Functional Differentiation and Religious Organizations in Modernity: A Theoretical Analysis Based on Pentecostalism in Brazil

Roberto Dutra,João

doi:10.13189/sa.2018.060102

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the role of religious organizations based on Niklas Luhmann's theory of functional differentiation. Starting from a reflection on functional differentiation as the defining form of modern society and the relation between religion and other social spheres, we argue that the multiplicity of functional orientations, due to the non-convergence between the perspectives of the different social subsystems, should be the point of departure from empirical analyzes of religious organizations in modernity. We demonstrate the theoretical argument through an analysis of religious organizations that are guided by Pentecostal structures and semantics in the search for the conversion of believers in the Brazilian religious field.

Highlights

Intending to explain the different spheres of value and a Keywords typology of organizations and specialists – mainly Functional Differentiation, Modernity, religious, such as the typology of Sect-Church and the Religious Organizations, Pentecostalism typology of prophet-priest-magician, he does not approach the tension between religion and the world in a mesosociological level
In the second section, we argue that the multiplicity of functional orientations, due to the non-convergence between the perspectives of the different social subsystems, should be the point of departure from empirical analyzes of religious organizations in modernity
Labeling the religious phenomenon as anti-ethic to modernity is a mistake that sociology and social sciences in general still make

Summary

Modern Religious Organizations

To Werron and Heintz [17], since the second part of the 19th century, potentially global comparative communications will allow stabilizing the expectations about communications and relations of competition and cooperation among social units in different functional systems – non-spacial. It may be said that the American scenery (similar to the Brazilian one in its more recent configuration) is pragmatic when it comes to handling the tension between religion and world in the meso level of religious organizations, since strategic organizational rationality and religious objectives establish a mutual effort relation, allowing organizational religiosity to be kept and widened even with its emphasis necessary in non-religious criteria (such as media time or even economic sustainability of denominations) of success This organizational form, due to the successful combination of religious logic and other systemic rationalities and of its affinity with the development of a global religious sphere open to competition, is one of the main (if not the main) representative of religious modernity. It enables the interaction between religious function and other functions, e.g. economic and politic

Religious Organizations and the Modern Religious Field

Findings

Conclusions