Christian Sects Research Articles

Psychological benefits of Spiritual Baptist "mourning," II: An empirical assessment.

Members of a West Indian Christian sect called the Spiritual Baptists participate in a "mourning" ritual that is characterized by praying, fasting, and the experiencing of dreams and visions while in isolation. Sixteen individuals who underwent mourning were evaluated with the SCL-90-R before and after the ritual. In general, the mourners showed significant improvement on the self-report scales.

Burning with the Fire of God: Calvinism and Community in a Scottish Fishing Village

The village of Ferryden, Scotland, has 800 people and two Presbyterian churches. The larger one, the Established Church of Scotland, is state-supported, the smaller one, the United Free (Continuing) Church, is not. Supporters ofthe latter regard members of the former as traitors, yet the doctrinal differences between them may at first seem rather small to an outsider. As one Ferrydener said, one kirk, ye stand to sing and sit to pray; in the other, ye sit to sing and stand to pray. To understand how a small village can sustain two churches and why feelings about them run so high, we must look not at the formal differences in doctrine?what they might mean to an outsider considering attendance?but rather at their symbolic meaning for the people of Ferryden. In doing so, we find that this meaning derives from the social transformation of the community from a homogeneous fishing village to a divided, partially suburbanized dormitory for people perceived by the fisherfolk as incomers. The two churches come to stand for this division. In a previous article (Nadel 1984), I argued that the Ferryden fisherfolk clung to their occupational identity despite its stigmatization by outsiders, and despite their dependence upon new forms of work, because without it they would lose their most precious possession: the sense of belonging to a community. In short, fisherfolk identity has become a way of staking a moral claim upon the home of their ancestors. Here I investigate the process by which Ferryden fisherfolk (and Scottish fisherfolk, more broadly) of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries used both the dissenting Free Kirk and revivalism for social and psychological advantage and as a means for social change. In doing so, they elevated their own perception of what fisherfolk identity meant, giving it a gloss of respectability and virtue that it had never had before. During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Scottish fishing commu? nities were reputed to be strongholds of paganism and the Established Church appeared to little hold over their lives. From the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the fisherfolk came to be known for fervent religiosity, adhering to different Christian sects of varying doctrinal and ritual strictness (Anson 1974:47). In fact, the fisherfolk ofthe northeast have been described as apt to embrace every new form of religion on offer (Fraser 1983:22). Revival movements were especially popular in the 1850s, 1870s, and the 1920s. They were often inspired by itinerant missionary preachers from other parts of the English-speaking Protestant world, including Ulster, England, and the United States, but were frequently led by local men who had undergone sudden and

The Remnant Church: A Christian Sect of the Solomon Islands

The Remnant Church is a religious movement of Malaita in the Solomon Islands whose members trace their ancestry to the Old Testament migrations of the tribes of Israel. It is a small sect1, founded by visionaries among the Kwara'ae-speaking people more than twenty years ago, and has probably never numbered many more than a hundred men and their families. However, in the 1950s and 60s its members' determination to observe the religious laws of their Church rather than those of the colonial government was strong enough to result in a number of them being imprisoned by the authorities of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate. The rise and fall of anti-colonial movements has long been a feature of social change in the Solomon Islands. The Remnant Church, despite its Christian doctrine, falls within a long tradition of such movements in Malaita, as explained in Keesing's brief allusion to its leader, Sisimia, in his analysis of the famous Maasina Rule Movement (1978 II:53-54)2. In this paper I will try to develop Keesing's theme through a more detailed account of the Remnant Church, explaining in particular the intellectual assumptions upon which its anti-colonial doctrine is based, in the context of Malaitan society and its colonial history. Stories of the lost tribes of Israel abound in Christian countries around

Some lesser‐known victims of totalitarian persecution

The persecution of Christian sects such as Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists in totalitarian societies is a neglected subject. In Hitler's Germany, some refused to compromise and suffered the fate of Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals. Others were tempted to buy a stay of execution and publicly adopted elements of national‐socialist ideology.

