sung eun lee dissertation ii. sociological understanding of group formation

8/14/2019 Sung Eun Lee Dissertation II. Sociological Understanding of Group Formation

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Sung Eun Lee

dissertation

II. Sociological Understanding of Group Formation and Maintenance

Religious expressions are anchored in communities in society. Religious groups

and their activities as social phenomena could and should, thus, be explained in light of

the discipline about humans in society. Religion needs to be investigated in light of

sociology. Here I would like to review and evaluate a number of important sociological

theories that seek to explain the origins and vitality of deviant (high-tension) religious

groups.

1. Why do people enter a deviant community: theoretical reflections

First of all, I would like to raise one question: why are people entering certain

sectarian (or deviant) religious movements? This question seems to arise out of the

famous church-sect dichotomy, and the dominant sociological explanations of conversion

into a sectarian perspective have assumed that such conversions happen primarily when

people are attracted to particular new doctrines and theologies. In particular, many New

Testament sociologists simply assume that people who suffered certain types of

deprivation tend to be fascinated by the ideological or doctrinal appeal of a sectarian

religious movement. However, a study of the relationships between conversion and

social network began to see the issue somewhat differently.1 Recent sociology of religion

sees that social network or interpersonal relationships are very important in the process of

1 See Malcolm Hamilton, The Sociology of Religion: Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives, 2nd ed.

(London and New York: Routledge, 2001) 238-45, 262-71.

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Christianity: church, sect, and mysticism.5 Actually, only the concepts of church and sect

have been applied because mysticism was thought to be inherent in any type of religious

movement.

According to Troeltsch, a church is by nature an inclusive institution, and adjusts

itself to the secular world. Thus, a church is cooperative with the social order of the

society at large. A sect is voluntary and exclusive in character, and demands certain

types of religious perfection from the individual and total fellowship between its group

members. The former corresponds well to the upper class of a given society, but the

latter by and large is favored by the lower class.

6

In this scheme the concepts of church

and sect become polarized, and the economic situation of religious members has been

considered to be a more important factor.7 H. Richard Niebuhr, accepting Troeltschs

idea that a sect is essentially unstable and tends to develop into a church, further argued

that the earliest fervors of sectarian religious movements is valid only for the first

generation.8 After the first generation, the sect must adapt to the world. The second and

third generations are no longer poor and hostile to the secular world. They become

welcomed into society and begin to contribute much to the world:

Wealth frequently increases when the sect subjects itself to the discipline of

asceticism in work and expenditure; with the increase of wealth the possibilities

for culture also become more numerous . . . compromise begins and the ethics of

the sect approach the churchly type of morals. And with the ethics, so with the

doctrine, so also with the administration of religion.9

The social patterns of the sect thus are considerably different.10

5 Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches, vol. 2, trans. Olive Wyon (Louisville:Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992) 993.6 Troeltsch, The Social Teaching, vol. 2, 993; H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of

Denominationalism (New York: Meridian Books, 1957) 17-18.7 Cf. Niebuhr, Social Sources, 19-20.8 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 19.9 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 20.10 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 21, 145-46. In this regard he proposes the concept of denominationalism.

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What is much more important is that since Niebuhrs sharpened argument has

been dominant, such a traditional distinction between church and sect lies mainly in the

assumption that sect members are economically marginalized. Niebuhr suggested that

denominationalism was based mainly in class conflict. His suggestion is based on his

own observations that masses were less secular than the middle classes, and many times

created religious movements. He concluded that the successful formation of a sectarian

religious body by the masses was inevitably captured by the middle classes and

accommodated to the secular world.11

The church-sect dichotomy has been dominant in the sociology of religion

because this line of typologizing seems to have analytic value. There are some developed

proposals on this. J. Milton Yinger proposed the concept of an established sect. This

type of sect is somewhat more inclusive, less alienated, and more structured than the

sect.12 More often cited is Bryan R. Wilsons sect typology. He attempts to specify the

type of a sect according to the kind of response to the world that the sect adopts.13

Conversionistsects emphasize evangelism and conversion of people.14Adventistsects

are focused on predicting the imminent reversal of the present world.15Introversionist

sects underscore the withdrawal of the believing community from the secular world.

Manipulationistsects pay attention to their own esoteric knowledge. Thaumaturgical

sects are devoted to miracles and wonders. Reformistsects pay attention to solving social

problems. Utopian sects are commonly founded as corporate communities for social

11 Niebuhr, Social Sources, 26-33, 275-78.12 J. Milton Yinger, The Scientific Study of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1970) 266. The Quakers are a

good example.13 Bryan R. Wilson, An Analysis of Sect Development,American Sociological Review 24 (1959): 2-15. A

slight revision of this article was published inPatterns of Sectarianism: Organisation and Ideology inSocial and Religious Movements, ed. Bryan R. Wilson (London: Heinemann, 1967) 22-45.14 Conversionist sects are centered on free-will optimism.15 This type of sect is supposed to seek a pessimistic determinism.

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transformation.16 But as Stark and Finke evaluate succinctly, names explain nothing,17

and empirical tests need to be performed. The single dimension, the response of the

world seems less discernible, and the sect typology itself remains arbitrary.

Some scholars in sociology of religion began to propose a somewhat differently

nuanced version of this church-sect typology. Many of them tried to focus on other than

economic factors when explaining why people decided to join a sectarian religious

movement that hates the secular world and the established mainline religious movement.

Many of them have been fascinated with the explanatory feasibility of relative

deprivation. Charles Y. Glock, one of the prominent proponents of this theory has

argued that the traditional sect-church theory was only viable for distinguishing the types

of religious movements, and not for discovering the conditions under which religious

groups originate.18 To relative deprivation theorists, new sectarian movements may not

necessarily recruit their member primarily from the economically deprived class of

society.19 I will explain the arguments of relative deprivation theory later.

Although the church-sect dichotomy has been dominant, after Benton Johnson

judged that this typology is of limited use and postulated a new definition of the church-

sect typology in terms of the degree of tension between a religious body and its

surrounding socio-cultural environment, the situation has become quite different.20

According to Johnson, the terms sect and church need to be redefined. A church is a

religious group that accepts the social environment in which it exists, whereas a sect is a

16 See Bryan R. Wilson, Sects: A Sociological Study (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1970) 36-47.17 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 143.18 Charles Y. Glock, The Role of Deprivation in the Origin and Evolution of Religious Groups, in

Religion and Social Conflict, eds. R. Lee and M. E. Marty (Oxford and New York: Oxford University

Press, 1964) 24.19 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 25.20 Benton Johnson, On Church and State,American Sociological Review 28 (1963): 539-49.

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religious group that rejects the social environment in which it exists.21 The definition is

this simple: the higher the tension, the more sect-like the religious organization; the lower

the tension, the more church-like the religious body.22 Johnson has made this kind of

thought clear. The church-sect typology is not mutually exclusive but can be placed on a

continuum.

Following Johnson, Stark and his fellows also theorize about the concepts of

church and sect.23 Church and sect are no longer mutually exclusive categories, but

depend on the degree oftension or degree ofdeviance. Tension here refers to the degree

of distinctiveness, separation, and antagonism between a religious group and the outside

world.24 Deviance refers to departure from the norms of a culture in such a way as to

incur the imposition of extraordinary costs from those who maintain the culture.25

As Peter L. Berger rightly suggests, to continue to sustain a meaningful structure

of religious identity, any religious group basically needs to develop a plausibility

structure for their social world, that is, for social interaction among those who share the

same meaning structures.26 A sectarian group needs to emphasize the direct relationships

among fellow members, and this requires the group to be in greater tension with the

wider society. This kind of social and religious separation in a deviant, high-tension

movement is reinforced when thinking and behaviors are dominated by a dualistic

worldview. Their worldview is unlike others in the main society. A dualistic worldview

21

Johnson, On Church and State, 542.22 See Rodney Stark and William S. Bainbridge,A Theory of Religion (New Brunswick: Rutgers University

Press, 1996) 122.23 A church is a conventional religious organization, whereas a sect is a deviant or high-tension religious

organization with traditional beliefs and practices. See Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 124.24 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 143.25 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 124.26 Peter L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of A Sociological Theory of Religion (New York,

Doubleday, 1967) 46-47. Cf. Peter L. Berger and T. Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A

Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966).

