mystical practices can create meaningful social change. We argue that this change is possible because inner-worldly mysticism holds the potential to generate solidarity across traditional power and status divides. We illustrate how this potential for interaction-level change can spread horizontally; the number of small groups committed to carrying out inner-worldly mystical practices can grow until such groups spread across communities and beyond. In this way, the work of inner-worldly mystics can create meaningful change without ever vying for power on the macro political stage.

Weber’s typology of religious orientations remains incomplete. Given Weber’s influence on the sociology of religion, it is surprising that his typology of religious orientations has remained underdeveloped. Although the 1970s saw a brief flurry of attention on Weber’s category of mysticism (Toennies et al. 1973; Steeman 1975; Nelson 1975; Garrett 1975; Robertson 1975, 1978), there has been little development since (Bynum 1991). This article more fully develops Weber’s missing mystics by focusing on inner-worldly mysticism, with a particular focus on the potential for social change.

More broadly, in developing this category, we contribute to understandings of the relationships among beliefs, action, and social change. Weber used his typology of religious experience to explain social action in The Protestant Ethic [TPE]; he drew on his analysis of inner worldly asceticism [IWA] to gain important insights into the dynamics of culture and macro social structure. Specifically, he demonstrated how ideological commitments shape economic actions, which in turn create patterns of social organization that constrain action. In other words, Weber illustrated how macro constraining economic structures can develop out of actors’ ideological commitments (cf. Weber’s Protestant Ethic [1905]1930).

Based on Weber’s explanation of the relationship between culture and structural change in TPE, we could anticipate a strong link between religion (culture) and social movements (efforts to exact structural change). Indeed, just to name a few, the role of religion was crucial in the successes of the US civil rights movement (Morris 1981, 1984; McAdam 1999; Williams 2002), the sanctuary movement (Lorentzen 1991; Coutin 1993; Davidson 1998; Marfleet 2011), and the anti-apartheid movement (Glifford 1995; Borer 1996; Nepstad and Williams 2007; Shore 2009). All of these examples illustrate the power of religion to generate fresh insight, enthusiasm for participation, and ultimately structural change in macro political, civil, and economic realms.

Exploring IWM reveals that ideas shape patterns of action not only within macro economics and political structures (cf Weber [1905]1930; Gorski 1993, 2003) but also within the interaction order (Goffman 1964a, b; Rawls 1987; Collins 2004). The interaction order is the realm of face-to-face interaction where social dynamics are made manifest. Students of the interaction order (Goffman 1964a, b; Rawls 1987; Collins 2004) demonstrate how this level of social life shaped by non-rational and emotional dynamics. Specifically, Collins (2004) argues that flows and stoppages of emotional energy (EE)—which are gained through solidarity or power and feel like confidence and willingness to initiate interaction—pattern the interaction order. The interaction order is stratified with the emotionally rich (high EE) getting richer and the emotionally poor (low EE) getting poorer. We argue that Weber also anticipated the importance of emotion and the non-rational dynamics in interaction in his underdeveloped theory of IWM.

IWM practices hold this power to reorder the prevailing hierarchy in the interaction order because they lead to direct solidarity-oriented action and change at the local face-to-face level. They do this by pulling people out of their standard social interaction orbits and encouraging them to experience solidarity with those lower in status. When successful, this solidarity shifts flows of EE, bringing high EE to low EE social positions. This is to say that IWM beliefs inspire action that can close gaps between people from very different power, status, and class positions. Such bridges undermine the prevailing interaction order. This power to unsettle expectations for interactions is the capacity to create micro change. Change in the interaction order can diffuse across networks to create what we can think of as grassroots change. This type of change can create meaningful differences in interaction without ever vying for space on the macro political stage.

This article focuses on the sorts of interaction changes that are inspired by following IWM commitments and on how these changes can diffuse through networks. We make two claims about social change within the interaction order: the first is the influence on those who witness the service interactions. As will become apparent, one need only to witness these unusual interactions to feel the power of them. The second is the influence on those serving the disadvantaged. The people involved in IWM have strong emotional experiences that can change their perception of social structure. Emotional intensity and change in perception can spread among networks, creating pockets of opportunity to engage in IWM-inspired action. Although change among those who receive help is of the utmost importance, we could find no written accounts of experiences of receiving.¹ Thus understanding the experiences of those who receive requires future ethnographic work focused on those who receive aid.²

Weber’s typology of religious orientations

Weber argues that religions evolved along two paths, “rational cognition and mastery of nature, on the one hand, and … ‘mystic’ experiences, on the other” ([1946]1964, 282). Asceticism is grounded in rationalized thinking motivated by a belief that living out God’s command will bring the benefits of God’s grace in the future. Mysticism, alternately, is grounded in emotional processes that are motivated by efforts to enjoy immediate direct contact with the divine. Through the lens of Weber’s typology of action, we could say that asceticism is driven by value-rational motivations and that mysticism is driven by affective motivations. This is to say, the first is motivated by beliefs, behaviors, and ethics, and the second is motivated by feelings, experiences, and emotions (Weber [1922]1978, p. 25).

Weber breaks these two different orientations, asceticism and mysticism, into two more categories: inner-worldly and other-worldly ([1922]1978, p. 544). Inner-worldly involvements include engagement in mundane and face-to-face activities (Weber [1963]1997, p. 166). Other-worldly involvements includes various forms of private contemplation ([1946]1964, p. 542). In other words, inner-worldly refers to engaging the immediate social world, and other-worldly refers to withdrawing from the social world by isolating oneself from face-to-face interaction with other people.³

Weber combines the two approaches to religion, and in doing so produces a typology of four religious orientations ([1922]1978, pp. 541–556), which can be laid out in a two-by-two table (see Table 1). Out of the four religious categories, Weber develops IWA, the subject of The Protestant Ethic ([1905]1930), most fully. In theorizing the dynamics of IWA, Weber argues that the protestant work ethic helped to shape American capitalism. Ideological commitment to vocation, hard work, and frugality led to an accumulation of capital. A surplus of capital fed back into the goals of vocation, hard work, and frugality and resulted in the continued accumulation of capital. Eventually other actors, who did not necessarily share the initial theological mandates, had to take up the capital accumulation habits and attitudes in order to compete in the market place with IWA. Thus living out religious ideological commitments created a self-reinforcing loop between culture and material conditions that became the basis for future constraining patterns—the formation of capitalism. The Protestant Ethic thus details the relationship between ideas and the formation of constraining structures (Weber [1905]2002).

Table 1 Weber’s typology of religious orientation

Although Weber refers to all four types throughout his discussions of religious orientations, Weber treats inner-worldly mysticism, in particular, as an aside ([1922]1978, pp. 541–556).⁴ From the start, Weber does not even allow for the possibility that mystics could engage in social activity that could lead to social change. By collapsing the practice of contemplation with the mystics’ goal of communion with the divine, Weber treats all mysticism as other-worldly. Indeed, throughout his discussion, Weber discusses the “inner-worldly mystics” as “inner-worldly contemplative mystics” ([1963]1993, pp. 173, 175, emphasis added)⁵ who minimize action in the world and look for opportunities for contemplation in order to experience mystical illumination (1964[1946], pp. 174,176, 325–326). Weber describes the contemplative mystic: “He is constantly striving to escape from activity in the world back to the quietness and inwardness to his god. Conversely, the ascetic, whenever he acts in conformity with his type, is certain to become god’s instrument” (1922[1978]), p. 549).⁶ However, Weber does state in one section of his description of IWM in Economy and Society that “genuine mysticism” does not typically lead to “social activity” but can nevertheless give rise to “communal action,” especially “the mystical feeling of love” and thereby “the creation of communities” ([1922]1978, p. 550). However, Weber does not pursue this line of thinking throughout the rest of his description of IWM, and he actually later contradicts it by suggesting that no mystics are interested in the world and that they have no impact on the world (1946[1964], pp. 174,176, 325–326, 549).