American-Born Sects: Initial Findings

This paper reports initial descriptive findings based on quantitative coding of basic features of 417 American-born sects still in existence. Sects are less numerous than are cults but are, on the average, older and larger. Nonetheless, most sects are small and very few are growing rapidly at present. Indeed, about a third have not grown since their initial formation. A major impediment to sect growth appears to be the fact that most begin in a state of very high tension with their environment so high as to cut them off from potential recruits. Moreover, once founded, very few sects subsequently reduce their initial tension level (only 4% have markedly lowered their tension; 10% have reduced it modestly). However, those that have lowered their tension are overwhelmingly those that have achieved significant growth. When sect families are examined, the Pentecostals are the most numerous group, followed by the Holiness, Baptist, and Adventist families. Tennessee has the most sects per million population. However, aside from Tennessee, the rest of the South is not unusually prolific in sects. While cults are highly concentrated on the West Coast, the Pacific region has a relatively low sect rate. It is in New England that sects are least numerous, and we suggest historic reasons why this is so. Finally, the data show that, with population taken into account, the United States does not have an unusually large number of sects. Even when only Christian sects are counted, Africa has a sect rate more than six times as high as the U. S.

A Note on Sainthood in the Hagiographical Prologue

Changing trends in medieval hagiography are most clearly expressed in the prologue or preface to the saint's life, which affords the author an opportunity to explain the circumstances surrounding the work's composition, outline the main themes or chapters, cite his chief sources, or state his philosophical stance. An attempt was made to place the saint within the broader context of sacred history, within a continuing tradition of divine revelations stretching back to the Prophets. Particularly in the thirteenth century, such apologetic remarks were often the result of the conflict of religious orders, each of which sought to legitimize the novelties it had introduced into the monastic life, or between Christian sects which threatened to tear asunder the seamless robe of Christ. Robert of Sulmona's biographer, for example, describes his subject as a divine instrument of the Church Militant, whose mission is a logical continuation of the Old Testament and the Gospel. Robert's virtuous life and signs of sainthood restore the sick to health, provide rest for the weary, food for the hungry, drink for the thirsty, cleanliness for the leprous, life for the dead, freedom for those obsessed by demons, and, through his prayers, lighten the load of the dead.1 Many an author, overtaken with modesty, begins in classical style by bemoaning his lack of skill and eloquence, his inability to do his subject justice, and admits his reliance upon such patristic predecessors as Gregory the Great, Jerome, Cassiodorus, and the Liber vitaspatrum.2 Others, in the style of their humanist descendants who called upon the muse for inspiration, invoke the aid of the Holy Spirit and propose to compose a rude and simple work, albeit short and truthful, free of subtle rhetoric or flourish.3 In his inimitable way, the Cistercian hagiographer Caesarius of Heisterbach, like his predecessor Sulpicius Severus, both belittles his own writing skills and takes a swipe at the rhetorical acrobatics of the philosophers. He suggests that if some day the diocese of Cologne should possess more learned men, they may compose a more eloquent life of Engelbert of Cologne; for as a monk, and not as a philosopher, Caesarius's powers are insufficient to the task. The philosophers and dialecticians, on the other hand, often write more to display

The Medium and Her Message: A Study of Spiritualism at Lily Dale, New York

A field study at Lily Dale, New York, leads to the conclusion that Spiritualism is a religious sect rather than a cult. It is not a Christian sect, although it reflects the pietistic values of nineteenth-century America. Spiritualists are still subject to, legal discrimination and social stigma because of their beliefs and practices. Recent evidence suggests, however, that psychic experiences are fairly common in the general population, although they are considered abnormal. If spirit communication can be associated with madness, it is also possible to view the medium as a mental health resource.

Allende's Chile: Contemporary History and the Counterfactual

Historians generally recognize that the writing of contemporary history is an exercise of some delicacy. Narrating the contests of the Christian sects at the time of Constantine, Edward Gibbon remarks that ‘the fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribingallvirtue to themselves andallguilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the daemons. Our calmer reason,’ he goes on, ‘will reject such pure and perfect monsters of vice and sanctity.’