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to a schismatic, high-tension movement within a dominant religious tradition, a cult

includes new religious movements that constitute a deviant religious tradition.33 Sects

may thus be, they believe, easily able to do their missionary work in a particular local

community of relatively deprived people. In its scheme sectarianism tends to be

prominent only in a more stratified society.34 Cults, however, do require transmission of

new culture. Cult formation involves religious innovation, not mere schisms within

conventional religious organizations.35 Stark thus argues that cults will probably spread

more rapidly through the extensive social network of a cosmopolitan elite, if they

recruit among the advantaged.

36

However, this distinction between cult and sect is, in effect, made in terms of

their origins, and remains not as a mutually exclusive category but as a point on

continuum.37 For example, is the Unification Church (Moonies) a schismatic sect or a

novel cult in Stark and Bainbridges terms? Any deviant religious movement can have

the characteristics of both.

Since both sects and cults are deviant, high-tension groups in terms of their

origins, it seems to me that distinguishing between sects and cult is not necessary. In

many ways the terms seem interchangeable. Even to Stark and Finke, both sect and cult

are deviant, and what seems important are the ways of describing a deviant (either

sectarian or cultlike) religious movement:

33 Rodney Stark and William S. Bainbridge, The Future of Religion: Secularization, Revival, and Cult

Formation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985) 149.34 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 237.35 Stark and Bainbridge,Future of Religion, 149. Stark even argues that Christianity was not a sect withinconventional paganism. The early church was a cult movement in the context of the empire (Rodney Stark,

The Rise of Christianity: How the Obscure, Marginal Jesus Movement Became the Dominant Religious

Force in the Western World in a Few Centuries [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996] 45). He

infers that Pauls missionary efforts had their greatest success among the middle and upper middle classes.

Cult movements overrecruit persons of more privileged backgrounds (Stark,Rise of Christianity, 45-46).36 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 237.37 Hamilton, Sociology of Religion, 251.

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The higher its level of tension with its surroundings, the more extensive the

commitment to a religious organization.

The higher its level of tension with its surroundings, the more expensive it is to

belong to a religious group.

The higher its level of tension with its surroundings, the more exclusive,extensive and expensive the level of commitment required by a religious group.

The higher a groups level of tension with its surroundings, the higher its average

level of member commitment.38

The commitment and interaction within a deviant, high-tension religious group has to be

extensive. Their commitment is shown by the extensive efforts of the new converts to

break off close relationships with previous friends and acquaintances.39 Members of such

a religious group must have exclusively strong relationships with each other. Once

conversion happens, deviant groups must help the converts maintain their faith or their

new social world. In Bergers terms, the process of social engineering must be

successfully done. The new social world should be, as far as possible, taken for

granted,40because religion by nature needs to maintain the socially defined reality by

legitimating situations in terms of an all-encompassing sacred reality.

41

In this regard,

many applications of world-maintenance theory have been attempted in New

Testament studies.42 Because my concern is with the reasons people join a high-tension

religious perspective, namely, with the issue of the world-construction in Bergers

term, however, I will pursue the issue of the world-maintenance in the later part of this

38 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 145. As applied to religious commitment, the word extensive refers to

the range and depth of religious effects on the individual, and the word expensive refers to the material,social, and psychic costs of belonging to a religious group (Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 144).39 John Lofland,Doomsday Cult: A Study of Conversion, Proselytization, and Maintenance of Faith

(Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1966) 11.40 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 24.41 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 44. Bergers argument is worth noting: The prerequisite of plausibility pertains

to entire religious worlds as well as to the legitimations designed to maintain these, . . . the firmer the

plausibility structure is, the firmer will be the world that is based upon it (47). See an example study on

maintaining faith, Lofland,Doomsday Cult, 63-189.42 Many New Testament scholars have employed Bergers this idea.

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chapter.

What is important at this point is that a sect is by definition a high-tension

religious movement in regard to its socio-cultural environment, and requires its group

members to have stronger, exclusive social relationships with other members.

B. Sect Formation and Relative Deprivation

Since church-sect typology has been widely used, the point of view that the

particular ideology (theology) of a sectarian group appeals to persons who suffer

deprivation has been given as an answer to why people join high-tension religious

movements.43 Since Niebuhrs church-sect typology has been dominant, it has been

affirmed that deprivation itself is a necessary condition for the rise of new religious

movements, especially sectarian or high-tension ones. Some began to propose that the

concept of deprivation be broadened and generalized beyond its customary usage in sect-

church theory. Arguing that church-sect typology conceives of deprivation primarily in

terms of economic status,44 relative deprivation theorists thus go on to suggest that there

are forms of deprivation other than economic deprivation, and that these factors can also

involve the rise of new religious movements.

First, David Aberle defines relative deprivation as a negative discrepancy

43

Cf. Ralph Linton, Nativistic Movement,American Anthropologist45 (1943): 230-40; Graham Allen,A Theory of Millenialism: The Irvingite Movement as an Illustration,British Journal of Sociology 25

(1974): 296-311; Norman Cohn, Medieval Millenarism: Its Bearing on the Comparative Study ofMillenarian Movement, in Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutionary Religious Movements,

ed. S. L. Thrupp (New York: Schocken Books, Inc., 1962) 31-43; George Shepperson, The Comparative

Study of Millenarian Movements, in Millennial Dreams in Action: Studies in Revolutionary Religious

Movements, ed. S. L. Thrupp (New York: Schocken Books, Inc., 1970) 44-52. For an early application of

the relative deprivation theory to Judaism, see S. R. Isenberg, Millenarism in Greco-Roman Palestine,

Religion 4 (1974): 26-46.44 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 26.

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between legitimate expectation and actuality.45 He goes on to say that where an

individual or a group has a particular expectation and furthermore where this expectation

is considered to be a proper state of affairs, and where something less than that

expectation is fulfilled, we may speak of relative deprivation.46 He also classifies the

types of deprivation as those of possession, status, behavior, and worth in addition to

economic deprivation. Moreover, if a sense of blockage is felt, this sense would

become the source of the millenarian movements that are inclined to the more

supernatural and dualistic.47

Second, according to Charles Y. Glock, there are five kinds of deprivations which

people may subjectively feel: economic, social, organismic, ethical, and psychic ones.

Any person may experience more than one kind of deprivation.48 Religious attempts to

eliminate deprivation are likely to compensate for feelings of deprivation rather than to

eliminate its causes.49

He criticizes that traditional church-sect typology overlooks the fact that not all

religious groups begin as sects.50 Religious groups of the socially deprived are more

likely to be like a church, because those who are socially deprived are primarily

concerned to accommodate themselves to the larger society rather than to escape from

it.51 Religious movements arising out of ethical deprivation tend to develop an

45 David Aberle, A Note on Relative Deprivation Theory as Applied to Millenarian and Other Cult

Movement, inReader in Contemporary Religion: An Anthropological Approach, eds. W. A. Lessa and E.Z. Vogt (New York: Harper & Row, 1964) 209.46 Aberle, Note on Relative Deprivation Theory, 209. The deprivation is not a particular objective stateof affairs, but a difference between an anticipated state of affairs and a less agreeable actuality. The

deprivation itself is not absolute.47 Aberle, Note on Relative Deprivation Theory, 212.48 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 27.49 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 29.50 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 26.51 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 31.