Weber’s analysis of IWM contains gaps and inconsistencies because he does not develop his theory about IWM from strong examples.⁷ For example, Weber uses Quakers and Monks as examples of IWM, but he also uses both groups as examples of OWM ([1946]1964, pp. 538, 542, 549). Without strong examples, Weber’s two methods, ideal types and verstehen, fail. The ideal type approach fails because he does not develop a synthetic picture from examining the extremes of actual empirical cases of IWM ([1946]1964, p. 7). The goal of verstehen—an empathic understanding of subjective meaning in social action ([1946]1964, p. 388)—fails for essentially the same reason: without concrete examples there were no subjective meanings to unearth.

By using empirical cases to detail the social foundations and consequences of IWM, this article augments Weber’s development of his typology of religious orientations. Throughout this article, we illustrate our theoretical treatment of IWM with examples from two prolific writers—Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa. Both worked in the Catholic Social Thought tradition⁸—a tradition with a theology that is particularly conducive to IWM. Both also gave rich depictions of an inner-worldly mystical orientation. By using writing from Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa to flesh out a picture of inner-worldly mysticism orientations, we illustrate how a mystical orientation can indeed be grounded in the world.

This article proceeds in the following way: First, we present our case for using Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa as examples for examining an IWM orientation. Second, we reject Weber’s notion that an IWM orientation is based on personality-based charisma. Rather, IWM is grounded in the emotional dynamics of face-to-face interaction, in particular, interaction in small religious communities. In the third section, we reject Weber’s assertion that one can only orient oneself to the divine either as an instrument or a vessel. Instead, we suggest that the IWM orientation towards the divine is better thought of as a channel. In the final section, we augment Weber’s insight that living out IWA ideological commitments can lead to the creation of social structures ([1905]1930), and argue that living out IWM ideological commitments can lead to the disruption of social structure. Specifically, the IWM sense of channeling the divine can lead to interactions that counter the prevailing interaction-level flow of material and emotional resources. The practices that create these changes can diffuse through networks to generate multiple pockets where face-to-face interaction disrupted and redirected. In other words, IWM practices can spread in a grassroots style, a crucial form of change that is missing from Weber’s typology.

Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, and the experiences of inner-worldly mysticism

This article uses the writings of Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa to illustrate how actors develop and sustain an IWM orientation by acting as a channel between the divine and the world. This article uses these two cases to problematize some of Weber’s notions of inner-worldly mysticism, and to refine Weber’s theory by offering some solutions to this long-standing under-development (cf. Snow and Trom 2002, p. 161). By comparing the two women’s efforts to live out Catholic Social Teaching, our goal is to build toward an ideal type and prevent a consuming focus on biography. Beyond Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa’s public writing, both have also had personal papers published—a diary in the case of Dorothy Day and personal letters in the case of Mother Teresa. These personal papers provide an opportunity to see how these women’s public presentations of their work fit with their depictions of their private experience of doing the work.

Case selection

We selected Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa primarily because both explicitly stated in their writings that they sought to find the divine in the world.

For example, Mother Teresa explains:

“[W]hen I walk through the slums or enter the dark holes—there Our Lord is lways really present” (2007, p. 50).

Dorothy Day expresses similar sentiments:

I do not have to retire to our room to pray. It is enough to get out and walk in the wilderness of the streets (2011, p. 40).

Beyond their evident IWM bent, we also selected Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa because both wrote prolifically, richly, and compellingly about inner-worldly religious life, including IWM.

It is important to note that just like Weber’s Protestant Ethic, we are not situating the dynamics of the typology of IWM in personalities; instead we focus on practices and skills and how they affect micro structures. Thus, rather than focusing on the two women as inner-worldly mystics, we focus on how both women routinely practiced inner-worldly mysticism. This is to say, their experiences of inner-worldly mysticism were a product of what they did within particular social and religious contexts, not necessarily who they were.

As a caveat, we must note that the brief biographies that follow reveal that both women were extreme in their religious devotion and practice. Indeed, both Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa are currently going through the process of canonization, the official process to become a saint in the Catholic Church. There are dangers in using such extreme examples. For example, one could mistakenly assume that all experiences of inner-worldly mysticism are as religiously intense as Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day’s experiences of IWM. In actuality, there is no reason to assume that IWM is more exclusively the purview of potential saints than any of the other religious orientations in Weber’s typology. In spite of such dangers, the choice to use extreme examples is similar to Weber’s decision to use Puritans to illustrate the dynamics of inner-worldly asceticism. Weber developed his theory by using extreme cases to work up general typologies of social action, acknowledging that most cases would fall somewhere along a continuum between his basic typologies (Weber [1946]1964, pp. 59–60; Weber [1963]1997, p. 12).

Brief biographies⁹

Mother Teresa began her religious life very differently from the way she ended it. She started as a nun in the order of Loreto, a religious order out of Ireland. She was sent to Calcutta as a teacher, where she taught the children of the wealthy for fifteen years. While she was in Calcutta, she was exposed to the depth of poverty. However, it was not until, as she reports, that she was personally called by Jesus into the slums to care for the poorest of the poor, that she shifted her focus to the slums of Calcutta. She petitioned the Vatican to be released from her involvement with the Sisters of Loreto in order to go into the slums with a vow of poverty and no resources or protection. She began by teaching the children, and then she sought nursing training, allowing her to care for the sick and dying. Soon others joined her in her efforts, living in voluntary poverty and serving the poorest of the poor. She taught those who served with her that each person who came to them in need was “Jesus in his most disturbing form.” Thus to serve was to have direct contact with the divine. Eventually her work developed into its own religious order committed to this initial path of voluntary poverty and serving the poorest of the poor. Mother Teresa’s religious order, The Sisters of Charity, spread throughout the world. Each new outpost began as she began—committed individuals took vows of poverty and initiated communities without material resources. No matter how large the order became during her lifetime, Mother Teresa never ceased her commitment to voluntary poverty, her belief that she served Jesus directly through the poor, or her direct personal service to the poor (Teresa 1997; Guntzelman 1999).

In the early 1930s, Peter Maurin and Dorothy Day first began the Catholic Worker newspaper and then shortly after started living according to what they advocated in print. The paper advocated organizing one’s life around living out the Corporal Works of Mercy (feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, visiting the sick, visiting the prisoner, and burying the dead). The paper stressed the importance of personal responsibility for the poor, arguing that people should live in community in poor neighborhoods, give hospitality to the otherwise homeless in their community house, share all that they have, and protest any institution that negatively affects the poor. They also advocated love for the poor, emphasizing that anyone who came to them for help should be treated as the potential second coming of Christ. Both because of this belief that they could be serving Christ and their belief that God has a special affinity for the poor, the Catholic Workers believed that engaging the world by serving the poor created an opportunity to live both emotionally and spiritually closer to God. Maurin and Day believed that a movement of people committed to living in this way could fundamentally transform society. The end point of the Catholic Workers’ moral vision was a utopian return to the earth (Day [1963]1997; Summers-Effler 2010, pp. 27–28). Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin’s vision survived both of their deaths, with Catholic Worker houses throughout the United States and around the world.

Similarities in cases

As their quotes suggest, there are many similarities between the two women, similarities beyond what the short biographies above can reflect. Both struggled within the confines of the Catholic Church; they walked a fine line between pursuing their radical visions while remaining completely devout and deferential to the Church’s religious authority. They both worked with the most down and out without a safety net—they were the last stop and only place for many they served. Most importantly, for our purposes here, neither stopped serving the poor face-to-face when they began to gain notoriety for their work. Since loving and serving the poor were mystical ends unto themselves, service remained central in both women’s religious practice.

