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Religious Organisations - Coggle Diagram

- - - - These are often breakaways from existing mainstream churches or denominations, such as neo-pentecostalists who split from Catholicism, or Subud, an offshoot of Islam. They neither accept nor reject the world, and they focus on religion rather than worldly matters, seeking to restore the spiritual purity of religion.
        Examples: Neo-Pentecostalists believe that other Christian
        religions have lost the Holy Spirit. Members tend to lead conventional lives.
    - - They differ from all other religious groups and may lack some of the conventional features of religion, such as collective worship and some are not highly organised. They offer their followers access to spiritual or supernatural powers.
        . They accept the world as it is. They are optimistic and promise followers success in terms of mainstream goals and values, such as a career or personal relationships.
        . They are non-exclusive and tolerant of other religions but claim to offer additional special knowledge or techniques that enable followers to unlock their own spiritual powers and achieve success or overcome problems such as unhappiness or illness. They have been described as psychologising religions offering this-worldly gratification.
        . Most cults, whose followers are often customers rather than members, and entry is through training. The movement places few demands on them and they carry on normal lives.
        In general world-affirming, NRMs have been the most successful of the movements Wallis studies. Scientology has grown much more rapidly in the UK rather than the Moonies.
        Examples: Scientology, Soka Gakkai and Human Potential
    - - Similar to Troeltsch’s sects. They vary greatly in size and have several characteristics:
        .They are clearly religious organisations with a clear notion of God.
        . They are highly critical of the outside world and they expect or seek radical change.
        . To achieve salvation, members must make a sharp break from their former life.
        . Members live communally, with restricted contact with the outside world. The movement controls all aspects of their lives and is often accused of 'brainwashing' them.
        . They often have conservative moral codes, e.g. sex
        Examples: The moonies, Krishna Consciousness, Children of God, the Manson Family, and the Branch Davidian and the People’s Temple.
- - - - Relative deprivation refers to the subjective sense of being deprived, meaning that it’s possible for someone who is in reality quite privileged nevertheless to feel that they are deprived or disadvantaged in some way compared with others.
        . Example: The deprived may stress Christ’s claim that it is harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, the message that the deprived may want to emphasise Christ’s message that ‘the meek shall inherit the earth’.
    - - Wilson (1970) argues that periods of rapid change disrupt and undermine established norms and values, producing anomie. In response to the uncertainty and insecurity that this creates, those who are most affected by the disruption may turn to sects as a solution.
        
        Bruce (1995; 1996; 2006) sees the growth of sects and cults as a response to the social changes involved in modernisation and secularisation. In Bruce’s view, society is now secularised and therefore people are less attracted to the traditional churches and strict sects because these demand too much commitment. Instead, people now prefer cults because they are less demanding and require fewer sacrifices.
        . Examples: The dislocation created by the industrial revolution in Britain in the 18th and early 19th centuries led to the birth of Methodism, which offered a sense of community, warmth and fellowship, clear norms and values and the promise of salvation. Methodism succeeded in recruiting large numbers of the new industrial WC.
    - - In Weber’s view, sects offer a solution to this problem by offering their members a theodicy of disprivilege, which is a religious explanation and justification for their suffering and disadvantage. This may explain their misfortune as a test of faith.
        Historically, many sects, as well as millenarian movements, have recruited from marginalised poor.
        . Examples: While holding out the promise of rewarding the future for keeping the faith.
        ¬ In the 20th century, the Nation of Islam (the black Muslims) recruited disadvantaged Black people in the US.
        ¬ However, in the 1960s, a sect-like world-rejecting MRMs such as the Moonies had recruited mainly from more affluent groups of well-educated young, MC white people.
        ¬ Wallis argues that this does not contradict weber's view because many of these individuals had become marginal to society. Despite their MC origins, most were hippies, dropouts and drug users.
  - - - Those born into the sect are less committed to its values as they did not choose to join.
    - - Sects that practice ascetism (work+save) will develop more affluent members who will break the sect rules/ leave.
    - - When the leader of a sect dies it creates a vacuum resulting in a dilution of the religious message.
    - - Schism - break away from mainstream church with its world-rejecting view.
        