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organizational form which is distinct from that of traditional religions.52 Responses to

psychic deprivation, which seems close to ethical deprivation, often lead to religious

movements and these movements then assume a cult-like rather than a sect-like or

church-like form.53 It is from the economically deprived that a sect gains its

membership. In sum, present or anticipated deprivation would appear to be a central

factor in the formation of new movements.54 Concerning church-sect typology, Glock

suggests that the ability of churches to survive in basically unchanged form is a

consequence of the persistence of social deprivation.55 He goes on to say that churches

tend to gain their greatest commitment from individuals who are most deprived.

56

Namely, sectarian religious movements emerge when they are stimulated by economic

deprivation, while church-like movements emerge where the deprivation is social.57

It is important to note that those relative deprivation theorists posit that the

ideology of the movement is to be related to the types of deprivation.58 The ideologies

are understood in terms of the compensation provided for the deprived. From this

perspective, ideology is often portrayed as a somewhat irrational response to the world.59

Thus a sense of deprivation is always relative to some level of expectation that is not

fulfilled.60 Relative deprivation theorists here appear to emphasize the subjective

character of the state of felt deprivation. By focusing on internal psychological states,

52 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 33.53 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 32. Glock accepts the concept of cult.54

Glock, Role of Deprivation, 32.55 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 34.56 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 34. Thus, it is the less gifted intellectually, the aged, women, and thosewithout normal family lives who are most often actively involved in the church.57 Glock, Role of Deprivation, 33.58 See Aberle, Note on Relative Deprivation Theory, 212-13.59Robert Wuthnow, Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis (Berkeley and Los

Angeles: University of California Press, 1987) 152. In some sense, it has been a classical thesis since Karl

Marx.60 Hamilton, Sociology of Religion, 240.

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such as anxiety and other felt needs, relative deprivation models are basically concerned

with explanations at the individual or socio-psychological level. However, these factors

may or may not be present because their subjectivity may be largely unobservable.61

Often ideological movements occur among the relatively advantaged, and they are mainly

concerned with maximizing new opportunities rather than restoring some traditional

values that have become endangered.62 Relative deprivation theory seldom establishes

that the alleged sense of deprivation was actually felt or experienced by those who join,

and customarily assumes that it was felt.63

Thus, it became evident that the deprivation and ideological appeal explanation

for the recruitment to deviant religious movements was incomplete.64 However, it should

be noted that seeing deprivation as not always material is a strong point of relative

deprivation theory. Non-material deprivation may be important in the rise of new

religious movements.

In the early 1960s John Lofland and Rodney Stark conducted an ethnographic

study of the first group of Moonies in America.65 The interpersonal bonds between the

members of this deviant religious body and their potential recruits came to be considered

essentially important. Lofland and Stark have found that people were drawn to the

ideology because their ties to the group were strong and meaningful: final conversion

was coming to accept the opinions of ones friends.66Stark, together with Roger Finke,

61 Wuthnow, Meaning, 154.62 Wuthnow, Meaning, 153.63 Hamilton, Sociology of Religion, 240.64 Stark and Bainbridge,Future of Religion, 308.65 John Lofland and Rodney Stark, Becoming a World-Saver: A Theory of Conversion to a Deviant

Perspective,American Sociological Review 30 (1965): 862-75; see also Lofland,Doomsday Cult.66 Lofland and Stark, Becoming a World-Saver, 871. A famous conversion scholar, Lewis R. Rambo

(Understanding Religious Conversion, [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993] 7) also suggests that

conversion is what a group or personsays it is. Emphasis is his.

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later fairly reasons that conversion is seldom about seeking or embracing an ideology.

Conversion is, in effect, about bringing ones religious behavior into alignment with that

of ones friends and family members.67This can be confirmed by the fact that the

perception of converts situation prior to their conversion can be influenced by the sects

ideology/theology.68It should thus be noted that religious conversion usually moves

through a preexisting social network.69

Accepting the thesis that social relations play an essential role in recruitment to

high-tension religious movements does not necessarily mean that the traditional thesis

that combines both the deprivational and ideological appeals is incorrect. People must

still experience enduring and acutely felt tensions before they join a high-tension

religious body.70

There seems to be no conflict between the deprivation and ideological appeal line

of analysis and the analysis that stresses the importance of social networks.71 A situation

of felt deprivation is an indispensable precondition for the rise of any social and religious

movement. However, deprivation is not, in itself, a sufficient condition. People gain

faith from strong social relationships, not from personal deprivation alone.72 New

converts must be placed in a situation where they will develop social bonds with

members of the group.73 Otherwise, people with weak social bonds to a group are most

likely to leave it.74

Using theories similar to relative deprivation theory, some New Testament

67 Stark and Finke, Acts of Faith, 117.68 Hamilton, Sociology of Religion, 240.69 Stark and Bainbridge,Future of Religion, 309, 362.70 Stark and Bainbridge,Future of Religion, 311.71 Stark and Bainbridge,Future of Religion, 312.72 Stark and Bainbridge,Future of Religion, 326.73 Lofland,Doomsday Cult, 51-53.74 Lofland,Doomsday Cult, 54-58; Stark and Bainbridge,Future of Religion, 321.

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scholars have attempted to focus on the concept of status inconsistency to explain why

people joined the earliest churches, particularly, the Pauline churches. Here, the work of

Wayne A. Meeks is to be mentioned. Relying on certain anthropological studies, he

argues that the crucial factor in the formation of sectarian or millenarian movements is

more cognitive than in the proposal of the relative deprivation thesis. His idea is that

Pauls converts were mainly attracted to Pauls new millenarian messages because they

suffered from status inconsistency. By the term status inconsistency, Meeks seems to

mean that their achieved status was greater than their attributed status.75 Meeks states:

A millenarian movement looks forward to a series of events in the immediate

future that will radically transform the existing relationships of power, prestige,

and wealth. . . . They are almost invariably people who are not competing

successfully in the existing scheme of social transactions. Yet it is not enough to

say that it is deprived groups that develop millennial dreams. It is not their

absolute level of poverty or powerlessness that counts, but the way in which they

perceive their status relative to significant other groups.76

In this respect Meeks argues with a strong biblical advocate on relative

deprivation theory, John G. Gager:

I do not entirely understand John Gagers remarks (1979, 180). . . . Gagerproceeds to argue that some persons of relatively high social status, but few of

high social class were attracted to Christianity in the first two centuries. . . . The

concept of relative deprivation, which figures largely in hisKingdom and

Community (1975), is closely related to status inconsistency. But great precision

is needed.77

To explain the status inconsistency that Pauline churches felt in receiving Pauls

ideas of the millennium, Meeks relies on the concept of cognitive dissonance that was

75 Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul(New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1983) 73, 172-73. See also M. S. Sasaki, Status Inconsistency and ReligiousCommitment, in The Religious Dimension: New Directions in Quantitative Research, ed. Robert

Wuthnow (New York: Academic, 1979) 135-56. Meeks seems to rely on Webers ideas of status group.See Weber, Class, Status, Party, inFrom Max Weber, 180-95. Weber (Class, Status, Party, 193)

suggests that classes are stratified according to their relation to the production and acquisition of goods;

whereas status groups are stratified according to the principles of theirconsumption of goods as

represented by special styles of life. Emphasis is his.76 Meeks,First Urban Christians, 172.77 Meeks,First Urban Christians, 215, n. 20 of chapter 2. See John G. Gager,Kingdom and Community:

The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1975).

