BELIEFS TOPIC 6 - ORGANISATIONS, MOVEMENTS AND MEMBERS Flashcards
(12 cards)
Types of religious organisation
Troeltsch:
THE CHURCH - large organisations often with millions of members such as the catholic church run by bureaucratic hierarchy of professional priests and they claim a monopoly over the truth. They are universalistic, aiming to include the whole of society.
Bruce argues that Troeltsch’s idea of a church having a monopoly only applies to the catholic church before the 16th century protestant reformation.
THE SECT - small, exclusive groups, hostile to wider society and expect a large amount of commitment.
Niebuhr:
THE DENOMINATION - e.g methodism as lying midway between churches and sects. Membership is less exclusive than a sect, but they don’t appeal to the whole of society. They broadly accept society’s values but are not linked with the state. They impose some minor restrictions on members such as forbidding alcohol, but are not demanding as sects. Unlike both church and sect, they are tolerant of other religious organisations and do not claim a monopoly of the truth.
CULTS - highly individualistic, loose-knit and usually small grouping around some shared themes and interests without a sharply defined and exclusive belief system. Usually led by practitioners who claim special knowledge. They are usually tolerant of other organisations and their beliefs. They do not require strong commitments and they may have little involvement with the cult after they have acquired the beliefs and techniques that they offer. They are world-affirming, claiming to improve the world.
New religious movements
Since the 1960s, there has been an explosion in the number of new religious movements and organisations such as the unification church or ‘moonies’.
Wallis categories new religious movements into three groups:
World rejecting NRMs:
similar to Troeltsch’s sects,
Examples include the moonies, the manson family and the people’s temple.
Vary in size, clearly religious organisations with clear notion of God, highly critical of the outside world, members must make a sharp break with their former life, members live communally, often have conservative moral codes.
World accommodating NRMs:
Breakaways from existing mainstream churches / denominations
Neither accept nor reject the world, focusing on religious rather than worldly matters
Seek to restore spiritual purity of religion.
World-affirming NRMS
Not highly organised
Offer followers accss to spirtual or supernatural powers
E.g. scientology
Accept the world as it is, they are tolerant of other religions and belief systems, most are cults, most successful of the movements studied.
Sects and cults
Stark and bainbridge identify two kinds of organisations that are in conflict with wider society:
Sects - result from schisms - splits in existing organisations. They break away from churches usually because of disagreements about doctrine.
Cults are new religions such as scientology.
They see sects as promising otherworldly benefits tho those suffering economic or ethnic deprivation while cults offer this worldly benefits to more prosperous individuals who are suffering from psychic deprivation (or normlessness) and organismic deprivation.
They subdivide cults based on how organised they are:
Audience cults - least organised and do not involve formal membership or commitment. There is little interaction between members. Participation may be through media such as astrology and UFO cults.
Client cults - based on relationship between a consultant and a client, and provide services to their followers.
Cultic movements - most organised and demand a higher level of commitment than other cults. Movement aims to meet all its members’ needs and unlike followers of audience and client cults, they are rarely allowed to belong to other religious organisations at the same time.
Stark and bainbridge make some useful distinctions between organisations. However, some of the examples they give do not fit neatly into any one of their categories.
Marginality
Weber - sects tend to arise in groups who are marginal to society who may feel they they are disprivileged.
Sects offer a solution to this problem by providing their members with a theodicy of disprivilege - a religious explanation and justification for their suffering and disadvantage. This may explain their misfortune as a test of their faith.
Historically, many sects and millenarian movements have recruited from the disadvantage. However, since the 1960s, the sect-like world rejecting NRMS have recruited mainly from more affluent groups of often well-educated young, middle class whites. However, Wallis argues that this does not contradict Weber’s view, because many of these individuals had become marginal to society. Despite middle class origins, most were hippies, dropouts and drug users.
Relative deprivation
Refers to the subjective sense of being deprived.
It is perfectly possible for someone who is privileged to feel disadvantaged compared to others. Stark and Bainbridge argue that it is the relatively deprived who break away from churches to form sects/
When middle class members of a church seek to compromise its beliefs in order to fit into society, deprived members are likely to break away to form sects that safeguard the original message of the organisation.
The deprived may stress Christ’s claim that it is harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle - a message that the better off might want to play down.
Social change
Wilson argues that periods of rapid social change disrupt and undermine established norms and values producing normlessness. Those who are affected by this disruption may turn to sects as a solution. For example, the dislocation caused by the industrial revolution in Britain in the late 19th and early 19th century led to the birth of methodism offering a sense of community, warmth and fellowship.
Bruce - sees growth of sects and cults today as a response to the social changes involved in modernisation and secularisation. In Bruce’s view, society is now secularised and therefore, people are less attracted to the traditional churches and strict sects because these demand too much commitment. People now prefer cults because they are less demanding and require fewer sacrifices.
The dynamics of sects and NRMS
Denomination or death
Niebuhr - sects are world rejecting organisations that come into existence because of schisms - splitting from an established church because of a disagreement over religious doctrine. Niebuhr argues that sects are short-lived and that within a generation, they either die out or compromise with the world.
The second generation who are born into the sect lack commitment and fervour of their parents, who had consciously rejected the world and joined voluntarily.
