Beliefs- Organisations, movemnets and members Flashcards
Types of religion organisations- Church and sect - Troeltsch
• Churches are large organisations, often with millions of members, run by a bureaucratic hierarchy of professional priests, who also claim monopoly of truth.
• Sects are small, exclusive groups. They’re hostile to wider society and they expect a high level of commitment. They draw the poor and oppressed and are led by charismatic leaders.
❌ Sociologists argue that some of the above descriptions of religious organisations do not fit today’s reality. E.g. in today’s society churches have lost their monopoly of truth (due to diversity etc)
Types of religious organisations-Denominations and Cults - Niebuhr
• Denominations lie midway between churches and sects, membership is less exclusive than sects but they don’t appeal to the whole of society.
• Cults are highly individualistic, loose-knit and are usually small group based around a shared interest, but aren’t based around a specific belief system. They don’t demand a strong commitment.
Types of religious organisations- New Religious movements - Wallis
• World-rejecting NRMs: Clear religious belief with a clear notions of God, highly critical of the outside world and seeking radical change, they desire to achieve salvation, members live communally and they often have conservative moral codes.
• World-accommodating NRMs: They neither accept nor reject the world, and they focus on religious rather than worldly matters, seeking to restore the spiritual purity of religion.
• World-affirming NRMs: Optimistic view of the world as a whole, non-exclusive and are tolerant of other religions, most are cults whose followers are often customers rather than members with training and little demands on their life.
❌ He ignores the diversity of beliefs within NRMs
Types of religious organisations-Cults - Stark and Bainbridge
• Stark and Bainbridge subdivide cults according to how organised they are:
Audience cults (least organised, do not involve formal commitment)
• Client cults (based on the relationship between a consultant and client, provides services to their followers)
Cultic movements (most organised and demand a high level of commitment, movements aims to meet all members religious needs and rarely allow their followers to be a part of other religious movements as well)
Explaining the growth of religious movements
Marginality - Weber
• Note how sects tend to arise in groups who are marginal to society, sects therefore offer a solution to this problem by offering their members a theodicy of disprivilege.
• Historically, many sects have recruited from the marginalised poor, however since the 1960s sects like world-rejecting NRMs have recruited from more middle class groups.
Explaining the growth of religious movements- Relative Deprivation - Stark and Bainbridge
• Refers to the subjective sense of being deprived, it is possible therefore for a privileged person to feel that they’re deprived in some way (e.g. spiritually deprived).
• Argues that relatively deprived people break away from churches to form sects and safeguard the original message that had since been lost in the church
• World-rejecting sects offer the deprived the compensators that they need for the rewards they’re denied.
Explaining the growth of religious movements-Social Change - Wilson
• Argues that periods of rapid change disrupt and undermine established norms and values produce anomie. In response to the uncertainty that is created, those who are most affected may turn to sects.
• Bruce sees the growth of sects and cults today as a response to the social changes involved in modernisation and secularisation. People are less attracted to traditional religion and more to sects.
Explaining the growth of religious movements- The growth of the New Age
• The New Age covers a range of beliefs and activities that have been widespread since the 1980s, many of them are extremely diverse and eclectic (putting unconnected things together in new combinations) e.g. belief in UFOs/tarot cards.
• Heelas (1996) believes that there are two common themes that characterise the New Age:
• Self-spirituality (seeking spirituality and turning away from traditional religions)
° Detraditionalization (valuing personal experiences not a spiritual deity).
• Heelas argues also that most New Age beliefs offer both world-affirming and world-rejecting aspects.
Explaining the growth of religious movements- Postmodernity and the New Age
• Heelas sees the New Age and modernity to be linked in 4 ways:
• A source of identity
• Consumer culture
Rapid social change
Decline of organised religion
Religiosity and gender-
• There are clear differences between gender differences and religiosity in the UK: most churchgoers are females who outnumber males by almost half a million, more women than men (55% vs 44%) say they’re religious, more women than men (38% vs 26% say that religion is important to them.
Religiosity and gender-Reasons for gender differences
• Miller and Hoffman explain that there’s 3 reasons for women’s higher levels of religiosity:
• Davie argues that women are more conscious of religion due to their roles close to child birth and caring for the elderly which brings them closer to the ‘ultimate questions’
• Women also share an attraction to the more individualistic/spiritual side of the New Age than men (as they’re more often associated with nature and healing)
• The New Age beliefs allow women to bypass the role conflict and create their own ‘inner
• Bruce estimates that there are twice as many women involved in sects that men.
• Sects act as compensators to relative deprivation, deprivation is seen more commonly in women
• Organism deprivation stems from how women are more likely to be mentally or physically ill so seek the help of sects
• Ethical deprivation portrays how women are more morally conservative so would regard the world to be in moral decline and turn to sects.
• Social deprivation explains how women are most likely to be poor and the poor are attracted to sects
• Pentecostalism has grown in recent years, but is generally seen to be patriarchal based due to how the heads of the church are men.
• However, women are also attracted to it (Pentecostal gender paradox) this is due to how Pentecostalism require an ascetic way of life and also requires men to be bread-winners.
• Pentecostal women can use these ideas to combat a widespread culture of machismo in
Latin America when men are told to “buck-up’ and care for their families.
Religiosity and ethnicity
• The UK is now seen as a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society. This means that there are vast, varying differences in religious participation patterns, for example black people are twice as likely to attend church that white people, or how they’re also more likely to be involved in the Pentecostal church than whites.
Reasons for ethnic differences
• Bruce argues that religion offers support and a sense of cultural identity, this becomes especially relevant in uncertain or hostile environments.
• Religion can also be used as a means into easing the transition into a new culture by providing support and a sense of community.
• Herberg shows that high levels of religious participation is seen in first-generation immigrants.
• Pryce’s study of the African Caribbean community in Bristol shows both cultural defence and cultural transition have been important.
• Pentecostalism helped African Caribbean’s to adapt to British society as it encouraged its members to succeed by encouraging self-reliance.
Religiosity and age
• The older a person is, the more likely they are to attend religious services. However there is an exception with under 15s who are most likely to attend religious services than those above them due to their parents.
Religiosity and age- Reasons for age differences - Voas and Crockett
• They suggest 3 possible explanations for age differences in religiosity: t
• The ageing effect (the view that we approach religion more when we get old due to the spiritual matters of death),
• The period or cohort effect (people born during a particular period may be more or less likely to be religious due to events they’ve lived through)
• Secularisation (as religion declines in importance, each generation becomes less religious than the one before it). Secularisation is seen as the main explanation of age difference in religiosity
