key questions on religious organisations

Question 1

why do people join sects or world rejecting NRMs?

Answer 1

• Weber - theodicy of disprivilege offering marginalised individuals a religious explanation and restoring a sense of pride in them as the chosen ones
• offer a solution to relative deprivation which can be attained more than absolute deprivation
• tend to appear during periods of rapid social change so can address feelings of anomie or social dislocation (industrial revolution allowed Methodism to flourish)
• helps individuals cope with normlessness (La Santa Muerte helps Mexicans cope with anomie of drug cartels around them)

Question 2

critisms of why people join sects/WRNRMs

Answer 2

some have questioned relevance of social marginality and relative deprivation
- Beckford found JW was not deprived but just offered them alternative religious direction in life
- Stark and Bainbridge found no relationship between development of sects and periods of social change

Question 3

why do people join cults/world affirming NRMs?

Answer 3

• spiritual void in today’s society of rationalisation and demystification
• offer pragmatic motives in mainstream ways to become more successful materially, sexually and emotionally
• can help in constructing self identity in postmodern society (Giddens)
• fit with relative truths associated with post modernity as there are no absolute truths
• marketed to fit in with consumption of products
• low levels of commitment

Question 4

Niebuhr - sects are short lived

Answer 4

sects cannot remain as sects for more than one generation and characteristics change so they will become a denomination or disappear altogether: children of leaders will not have same commitment, after leader dies cannot maintain leadership, once people improve position from them they no longer join them
- Methodism cooled to a denomination
- People’s Temple wiped out by mass suicide
- if millennial predictions are proved wrong they may collapse

Question 5

Wilson - not all sects are short lived

Answer 5

believes that whether a sect becomes a denomination depends on its requirements for salvation:
- some aim for as many converts as possible and these will become a denomination (evangelical sects)
- some claim salvation is only for those who belong to the sect so will remain a sect (adventist sects - JW)
- some separate themselves from society entirely so will remain a sect (introversionist sects - Amish)

Question 6

Wallis - why the nature of a WRNRM can change

Answer 6

• changes in society such as recession can weaken views, changing to a world affirming NRM
• charismatic leader may be replaced or something could happen to them changing the nature of the sect
• may move further inwards and totally reject the world (People’s Temple, Children of God)