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created by their social experience. This theory is used in social psychology to refer to

mental distress arising from contradictions between ones deeply held beliefs and

expectations and the actual state of affairs.78

The cognitive dissonance theory with the status inconsistency thesis does not

seem to explain why some people were attracted to Pauls high-tension religious

movement. In particular, I who am concerned with the situations in 1 Thessalonians have

almost no information about individuals at Thessalonica on which to base conclusions

concerning the status inconsistency of the Thessalonian church. We cannot find any

distinct indication that in 1 Thessalonians the church members had achieved high social

status before their conversion. I believe Meeks argument around the concept of status

inconsistency fails to distinguish what is conceptually different between relative

deprivation and status inconsistency.

C. Conversion to Sect and Social Network Theory: The Importance of Interpersonal

Bonds

As Lewis R. Rambo suggests, conversion is what a group or person says it is.79

Rambo has already proposed a conversion model that includes cultural, social, personal,

and religious systems as its major components. His model of conversion has stages of:

context, crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment, and consequences, focusing

more on the process itself instead of on ideologies and deprivation. Conversion is to be

78 Leon Festinger, Henry W. Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, When Prophecy Fails: A Social andPsychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World(New York: Harper

& Row, 1964). See also Gager,Kingdom and Community, 37-43.79 Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, 7.

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approached as a series of elements that are interactive and cumulative over time. 80 In

the interaction stage, he argues, personal relationships must provide a critical milieu for

the person to convert.81

For decades, social scientists have paid attention to how persons joined deviant

(or high-tension) religious groups. As I have reviewed earlier, the most popular

explanation for such a conversion couples deprivation with ideological appeal. However,

people usually do not join high-tension religious movements to compensate for their

deprivation.

In deviant act theory, scholars postulate that while some people deviate, others

conform to the mainline culture, because people differ in their stakes in conformity.82

Deviant behavior entails greater cost than conventional behavior. Thus, it seems fair to

suggest that most people do not join costly high-tension religious groups.83 Stakes in

conformity are those things at risk (which represent potential losses) when a person

deviates or fails to conform.84 Persons low in social relationships are more likely than

others to become members of a deviant religious group.85

Some scholars have considered deviant behaviors as a particular strain within an

otherwise unified cultural system in a given social order.86Such a perspective, rooted in

structural-functionalist logic, assumes that each society possesses a unified culture.

80 Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, 17.81 Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, 110.82

Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 117.83 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 205.84 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 190. They propose the following: persons with low stakes inconformity may incur minimal costs by deviating, and may, in turn, have much to gain from it. Persons

with low stakes in conformity are relatively free to deviate. For persons with low stakes in conformity,

conventional explanations tend to be evaluated negatively (Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion,

191).85 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 234.86 See Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 215. The work Robert K. Merton and Neil J. Smelser can

be categorized within this viewpoint.

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However, any society has numerous cultural systems.87Since interest in a social network

arises as a reaction to structural/functional interpretations of social relationship,88 social

network theorists focus on how sets of people are linked by interpersonal ties to a variety

of cultural systems in a given society. These ties can be defined by sets of factors such as

duration of time, emotional intensity, mutual intimacy, and reciprocity.89 Mark

Granovetter, for example, poses that the strong ties are those of long duration, high

emotional intensity and great intimacy.90 These factors are also thought to be important

to the formation of any network between human beings.

The following work of Lofland and Stark is a good example of the importance of

social networks. Lofland and Stark investigated how Moonies recruited new members in

San Francisco.91 Because joining the Moonies was seen by most people as an act of

deviance, individuals who initially spent time with them learning their doctrines never

joined. In every instance these people continued to have strong attachments to

nonmembers who did not approve of the group. Of the people who did join, many were

newcomers to San Francisco whose attachments were all to people far away.92 The

basis for successful religious movements is, thus, growth through social networks,

87 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 218.88 Mark Granovetter, The Strength of Weak Ties,American Journal of Sociology 78 (1973): 1360-80;idem, The Strength of Weak Ties: A Network Theory Revisited, Sociological Theory 1 (1983): 203-33;

Ronald Burt, Models of Network Structure,Annual Review of Sociology 6 (1980): 79-141; idem, Towarda Structural Theory of Action: Network Models of Social Structure, Perception, and Action (New York:

Academic Press, 1982); Paul W. Holland and Samuel Leinhardt, eds.Perspectives in Social NetworkResearch (New York: Academic Press, 1976); and Nan Lin and Peter Marsden, eds. Social Structure and

Network Analysis (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1982).89 Granovetter, Strength, 1361.90 Granovetter, Network Theory Revisited, 213-17. However, what he is particularly concerned with isthe weak ties. While most social network theorists deal with strong ties, Granovetter tries to emphasize

the strength of weak ties. According to him (Strength, 1376), while strong ties are more likely to become

fragmented, weak ties tend to link members ofdifferentsmall groups than strong ties, which tend to be

concentrated within particular groups. Weak ties are indispensable to individuals opportunities and to

their integration into communities (Strength, 1378). Emphasis is his.91 Lofland and Stark, Becoming a World-Saver, 862-75.92 Stark,Rise of Christianity, 17.

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These new insights can also be affirmed through studies of deviant acts.100 In this

field, there are mainly three perspectives: labeling theory, control theory, and learning

theory. Labeling theory focuses on the process of deviance, but does not explain why

some people are engaged in deviant acts. Deviant behavior is considered to be what

people label as reaction.101 This theory is not concerned with the origin of behavior, but

rather with characteristics of reactions from society.102

In control theory, generally resulting from Emil Durkheims insights, deviance

arises out of an absence of social control.103 Deviant acts happen when control over

individual conduct is lacking. Successive integration into relevant groups thus reduces

deviance.104

In learning theory deviant actions represent learned behavior.105 Deviants learn

this behavior through interaction with others in intimate personal groups. A person

becomes deviant because definitions that favor violating norms exceed definitions that

favor conforming to norms.106 The concept of socialization is essentially important in

learning theory, and it has been widely accepted among sociologists of deviance.107 I

think that this learning theory of deviance has also many implications for the issues

relating interpersonal relationships and conversion into a high-tension religious

perspective.

100 Alex Thio,Deviant Behavior, 4th ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1995); Marshall B. Clinard and Robert

F. Meier, Sociology of Deviant Behavior, 10th ed. (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1998).101 Clinard and Meier, Sociology of Deviant Behavior, 128.102

Clinard and Meier, Sociology of Deviant Behavior, 129. Cf. Earl Rubington and Martin S. Weinberg,Deviance: The Interactionist, or Labeling Theory of Deviance, 6th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1996).103 Clinard and Meier, Sociology of Deviant Behavior, 135.104 Clinard and Meier, Sociology of Deviant Behavior, 140. See Travis Hirschi, Causes of Delinquency

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).105 Ronald L. Akers,Deviant Behavior: A Social Learning Perspective, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth,

1985); Edwin H. Sutherland, Donald R. Cressey, and David F. Luckenbill,Principles of Criminology , 11th

ed. (Chicago: General Hall, 1992).106 Clinard and Meier, Sociology of Deviant Behavior, 142-43. Quotation is from p. 143.107 Clinard and Meier, Sociology of Deviant Behavior, 144.

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I would like to present one more concept in sociology of religious conversion,

religious capital. As in learning theory of deviant behaviors, the notion of

resocialization is very important to the conversion process. In this regard, scholars in

social networks and conversion attempt to study those who are recruited to and

resocialized in a new religious perspective. Following Pierre Bourdieus term cultural

capital, Stark and his colleagues coined religious capital as consisting of the degree

of mastery of and attachment to a particular religious culture.108 Any religious culture or

emotion a person keeps may be called religious capital. They then propose that the

greater their religious capital, the less likely people are either to reaffiliate or to

convert.109 People who are intensely socialized in a specific religious perspective usually

do not join other ones. Although this concept is extracted by research on modern

individualistic society, the concept itself can bear some fruit for the process of conversion

into a high-tension religious group.

