Religious organisations and Movements Flashcards
What are sociologists interested in about religious organisations?
Who was the first to identify features of different types of religious organisations?
What were the two he distinguished between?
What did he identify to be a Church?(Size, Hierarchy, ,Monopoly of)
What do they aim to include? Despite this(links to)?
Are churches restrictive?
-Sociologists are interested in the different types of religious organisations, how they develop and who joins them.
-Troeltsch and he distinguished between a Church and a Sect.
-Churches are large organisations, often with millions of members such as the Catholic Church, run by a bureaucratic hierarchy of professional priests, and they claim a monopoly of the truth.
-They aim to include the whole of society. Despite this they are more attractive to the higher classes because they are ideologically conservative and often linked to the state. I.e. CofE
-NO. They place few demands on their members.
What is the relationship between Sects and Churches according to Troeltsch?
What do they claim monopoly of?
Unlike Churches what do they have instead of a Bureatic hierarchy?
Are sects large or small organisations?
What does Wallis call the hostile nature of Sects?
Are they restrictive ?
-Troeltsch characterised sects as organisations that broke away from a church(through a schism) because they were dissatisfied with its teachings or practices.
-Sects claim a monopoly of the truth and are often hostile to other religious organisations.
-Unlike Churches who have a bureaucratic hierarchy Sects are led by a charismatic leader.
-Sects are small organisations.
-Wallis calls the hostile nature of Sects ‘world rejecting’.
-YES. They demand total commitment from members and therefore are not accessible without significant sacrifices on the part of those members.
What groups are mostly attracted to sects?
Name two examples of Extremist sect organisations?
What did Niebuhr call Sects which move into the mainstream?
Do Sects struggle to grow? Decline?
What happens when Sects become established for a long period of time?
-Sects are often made up of marginalised, deprived groups such as those on low incomes or from marginalised minority ethnic groups.
-Jim Jone’s Peoples Temple & David Koresh’s Branch Davidians.
-Nieburh called Sects which became mainstream ‘Denominations’.
-Sects grow quickly but can also decline very quickly. Should the sect survive and grow it is likely to lose the characteristics of a secy by becoming established and respectable.
What did Niebuhr describe the halfway house between a Church and a Sect as?
What is their relationship with social issues? The state?
Who is their membership larger than? Smaller than?
Bureaucratic hierarchy?
Monopoly of the truth?
What are two examples of denominations today?
-Niebuhr describes the halfway house between a Church and a Sect as a denomination.
-Denominations are not closely connected to the state and will comment and campaign on social issues.
-Their membership is larger than a sect but smaller than a established church.
-They have some beuraucratic hierarchy but less so than an established church.
-They often do not claim monopoly of the truth, instead being quite accepting of other denominations, churches and religions.
-Example of denominations today would be Methodists and Baptists.
Who looked at religious and spiritual movements as if they were businesses and identified three types of cult?
What two organisations have a degree of tension with wider society? Why?
-Stark and Bainbridge.
-Stark and Bainbridge argue that sects and cults are in conflict with wider society.
-Sects results from splits in existing organisations breaking away and offering other-worldly benefits to those suffering economic or ethical deprivation.
-Cults are new religions(e.g. scientology) or ones that have been imported(e.g. TM). They offer this-wordly beneifts to individuals suffering pyschic or health deprivation.
What are the 3 cults identified by Stark and Bainbridge? Describe them.
-Audience Cult, Client cult, Cult movement
-Audience Cult; This is a cult where the participant is a passive consumer. People might attend lectures, read books or buy DVDs to hear a particular message or consume a particular set of ideas. There are no expectations or necessary ongoing relationship.
-Client cult; This is a cult with a relationship with its adherents akin to a doctor/patient relationship. The cult is a service provider and the clients enter into a prolonged relationship as they might with a therapist.
-Cult movement: A cult movement is one which does not simply provide one service, but instead looks to fulfill all the spiritual needs of their customers. This relationship then becomes more like a traditional church, denomination or sect with clients being more like members of a congregation. They are more likely to identify themselves as a member of the group and as a believer.
What religious movement can be identified in all the cults made apparent by stark and Bainbridge? How?
-Scientology.
-Audience cult; It has been argued that Scientology began as an audience cult because it began with people reading L Ron Hubbard’s book on the subject of dianetics.
-Client cult; It has been argued that Scientology developed from being an audience cult into being a client it sought to treat people through the application of Hubbard’s theory and ‘dianetic auditing’(a highly controversial and rejected form of psychological therapy.)