Also, it is difficult to separate out completely the relationship between inner worldly and other worldly mysticism in both of these women’s lives, suggesting that there is not likely as clean a dichotomous relationship between the inner and other worldly as Weber suggests (Bynum 1991). Both women cultivated and experienced moments of IWM, but both also talked about the role of sacraments in sustaining them, went to mass daily, and took much comfort and inspiration from studying and meditating on the lives of saints. This is to say that both women cultivated OWM and IWM. However, in both women’s writings, there is a clear distinction between the social support that fosters opportunities for IWM and the individual practice that fosters opportunities for OWM, such as prayer and partaking in the sacraments. This is to say that in spite of the apparent intermingling of OWM and IWM, we are suggesting that there is something specifically social that is required to generate moments of IWM. We are also suggesting that this capacity to generate IWM not only offers deeply satisfying and energizing peak religious experiences, this capacity protects against compassion fatigue and burnout associated with self-transcending activity. Also, as we are focusing on Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa’s capacity for IWM, rather than labeling them as inner-worldly mystic, intermittent involvement in OWM does not undermine our claims about the ways in which IWM works.

Differences in cases

Both Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day wrote that they experienced Jesus directly in serving the poor,¹⁰ but their accounts and apparent experiences differed substantially. Mother Teresa was more graphic in describing these experiences than Dorothy Day. Indeed, Mother Teresa describes an emotional intensity so intimate that she described her relationship with Jesus as a spouse (Teresa and Kolodiejchuk 2007, pp. 44, 258). Mother Teresa also talked about Jesus and God separately. As she reported her direct experience and interaction with Jesus in the poor, she simultaneously reported feeling bereft from God during private moments. According to her personal letters, she had a close but one way relationship with God that was punctuated with a few experiences of profound and intense mystical connection.

Alternately, Dorothy Day did not report any ecstatic visions, although she briefly reveals a sense of separation or distance from God during private retreats. The two women also cited different sources of inspiration for their work: Mother Teresa reports to have been inspired directly by a vision from God, and Dorothy Day writes that she was inspired by Peter Maurin—her co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, whom she believed to be a saint.

There were other important differences between Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa. Dorothy Day saw revolution as part of the process of her work, while Mother Teresa did not talk about revolution in the same way. In accordance with this difference, Dorothy Day writes of providing justice as well as service, and Mother Teresa focuses primarily on providing loving service. They also began different types of movements; Mother Teresa initiated a religious order, while Dorothy Day initiated a lay movement. Dorothy Day’s theology of love appears to have been more hard-bitten than Mother Teresa. Day was not given to poetic language when describing the brutal reality of poverty. In spite of these differences, Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day shared the same sense that serving the poor was literally serving their savior. Theirs was a sacramental service, which they believe brought them into direct contact with the divine.

Caveats

In spite of the richness of the cases of Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, we are constrained by our choice to use the experiences of two women who attempted to live out Catholic Social Teachings through face-to-face interactions with the poor. Both women also chose to live in conditions below the class into which they were born. We cannot know if we would have come to the same conclusions if we had used more examples, examples from other religions, other genders, other types of religious or mundane activity, or other class positions. We also have no negative cases. In part this is because this state of inner-worldly mysticism is an active conscious achievement, so it is difficult to compare experiences of IWM with other types of experience that grow out of similar conditions, both emotional and physical, but that result in different ends.

Social mysticism

IWM differs from OWM in that IWM does not merely tolerate the world while seeking mystical moments in contemplation, meditation, and stillness. Rather IWM derives mystical experience from interactions within the world. As such, IWM is a social mysticism.

Weber’s treatment of social mysticism

As stated above, rather than capturing the role of social action in the IWM, Weber depicts IWM as nothing other than less successful or less committed contemplative OWM. Weber explains, “Mysticism intends a state of ‘possession,’ not action…. Action in the world must thus appear as endangering [this] absolutely irrational and other-worldly religious state” ([1946]1964, pp. 325–326). By arguing that the mystic must fundamentally reject action, Weber cuts off the potential to theorize mysticism that is truly social and of the world—a mysticism where social action is not a distraction but the very source of mystical illumination (cf Weber [1922]1978, pp. 548–549; Collins 2008a, b, pp. 12–13).

Examples of social mysticism

Rather than working to escape the world, Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day sought divine union through interactions with others—particularly in serving others. Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day attempted both to bring God to the world and to find God in the world; in doing so they mystified the mundane world around them and their experience of this world.

Mother Teresa explains,

We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world. For we are touching the body of Christ twenty-four hours! We have twenty-four hours in His presence, you and I (Mother Teresa 2010, p. 32).

Dorothy Day retells a short story by Salinger in Loaves and Fishes to communicate how important interaction is for authentic religious experiences. In the story, a young girl obsessively repeated a prayer until her brother convinces her that she is looking for a shortcut to religious experience. He accuses her of turning to God as an escape from contact with people. Day concludes her description of this story by saying,

The profound Christian truth the story expresses has been repeated over and over again by the saints. In the words of Jesus to Catherine of Siena: ‘I have placed you in the midst of your fellows that you may do to them what you cannot do to Me, that is to say … that you may love your neighbors without expecting any return from them, and what you do to them I count as done to Me ([1963] 1997, p. 181).

Elsewhere, Dorothy Day again emphasizes the importance of engaging people and acting as intermediaries on God’s behalf, saying,

Going to the people is the purest and best act in Christian tradition and revolutionary tradition and is the beginning of world brotherhood ([1952]1981, p. 216).

Weber’s treatment of the source of mystical experience

Weber not only neglects an account of how mysticism can be generated in interaction, Weber gives up on sociological explanations for mystical experience in general (Weber [1922]1978, p. 242). He attributes mysticism to individual personality and character traits, stating, “[T]he disposition to mysticism is an individual charisma” (Weber [1922]1978, pp. 531, 537).¹¹ Counter Weber, the manifestation of individual charisma in IWM is social in its foundation.

Indeed, Dorothy Day, in particular, resisted the notion of personality-based charisma or any sort of “great woman” understanding of her work (Day 2013). Indeed, she actively rejected any attempt to frame her as a saint. She argued that if she were to be understood as a saint, then she would be “special,” or in Weber’s terms: “charismatic,” rather than “regular.” She wanted to be a realistic model of living out the gospel in the world, and if she was seen as special—as a saint—her orientation towards the world and daily practices would be seen as unreasonable for “normal” people. This is to say that Dorothy Day would have rejected any attempt to detail her innate specialness, and she likely would have favored work focused on the social conditions that generated, or at least supported, an enduring love for the seemingly unlovable.

Examples of the role of community-based emotion in generating and sustaining mysticism

Mother Teresa describes the importance of community for sustaining the capacity to do their work.

The new Sisters are just blooming into saints.—All of them are such a joy to me.—Looking at them we can do double the amount of work[.] (Mother Teresa 2007, p. 72)

She also explains,

And being around the sisters with their never-ending faith has comforted me, helped me in doing this work—their joy and faith is infectious, you know (Mother Teresa 1995, p. 144).

Dorothy Day similarly describes the role of community support as the emotional cornerstone of the Catholic Workers vision:

Community—that was the social answer to the long loneliness … St. John of the Cross [said], ‘Where there is no love, put love and you will find love.’ I’ve thought of it and followed it many times these eighteen years of community life ([1952]1981, p. 225) … I thought … ‘The only answer in this life, to the loneliness we are all bound to feel, is community. The living together, working together, sharing together, loving God and loving our brother, and living close to him in community so we can show our love for Him ([1952]1981, p. 243).

Indeed, community was such a source of emotional support and motivation that Day experienced private retreats—usually understood to be a restorative and revitalizing practice—as draining and painful.