Catholicism and Rhetoric in Southwell, Crashaw, Dryden and Pope

The 150 years separating Southwell from Pope saw great changes in English Catholicism. In the later sixteenth century the Catholic faith was still native English, and the older poetical tradition of lyric religious meditation, which Southwell found flourishing about him when he returned from Rome in July 1586, blended readily in his own poetry with the newly passionate and ingenious devotion of the Counter-Reformation. The enterprise of reviving the Faith in England was vigorous and young, and the blood of the martyrs flowing in the very streets of London as once it had flowed in the streets of Rome must have made of the Church in its most deeply traditional and heroic aspect a present English reality. The passionate ingenuity of the Counter-Reformation; the plainness of the English religious and gnomic tradition; the edge of sober reality and depth given to meditation, even curious meditation, on the sufferings of Christ and the saints by the virtual certainty of the gallows; together with a rhetorical hold on the Faith deeper and older than the Counter-Reformation devotion he found in Italy, to be found rather together with the lives of the early martyrs in his breviary: all combined in Southwell's best poetry in a taut and assured style, full of balanced tensions. But as the years passed, England was not converted and the time of martyrdom ended. Where bloody persecution failed, exile and neglect began to succeed. A sense of the Church as thoroughly English and as in the fervour of its first centuries gradually disappeared. English Catholic devotion in the poetry of Crashaw became contemporary and sometimes uncontrollably ingenious and Continental, with martyrdom a metaphor, though exile a reality. In Dryden's poetry, the Church also appeared in very much its contemporary aspect, though expressing itself now not so much in devotional as in apologetic terms. Dryden's conversion was clearly genuine and his apologia sincere, but he had in his poetry an oddly restricted hold on the Faith, speaking of the Church's relation to other Christian sects often in political or social language. Dryden suffered willingly, however, for his belief, though not exile or martyrdom; whereas the suspicion with Pope is always that, though he remained a Catholic, his Catholicism was a social disability to be borne in much the same way as his physical disability. In the poetry of Pope, Catholicism is a remnant, contributing rather little to an assurance about final realities as impressive perhaps in its way as Southwell's.

On Ethics, Gyroscopes, and Radar Sets

E thics and regulation are quite different things. Each has an important role to play, but I believe current efforts to substitute public regulation for personal ethics are likely to be disastrous. In order to defend this position, I will give a brief, biased, anecdotal review of personal experience in a changing world. One of the very great differences between the way the world was when I was growing up and the way it is now is to be found in the attitude toward the state of man. When I was young, the prevailing view was that man had fallen from grace when he listened to that silly wife of his in the Garden of Eden. Even though one was skeptical of some of the details of that particular myth, everyone knew that it was easy to be tempted into evil ways and very difficult to lead a good life. Ethics was regarded as a set of rules or guidelines that everyone ought to have once he or she decided to try to live a good rather than an evil life. It was recognized that there were a number of different rules, but in the circles in which I grew up everyone knew that the unexamined life was not worth living. It was also known that in the ancient world the Stoics had come up with one set of rules that seemed quite consonant with the behavior of the later Christian sects, while a person named Epicurus, about whom a good deal less was said, had somewhat more latitudinarian views. For Christians, the paramount set of rules was to be found in the Bible, specifically in the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the Sermon on the Mount. Even to the very young-perhaps even more than to

Strategies for Survival: An Examination of the History of Five Christian Sects in Germany 1933-45

When in January 1933 the National Socialist Party took power in Germany, it set out to put into practice its principles and political aims. On the question of religion, there was a certain amount of ambivalence. Hitler himself had been brought up as a Catholic and expressed some theoretical toleration for the Churches. A leading party theorist, Alfred Rosenberg, however, had in his The Myth of the Twentieth Century attacked Christianity, and inherent in a great deal of Nazi teaching and symbolism was a conscious use of pagan teutonic mythology. Moreover, the policy of Gleichschaltung implied Nazification of all institutions, including the Churches. Whilst toleration in the early years was based on the assumption that the concern of the Churches was with the afterlife rather than with this life, clashes over administration occurred at quite an early date. The Nazi ideal was of a 'German Church' which rejected the internationalism of Roman Catholicism and whose leaders were, at least administratively, tied to the Nazi Party. Even in the area of doctrine, the Churches were in danger of offending party teaching. Certain Church members were baptized Jews; the Old Testament and 'the Rabbi Paul' were read and expounded in pulpits and schools. Church organizations, for example, for mothers and the young presented the possibility of rival loyalty.

A Variety of Outreach and Follow-Up Workers Play An Important Role in Philippine Church's Program

