Denominations, Congregations, and Special Purpose Groups

Abstract

This chapter examines three typical forms of religious organization – congregations, denominations, and religious special purpose groups. Using insights from cultural and ecological theories of organizations, it is argued that religious organizations are always shaped both by their own internal cultural traditions and by the cultural, legal, and other contextual forces of their environments. Internal dynamics include size, resources, race, status, and gender, in addition to the official systems of authority prescribed by religious traditions. All of that exists within a pervasive organizational template that prescribes (through institutional isomorphism) the kinds of activities and functions congregations and denominations are expected to undertake. The external environment includes an organization’s niche in the social and geographic ecology, but it also includes the historical roles and legal regulations that constrain religious organizing. Denominations and religious special purpose groups are institutionalized forms of organization that extend religious work beyond local communities, but they depend on states that are willing to recognize plural and public forms of religious activity. Future research is needed to allow a more thoroughly comparative analysis of the organizational forms of religious life.