How dull as ditchwater I am. I would like to get out on a brisk walk…. Such is the day, every moment taken with silence, solitude, waiting for God to speak, and he is silent. One hears often how retreats, revivals, do just that. But our long experience has been that they are hard work, a feat in endurance, persevering. Sticking it out, in blind, naked faith (Day 2011, p. 263).

Day’s response to the solitary retreat makes sense if we understand that IWM is not an individual trait; rather it is generated in interaction. Robertson makes this point, explaining, “The attempt to mystify the world requires that there be very frequent inter-individual validations, an ongoing culture of mysticism, to the effect that the world is indeed full of mystery” (1975, p. 256). From a relational perspective (cf. Emirbayer 1997), what may appear to be personality-based charisma, is grounded in face-to-face interactions (Collins 2004; Summers Effler 2007). At a meso level, the capacity for charisma is based in groups or enduring patterns of face-to-face interactions—what we experience as culture. At the most macro level, mystical “dispositions” are the property of networks and histories of patterns of interactions and situations that unfold over time.

Inner-worldly mysticism creates a sense of channeling the divine

As we stated above, we argue that interaction-based mysticism creates a sense of channeling the divine. This is opposed to Weber’s proposition that the relationship between the divine and the actor can be characterized as either an instrument or as a vessel (Weber [1922]1978, p. 546). For IWM, the notion of an instrument is too distant, and the notion of a vessel is too passive. The image of the actor channeling the divine captures the close and active relationship to the divine that is the mark of IWM.

Weber’s treatment of relationships with God

Weber argues that once a notion of a transcendental God arises, an actor can no longer “possess” God. Rather the religious goal shifts from self-sanctification to either the world beyond or to ethics. This is to say, the faithful must become either spiritually suffused vessels of God or ethical instruments of God (c.f. [1963]1997, p. 159). Those seeking to be suffused with the presence of God are oriented towards the world beyond and experience themselves as vessels of God. Those focused on ethics will seek to be instruments of God. In other words, vessels are in an other-worldly and proximate relationship with the divine; instruments are in inner-worldly and distant relationship with the divine.

These coupled distinctions make sense when we focus on IWA and OWM, but these pairing of these distinctions starts to fall apart when focusing on OWA and IWM. Like IWA, IWM lends itself to a sense of being an instrument of God’s will in the world, but, like OWM, this relationship is experienced as proximate, not distant. This is to say, IWM focuses on the world, but the approach is far more emotional than strictly ethical. Rather than an instrument or a vessel, IWM is better thought of as acting as a channel between God and the world.

Examples of channeling relationships with God

Indeed, both Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa stated that they believed that the will of God flowed through them so that they became channels for divine influence. For example, Mother Teresa says,

I’m only a little wire—God is the power (2007, pp. 34–36).

Dorothy Day similarly says,

[W]e can do for others, through God’s grace, what no law enforcement can do, what no common sense can achieve [1963]1997, p. 61).

For Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day, God’s love and will did not only flow out through them to the people they served; both Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day believed that those served were also channels for God’s love and will flow back towards them.

Mother Teresa describes her relationship to the poor:

That’s why the poor people give us much more than we give to them—because they give us an opportunity to love God in them. When I give a piece of bread to a hungry child, I believe what Jesus said, “You give it to Me.” And I give it to that child (Mother Teresa 2010, p. 8).

It is crucial to note that because of this senses of two-way channeling, the IWM approach differs from charity motivated works that take place at a distance. Charity is a gift, and as those who have nothing cannot return the gift, they are demoted to a lower social position than the giver (Mauss 1954). This understanding of the giver’s relationship to the poor turns notions of charity on its head: it is not the giver that has to forgive the receiver for begging; it is the receiver who has to forgive the giver for their wealth and charity.

[Peter] liked to talk of St. Vincent de Paul.… The last lines of the saint to the young peasant sister were words we can never forget: ‘You must love them very much … to make them forgive the bread you give them.’ We took those words to heart and tried to apply them to those who come to us helpless and in need (Day [1963]1997, p. 100).

This attitude of the rich needing the poor and the shifting of perspective this attitude supports generate interaction opportunities and the potential for change in the interaction order that are unique to IWM.

Keeping in line with Catholic Social Thought, the Catholic Workers believed part of their purpose was to give the rich the opportunity to help the poor. A stanza in one of Peter Maurin’s poems that he published in the Catholic Worker newspaper communicated this perspective,

We need houses of hospitality

To give the rich

The opportunity to serve the poor (Day [1963]1997, p. 24)

The poor did not just need Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day; Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and both of their communities needed the poor. They needed the poor in order to live out their ideological commitments to redistribute material resources and to return dignity to the marginalized. They also needed the poor to generate experiences of the divine in interaction.

Inner-worldly mysticism and the potential for change

In this section, we illustrate how emotion is an important resource in its own right, and that shifts in emotions constitute meaningful social change. Specifically, living out commitments to practice IWM can undermine prevailing micro social structures that usually contribute to the reproduction of the macro social order.

Weber’s treatment of the potential for social change

Since Weber depicts mystics as passive and world-affirming, he argues that mysticism, in any form, represents little potential for creating change in the world. He states, “The typical mystic is never a man of conspicuous social activity, nor is he at all prone to accomplish any rational transformation of the mundane order of the basis of a methodical patterns of life directed toward external success” ([1922]1978, p. 550).¹² We would argue that it is indeed likely true that patterns of action associated with IWM would only indirectly influence macro patterns, such as policy or macro economic activity. However, IWM-inspired actions can have direct effect on patterns of face-to-face interaction that constitute the order of lived day-to-day social life (cf Goffman 1982; Rawls 1987).

Theorizing mysticism in interaction

Weber’s analysis of IWM remains incomplete because he focuses on rationality and processes of rationalization. He turns less attention toward the role of emotion in generating IWM and the emotional consequences of IWM. We turn to Collins’s theory of interaction rituals (2004) in order to flesh out the emotional dynamics that are left underdeveloped in Weber’s account of IWM.

Interaction ritual theory

Building on the insights of Durkheim and Goffman, Collins argues that the social world is composed of rituals, in particular the micro rituals of face-to-face interaction. These micro rituals give shape to our social world by directing the flow of emotional energy [EE]. Actors experience EE as a level. When interactions go well, participants increase their levels of EE. When interactions go poorly, actors lose EE; they also lose EE when positioned as an order-taker or as the less powerful person in a power-based interaction. High EE feels like confidence, enthusiasm, and a willingness to initiate interaction. Low EE feels like shame, embarrassment, lack of enthusiasm, and a lack of willingness to initiate interaction (1981, 2004, 2008a, b).

Collins specifies the ingredients required for successful face-to-face rituals. There must be: two or more actors physically present; share a common focus of attention, and share a common mood (2004). EE is attached to symbols associated with successful interactions. Actors can return to these symbols as a source of EE between EE-generating rituals. Similarly, threats to EE are attached to symbols associated with negative interactions. Actor will then experience threats to EE when they cannot avoid the symbols associated with negative experiences.

Over time, every individual develops a chain of interaction rituals made up of a history of encounters. The chain of meaningful symbols associated with the history constitutes the cultural content of those histories of encounters. Thus our history of interactions creates both a store of symbolic meanings and a level of EE, positive for those who have enjoyed solidarity or power and negative for those who have suffered exclusion or domination. We draw on significant symbols and our store of EE to pursue or avoid interactions so as to maximize EE over time. If we observe the flows of EE over time, they provide a map of social relations. This is to say that the structurally advantaged and emotionally rich get richer and the structurally disadvantaged and emotionally poor stay poor or become poorer. Aggregated over time, these face-to-face emotional dynamics mirror and reproduce more macro patterns of inequality (Collins 2004).

