Abstract
The issue of the earthly manifestation of angels in a ritual play might seem to mark a limit to a sociological imagination. The place of the angels in sociology has not greatly advanced since Comte’s stress on the need to regard them as ‘ministers and representatives of the Great Being’ who could be invoked as protectors and models.1 It is difficult to conceive of a sociology of angels. They belong to a realm of myth and legend. To the secularised mind, they linger as metaphors for states of purity, unreal and irrelevant for the streetwise seeking to survive life in advanced industrialised societies. Liberal theologians regard the idea of angels as a liability, an embarrassing impediment to religious belief in a scientific age. They seek to deny the rumour which Peter Berger has tried to amplify.2 Somehow the angel seems to have vanished, no longer able to appear in the ideological fogs that swirl around contemporary cultures.
The angels keep their ancient places; Turn but a stone and start a wing! ’Tis ye, ’tis your estrangèd faces, That miss the many-splendoured thing
(Francis Thompson, ‘The Kingdom of God’)
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Notes and References
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© 1991 Kieran Flanagan
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Flanagan, K. (1991). Angels and Surplices: Appearing As Holy Becoming. In: Sociology and Liturgy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375383_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230375383_5
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