New Concepts for New Dynamics: Generating Theory for the Study of Religious Innovation and Social Change
The Emerging Church movement (ECM) is sociologically interestingnot due to the size of its membership or the centrality of its congregations. Rather, the ECM is significant because it provides an opportunity to generate new concepts for the study religious innovation and social change. Using theore...
| Published in: | Journal for the scientific study of religion |
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| Subtitles: | Forum on the Emerging Church Movent: What it is and Why it Matters |
| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
[2017]
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| In: |
Journal for the scientific study of religion
Year: 2017, Volume: 56, Issue: 1, Pages: 6-18 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Congregation
/ Religious sociology
/ Social change
/ Science of Religion
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| IxTheo Classification: | AA Study of religion AD Sociology of religion; religious policy KDH Christian sects |
| Further subjects: | B
organizational analysis
B Theory B Institutional logics B Emerging Church Movement B religious institutional entrepreneurship |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | The Emerging Church movement (ECM) is sociologically interestingnot due to the size of its membership or the centrality of its congregations. Rather, the ECM is significant because it provides an opportunity to generate new concepts for the study religious innovation and social change. Using theoretical language, the ECM consists of institutional entrepreneurs who drive their religiously concerned movement by continually deconstructing and reframing beliefs, practices, and identities from mainstream Christianity while at the same time promoting newly formulated and broadly resonant religious imperatives. As Emerging Christians cultivate new or altered religious practices, these must be continually legitimized. Furthermore, their renegotiated beliefs (heterodoxies) require new forms of organization (alternative congregations). Such action is not the work of isolated individuals, nor is it independent of societal conditions. Ultimately, the ECM consists of Emerging Christians who creatively operate through diffuse network structures across wide geographic spaces and among disparate social groups to enact a collective institutional entrepreneurship that seeks to reimagine the assumptions of conventional Christian congregational life. |
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| ISSN: | 1468-5906 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/jssr.12325 |