Building on his theory of interaction rituals [IR], Collins, contrary to Weber’s focus on the role of isolated contemplation in mysticism, suggests that it is actually far more likely that people would enjoy the emotional intensity associated with mystical experiences in interaction rather than isolation (Collins 2010, pp. 8–9).¹³ He states that “religious interaction rituals involve especially strong, even extreme, emotional experiences; these announce themselves as of the highest significance, transcending all other experiences, and give pervasive meaning to life” (2010, p. 4). Unlike the mystical path of isolated contemplation, where union is achieved through removing oneself from the mundanity of the world, mystical interactions are achieved by transforming the mundanity of the world into a place where even the minutiae of life are sacred. Mystical interactions can create a sense of “lifting the veil” that is obscuring the mystified world. When such a veil lifts, mystics perceive all that surrounds them as sanctified (Collins 2010, p. 8). The examples above suggest that IWM follows from theological commitments to find divine union in the world by priming mystical interactions.

We have been careful to delineate the difference between asserting that these women are inner-worldly mystics and that they have the capacity or propensity for inner-worldly mystical action. We suggest that IR theory does a precise job of detailing the social dynamics that may manifest as personal religious charisma. An IR approach provides explanations for the particular interaction conditions that give rise to these actions. IR theory also helps us to understand how biography can come to be entwined with interaction conditions to generate what we would tend to interpret as a charismatic personality. Successful IRs can build one upon another over time. As they build over time, they hone actors’ skills for generating similar successful interactions. A string of successful IRs can generate a biography where this sort of action is central to identity. This is to say that from an IR perspective, charismatic personalities are the outcome, not the cause, of patterns of IWM.

Using interaction ritual theory to identify the potential for reversing the interaction order

Looking to IR theory, we can postulate the conditions under which EE could be generated and shared by all of those involved in the interaction. Successful rituals generate feelings of collective effervescence. The focus of attention during a successful ritual—both formal and informal rituals—becomes not only grounds for meaningful action, but a sacred symbol of the success of the ritual (Durkheim 1912[1995]; Goffman 1964a, b; Collins 2004). Symbols have this power because they are imbued with the effervescence of the ritual, and as such symbols can call up fainter experiences of the initial rituals that generated the collective effervescence. Those who invoke the sacred symbols, people interacting with those who have status as sacred symbols, also receive a charge of EE that is reminiscent of the emotion generated in the initial successful IR. The focus of an interaction ritual can even be more micro than particular participants in the interaction—the focus, and thus ultimately the symbols of the IR, can be the interaction itself. In this case, types of interaction, rather than particular people, become the sacred symbol imbued with collective effervescence.

In the case of IWM, EE can grow beyond the other actors involved in the interaction to reflect a sense of communion with the divine. Ironically, it is the most challenging interactions, even interactions that have failed, where we can most clearly observe the sense of connection to the divine. In IWM interactions, the person being served can become the shared focus of attention for the interaction, thus elevating the one who is served to the status of a sacred symbol imbued with the EE associated with the successful, and in some cases divine, IRs. This process of interaction, emotion, expansion, and the formation of sacred symbols transforms the mundane, defined as those things that are not sacred, into not only the sacred, but also direct contact with the divine. Thus, not only are the conditions for IWM social, but the foundation for sustaining opportunities for and commitments to IWM are also social. Although individual actors may draw on contemplation, prayer, or the sacraments to help sustain their work in the world, we can see that the source of IWM experience is community, not charismatic personalities.

Channeling can create the potential to reorder the interaction order

The capacity to change the interaction order is grounded in the power of IWM-motivated interactions to generate EE for all involved. How can we use this understanding of IRs and their dynamics to explain how all involved in a moment of IWM experience EE? To claim that all involved in the interaction gained EE, we must argue that the IWM-inspired interaction are not power interactions but solidarity interactions. Indeed, one could imagine that many, if not most, charity-style helping interactions could be power-based interactions. To support the claim that helping interactions can be solidarity interactions, we must make the case that, in spite of differences in status, these interactions offer the potential for meeting the criteria for a successful solidarity interaction: bodily co-presence, a shared focus of attention, and a shared mood (Collins 2004, p. 48).

Below, we argue how IWM-based interaction supports opportunities to meet each requirement, but here we succinctly state: 1) bodily co-presence was a cornerstone of IWM for both women; 2) service interactions supported a shared focus of attention; 3) both women stressed the importance of focusing on those needing help as presenting opportunities to actively love the divine; and 4) the emotional intensity of both service interactions and the challenges of living in voluntary poverty generated shared mood, or at least a mutual identification, across normally rigid social lines. More generally, successful IRs create opportunities for connection to support the flow of resources when there were once firm boundaries.¹⁴

Bodily co-presence

As we noted above, Dorothy Day and Sister Teresa’s approaches to serving the poor personally meant that their services were rendered in face-to-face interactions, a requirement for a successful IR.

Mother Teresa writes,

To get to love the person, we must come in close contact with Him. If we wait till we get the numbers, then we will be lost in the numbers, and we will never be able to show that love and respect for the person (Mother Teresa 2010, p. 190).

So too Dorothy Day explains,

[T]o be present, to be available to men, to see Jesus in the poor, to welcome, to be hospitable, to love! This is my need (Day 2011,p. 291).

To provide the direct service their theology called for, both women, and the communities that grew up around them, placed a premium on bodily co-presence and face-to-face interaction. Both took these bodily interactions much further than providing gifts of food or money to the poor from a distance. Rather, these inner-worldly mystics emphasized prolonged contact with the poor; and sometimes quite intimate bodily care ranging from attending to seeping wounds to washing homeless persons’ damaged feet. This bodily interaction was so central to their endeavors that both Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa continued to spend their days in direct service to others, even as their movements grew and they gained worldwide attention and acclaim.

Shared focus of attention

One might think that their lack of stable resources and the enormity of the problems Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day faced would overwhelm them and lead to exhausted retreat; this, however, was not the case. Instead both Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa managed the gap between what was needed and what they could actually do by focusing intensely on “small” things. Both frequently spoke of following Saint Therese—The Little Flower’s—example of doing small mundane things in the present moment with great loving attention. It is reasonable to surmise that those seeking help would be consumed with their need. We can also see that those serving out of IWM motivation focusing on the “little way” would also focus deeply on the needs of the people right in front of them. This mutual focus on the needs of those who come to them for help promotes a shared focus of attention for the duration of the interaction.

Mother Teresa explained:

I believe in person to person. Every person is Christ for me, and since there is only one Jesus, there is only one person in the world for me at that moment (Mother Teresa 2010, p. 190).

Dorothy Day expressed similar sentiments:

There is always the complaint—‘but we are only feeding them!’ from some members of the groups in different parts of the country. It is right never to be satisfied with the little we can do, but we must remember the “little way” of Saint Therese—we must remember the importance of giving even a drink of cold water in the name of Christ (Dorothy Day 2003, p. 31).

This practice of attention and compassion lays the foundation for the reversal of the typical flow of emotional resources. This is to say, rather than EE flowing towards those already rich with EE, EE grows for both the server and the served.

Shared mood

We can see from the quotes below that those who help are more likely to be struggling with disgust and revulsion, whereas we can imagine that those who come for help are struggling with desperation. In spite of these potentially fundamentally different perspectives and moods, we can point out that in the cases of Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa, IWM offered skills that helped them manage their capacity for shared mood with those they served, including: 1) tuning into mutual intensity to generate solidarity across the divide between helper and helped, and 2) communicating shared material conditions.

Intensity in interaction

When attempting to remain open to serve as a channel for divine interventions, servers are vulnerable to sharing the intensity of desperation of those in need. If the inner-worldly mystics can meet those they serve at a primal level of desperation, they can achieve shared mood. They have the emotional skills to transform intense distancing reactions, like revulsion, into reverence and solidarity (Summers Effler 2010, pp. 115–118). This is the skill to join those in need where they are emotionally without being sucked into an immobilizing emotional black hole.