D. Millenarianism

Until now, I have focused on why people adopt a deviant religious perspective.

Since the church-sect dichotomy has sharpened the notion of a sectarian religious

movement, deprivational theory has been a classical answer for this question. However,

social network theory on conversion supplements deprivational theory, establishing that

without interpersonal bonds with members of the group, people might not join that kind

of a deviant group.

108 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 120. They redefine cultural capital as the investments or sunk costs

that culture represents to each individual.109 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 121.

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Departing from social network theory, Robert Wuthnow, who focuses on the roles

of crisis in the rise of ideological movements or social change, believes that social

network theorists do not necessarily examine the socio-cultural conditions out of which

high-tension movements emerge. Considering that new religious ideologies are shaped to

address crises in the moral order, he instead suggests that much attention be paid to the

broader structuring of resources in the social environment.110 Wuthnow accepts as

conceivable some of the insights of deprivational motives in a decision to join a high-

tension movement. He thinks that deprivation is, in fact, characteristic of the social order

itself. He believes disturbances in the moral order to be particularly important to

construct a new ideological perspective. Wuthnow adopts ideas of James C. Scott who

has found that colonial peasant societies operate by a moral economy. Scott argues

that a set of expectations and obligations about peasants, reciprocity in villages, social

choices in system of tenancy and attitudes toward taxes guard the peasant community

against subsistence crises.111 In these settings of moral economy, a subsistence crisis itself

would not necessarily result in new ideological movements.

However, when a structural change in the peasant economy occurs in a situation

where the systems of moral economy have become defective, then ideological questions

would be raised about the nature of the peasants moral obligations.112 Thus, Wuthnow

states:

Insofar as ideologies also require social resources in order to be maintained, any

disturbance of social resources that results in uncertainties about the nature of

moral obligations is likely to result in some modification at the level of ideologyitself. In other words, disturbances in the moral order are likely to be a factor in

110 Wuthnow, Meaning, 153.111 James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1976) 204, 219-25. Wuthnow (Meaning, 154-56) summarizes well Scotts

ideas.112 Scott, Moral Economy, 114-56.

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the production of new ideological forms.113

Wuthnows concern well suits the question of why a deviant group, and in particular, a

millenarian movement as an extreme form of high-tension movement, forms. With

regard to millenarian groups that expect the end of the present world order, scholars need

to stick to the relationships between structural change of the social order and the moral

obligations in ideology, while they still need to focus their attention to the importance of

social network in the formation of those groups.

Millenarianism has already fascinated many scholars in the field of sociology of

religion and New Testament studies. By definition, a millenarian religious movement is

one in which the participants believe that supernatural interventions will soon effect a

radical transformation of the conditions of life.114 These groups, in general, tend to be

marked by the following characteristics: beliefs about the promise of the imminent

coming of the millennium, or of the end of time; the complete reversal of the present

social order; the release of emotional energy; and the role of charismatic prophetic

leadership.115 All the activities of millenarian movements visualize some kind of

redemption, or release from current obligations through an inspiration regarded

locally as divine.116 This is because most millenarian movements seem to go through a

stage of anti-structure in which they reject the normal social and status structure of

113 Wuthnow, Meaning, 154. By ideology it is meant to contain propositions about moral obligations, i.e.,

obligations of patrons to clients, of clients to patrons, of members to communities, of citizens to states and

of state representatives to citizens, and so on (Wuthnow, Meaning, 154). Wuthnow goes on to say thatthese propositions specify how social relations should be conducted and therefore affect how social

resources may be distributed.114 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 210.115 I. C. Jarvie, The Revolution in Anthropology (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1967) 51; Gager,Kingdom and

Community, 21; Michael J. St. Clair, Millenarian Movements in Historical Context(New York and

London: Garland, 1992) 51; Eric Hobsbawm,Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of SocialMovements in the 19th and 20th Centuries, 3rd ed. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1971) 57.116 Kenelm Burridge,New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities (Oxford: Basil Blackwell,

1969) 99.

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society.117 This form of a religious perspective thus provides alternate explanations

about how the state will be overthrown. Group members lives and beliefs reflect

relations between themselves and the elite,118 and the expected millennium is associated

with the entire group as a whole. Therefore, nonmembers, particularly, the elite of a

society will be deprived or punished.119

The similarities and differences between millenarianism and various other

ideological forms have been investigated. Revitalization movements are concerned with

religious or political ideology that collectively restores patterns of the disrupted moral

order.

120

In cargo cults, the entire group anticipates material goods.

121

Nativistic

movements resulting from nostalgic ideologies try to purify their members from the

influences of foreign customs.122 Having certain similar components as these movements,

millenarianism is thought to focus on preparing their members for the coming of the new

world.

Scholars customarily interpret millenarian movements as providing relief for

brutal conditions or suffering.123 First, scholars from a Marxist perspective seem to have

interpreted millenarian movements as a kind of protest by the economically and

politically oppressed who seek the overthrow of the present social order.124

Similarly, but focused more on the emotional character of millenarian

117 St. Clair, Millenarian Movements, 61.118 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 210. Here, the elite means the one who currently

monopolizes the cultural means of coercion.119

See Wuthnow, Meaning, 164.120 Anthony F. C. Wallace, Revitalization Movements,American Anthropologist58 (1956): 264-81.121 Peter Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound: A Study of Cargo Cults in Melanesia, 2nd ed. (New York:Schocken Books, 1968).122 Wuthnow, Meaning, 164, 233.123 In particular, scholars in relative deprivation theory have thought this way.124 Vittorio Lanternari, The Religions of the Oppressed: A Study of Modern Messianic Cults, trans. L. Sergio

(New York: Mentor, 1965); Worsley, The Trumpet Shall Sound; Hobsbawm,Primitive Rebels; and

Rosebeth Kanter, Commitment and Community: Communes and Utopias in Sociological Perspective

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972).

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movements, some scholars emphasize more the irrational character of the individual

member of such movements as in deprivational theory. Norman Cohn is representative

of this viewpoint. He is very critical of a Marxist approach to millenarianism that focuses

heavily on the impact of class conflict on the formation of the millenarian movement.125

Others think of millenarian movements as responses to the disruption of social

and cultural patterns.126 James A. Barkun argues that disaster and the hope of millennium

are correlated with each other, because disaster as a collective stress experience

provides a necessary condition for the formation of a millenarian movement.127

Contemporary scholars tend to think of millenarianism as a radical form of social

organization. Millenarian groups, by their nature, reject the social order in which they

reside, and are required to invest their loyalty and identity in a new order. A collective

existence located between the old order and the new order is typical of millenarianism.128

Millenarianism gives birth to what Victor Turner designates as structural liminality.129

It seems true that victims of a repressive state are more likely to join high-

tension religious movements.130 These people will tend to join millenarian religious

movements if the preconditions social network theorists propose are being met. As K.

Burridge states, power provokes a particular redemptive process in millenarian

125 Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Messianism in Medieval and Reformation

Europe and Its Bearing on Modern Totalitarian Movements, 2nd ed. (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).126 James A. Barkun,Disaster and the Millennium (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974); Michael

Adas,Prophets of Rebellion: Millenarian Protest Movements against the European Colonial Order

(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979). Wuthnow can be categorized here, but he

attempts to synthesize all of three.127 Barkun,Disaster and the Millennium, 1-6, 111.128 David G. Bromley, Constructing Apocalypticism: Social and Cultural Elements of RadicalOrganization, in Millennium, Messiahs, and Mayhem: Contemporary Apocalyptic Movements, eds.

