Some Critical Observations on the Church-Sect Dimension

Abstract

THE church-sect dimension1 is a theoretical and empirical construct which has had a long and honorable tradition in the sociology of religion. First developed by Weber2 and substantially elaborated by Troeltsch,3 the concept has received more or less sustained attention throughout sociology's modern history.4 Refinements have followed one upon the other in the years following these pioneering efforts. Thus, instead of the simple dichotomy, we now also have the cult,5 * This paper is part of the research done under the Public Health Service fellowship number 1-F1-MH-23, 474-01. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of this institution during the academic year 1964-65. In addition, he would like to thank Dr. Yoshio Fukuyama, who lent him the data cards on which the tables of this paper are based. 1 This concept has sometimes been referred to as a typology, but at least one researcher as objected to this term. See Nicholas J. Demerath, III, Social Class in American Protestantism (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), p. 52. However, the term which this author substituted, theory, is even more inappropriate, as will be shown. Dimension is a more neutral term; if it does not form a true dimension, then its use as a concept is suspect. 2 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribner's, 1930), p. 145. 3 Ernst Troeltsch, Sect-Type and ChurchType Contrasted, in Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, trans. Olive Wyon (New York: Macmillan, 1931), pp. 331-343. 4 For instance, two extremely important works were done between the publication of the above two works and the end of the Second World War, supposedly a sterile period for the sociology of religion: H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York: Holt, 1929); and Liston Pope, Millhands And Preachers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942). Neither was written by a sociologist, however. 5 Howard Becker, Four Types of Religious Organizations, from Systematic Sociology on the Basis of the Beziehungslehre and Gebildungslehre of Leopold von Weise (New York: Wiley, 1932), pp. 624-628, and Allan W. Eister, Drawing-Room Conversion (Durham, North Ca-