Shared mood might be the intensity of the interaction for both parties, not the particular transitory emotions felt along with that intensity, such as revulsion and desperation.

Mother Teresa writes:

I never forget the man I picked up from an open drain—except for his face … worms were crawling on his body. There were holes in his body everywhere—he was eaten up alive. He must have fainted and fallen into an open drain and people must have passed and passed, but the dirt had covered him up and I saw something moving and I saw it was a human being. I took him out, took him to our house, and he was still—I had not yet begun cleaning him—but the only words he said: “I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.” Two hours after, by the time we finished cleaning him, he died. But there was such a radiating look on his face, I’ve never seen that kind of joy—real—the joy that Jesus came to give us. That complete content, complete surrender” (pp. 186–187).

We can think of intensity (a feeling that a moment matters) as creating the potential for shared mood and intimacy (shifting from vulnerability to solidarity). Such intensity of desperation can pull compassion out of a person poised to help. There is no pride that usually mediates interactions (Scheff 1990). Vulnerability is in the open. Particular elements of Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day’s commitments supported deep compassion rather than surface sympathy—compassion joins the suffering of the served, sympathy keeps distance between the server and the served. Empathy with the poor is a two-step process: choosing a compassionate orientation that then facilitates joining a person in the intensity of their despair. The server’s willingness to join in such desperation (which ultimately pays off because it leads to EE and a heightened experience of direct contact with God), that supports the shared mood required for a successful interaction ritual.

Voluntary poverty

Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day’s commitment to living in poverty ensured some similarities between their life conditions and material struggles and those they served. Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day’s voluntary poverty created a structural opportunity for resonance and solidarity between the helper and the helped. Although experiences and attitudes of those living in voluntary versus involuntary poverty undoubtedly differed, the shared material struggles and circumstances helped to create, if not a shared mood, a sense of “we’re all in the same boat.”¹⁵

Mother Teresa explains:

Once there came to Shishu Bhavan a man who was once rich but had become poor, so poor that he had to come to take the kitcheree. He was so bitter and so angry when he spoke to me, because he had to eat that kitcheree. And then … I could look him straight in the eyes and I could tell him: “Every day I eat the same food—kitcheree.” As soon as he heard that, he seemed to feel a great consolation, and he went away at peace. I thank God that at least one person was saved from despair because I share the food of the poor (Mother Teresa 2010, p. 189).

Dorothy Day similarly points to the importance of those they serve seeing the Catholic Workers’ poverty.

“[T]he men see our poverty. They know we eat the same breakfast they do” (Dorothy Day 2003, p. 28).

Although shared material conditions cannot ensure a shared mood with those they serve, shared circumstance helped to orient those serving in a similar way as those being served. This offered the potential for a shared perspective across normally strict social lines. Living in poverty also supported a sense of solidarity rather than pity for the poor, which created the potential for a sense of shared focus of attention, shared emotional tone, and shared perspective—all of which also facilitate emotionally successful interactions. All of this is to say that voluntary poverty increases the potential for experiences of solidarity between the giver and the receiver.¹⁶

The preferential option for the poor and communion with the divine

When skills for turning negative intensity into positive intensity and using shared poverty to generate solidarity fail, the interactions become vulnerable to a sense of disharmony and even disrespect between the helper and the helped. The people being helped may not be interested in participating to generate a successful interaction ritual. Indeed, both Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day talk about difficult and challenging guests.

Mother Teresa explains how seeing Jesus in the people they serve can bring those serving closer to the divine:

I said, ‘You saw during Holy Mass with what tenderness, with what love, father was touching the Body of Christ. Make sure it is the same body in the poor that you will be touching. Give that same love, that same tenderness.’ They went. After three hours they returned, and one of them came up to my room and said, ‘Mother I’ve been touching the body of Christ for three hours.’ Her face was shining with joy. I said, ‘What did you do, sister?’ ‘Well, just as I arrived, they brought a man covered with maggots. He had been picked up from a drain. And for three hours, I have been touching the body of Christ. I knew it was He (2010, p. 167).’

Similarly, Dorothy Day writes:

I remember one family on the west side, a longshoreman who got only a day or so on the docks every few weeks. He drank, his wife drank, and their children were growing up disorderly and dishonest. No one would help them. They sold the clothes they were given for liquor. The relief people said the man had work and didn’t report it to them. Consequently often the family went hungry. We spent all one winter giving food and clothing to this family. It was indeed hard to see Christ in these poor. Yet for no other reason could we help them. Without the religious motive, it was a waste of time. With this motive, not one crumb of our help was wasted. Provided we did it with love. And of course if you help people, you soon begin to love them (pp. 50–51).

These situations illustrate how Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day suggest that IWM endows the helper with the capacity to turn interactions into a form of prayer by focusing attention on “God within” the person, which generates feelings of compassion and love regardless of how those who are being helped behaved or felt. According to the Catholic Workers’ and Mother Teresa’s theology of the poor, both manifestations of Catholic Social Thought, those whom they served lived closer to God. Thus both women believed that they moved closer to God serving those with this privileged status. When people were angry, ungrateful, or disrespectful, the act of service could be transformed into a living prayer as the focus shifted to God.¹⁷

In situations where there is no successful IR between the helper and the helped, yet the helper experiences the helping action as a sort of prayer, there is no immediate reversal of the interaction order. However, increasing EE for the helper increases the likelihood of continuing such interactions, creating opportunities for the reversal of the flow of EE at some future point where there must be reciprocation in order to preserve the balance between actors and ultimately the relationship. Detailing the dynamics of IWM suggests how it is possible for the giver to perceive reciprocation while the receiver does not. Even though Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa believed the poor to have a special relationship with God, the poor might not have shared the same perspective. In which case the servers would benefit emotionally and the served physically without achieving solidarity. This can create an unexamined dynamic where the givers feel balance that enables them to continue, while the receivers may feel imbalance that would lead to negative self-feelings if they remained in a reciprocating position for too long. This work here breaks down Mauss’s (1925) distinction between the giver and the receiver, which Mauss treats as relatively clear. This is to say that exchange theory does not account sufficiently for the role of perception that shapes emotion in the social dynamics of giving and receiving.¹⁸

Potential for reversing the interaction order

In the above section we have argued for a way that we can begin to assess the emotional consequences for those involved in IWM actions; we have done so by considering the likelihood of meeting Randall Collins’s requirements for successful IRs. Although it is more than likely that there were considerable numbers of failures within IWM interactions, the assumptions and orientations born from an IWM perspective serve to buoy opportunities to create the conditions for such emotionally successful interactions. We have argued that the IWM-based interaction holds the potential for social change.

Emotional consequences for those served

We begin with the potential for change we know the least about: the consequences for those who are on the receiving end of the helping interaction. We have direct accounts of experiences of serving and even witnessing serving, but we do not have diaries or interviews with those who received help from Dorothy Day or Mother Teresa. We know that those who leave having been served are better off physically or materially, so why do we care whether those who were served left with more EE than they came with? Understanding the flow of EE is important because if EE diffuses from the more powerful to the less powerful, or if it is generated in solidarity actions across power distinctions, it constitutes a reversal in the normal patterns of EE distribution. Practically, we can get at whether emotional resources have indeed been redistributed by asking: do those helped leave the helping interactions feeling better in a meaningful way? Are they more positive, enthusiastic, self-assured, and willing to initiate interactions (Collins 2004,p. 49)?

If this reversal happens, particularly if it is sustained over patterns of interactions, there is the potential to change the understanding of self and social position for the helped. Such shifts in awareness can be the foundation for creative imagining of new social orders (Summers-Effler et al. 2014).

Emotional consequences of IWM for witnesses

Beyond changing those who are served, there are examples to suggest that the IWM work could be life-changing for those who were only witnesses or those who were only marginally involved.