Thomas Robbins and Susan J. Palmer (New York and London: Routledge: 1997) 32-45. See also other

articles in this work.129 Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977)

94-130.130 Stark and Bainbridge, Theory of Religion, 209; cf. Wuthnow, Meaning, 233. The term victims of a

repressive state is from the work of Stark and Bainbridge.

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passages. Van Gennep has already proposed three stages of the initiation through ritual

as separation, transition and incorporation.135 However, scholars in millenarian religious

movements, even Burridge, remain unsuccessful to explain why and how people join

them.

Whether a Marxist perspective, relative deprivation theory, or an approach on

social disruption is correct in regard to the essential elements of the formation of a

millenarian movement, what is to be explained is why and how people join a very deviant

millenarian movement. Social network theory on conversion remains to help clarify the

origins of millenarianism.

It is Robert Jewett among scholars in New Testament sociology who has paid a

great deal of attention to the formation of a sectarian community at Thessalonica as a

radical form of social organization. He borrows ideas from relative deprivation theory to

posit why members of the congregation joined the group, and appropriates the

implications of a study of millenarian or messianic movements.136 Then he assumes that

a social polarization occurred in Thessalonica and this became an important factor for the

formation of the Thessalonian church.137 Some of the families in the villages became

of the framework of a millenarian movement. First, at issue is what happens when there is a transference .

. . from one symbolic code or map to another, from one social order to another. Second, associated with a

competing redemptive process, this transference is usually related with a new understanding of powerstructures that is likely to be a source of rebellious action. Third, the prophetic figure empowers the group

to see the contradictions of a particular social experience, affirms ideologies on the moral systems, and

lets them define what they are or want to be (Burridge,New Heaven, 164). Moral systems are called as

moral obligation (Wuthnow) or social world (Berger). On these three points, Burridge (New Heaven,

164) adds money as the hinge on which most millenarian activities seem to turn.135

Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960).136 Robert Jewett, The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety

(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986) 165-68. He argues that economic, social and even psychic and ethicaldeprivations Glock has proposed contributed to the groups feelings of being marginalized. Especially, he

draws on the work of Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiros (Messianic Myths and Movements,Diogenes 90

[1975]: 78-99), who has observed that modern-day messianic movements in Brazil and other places often

originate among a marginalized group within a society.137 Jewett (Thessalonian Correspondence, 167) describes the situation as follows: the city had been created

by joining a number of native villages that kept their identity in the neighborhoods of the city for centuries

after the founding. It is likely that the medium of continuity was the extended families and clans that made

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socially dispossessed, and began to follow the apocalyptic visions of Paul. This is a good

reason, he believes, that in 1 Thessalonians there are many apocalyptic expectations. He

attempts to confirm that such a brutal socioeconomic situation often causes the socially

marginalized to turn toward a kind of millenarian perspective such as the one Paul

holds.138

However, Jewett has heavily relied on insights from relative deprivation

theory,139 and could not explain why in the initial stage of Pauls mission the

marginalized at Thessalonica decided to join Pauls high-tension religious movement,

because Paul states several times that they are destined to persecution. Even if we can

find some significant similarities between the Thessalonian church and typical

millenarian movements in general, we should keep focusing on why only some of

victims of a repressive state joined Pauls alternative, high-tension evkklhsi,a (1

Thess. 1:1).

E. Conclusion

I have tried to survey answers for one interesting question: why are people

up those original villages, . . . Some of these families were disadvantaged with the arrival of Romanbureaucrats, Latin immigrants, and ambitious Greek immigrants from other parts of the empire, and insofar

as they were unable to gain access to Thessalonian elite, would have constituted the type of pariah people

that Pereira de Queiros describes.138 Moreover, he argues that some enthusiasts (a;taktoi) who had been imbedded in the Cabirus cult

misunderstood Pauls proclamation of Christ and opposed him. However, in terms of religious capital, itseems less probable. If they had been faithfully imbedded in that Cabirus cult, they would have not

adopted Pauls high-tension religious perspective during the very short period of time Paul spent with them.If they were only nominal participants in the Cabirus cult or constrained to participate in the emperor cult,

it is more likely that they attempted to join Pauls high-tension movement. Jewetts interlocking idea lies

only in that they who had faithfully participated in the Cabirus cult in the village life, now co-opted by the

civic cult, misunderstoodPauls apocalyptic visions.139 Jewett doesnt distinguish the different types of deprivation. According to Glock, social deprivation

leads to church-like religious organization, not a high-tension religious group like the Thessalonian

community.

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No matter what it attempts to explain, this approach concerns the processes by which

social actors interact with each other using symbols such as gestures, language, and so

on. That is, social interactions, which uphold social structure and mediate socialization,

are considered to be symbolic exchange relations between social actors.

Although it may not represent all the diverse branches of social psychology,

symbolic interactionism in particular is an important approach that connects self and

society. Symbolic interactionists such as G. H. Mead and H. Blumer stress the role of

language in social interaction. Language allows individuals to realize individuality so

that they become self-conscious beings in society. For example, according to Mead,

infants can only define themselves as I at an early age. As they get involved in social

interactions with others, they can, finally, objectify and define themselves as Me. In

this process, they learn the roles of themselves and others. In general, they become

societal members through socialization processes by which they internalize generalized

norms and values i.e., Generalized Other or culture. At last, they can conduct abstract

thinking, without specific objects, by internalizing symbols that represent objects, decide

what types of behaviors are appropriate, and interpret what meanings other peoples

behaviors have.140 In short, symbolic interactionism helps us to examine the processes by

which people make sense out of their behavior by focusing on the social interactions

between them.

John Lofland, one of the prominent symbolic interactionists, has shown that if

converts feel integrated in a religious group, then they are more inclined to take course of

actions in support of the group. Even when they are disappointed or depressed by the

140 See George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934); J. D. Lewis, A Social Behaviorist Interpretation of the

Meadian I,American Journal of Sociology 85 (1979): 261-87.

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between individuals. It does not successfully explain social change, conflicts between

social structures or cultures, births of deviant individuals or sub/counterculture, etc.,

because it seems to focus overly on harmonious interactions only.

B. Social Construction Approach

Next, I would like to focus on the phenomenological understanding of religion as

social construction by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann. Bergers approach is in the

tradition of phenomenology together with Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Schutz. Their

focus was on ontology and epistemology i.e., the relationship between what exists or

objects and what to know or knowledge. Since the 1960s, Berger, together with

Luckmann, has claimed that worlds are socially constructed. In other words, reality that

people perceive and experience is not given from the transcendental being but is socially

located in society and differentially located across societies. This gave them the title,

constructivists because they viewed objects of our knowledge e.g., religious symbols,

traditions, beliefs, and so on as socially constructed in society.144 Applying their

constructivist perspective to varied social institutions and ideologies, Berger and

Luckmann examined the processes by which they are socially constructed. Especially,

they examined the processes by which people construct religious symbols by applying

their perspective to religion as a social institution.145

144 See Berger and Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality.145 Cultural perspective (social construction approach) and symbolic interactionism share some significant

resemblances, but we can make a distinction between the two. The latter is more inclined to describe how

social interaction itself is occurred among individuals, whereas the former focuses more on the structures or

cultures of social organizations that are constructed by individuals. Bergers approach tends to be overly

subjective rather than objective in its explanation because it does not discuss more objective conditions

such as social, economic, and political processes. Nonetheless, it does show the processes by which

seemingly objective constructs such as social institutions are constructed by subjective differences in

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A religion constructed and sustained by religious groups in their cultural milieu,

however, may become vulnerable at any time, and needs to remain kept safely. It is

because, they accept, all socially constructed worlds are inherently precarious.146 In

this regard, the meaning structure of any given group always needs legitimation.

