Studies in the Sociology of Religion. III. The Problems of a National Church Before 1860

Abstract

The Christianity of the eighteenth century did not allow the logic of a creed to interfere seriously with integration and union within Christian society. It was the nineteenth century, and the social situation therein, which gave the confessional principle an important social function once more. The wants of primary group, the inherent interests of the religious group of a church in the presence of rivalry and conflict with its neighbors, the rise of revolutionary radicalism-all militated against the pragmatic social rationalism of an older generation or tradition. The religious a priori of a creed begins to dominate the logic of the social process again. In view of the fact that religion is the "earlier situation," religious synergism and religious fundamentalism affect the political sphere. They are a cause as well as an effect.