Mother Teresa provides the following example:

In the Motherhouse, very often the power goes off and it is very hard for the sisters to study. They go outside onto the terrace, and so on. Then a very rich gentleman offered to give us a generator, so that, even if there is no current, we can have light. I told him, “Thank you. We don’t need it.” Do not misunderstand me, Sisters. There is nothing wrong in having it, but I must choose not to have.… I told him to give it to the Little Sisters of the Poor because they have a very big home and the old people might fall in that sudden darkness. So he gave it to them. After two weeks that man came back to me and told me, “Mother, because you refused me our life has completely changed. Before, I was always thinking how to get more and more money but now I want to give.” So he gave us some kerosene lamps (Mother Teresa 2010, p. 246).

Ellis, a writer that spent a year living as a Catholic Worker, gives an account of how he was changed by his experiences with those he would normally have little exposure to.

I had never been “comfortable” at the Worker. Our year had been characterized by anxiety and a sense of trial.... Rarely was there a time when the cries of the wounded were not to be heard.... In their affliction I began to recognize our own affliction. The Bowery people as well as the poor of the Lower East Side were no different than I except in circumstance. We are all in need of care and love. Our condition is common. This was the most difficult lesson I was to learn from our year at the worker.... The Catholic Worker has continued over the years to believe in the transforming power of love and service.... After having witnessed the transformation myself I know I can never dismiss this vision of love (Ellis [1978] 2000, pp. 139–140).

The story of the generator and the kerosene lamps illustrates the reversal of emotional dynamics in the interaction order. When Mother Teresa refuses the powerful and rich man, she, the poor one, takes control of the situation and asserts the morality of this shift in positions—she frames her turning down of wealth and resources as a moral test that must be passed by those living in voluntary poverty. In this case, this flipping of the interaction order by using morality rather than resources to direct the flow of action had profound influence on the wealthy man whom Mother Teresa positioned as a temptation rather than a savior.

Similarly, Ellis speaks of how his time with the Catholic Workers transformed his sense of identity such that he no longer perceived himself or the world in the same way. He refers to having learned three things: 1) there is no difference between him and other people regardless of dramatic superficial differences, 2) he, like all people, has a basic need for care and love, and 3) loving service can transform those who serve as well as those who received service. His pronouncement that he “can never dismiss” the lesson of the transformative power of love indicates that, like those who are more central to providing service, these somewhat more distant experiences of IWM still carry one into the future with enough EE to shift perspectives and even actions.

Micro emotional consequences of IWM for those who serve

Both Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day conveyed the enormous positive emotional impact the work had on them and others who joined their efforts. Mother Teresa explains she is grateful to the poor for giving her a chance to be close to God.

I am grateful to God to have given me this opportunity to be with you and to share with you the gift of God, the privilege of being with the poor, the privilege of being twenty-four hours in touch with Christ.... We are trying to do, you and I together, to bring that joy of touching Christ in the distressing disguise (2010, pp. 160–161).

Dorothy similarly explains how acts of service bring an experience of the indwelling of God.

The hard work of loving. That is our CW [Catholic Worker] work. Learning to love, exercising our love so it grows strong. And exercising our faith too. Natural and supernatural love. “No man has ever seen God. But if we love one another, then we have God dwelling in us” (2011, p. 305).

Such accounts suggest that IWM-motivated service-focused interactions can generate intense feelings of direct access to the divine. In IR terms, we could think of these moments as tremendous increases in EE. Since EE is associated not only with positive feelings and increases in energy, but also with a willingness to initiate interaction, we could see how the positive emotional impact of serving could support future service interaction. Thus, rather than draining those who seek IWM, service interactions could generate enough EE to carry those who serve from one act of service to the next, creating sustained patterns of service over time.

The increase of EE for servers is also important for understanding social change. Increases of EE associated with service can power the diffusion of IWM skills and strategies across networks of communities dedicated to IWM-based service.¹⁹

Micro influence spreads through networks to create grassroots change

Successful interactional practices and skills spread to create pockets of communities engaging in the same sort of service in different locations.²⁰ For example, both movements grew through the addition of “houses”—base communities that provide face-to-face service. The term “houses” indicates the nature of the growth—it grows through the addition of base communities rather than the formation of more complex and further reaching bureaucratic structures.

Because of their radical commitment to poverty, the Sisters of Charity need nothing other than an invitation or permission from the local government and the transfer of at least one established sister to the new location to set up shop. There are even fewer barriers to the opening of Catholic Worker communities. Due to their commitment to anarchistic personalist philosophy, the movement completely lacks a hierarchical structure.²¹ Indeed, burgeoning communities do not require permission from the movement, the Church, or local authorities to open a house in the name of the Catholic Worker tradition.²²

Mother Teresa describes this growth:

We have so many requests for opening new homes around the world and we are doing this all the time. We are now in well over a hundred countries—this is a real gift of God, to be able to give wholehearted free service to the poorest of the poor in so many places (Mother Teresa 2007, pp. 132–134).

Indeed, by the time of Mother Teresa’s death in 1997, the Missionaries of Charity sisters numbered nearly four thousand, in 610 foundations in 123 countries (Johnson 2011).

Similarly, Dorothy Day describes the growth of the Catholic Worker vision:

In connection with THE CATHOLIC WORKER [emphasis in the original], we have continued to maintain houses of hospitality where the works of mercy can be practiced through voluntary poverty (none of us or our helpers receiving pay), and the help of readers of the paper and our kind neighbors. Clothes and food are provided to all who come, and lodging is provided for as many as the house will hold (Day 2011, p. 70).

Indeed, Dorothy Day’s vision did spread. Currently there are over 165 Catholic Worker communities scattered throughout the United States and 21 communities outside the United States (The Catholic Worker Movement 2012). The Missionaries of Charity sisters and the Catholic Worker movement do not seek political change on the policy level, instead they focus on creating pockets of change through communities. Because of this commitment to face-to-face interactions, solidarity and community, influence spreads horizontally at the grassroots level.

Although IWM action is motivated to express caring rather than create concrete measurable outcomes, such action may very well have the greatest significance for the transformation of emotional dynamics in the interaction order (Goffman 1964a, b; Rawls 1987; Collins 2004). Acting on commitment to ameliorate personally the suffering of others helps to reverse the tendency to reproduce dominant structures in face-to-face interaction. If “success” is understood as instigating macro-level change, IWM attempts to create change appear to be doomed to failure. This transformation of the interaction order is only indirectly related to macro patterns of inequality (cf. Collins 2002). However, as Weber noted ([1963]1997, 68), stable institutions rest on stable expectations for face-to-face interaction. Thus any shifts in face-to-face expectations will necessarily entail shifts in institutions, if only locally and temporarily. The type of influence created by IWM is not wholly without potential to shape the prevailing flow of resources, both material and emotional, that tend to reproduce power and status in interaction.

It would be a mistake, however, to assume that EE is always a highly valued resource. There may be dire conditions where material help is so pronounced that nothing else matters. For example, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (1954) suggests that basic material and psychological needs—such as needs for food and safety—must be met before emotional and psychological satisfaction can be the focus of the actor. However, even if only the servers receive EE in the interaction, IWM-motivated interactions still disrupted the dominant patterns of interaction in other ways: they do this by diffusing material resources towards the poor, by changing the meaning structures of those who witness the interactions, and by shifting focus of attention from those at the top and center to those at the bottom and margins.

Collins similarly points out that it would be inaccurate to reduce IWM action to either moralistic and ethical action or traditionally monastic isolation. These are movements of solidarity with the potential to affect social change.