        Initial fervour - composed of a charismatic leader, tensions with other sects and wider society.
        
        Denomination - following the death of the leader sects dilute their initial message/
        
        Establishment - sect becomes world-accepting and tensions reduce.
        
        Further schisms - members break away and create new sects.
- - - - Brown
        They argue that the New Age ‘self’ religions (those that emphasise subjective experience rather than external authority) attract women recruits because they appeal to women’s wish for autonomy. On the other hand, some women may be attracted to fundamentalism because of the certainties of traditional gender roles that it prescribes for them.
      - Bruce
        They point out that there are class differences in the types of religion that appeal to women. While New Age beliefs and practices emphasising personal autonomy, control and self-development appeal to some MC and WC women are more attracted to ideas that give them a passive role, such as belief in an all-powerful God or fatalistic ideas such as superstition, horoscopes and Lucky charms.
      - Woodhead
        They suggest that for these women, New Age beliefs are attractive because they appeal to the third sphere, which she calls the individual sphere. This sphere is concerned with individual autonomy and personal growth rather than role performance. New Age beliefs bypass the role conflict by creating a new source of identity for women based on their ‘inner self’ rather than these contradictory social roles, giving them a sense of wholeness.
    - - Bruce
        
        He estimates that there are twice as many women as men involved in sects. One explanation for this comes from the religious market theorists, Stark and Bainbridge.
      - Stark and Bainbridge
        
        They argue that people may participate in sects because they offer compensators for organisms, ethical and social deprivation. These forms of deprivation are more common among women which explains their higher level of sect membership:
        . Organismic deprivation stems from physical and mental health problems. Women are more likely to suffer ill health and thus seek the healing that sects offer.
        . Ethical deprivation - women tend to be more morally conservative. They are thus more likely to regard the world as being in moral decline and be attracted to sects, which often share this view.
        . Social deprivation - sects attract poorer groups and women are more likely to be poor.
    - - Bruce
        They argue that women’s religiosity is a result of involvement in paid work. He links this to secularisation processes such as rationalisation. Over the past two centuries, this has gradually driven religion out of the male-dominated public sphere of work, confining it to the private sphere of family and personal life, the sphere that women are more concerned with. As religion has become privatised, so men’s religiosity has declined more quickly than women’s
    - - Brusco
        They studied Pentecostals in Columbia, the answer lies in the fact that pentecostalism demands that its followers adopt an ascetic (self-denying) lifestyle. Pentecostal men are pressured by their pastor and church to change their ways, act responsibly and redirect their income back into the household, thereby raising the standard of living of women and children. Pentecostalism is not offering Western-style women’s liberation; as men retain their headship role in the family and church. But Brusco shows that Latin American women can and do use Pentecostalism as a means of improving their position. Although pentecostalism is patriarchal, it critique of the sexual irresponsibility and wastefulness of machismo culture makes it popular with women.
      - Drogus
        They also note that although the official pentecostal doctrine is that men should have authority over women, church magazines and educational materials often encourage more equal relations within marriage.
    - - Greeley
        They argue that their role in taking care of other family members increases women’s religiosity because it involves responsibility for their ‘ultimate’ welfare as well as their everyday needs.
      - Davie
        They argue that women are closer to birth and death bringing them closer to ‘ultimate’ questions about the meaning of life that religion is concerned with. This also fits with differences in the way men and women see God; men are more likely to see a God of power and control, whereas women tend to see a God of love and forgiveness.
      - Miller and Hoffman
        They argue that there are 3 main reasons for women’s higher levels of religiosity. The first one is that gender differences in risk-taking are a reason for differences in religiosity, as by not being religious people are risking that religion might be right and they will be condemned to hell and as men are less risk averse than women, they are more likely to take the risk of not being religious. Secondly, women are socialised to be more passive, obedient and caring. These are qualities valued by most religions, they also argue that men who have these qualities are also more likely to be religious. And thirdly they argue that women’s gender roles mean that they are more likely than men to work part or full-time. So they have more scope for organising their time to participate in religious activities. They also argue that women are more attracted to the church as a source of gender identity.