Legitimation belongs to the domain of social objectivations, that is, to what passes for

knowledge in a given collectivity.147 Religious legitimation purports to relate the

humanly defined reality to ultimate, universal and sacred reality.148 The firmer the

plausibility structure is, the firmer will be the world that is based upon it.149 Namely,

its plausibility structure is to be constantly sustained and maintained by the religious

group. Strong religion should maintain an ultimately valid ontological status within a

sacred and cosmic frame of reference.150

A problem of social engineering is critical for anyone who wishes to maintain

the reality of a particular religious system, and then he must maintain . . . an

appropriate plausibility structure.151 Therefore, the situations change significantly when

different religious systems, and their respective institutional carriers are in pluralistic

competition with each other.152 The individual who wish to stay converted must

dissociate himself from those individuals or groups that constituted the plausibility

structure of his past religious reality, and associate himself all the more intensively and

(if possible) exclusively with those who serve to maintain his new one.153

meanings, symbols, and so on.146 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 30.147 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 30.148 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 36-37.149 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 47.150 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 33.151 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 48.152 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 49.153 Berger, Sacred Canopy, 50-51.

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In sum, religion could be defined as what is constituted and bounded by its

distinctive symbolic boundaries within its own social world or sacred cosmos. It is

actually a socially maintained cultural milieu. Strong religious groups are thus capable of

offering credible moral orders that create meanings for the lives of their members and

make their world significant. In this perspective, credibility and security are very

important, because it is the participants who must inhabit and sustain the sacred cosmos

and its distinctive set of normative orders of their own religious group, and suffer the

problem of delegitimation at any time. In this regard, strong religious groups that offer

secure and plausible moral orders seem to be placed, roughly speaking, in a socially and

demographically more Gemeinschafttype society than in a more Gesellschaft-type

society to avoid problems of delegitimation.154 It eventually leads to Bergers

secularization thesis that has been sharply criticized by rational choice theory.155

According to this approach, religious pluralism in a given society is thought to

undermine religious vitality, while monopoly environments are very helpful to promote

it. Capable religious groups should, thus, remain within demographically and socially

distant from the corrosiveness of modernity, within strong enclaves where vibrant sacred

moral orders can be sustained.156

154 Christian Smith,American Evangelicalism: Embattled and Thriving(Chicago and London: The

University of Chicago Press, 1998) 69.155

See Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 57-79. Rational choice theorists seem pleased to quote such remarksfrom Berger in his interview done in 1997: I think what I and most other sociologists of religion wrote in

the 1960s about secularization was a mistake. Our underlying argument was that secularization andmodernity go hand in hand. With more modernization comes more secularization. It wasnt a crazy

theory. There was some evidence for it. But I think its basically wrong. Most of the world today is

certainly not secular. Its very religious. I requote it from Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 79. Originally,

this interview is in Peter L. Berger, Epistemological Modesty: An Interview with Peter Berger, ChristianCentury 114 (1997): 974.156 Christian Smith,American Evangelicalism , 69. Christian Smith labels this theory as the the sheltered

enclave theory (American Evangelicalism , 67).

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from the Weberian perspective in particular. Thus, some scholars criticize that this

approach has much difficulty to explain the changes in social structures and social

institutions based on other types of social actions.160 Further, it does not explain how

social systems evolve according to their own mechanisms at the macro level because it

overemphasizes how macro structures are emerged from micro (inter)actions.161

Although it has such weaknesses proposed above, rational choice theory does

have good implications for the examination of the maintenance of religious groups. Let

me specify some characteristics of this theoretical tradition applicable to the study of

religion.

First of all, this theory finds free rider problems very important to the issue of

the maintenance of religious groups. It notices a tension between individual believers

who behave based on rational calculation and religious groups or group features that are

jointly produced goods such as communal worship, sacrament, music, warm

encouragement through friendship, etc. that need, for their maintenance, collective

cooperation of their participants. That is, religious believers try to minimize the costs of

their commitments to their groups while they seek to benefit maximally from the groups

in which they participate.162

As a natural consequence of this tension, certain forms of group properties

emerge to resolve the dilemma of free rider. For example, group members create or

heighten group solidarity by regulating the free riders so that they can safeguard the

structures of producing joint goods.163 Such free riders are most likely to enjoy many of

160 Christian Smith, Moral, Believing Animals: Human Personhood and Culture (Oxford and New York:

Oxford University Press, 2003) 114161 Cf. Donald P. Green and Ian Shapiro,Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory: A Critique of

Applications in Political Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).162 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 147-50.163 See Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965);

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the benefits of the religious group, with regard to their likeliness to contribute little to

their group.

Moreover, the larger the congregation becomes, the higher the proportion of

free-riders increases, because it is self-evidently true that the obverse of weak intra-

group social ties is strong external ties.164 Stark and Finke explain this kind of self-

evident religious phenomena as in their own terms:

The less dense the networks within a congregation, the stronger the ties maintained to

external networks.

The more prevalent member ties to external networks, the greater the pressure on the group

to reduce tension.165

Laurence R. Iannaccone has thus recognized that regulations requiring costs of

every member (set out by the strict religious groups in his term) would be efficient to

prevent free-riding problems, and screening free-riders would help make religious

commitment higher. Iannaccone argues that strict religions more easily screen out free

riders so that their religious vitality can be maintained.166 Only strong religious groups

that are able to screen out free riders enjoy high degrees of commitment, investment,

solidarity, and mutual-rewards, all of which make those groups thrive and grow.167

Secondly and further, Stark and Finke posit that the level of religious commitment

is associated with the tension between religious groups and their environments. As I have

reviewed earlier, based on Benton Johnsons simplified formulation of church-sect in

Michael Hechter,Principles of Group Solidarity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California

Press, 1987).164 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 161.165 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 161-62. These are their propositions 56, 57.166 Laurence R. Iannaccone, Why Strict Churches Are Strong,American Journal of Sociology 99 (1994):

1180-1211.167 Christian Smith,American Evangelicalism , 72.

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terms of a groups tension with its socio-cultural environment, they theorize that there is

a reciprocal relationship between the tension and the value of the rewards of

membership.168 The lower the tension is, the more the religious groups are likely to view

god as a detached and unresponsive entity. In contrast, higher-tension groups are more

likely to give greater reward to religious consumers, because they are precious, so it

would be rational for them to prefer a higher-priced supplier after their religious

motivations have been made in their religious lives. Religious vitality is made not

because group members have been resocialized to a high level of commitment to deviant

groups but because such high-tension groups offer more reward to themselves.

169

In contrast, lower-tension groups are more likely to be full of free riders who want

to enjoy many benefits more than they contribute. In such groups, religious collective

benefits including mutual support and fellowship, etc., become fewer and this leads to

more disinterest and less participation among the group members.170

Thirdly, Stark and Finke emphasize on the aspects of religious economies,

because they believe that the religious subsystem of any society is entirely parallel to the

subsystem involved with the secular (or commercial) economy, and both involve the

interplay of supply and demand for valued products.171 Here, religious economies is

defined as what consists of a market of current and potential followers (demand), a set

168 Stark and Finkes propositions 42-48.169 Rational choice theorists also posit that the more religious capital people have developed in a specific

religion, the more likely they are to stay because it is more rational for them to stay there because that

religion offers more benefits or religious goods than others whose religious capital they have not developedsufficiently. It remains theoretically true, but I have not summarized this trait here in detail because the

Thessalonian churches were almost entirely Gentiles who had not known about Judeo-Christian religioustraditions at that time and were very young in terms of the time of their conversion (cf. 1 Thess. 1:9).

