Studies in the Sociology of Religion II. Religion and American Sectionalism. The Pennsylvania German

Abstract

Scientific hypothesis: For the study of the significance of religion as a principle of structural and functional individuation, the German religious groups in America furnish perfect clinical cases. In the case of the Pennsylvania German, the Lutheran traditionalism of faith has become a radiant center for the integration of a consciousness of self, of difference and of kind. A historical creed has here rationalized the process of life upon terms of its own. By conditioning an ego it determined the development of its organs of self-preservation, a functional type ideal, a specific societal technique, a language, a school system. It thus determined the performance of that type as a socius: his function in the social constitution and in the creation of values. By indicating distinct mind frontiers, by sanctioning terms of dissociation as well as consociation, religion appears here as the grandam of sectionalism and as a vital condition of the social process in America.