-Cult movement; It has been argued that ultimately Scientology turned from being a client cult into what it is today, a cult movement: the Church of scientology.
Why is Troeltsch’s typologies criticised? (reality?)
Why does Steve Bruce argue it is much harder for Churches to claim a monopoly of the truth? Is CofE always conservative according to Bruce?
Although being the established Church with a population of 66 million in the UK how large is its membership?
-The reality never quite fits the theory: many religious organisations have elements of more than one type, or could change over time or between different places. I.e. In countries where the Roman Catholic Church is the dominant or established religion it fits the church typology, but less so in countries where it is a minority faith, like Sweden or the UK.
-Bruce points out that in modern Western societies we now have religious pluralism meaning that it is much harder for churches to claim a monopoly of the truth.
-Bruce also points out that the CofE is not always a conservative force anymore, often taking critical positions about gov’t policies and campaigning for change.
- The CofE only has a membership of 1 million active members despite a population of 66 million.
Who identified three main types of New Religious Movements?
What are they?
-Wallis
-World- affirming NRMs: - or cults- seek to offer their members spiritual enrichment. They often do not include belief in a God and usually make few demands on their members. Instead they offer personal fulfillment, meditation and ways to turn individuals into ‘better people’. Clear overlap with New Age Movements.
However, some world-affirming cults are more organised and have greater demands on their members, such as Scientology.
-World-accomodating NRM:
These separate life into spiritual and worldly spheres, focusing on the spiritual. They neither affirm nor reject the world, but they do adapt in order to ensure they can peacefully live within it.
-World rejecting NRM: A world rejecting NRM is one that sees the world as inherently evil or corrupt. They think that the way society is currently organised is against the will of God and needs to radically change, e.g. Millenarianism is a belief system whereby adherents are waiting for a moment of radical change(these are more like traditional sects.)
Who founded the Peoples Temple?
What ideas did he originally combine?
How much members did it have at its peak?
After killing a congressmen and journalists what did he convince members to do?
How many died?
What features did it have of a sect?
Why do some question whether this was indeed a religious organisation?
-Jim Jones.
-He originally combined Christian teachings with anti-racism and socialist ideas.
-Although claiming to have 20,000 members it actually had 5000 during its peak.
-After killing a congressmen Jim Jones convinced members to drink poisoned kool aid.
-918 died including 276 children.
-It had many features of a sect: a charismatic leader and a ‘world-rejecting’ message, appealing to marginalised people and the deprived. The sect also did not exist after the death of their leader.
-There is a question whether it was a religious organisation at all, as the spiritual elements of the Temple were mostly used to recruit people, rather than as a sustained belief system.
Who completed a study known as the Kendal Project?
What did they study?
What is a congregational domain? Holistic milleu?
What did the study conclude?
Why is this criticised?
-Heelas and Woodhead(2005).
-Heelas and Woodhead studied the town of Kendal, comparing the congregational domain with the holistic milleu.
-A congregational domain are traditional churches and places of worship.
-A Holistic Milleu is a wide range of other spiritual organisations or activities, including New Age movements.
-They concluded that the holistic milleu was growing rapidly and that the congregational domain was steadily declining. They found that middle-aged women were particularly attracted to the holistic milleu.
-This is criticised because Kendal was not necessarily representative of the UK; we might see different trends in more multicultural and less prosperous areas.
The definition of a holistic milleu is problematic. I.e. is going to a Yoga class a religious belief?
What postmodernist argued that New Age movements have grown as a result of an apparent failure of science as a belief system?
Why(Enlightenment and rationalisation)?
What does science do instead of solving world problems?
-John Drane suggested that New Age Movements has grown due to the failure of science as a belief system.
-He argues whilst the Enlightenment and rationalisation led to people dismissing traditional religions, they increasingly find that science does not provide the answers either.
-Rather than solving world problems, science has just created lots of new ones (e.g. the risk of nuclear catastrophe).
Who does Weber argue Sects appeal to? How(theodicy of disprivelege)?
Alternatively what do Stark and Bainbridge argue is the reason?
Who have the Moonies mostly recruited from that supports Stark and Bainbridge’s explanation for the rise in sects?
-Weber argued that sects appeal to disprivileged groups who are marginal to society.
-Sects offer a solution to their lack of status by offering their members a theodicy disprivilege- a religious justification to their disadvantage.
-Many sects and millenarian movements have recruited from the marginalised poor.
-However, Stark and Bainbridge argue it is possible for someone who is quite privileged to feel deprived compared with others; e.g. some middle-class people feel spiritually deprived.
-E.g. the Moonies have recruited mainly from educated middle-class whites.