Namely, their Christian religious capital was low. This aspect seems to be more connected with the issue

of the group formation, namely, the ways in which Pauls social networking enabled them to join the

Christian group as will be described in the chapters to follow.170 They theorize that such impersonal god conceived of by lower-tension (churchlike) groups is not

rewarding as an exchange partner (Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 91, 98-100).171 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 35-36.

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of organizations (suppliers) seeking to serve that market, and the religious doctrines and

practices (products) offered by the various organizations.172 One of their critical

arguments is that religious demand is relatively stable over time.173 It is based upon the

principle called homophily principle which means that people tend to associate with

people similar to themselves.174

Rational choice theorists basic claim, thus, seems to be that religious regulation

and monopolies create lethargic religions, but that within a competitive free religious

market, capable religions thrive.175 Christian Smith summarizes well their basic

arguments as follows:

capable religions thrive because their religious entrepreneurs capitalize onunregulated religious environment to aggressively market their religions to new

consumers; in these environments, religious firms (denominations and traditions)

that possess superior organizational structures (denominational polities), sales

representatives (evangelists and clergy), products (religious messages), and marketing(evangelistic) techniques flourish.176

What we can come by as typical in their reasoning is that with pluralism and

competition, at the aggressive level, the total amount of religious participation in the

society increases, since more and more religious consumers are induced into participation

by the variety of religious products that satisfy their needs and wants.177 They propose

172 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 36.173 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 193.174

Stark and Finke think that voluntary organizations are rooted in specific homophilus niches.Moreover, to the degree that a religious economy is unregulated and market forces prevail, these niches

will be quite visible, and each will sustain a set of specialized religious bodies (Stark and Finke,Acts of

Faith, 195).175 Christian Smith,American Evangelicalism , 73. Their theory can also be called competitive marketing,

religious economies, or supply-side theory. And even in non-competitive or sacralized religious

market such as in the Roman empire, religious vitality of any small but capable group can be seen as

proposed above.176 Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 73.177 Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 73.

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that market niche is very important. Here, the term market niches is meant to be

market segments of potential adherents sharing particular religious preferences (needs,

tastes, and expectations).178

The successful maintenance of religious groups can easily be led from

unregulated religious environments through which active religious firms can expand

market niches to promote more diverse supplies of religious products that satisfy ever-

expanding markets of religious consumers.179

One more thing to be considered. The relationship between the religious monopoly

and the vitality of new religion has also been proposed:

To the degree that a religious firm achieves a monopoly, it will seek to exert its influence

over other institutions, and the society will thus be sacralized.180

The capacity of a single religious firm to monopolize a religious economy depends upon

the degree to which the state uses coercive force to regulate the religious economy.181

The term sacralized here can be borrowed to explain such situations as in which people

can find little differentiation between religious and secular institutions and in which

the primary aspects of life, from family to politics, are suffused with religious symbols,

rhetoric, and ritual.182 Therefore, because no single religious organization can achieve

monopoly through voluntary assent in any society, religious monopolies rest upon

coercion.183

178 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 195.179 Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 74.180 It is their proposal 73.181 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 199. It is also true that even in highly regulated religious economies

limited to a single monopoly faith, these niches will exist, if less distinctly, and in such monopoly

situations, religious deviants seem to have little trouble finding receptive consumers (Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 195, 197).182 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 199.183 Stark and Finke,Acts of Faith, 199.

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it.188

In sum, within the reasoning of rational choice theory, as Christian Smith

evaluates, at the macro level, religious vitality is the product of pluralistic, competitive

religious economies, while religious weakness is the product of highly regulated

religious environments that discourage competition. And at the micro level of religious

congregations, vitality is the result of skilled and aggressive religious activists marketing

their religious products to newly responsive and satisfied market niches of religious

consumers. 189

D. Conclusion

I have reviewed and evaluated some important sociological approaches on how

deviant (or high-tension) religious groups can maintain their religious vitality. There are

quite different assumptions and thinking on why people get into such deviant groups

from each theory. With regard to the group maintenance, however, some theories share

several characteristics with which they argue for the essential aspects of the groups to

keep alive.

Still, we can figure out differences of the underlying assumptions of two

opposing paradigms on how religious vitality can be achieved in conjunction with

groups socio-cultural environments. As Christian Smith and many others believe, I also

evaluate that rational choice theory presents the best orienting framework and set of

assumptions for the study of the formation and maintenance of religious groups.190

188 Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 74.189 Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 74.190 Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 85.

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Religious pluralism may not be an obstacle to religious vitality. Rather, it can

give weight to some basic points for the religious vitality to come true with the help of

the theory of Stark and Finke. Not all the details in their theory might be true. However,

basic arguments are thought to be supported by empirical materials and experiences

among religious groups as such: deep connections of socio-cultural environment with

tension, how to deal with free riders in groups, and religious pluralisms positive

functions to religious vitality, etc. Even their theory is by nature interdisciplinary,191 and

shares several explanatory characteristics with those from other scholarly fields, some of

which I have reviewed. With the evaluation of Christian Smith, my position also is to

think that the rational choice theory formulates a theoretical account of why and how

religion survives and can thrive and explains variations in religious vitality among

different religious traditions than any other theoretical traditions.192 However, scholars

still think that arguments of rational choice theory on this issue are too much based upon

economic assumptions. As humans are not always at bottom calculating, consuming

animals, rather, moral, believing animals,193 the economistic language of exchange-

based rational-choice theory seems, thus, somewhat problematic to be employed without

any hesitation, and a noneconomic language drawn from insights of the other fields that

have been reviewed above needs to be included for the study of religious vitality.194

191 They favor to call it a general theory of explanation.192 Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 118.193 Christian Smith, Moral, Believing Animals, 114.194

Some wordings are from Christian Smith, American Evangelicalism, 118. With these insights from thework of Stark and his fellows, Christian Smith tries to deepen its theoretical framework. Christian Smiths

subcultural identity theory that tries to make rational choice version of religious vitality complete is asfollows: Propositions 1-8; 1. The human drives for meaning and belonging are satisfied primarily by

locating human selves within the social groups that sustain distinctive, morally orienting collective

identities. 2. Social groups construct and maintain collective identities by drawing symbolic boundaries

that create distinction between themselves and relevant outgroups. 3. Religious traditions have always

strategically renegotiated their collective identities by continually reformulating the ways their constructed

orthodoxies engage the changing sociocultural environments they confront. 4. Because the socially

normative bases for identity-legitimation are historically variable, modern religious believers can establish

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Aside from economistic language, there are a lot of insights and explanatory powers

within this tradition. Its basic arguments remain correct.

With the insights from these reviews and evaluations in mind, I would, thus, like

to focus more on the social context of Paul and his church at Thessalonica in the next

chapter.

stronger religious identities and commitments on the basis of individual choice than through ascription. 5.Individuals and groups define their values and norms and evaluate their identities and actions in relation to

specific, chosen reference groups; dissimilar and antagonistic outgroups may serve as negative reference

groups. 6. Modern pluralism promotes the formation of strong subcultures and potentially deviant

identities, including religious subcultures and identities. 7. Intergroup conflict in a pluralistic contexttypically strengthens in-group identity, solidarity, resources mobilization, and membership retention. 8.

Modernity can actually increase religion's appeal, by creating social conditions which intensify the kinds offelt needs and desires that religion in especially well-positioned to satisfy (American Evangelicalism , 90,

91, 97, 102, 104, 107, 113, 116). His subcultural identity theory is worth listening, but its basic arguments

still seem similar to the main points of rational choice theory (or social network theory). Economistic

language being put aside, rational choice theory and subcultural identity

sung eun lee dissertation ii. sociological understanding of group formation

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