Christian mystics … created a form of activist politics that is radically humanitarian rather than harsh and moralistic. St. Francis of Assisi led a new form of monastic movement; it was literally monks outside the monasteries, wandering brothers … who gave up their homes and worldly occupations and devoted themselves to living among the poor…. The Franciscans were … not merely a religious movement, calling people to join for the sake of their own salvation; at least in part, they were a movement of sympathy for the suffering lower classes of the world (Collins 2008a, b, p. 13).

Rather than remaining confined within the mystic or the mystical community removed from the world, the EE generated in IWM can diffuse into the world beyond the immediate interactions. Rather than growing more powerful vertically, through increasingly macro influence, they grow horizontally through networks of pockets of resistance, creating multiple sites of micro disruption. While IWM may not represent an imminent threat to the macro order, the dynamics of IWM represent the potential for grassroots change. In this way we can imagine how disruption on the level of interaction can have more enduring consequences. Thus even without financial strength, or traditional organizational strength, there is tremendous potential for this sort of community to grow in terms of numbers of people and extent of commitment (Weber [1922] 1978, pp. 241–245).

All of this is to say that Weber missed the mark when it came to understanding the potential for IWM to create change. Indeed, from the analysis above, it would seem reasonable to assert that IWM is particularly well suited for creating particular types of change, namely diffusing opportunities to create reversals of flow in the interaction order by imparting both material and emotional resources to the poor. This is change that amounts to grassroots challenges as sites of change spread throughout networks.

Discussion

We could think of the efforts inspired by Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day as social movements. The Sisters of Charity and the Catholic Workers fit definitions put forward by Snow (2004) and McCarthy and Zald (1977). Snow (2004) defines social movements as “collective challenges to systems or structures of authority or, more concretely, as collectivities acting with some degree of organization (could be formal, hierarchical, networked, etc.) and continuity (more continuous than crowd or protest events but not institutionalized or routinized in the sense of being institutionally or organizationally calendarized) primarily outside of institutional or organizational channels for the purpose of challenging extant systems of authority, or resisting change in such systems, in the organization, society, culture or world order of which they are a part” (p. 11). According to McCarthy and Zald (1977), a social movement is “a set of opinions and beliefs in a population which represents preferences for changing some elements of the social structure and/or reward distribution of a society” (pp. 1217–1218). However, thinking of IWM action as a type of social movement action enriches social movement theory with very little gain in the other direction. An exception is Gamson (1975), who acknowledges that the target of certain social movement groups may not only be political. For these groups, “the antagonist is not a circumscribed set of authorities but the general public. This is especially true with respect to groups that aim at changing values or aggregated individual practices” (p. 33). Unfortunately efforts outside of the political realm proper continue to be under theorized.

Because movements have been assumed to be focused on political realms, social movement theory sheds very little light on social change that manifests as pockets of face-to-face changes in patterns of interaction. Ironically, this sort of change, while under theorized, is the type of social change most likely to have a profound effect on individual actors’ experiences of their world. By theorizing IWM, we can see how emotions are crucial for grassroots movements’ micro-level face-to-face change; change that happens during successful interactions that cross boundaries, including religion, national, class, etc.

Thus our article makes an important contribution by distinguishing between prevalence and level of organization. Just because something is widespread does not make it macro. Fine’s concept of “ideocultures” is an excellent example (1979). Fine details how jokes, sayings, and other things spread among and across little league teams, even across cities and different parts of the country; but this success in diffusion did not make the jokes macro phenomenon—their meaning and distribution never varied from the small group interaction. Similarly, the opening of more Catholic Worker houses or Sisters of Charity houses spreads the types of interactions that constituted these communities, but they did not become macro—they were not imposed by a larger institution—they remained grounded in face-to-face interaction. We can also see this in that neither Dorothy Day nor Mother Teresa moved up an organizational ladder—they both continued to do the same face-to-face work.

If such grassroots movements ultimately have macro influence, it could be within the realm of culture. For example, expectations for what it means to be a good person may change eventually to include face-to-face service of the poor and sick. If a movement shifts to a style of resistance that focuses on political (either small scale or large scale) goals, then a movement can change more macro social structures. We could imagine that grassroots movements may become macro in nature if the movement experiences a significant change in the combination of perception of movement resources (e.g., increasing access to the political system), focus of attention (e.g., laws and policies) and resistance action (e.g., using normal political channels). An example is the birth control movement in the United States and its change in style of resistance from seeking large scale, cultural changes in its early years to focusing on large scale, political changes in its later years (Engelman 2011). Moreover, peace and conflict studies literatures reveal how movements seeking grassroots change can also change macro structures when they strategically partner with actors in the political institutional level (Lederach and Appleby 2010).

Conclusion

We have argued that Weber does not fully develop IWM, which is unfortunate because it means he does not develop insight into the type of change that is a counterpart to the macro economic and political change he details in the Protestant Ethic. Filling out Weber’s depiction of religious orientations and their relationship to social structure, we have argued that it is possible to achieve an emotional experience of direct contact with the divine (Weber [1922]1978, pp. 545–546) while staying involved with worldly endeavors (Weber [1963]1997, p. 166). In making this argument, we have developed and illustrated an ideal type of religious expression and experience—inner worldly mysticism. Developing this category is a significant contribution. In spite of including it within his typology of religion, Weber all but argues that this type of expression of religious sentiment should not exist, much less endure or create change in the world. Thus our focus on the social foundations and consequences of IWM runs counter to Weber’s assessment of how mysticism works. In detailing how IWM works, we have reformulated and illustrated the two dynamics that are most problematic in Weber’s rendering of mysticism. Namely we demonstrate 1) how inner-worldly mysticism is indeed grounded in social interaction, and 2) how IWM holds the potential for creating change.

In developing the first point, we argue that IWM is not an individual trait but is generated in interaction. Ideology can be sustained more or less in a vacuum, but experiences of inner-worldly mysticism require interaction in the wider world in order to generate the sought after emotional experience. Thus rather than either seeking isolation for contemplation, or being motivated by internally-oriented charisma, inner-worldly mysticism is created and nourished in communities that cultivate particular emotional dynamics. We demonstrate how instead of merely surviving the world, communities and theological and ideological commitments ready people for participation in mystical interactions that could only happen within the world.

In developing the second point, we argued that rather than serving as an instrument (IWA) or vessel (OWM) of the divine, IWM is better understood as channeling the divine. This sense of channeling is generated in solidarity-based service actions that connect people across generally inflexible social boundaries. In these moments, those seeking experiences of IWM serve as channels both for what they perceive as God’s will and the diffusion of material resources. These cross-cutting interactions disrupt the pull toward reproducing the dominant ordering in the interaction order. Specifically, theological mandates to serve and to have community with the poor provide opportunities for successful interactions that reverse the tendency to reproduce macro patterns of dominance in face-to-face interaction.

Gorski spells out the political consequences of inner-worldly asceticism, namely discipline (1993, 2003). We, in turn, spell out the political consequences of inner-worldly mysticism, namely all-encompassing altruism that manifests as enduring sympathy for the poor. In contrast to the ethical/activist style that seeks state power in order to bring about change, IWM leads to direct action at the local level.

Weber’s assumption that mystics have little consequence for the world may be due to the fact that Weber primarily focused on generations-enduring patterns of change. We argue that although shifts in the economic world order are crucial for understanding the unfolding of human activity as macro time-scales, this sort of work can miss the importance of face-to-face interaction for day-to-day lived reality. This is to say that although those in the gutters of India that Mother Teresa attended to were there, in broad terms, because of global capitalism, the direct and meaningful experiences of those in the gutter are lost if we only attend to such macro dynamics. This is to say that in contrast to inner-worldly asceticism, which has its main effects in transforming the economic realm and in the bringing about of the ruthless drive of modern capitalism, inner-worldly mysticism has the capacity to inspire altruistic social activism at the level of individuals and communities. Inner worldly mysticism inspires communal support and face-to-face acts of love associated with Mother Teresa and Dorothy Day, among many others.