British Sociological Association

BEN PINK DANDELION

The complexities of disaffiliation: a Quaker case-study

Unprogrammed Friends (Quakers) in Britain provide an interesting counter-example to mainstream groups within the sociology of religion, particularly in terms of their patterns of believing and belonging. Permissive belief patterns and conformist behavioural ones have led to the description of the group in terms of a 'double-culture', one which behaves as both sect and denomination in alternate spheres of church life. This paper reports on a study of British Quakers who have resigned their membership in the last five years. Quakers leave either because they are 'de-convinced' or because, in a group which places emphasis on continuing revelation, they are grieving the loss of what has passed before. A third type resigns because they feel the group is too slow to support new revelation. This typology is placed across the concept of the 'double-culture' to give six types of ex-Quaker and to show how conservative or progressive thinking in each sphere of the double-culture may lead to different patterns of resistance to resignation from the group. Recent work on the Quaker group as an 'implicit sect' is briefly considered to examine how this new thinking affects the typology of church-leavers.

GRACE DAVIE

The persistence of institutional religion in modern Europe.

The idea of European exceptionalism is increasingly, if not universally, accepted by scholars interested in the sociology of religion in the modern world. European patterns of religion are no longer seen as a global prototype, but constitute an unusual case in a world in which vibrant religiosity becomes the norm. It follows that explanations for European patterns of religion must lie in Europeanness rather than in the connections between religion and modernity per se.

There is a further modification to this theory (Berger 1998) which accepts that the institutional churches are indeed very much weaker in most parts of Europe, but that a diffuse and for the most part a nominally Christian form of religiousness continues to exist - hinting that Europeans may not be quite so irreligious as they seem at first glance.

I would like to develop this argument further still and suggest that while the patterns of religion in Europe are indeed unusual, the role of the churches in Western Europe has been written off far too soon. Located in the voluntary sector of modern European societies, the churches do as well as many of their counterparts. In order to understand their role fully, the notion of 'vicarious religion' (a specifically European characteristic) is elaborated in some detail.

DOUGLAS DAVIES

Global Mormonism

Rodney Stark has already initiated an extensive sociological argument positing that by 2080 there will be 265 million Mormons and that Mormonism will, accordingly, be the next world religion after Islam. My paper will critically evaluate Stark's thesis, will offer a definition of a world religion -something that is markedly absent in the sociology of religion- and then argue that globalisation renders such definitions redundant and favours the networking of groups with distinct identities that need not, and preferably ought not, be typical of indigenous cultures. .

I will then offer a prediction about a major change in Mormonism focused on the prophetic leadership of the Church that will be a major part of its adaptation for success in the future.

In a Weberian fashion I will identify the radical discontinuities in the future between other-worldly and this-worldly soteriologies and show how Mormonism relates to the two, especially with an eye to the place of the human body, ritual performances, sacred space and the interactive community.

Finally I ask how, if at all, Bryan Wilson's typology of sects can illuminate these several issues?

ARTHUR FARNSLEY

Congregations as the focal point of American religious life

Thanks in part to a burgeoning sociological interest in organizations and in part to the generosity of the Lilly Endowment, the field of congregational studies has been a growth industry in the US for the past decade. Some have gone so far as to offer congregations as the preeminent mediating institution capable of producing the social capital necessary for a healthy republic and of delivering both social welfare services and community development.

During the twentieth century, the power of religion as a public, social force in America waned in relationship to the economy or the polity. Nonetheless, Americans continued, in overwhelming numbers, to profess belief in God and to practice that belief in local congregations. But the nature of congregations, and of the larger organizations with which they affiliate, has changed substantially in the past three or four decades. Many of the same market forces that have shaped business and residential patterns have also shaped the way worship communities are organized.

This paper hazards guesses at the changes in store for the American congregation as a form of social organization. It will consider topics such as the growth of megachurches, the importance of capturing niche markets, and the effect of changing expectations about the role congregations play in community life.

RICHARD FENN

Infinite possibility and its reduction to the sacred: another approach to secularization?

Earlier discussions of a secular society were motivated in part by a desire to counter fascist tendencies that were surfacing, at least in the United States, during the nineteen-fifties. Support for the notion of secularization also came from other quarters: from a church that felt burdened by the mythological framework of its beliefs, and by intellectuals who wished to demystify politics. The most consistent ideological critique came from those who, like Herbert Marcuse, attacked the limits placed on what could be imagined in any society and on what could be regarded as realistically possible. In this paper I therefore suggest that a secular society would be one in which there would a minimum of psychological, institutional, or cultural barriers to the awareness of possibility. The Sacred, I will argue, is simply the fullness of possibility both for life and death, good or ill, and it lies beyond what is known even to those who specialize in sacred knowledge. The sacred, therefore, is the more limited range of possibility that is known to those who claim access to mysteries. These claimants may be seers or priests, scientists or shamans, mystics or other virtuosi. What they have in common is a reduction of the range of possibility to a knowledge that can be owned and controlled by those who have a license to practice in the presence of the Sacred. The process of secularization, I will further argue, thus begins in this initial reduction of the Sacred to the sacred. It continues as occupations and institutions lose their monopoly on the sacred, and as the sacred therefore becomes more dispersed among a society's constituents and regions or more diffused in a wide range of social contexts. In this process unauthorized versions of the sacred open up a possibilities that range from the terrifying to the merely subversive, playful, or satisfying. Secular societies are thus exposed to more acute and widespread experiences of uncertainty and ambiguity as well as to more possibilities for the transformation of social institutions and of the psyche.

JOHN FULTON

Young adults and the future of Catholicism in England

It has only recently been recognised that young adults form a key group for the future of contemporary western societies. They are the ones most likely to structure the values and cultures of the next 25 or so years, and yet so little is known about them from the religious point of view. The paper examines the values and attitudes which appear in 51 life histories of young adult Roman Catholics in England, against the background of other similar life histories collected for Ireland, Italy, Malta, Poland and USA, their expectations of the Roman Catholic Church, and the responses they are likely to make to changes or lack of changes within Catholicism over the next 20 to 40 years. Some of the issues considered are married and female clergy, sexual and family ethics, the hierarchical and unitary nature of contemporary Catholicism, and the emerging core spiritualities. Some mention will also be made of the differences between young Catholics in England compared with the other countries.