Sociology of Religion: Week Nine

I. Finish "Bonhoeffer" and do groups

Note: Spring 2009--UMD's Center for Genocide, Holocaust, and Human Rights Studies presents: "Hitler's Priests: Catholic Clergy and the Nazis," an expose of 138 "brown priests" in Germany who served as Nazi propagandists. Professor and Priest Kevin Spicer. Thursday, April 2, 4-5 p.m., 4th floor Library Rotunda.

I. Religion in the United States (ch. 4, Christiano et. al) (I'll do a pretty thorough reprise of the first 13 pages, up to "Congregations," but I'll depend on you to tease out the important issues thereafter."

A. Church/sect theory probably the most widely used middle range theory in the sociology of religion, say these authors

1. Background

a. Weber's distinction based on mode of membership recruitment: by birth = church (infant baptism, for example); by decision = sect)

a.Troeltsch's distinction based on degree of accomodation to the dominant culture (high accomodation = church; low accomodation = sect)

Just definitions (ideal types, in Weber's terminology)... plenty of issues with middle ground... e.g., Balmer, Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory, Word of Life Camp or the Amish

2. We begin to make more of a theory if we link the definitions in the following way: Churches, which are more accomodated and therefore "respectable," tend to recruit by birth (generation following generation), while sects, which put more emphasis on their opposition to the dominant culture, tend to recruit more by adult decision.

Are the complications and exceptions enough to invalidate this theory?

3. Another theory. Religious organizations start as sects but if "successful," tend to transition into churches. (cyclic process). The Methodists, for example, started out as a sect, but became more of a church, particularly after the main center of Methodism shifted to the United States. (What about "cults?")

a. What about the Baptists and Anabaptists? Share the notion of adult Baptism, but very different levels of accomodation to the mainstream culture. E.g., Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites vs. Southern Baptist Convention(16 million membes, 42,000 churches)

b. "John Wesley on wealth and piety", p. 93, (relate to Dick Green's discussion of Adam Smith)

B. Denominations: "those forms of organized religious expression that generally support the established order and are tolerant of one anothers's practices."

1. Notice that this apparent definition is really another mini-theory, namely that the accomodated religious organizations(variously called churches or denominations) tend to be tolerant of other accomodated religious organizations... The Presbyterians, for example, don't have much of a problem with the Methodists or the Lutherans.

Bryan Wilson (see p. 94). "Breadth and tolerance are emphasized...etc."

2. Another theory: Denominationalism is an outgrowth of pluralism (religious freedom: "one may belong to any denomination or none at all")

3. Began as a Protestant dynamic in the United States, but has spread to all the major religious groups in the United States (Thanksgiving interfaith services). Denominationalism now the dominant pattern in all the major western societies, even where there is a state church of sorts.

4. Church historian Sidney Mead on the unwritten rules of denominationalism (p. 95) "...only what all the religious 'sects' held and taught in common..."

C. Denominations today: What are the issues that tend to divide religious people in the United States, if those isses are "no longer ecclesiastical but cosmological."(Hunter, quoted on p. 97)

1. Wuthnow: Each denomination now divided between two "parties" based on sociopolitical issues, such as abortion and sexual orientation. Actual schisms... e.g., the Episcopal Church (Anglican)

2. Opposing view: internally consistent worldviews within at least some denominations... e.g., Southern Baptists very conservative, Episcopal and UCC very liberal

Putting those two views together

Headings for Friday's discussion

D. Congregationalism:

1. Locus of control

a. Role of the laity

b. Financial support

2. Loyalty to.... Identification with...

E. American Religious Renewal

1. Ebb and flow, or as Martin Marty puts it, "all-pervasive religiousness and persistent secularity "

2. Is there a persistent core that would be endorsed by the majority of Americans?
Their candidate: Benjamin Franklin's creed... what were its main points(p. 104)?

F. Mainlines and Sidelines: who is growing, who is not, and why?

1. Roman Catholic Church.

2. Mainline (="liberal?") Protestant Churches (Why do my previous and my current denomination lead all other denominations in their rate of membership decline?)

3. Evangelical Protestant Churches (="conservative"?) (fundamentalist?)

4. Community (nondenominational) Churches

5. "No religious preference"

II. Alan Wolfe: The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Practice Our Faith... statement on the home page of the Boisi Center for Religioin and American Life at Boston College... "God has met and struggled fiercely against American culture--and the culture has won." Read the whole statement to class

A. Basic theme: Two competing sources of meaning in the United States, religion and culture, and based on his interviews (qualitative research) across the country, American culture tends to dominate religion.

1. Belief. America not a culture of the intellect, and though religious Americans see themselves as believers, they are not very clear about just what they believe. Not a lot of Biblical knowledge among most Christians, for example... religious services that speak more to the emotions.

a. Calvary Chapel, an association of nondenominational churches (according to the American Religious Identification Survey, 2008, nondenominational churches have been the fastest growing group in the United States since 1990, with membership growing from 200,000 in 1990 to 9 million in 2008), led by Chuck Smith, who says:
"Our members may not learn theology, but will be excited about God and what God can do for them."

b. Steve Shogren, pastor of a Cincinatti church that is one of the fastest growing in the U.S., describes his sermons this way: "My sermons are love, love, love, love, truth."

c. U.S. as "the Spiritual Supermarket," as the Dalai Lama has put it (p. 99, CSK) (That section called "Point/Counterpoint" also notes some opposing trends.)

2. Emphasis on the individual vs. the group. Can a communal ethic survive in an individualistic culture like ours.

a. Catholic liturgy and ritual had changed very little for hundreds of years... mass still in Latin until the 1960s... ritual downplays the significance of the individual

b. Wolfe's college, Boston College, a Catholic institution and he sees devout students who are looking for more individualistic things, especially post Vatican II.

c. Survey of American Catholics on what they are looking for in worship: 20%--to take the holy sacrament vs. 37% looking to experience the feeling of communion with God

3. "Sin-drenched view of human nature" vs. current emphasis on what religion can do for you

a. Pentecostalism: historically, women's obligation to look plan vs. widespread influence of Women's Aglow, with an obligation of look as well as you possibly ca

b. Wolfe: "Salvation inflation"

4. Widespread "church shopping"

Again and again Wolfe hears that religion is countercultural and the religious as a people apart,, but after hundreds and hundreds of interviews across the country, he no longer believes it. What he finds instead is that we really are all one nation and that the churched and the unchurched share a lot of basic American cultural values.