This essay represents an attempt to contribute to the growing body of literature on education in conflict and emergency situations by analyzing shifts in sources of authority and their influence on conceptions of leadership in the context of a decades-long armed conflict in the predominately Muslim regions of the southern Philippines. Interviews with school principals conducted in the conflict areas of Muslim Mindanao in two separate periods of field research, reveal a fluid pattern of strategic blending of authority sources in response to the conflict's impact on social conditions. This data shows, I will argue, an evolution from patterns of leadership grounded in traditional and/or formal authority structures to a mode of leadership rooted in religious authority and aspirations of technological competence conceived as pragmatic prophetic leadership.