11-15 sociology's key problem with investigating religion is maintaining best balance of sympathetic detachment.
27 functions of religion - manifest and latent.
Manifest - salvation (by ethical action).
Latent - i.e. unseen or unintended:
35 this type of explanation attractive to sociologists who believed religion irrational and false but not just to sociologists - any rationalist, and there were plenty of them around the turn of C19/C20.
36 but now these latent functions have been taken over by other agencies e.g. explanation of physical world by science. 40 expression and regulation of emotion - mass media e.g. sanctioned hedonism; public moral outrage.
41 all this suggests close association between structure and function that existed in simple societies does not hold now. Institutional differentiation has removed latent functions and led to "loss of presidency of religion". Some suggest functionalist *definition* then say whatever fulfils those functions must be religion - e.g. civil religion.
44 other institutions capable of internal rationalisation but for religion there are distinct limits to introducing of rational procedures. What religion has kept is that manifest function of salvation.
45-52 lengthy description of effects of a rationally based society in failing to cater for modern dislocations. 52 appears to blame UK and US breakdown in consensus and law and order on loss of religion's function in social cohesion - which seems to me to be profoundly unhistorical.
55 Christianity nurtured tendency to secularisation, e.g. by controlling supernaturalism (by replacing or absorbing it) eliminated competing religious ideas and symbols from everyday life but not completely. Monotheism that Christianity and Islam inherited from Judaism was powerfully influential. Other religions more accepting of diversity.
62 Christianity was primary civilising influence outside Greek and Roman cities; contrast Buddhism emerged in a society that already had a sophisticated civilisation, and therefore accommodated itself to the prevailing civilisation. e.g. 63 influencing and being influenced by Confucianism in China.
65 western traditions value emotions less than eastern e.g. rejection and regulation of dancing.
67 Buddhism designed to appeal to self selected elite - because of salvation as transcendence of desire). Largely separate from state, though sometimes involved in political affairs, more so in C20.
69 Islam and state inextricably linked.
In practice religion accommodates secular power.
71 Hinduism's lack of formal organisation.
78 Puritan reformation affected principally bourgeois classes; later Methodist revival affected working class - psychologically suited - Calvinist predeterminism good for elite; later church polity autocratic but salvation democratic. Gradual expansion of prospects of salvation not uncommon - viz Jodu Shu and Jodu Shinshu Buddhists.
83 relation to secular world - Christianity at times saw self as transcending it, as opposed to it, as expressing it. Whatever the attitude, has influence on it. 84 Social control and concept of sin - agents of social control, individual self control. 86 privatisation of responsibility in Puritanism and pietistic and evangelical style of some in C18 and C19 heavily influenced some countries. 88 At present, in the West, the remnants of religion are, if receding, as yet still in evidence, but generally it may be said that western culture lives off the borrowed capital of its religious past.
89 Sects - definition difficult to hold, particularly as born is schism. Also because of decline of churches and internal secularisation e.g. lack of doctrine means nothing to define churches against.
91 common characteristics (tendencies) - exclusive, claim to complete monopoly of truth, lay, no relative division of labour, voluntarist, active policing of standards of members behaviour, demand total allegiance, is a protest group (used to be against church, now against secular society. 92-3 expands on protest group theme - doesn't do it so well as characterisation of withdrawing from the world. - But says generalised from medieval times.
96 generalised from American sects of his own times and postulated that in a generation they turned into denominations (not here defined) - less concerned with proselytising than preparing own children, prosperous, institutionalised, - less stringent moral attitudes, more openness to others, more formalised worship. Examination versus ideal type showed this was likely to happen to sects that come into being as intense reaffirmation of old traditions. Eventually typology of seven types of sects emerged.
105 sects arising within a traditional culture are characteristically both radical and conservative. 208 possible organisational features of sect become affected by sense of sacredness because - in western culture at least - of tension between sacred and profane. Secular world kept out by sacralising everything e.g. structure and organisation.
111 Typologies - world-affirming and world-rejecting. world-denying, world-indifferent, world-enhancing. 113 thought sects originated among poorer classes, seeking compensations and communities of hope - evidence is against this.
