Show Must Go On

Abstract

When new religions reach a mature and settled phase, they resemble in many respects secular organizations and are therefore amenable to being studied with methods inspired by organization studies. One group of such methods deals with corporate narratives and corporate communication. This article takes a structuralist approach and applies a version of the actant model originally developed by the Lithuanian literary theorist Algirdas Greimas to a specific case involving a set of texts, namely the so-called Christmas appeals in which a spokesperson for the leadership of the General Anthroposophical Society at the Goetheanum initiates a fundraising campaign. Since money is a limited resource, these texts reveal which objects the organization’s leaders present as being important and why. The analysis reveals an organization that largely resembles a secular corporation but with the crucial difference that there are ultimate aims that transcend such arguably mundane concerns as maintaining a balanced budget.