Communal and Associational Churches

Abstract

The inadequacy of the church-sect typology for the analysis of the changes taking place in the structure of traditional religious groups within urban-industrial societies has made necessary the development of new conceptual tools for the study of the processes and directions of change in such groups. One such typology is derived from the distinction between community and association, and a typological continuum extending from communal to associational churches is proposed. While churches may develop in either direction along this continuum, it is to be expected that churches will become more associational in the urban environment. This model has been applied to the analysis of a city center church in Birmingham, England. It has become increasingly obvious in recent years that the church-sect typolo?gy, even in its developed and modified forms, is inadequate for the analysis and classification of the various types of religious organizations in modern western societies. Unfortunately, few attempts have yet been made to construct models which use other dimensions of organizational structure or of religiosity as the basis for analysis. The development of the concept of cult has provided the basis for the analysis of syncretistic and non-traditional religions within a Christian society (Nelson, 1968a; 1968b:649-81; 1969a; 1969 b:152-60; Jackson and Jobling, 1968) but models for the analysis of the types of Christian religious groups remain to be developed. The basis for a model which should prove useful in the classification of churches, in the analysis of the role of the churches within society, and in predicting the form of adaptation to social change that churches may take can be found in the concepts of community and association defined by MacIver (MacIver and Page, 1955) and derived ultimately from the concepts of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft, formulated by Toennies (1957). RURAL-URBAN DIFFERENCES Further bases for the development of such a model are to be found in Cooley's concept of primary groups (1909), in the work of Redfield (1947), and in the now somewhat neglected work of the ecological school whose work was largely