115-8 one explanation of religion is relative deprivation, as a compensation for a felt lack - very difficult to apply. 122 Theravada Buddhism frequent recourse to astrologers and herbalists who offer more proximate reassurance than its remote soteriological scheme. 125 religion always seeks to address anxiety so new movements are conditioned by the anxieties felt at the time of their emergence. 127 Wilson would fit perfectly into Grumpy Old Men - on difference between old and young.
129 in past people were localised. Alien religions arrived via slow process of cultural diffusion and made themselves at home. Now religions are known about in the abstract - people acquire little feel for them but know about them intellectually and know the circumstances of their origins. They are accepted relative to time and conditions of birth, not as truth systems. By extension induces doubt about indigenous tradition. I think he has both the history and the psychology wrong 129 religion suffers from growth of news media. Contrasted to time when religious instruction and religiously inspired tales were the principal stuff of communication What time would that have been?
130 religions legitimise teachings practice etc by reference to past almost as if past itself is sacred. 131 NRMs offer reassurance in more immediate ways - no traditions, use contemporary language and symbols, more immediate salvation. May use more rational means - Soka Gakkai successful at this - rational deployment of personnel in recruiting. 134-5 NRMs provide intrinsic and symbolic sense of community. 136 NRMs tend to appeal to all generations, perhaps because of encompassing quality. But equally many NRMs grew out of counter culture and so appealed mainly to young. 139 In general, the Christian churches have engendered little that is new in many decades, except in a destructive sense, in the abandonment of old liturgies and the adoption, by way of replacement for them, of casual performances which imitate the ephemeral fashions of the entertainment industry of secular western society. 140 Charismatic renewal significant - democratic ethos. Emotional experience virtually guarantees authenticity. Stay within original fellowships, so different from NRMs. 144 western NRMs not involved in public policy; Japanese NRMs are. Far more homogeneous culture thatn the west, so moral comportment retains high general standard. Also sharp dislocations since WW2 - very rapid urbanisation, industrialisation and technologisation. Movements populate social vacuum left by old forms of association.
Secularisation and its discontents.
Diminution in social significance of religion. 149 list of things it covers. 150 secularisation not the same as deChristianisation. 152 US churches strong attendance because churches are community focus in land of high mobility and high immigration. But internally secularised - specifically religious character attenuated not sure what he means by this. Seems to be a contrast once again of modern forms of worship (bad) with older forms (good)
152/3 Societal organisation demands mobilisation of intellectual faculties; communal order mobilises affective dispositions - religious community vs secular society. 159 religion was ideology of community; its functions have declined as human involvements have ceased to be primarily local and human associations have ceased to be communal. 161-5 lengthy description of difference between moral community and rational society, with big hints of nostalgia in the tone. 165 seems old moral systems evinced attachment and affections not evinced by rational patterns of order.
167 there appears to be a persisting undercurrent in modern society of demand for values of a more substantive kind. Evidence of disenchantment with technology, evidence of nostalgia. Religion provided legitimation of substantive values Don't understand this - if these values were what people sought, why did they need legitimation?
169 "Civil religion", so called, is the feeble remnant of what remains of the latent functions of religion in providing social cohesion - and that is more the celebration of the institutionalising of the state than of the birth of a nation. Who nowadays believes in patriotism as a primary virtue? Once the local community dies, so the sentiments that could once be extended to the linguistic group, or the nation-state, also die. No, I think he's completely wrong here. A lot of people do believe in patriotism as a primary virtue. And it's clear, I think, that there is no intrinsic link between local loyalty and national loyalty.
171 religion elevates, universalises, and ethicises soteriology. Difference with magic is religion's benefits remain spiritual, general and abstract.
179 Traditional religion, in the West and in other fully modernised countries, has succumbed to the transformation of social organisation. Nowhere in the modern world does traditional faith influence more than residually and incidentally the operation of society, or even, for the generality of men, the quality of everyday life experience.... as yet, only at the margins and in the interstices, and principally in the domain of private life, has such religious endeavour been effective, in allowing some men, at least, to transcend the present discontents, and in producing, by way of the dissemination of dispositions of goodwill and commitment, that salt of the earth that is necessary to sustain the social order. he could be one of the elite writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, worrying if the lower classes are going to rebel...