Toward a Sociological Theory of Religious Movements
This study attempts to analyze the characteristics of the religious movements related to societal change. Only by comparing their most recurringly typical attributes in as many diverse cultural contexts as possible do the common patterns of religion and societal change emerge with striking clarity....
| Published in: | Journal for the scientific study of religion |
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| 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
[1975]
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| In: |
Journal for the scientific study of religion
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| Further subjects: | B
Poverty
B Power structures B Heresy B Sectarianism B Christianity B Protest movements B Religious buildings |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | This study attempts to analyze the characteristics of the religious movements related to societal change. Only by comparing their most recurringly typical attributes in as many diverse cultural contexts as possible do the common patterns of religion and societal change emerge with striking clarity. Data are taken from numerous early Christian, Apostolic Poverty, Croat, Czech, and German movements. These patterns are drawn from empirical evidence as if the term sect was never invented and the church-sect typology (and other labeling inherited from the past) never existed. The results reject Durkheim's dogmatic, unwarranted, and value-permeated statements, but support Weber's qualified, tentative, and neutral propositions. Durkheim's influence on American sociologists, in contrast to the lip service paid to Weber, is in part causative of the poverty of sociological theory on religious movements. This in turn nourished the myth of convergence or synthesis of Weber and Durkheim. |
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| ISSN: | 1468-5906 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Journal for the scientific study of religion
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.2307/1384907 |