The protestant ethnic effect - sects that practice asceticism tend to become prosperous and upwardly mobile such as was the case with the methodists in the 19th century.
Death of the leader - sects with a charismatic leader either collapsed on the leader’s death or a more formal bureaucratic leadership takes over.
The sectarian cycle
Stark and bainbridge - in the first stage, the schism, there is a tension between the needs of the deprived and privileged members of the church, deprived members break away to form a world-rejecting sect. The second stage is initial fervour - a charismatic leader and great tension between sects’ beliefs and those of wider society. In the third stage, denominationalism, the protestant ethic effect means that the fervour disappears. The fourth stage, establishment, sees the sect becoming world accepting. In the final stage, a further schism results when more zealous or less privilege members break away to found a new sect true to its original message.
Established sects
Wilson argues that not all sects follow these patterns
Conversionist - sects such as evangelicals aim to convert large numbers of people and are more likely to grow into larger more formal denominations
Adventist - sects such as jehovah’s witnesses believe that they must hold themselves separate from the corrupt world aroudn them and this seperatism results in them not becoming a denomination.
The growth of the new age
The term ‘new age’ covers a range of beliefs and activities
Heelas estimates that there about 2000 activities and 146,000 practitioners in the Uk.
Many of them are very loosely organised audiences or client cults. They are extremely diverse and eclectic.
They include belief in aliens, astrology tarot, crystals, yoga, meditation, magic etc.
According to Heelas, there are two common themes that characterise the new age:
Self-spirituality - new agers seeking the spiritual have turned away from traditional external religions such as the churches and instead look inside themselves to find it.
Detraditionalization - the new age rejects the spiritual authority of external traditional sources such as priests or sacred texts. Instead it values personal experiences and believes that we can discover the truth for ourselves and within ourselves.
Postmodernity and the new age
Drane - its appeal is based on the shift into postmodernity which causes a loss of faith in meta-narrative and therefore turn to find the truth for ourselves by looking within.
Bruce - the growth of new age is a feature of the latest phase of modern society, and not postmodernity. Modern society values individualism which is a key principle of new age beliefs. Bruce notes that new age beliefs are often softer versions of much more demanding and self-disciplined traditional eastern religions such as Buddhism that have been watered down to make them palatable to self-centred westerners.
Heelas sees the new age and modernity as linked in four ways:
A source of identity - in modern society, the individual has many different roles but there is little overlap between them resulting in a fragmented identity. New age beliefs offer a source of authentic identity.
Consumer culture - creates dissatisfaction because it never delivers the perfection that it promises. The new age offers an alternative way to achieve perfection.
Rapid social change - modern society disrupts established norms and values creating anomie - the new age provides a sense of certainty and truth in the same way as sects.
Decline of organised religion - modernity leads to secularisation, thereby removing the traditional alternatives to new age beliefs.
gender
Most churchgoers are female, more women than men say they have a religion, more women say that religion is important to them.
Miller and Hoffman identify three reasons for higher female religiosity:
Gender differences in risk taking - men being less risk-averse than women means they are more likely to take the risk of not being religious.
Women are socialised to be passive, obedient and caring which are qualities valued by religions.
Women’s gender roles means that they are more likely than men to work part time or to be full-time carers so they have more scope for organising their time to participate in religious activity. Greeley - women’s role in taking care of family members increases religiosity as it involves responsibility for their ultimate welfare.
Bruce - women’s religiosity is a result of their lower levels of involvement in paid work. He links this to the secularization process of rationalisation which has driven religion out of the male dominated public sphere of work confininit it to the public sphere of the family - the sphere that women are more involved with.
The individual sphere - suggested by woodhead as the sphere associated with individual autonomy and personal growth rather than role performance. New age beliefs bypass women’s role conflict between their masculinised instrumental role and their traditional expressive roles creating a new source of identity where women can express their inner self.
Stark and bainbridge argye that many participate in sects because they offer compensators for multiple forms of deprivation which are common amongst women:
Organismic deprivation - stems from physical and mental health problems.
Ethical deprivation - women tend to be more morally conservative and are therefore more attracted to sects.
Social deprivation - sects attract poorer groups.
Brusco’s study of pentecostalism found that while pentecostalism is a traditional belief system which is extremely patriarchal, many women are attracted to it. She calls this the pentecostal paradox as women are able to use it to improve their position, allowing them to limit their husband’s machismo culture.
ethnicity
Ethnic minorities originate from poorter countries with traditional cultures, both of which produce higher levels of religious beliefs and practices.
Cultural defence - bird notes that religion among minorities can be a basis for community solidarity, a means of preserving one’s culture and language, and a way of coping with oppression in a racist society. Brierly notes a growth of new churches in london catering for specific languages and nationalities as a result of recent immigration.
Cultural transition - Pryce’s study of African Caribbean community in bristol shows both cultural defence and cultural transition. He argues that pentecostalism is a highly adaptive ‘religion of the oppressed’ that provides migrants with values appropriate to the new world in which they found themselves in.
age
The ageing effect - heelas argues that people have become more interested in spirituality as they age. As we approach death, we become more concerned with spirituality and the afterlife.
The period / cohort effect - people born during a particular period may be more likely to be religious because of the events that they lived through.
Secularisation - as religion declines in importance, each generation becomes less religious than the one before it.