3 programs to implement family planning have been set up by the Iglesia Ni Cristo (INC), an indigenous Christian sect with 4fmillion adherents in the Philippines. The Vigilante program began in 1975 with 34 specially trained nurses and paraprofessionals stationed in parish churches to recruit family planning acceptors, follow-up women with complaints, and treat minor complaints. Major problems are sent to medical centers. Between August 1975-September 1976 Vigilantes recruited 36,621 new clients, including almost 500 sterilization referrals. About 1/2 the new clients chose condoms, 1/3 the pill. These nurses also inserted IUDs. Pill Counselors also engage in motivational work. They are not stationed at an individual church but are in neighborhoods where they are needed. 4 special workers have been trained to recruit vasectomy acceptors. All 4 are young unmarried women but they have had good success. In 1975-1976 they recruited almost 1000 vasectomy acceptors and 350 minilaparotomy acceptors in addition to supplying 300 men and women with condoms and pills. Because 1 of their hardest jobs is convincing men that sterilization will not affect their sexual powers they have been nicknamed "machismo wreckers." Saturation teams are trained groups of 9 persons each which concentrate on a small area at a time. Before they begin the area is surveyed by a field coordinator who calls on the local leader and seeks local assistance. When the team leaves, it leaves additional supplies with this leader and these supplies are replenished from time to time. INC chapels also carry supplies. In addition to family planning, INC sponsors programs to assist young people and farmers, and has nutrition education, low-cost housing, and health care programs.

Religious Differentials in Fertility: Lebanon, 1971

Research has been conduted to determine define and explain the effects of religious affiliation on fertility with specific reference to a multireligious society. Data from the 1971 National Fertility and Family Planning Survey conducted by the Lebanon Family Planning Association have been evaluated and 2 major results have been found i.e. significant fertility differences do exist among Muslim and Christian sects and religious fertility differentials based on cumulative fertility are dependent on the level of socioeconomic status as measured by the wifes education. When education levels are low differentials are great; when education levels are high religious fertility differentials are negligible. These results suggest that religion may be an important characteristic in differentiating fertility behavior but only at certain socioeconomic levels. In countries where religious composition is a sensitive issue these results may have significant implications on population policymakers.

Hegel and the Crisis of Christianity

There is no crisis of Christianity for a devout Christian. Everything else may be in questionable shape but not Jesus Christ Our Lord. There is no crisis of Christianity for an equally devout non-Christian. He sees in Christianity nothing but superstition, magic, idolatry, practiced in book-burning, closing of schools, inquisitions, persecutions, crusades, coercion, and 'religious' wars between the Christian sects.

HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

DESCRIPTION: This course is a survey of the history of world Christianity from its GrecoRoman background to its challenges in the 21 century. Topics such as the development of theology, the growth of Christian institutions, popular piety, sects and heterodox groups and the relationship of Christianity and culture are covered. While examining an extensive collection of primary sources, attention is given to key movements like Gnosticism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Monasticism, Scholasticism, Protestantism, Pentecostalism and Post-modern Christianity as they have developed in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and North and South America. Throughout the course students will be introduced to the methodologies of critical-historical analysis. To complement their readings, students will watch the library documentary series, Christianity: The First Two Thousand Years, and compose an analytical review. Furthermore, students will compose a couple of analytical papers based on assigned readings from an excellent web site called, The Hall of Church History: Theology From A Bunch of Dead Guys.

Dositheans, Resurrection and a Messianic Joshua

One of the unsolved mysteries of Samaritan history is the problem of the Dosithean sect and its relationships with other Samaritan groups and with Christian and Gnostic sects. Of particular interest, in view of controversy over the history of Samaritan eschatology, is the question of whether the Dositheans believed in the resurrection of the dead and in a Messiah in the person of Joshua. It is more than fifty years since these questions were last examined in any detail and in the light of recent evidence accruing about the Samaritans the time would now seem to be opportune for a fresh evaluation of the evidence relating to Dositheanism.

Reform Judaism: The Origin and Evolution of a "Church Movement"

* I am indebted to John Lofland and Rodney Stark who collaborated with me in formulating the theoretical distinctions outlined in the first section of this paper. I am also grateful to Neil Smelser for his helpful criticisms of an early draft. This is Publication Number A-41 in the series of the Survey Research Center, University of California, Berkeley. 1 Students of religion have tended either to avoid consideration of Judaism or to treat it as a special area of study presumably unrelated to theories concerning Christian religion. Theorists who have studied church and sect have been especially remiss in applying their generalizations to the Jewish case. Current theory, in short, is limited not only to particular historical conditions, as Benton Johnson suggests, but also to a particular religious type. Examination of Judaism, then, will at a minimum test the comprehensiveness of accepted sociological propositions. In addition, because of the singularity of the historic relation between the Jewish community in the Diaspora and the accommodating societies, such an investigation promises to yield new insights and in this way prove fruitful for our understanding of religious movements in general. doxy, is a sectarian movement, analytically indistinct from Christian sects that arise out of schisms within established religious bodies. Yet certain elements usually associated with sects, such as literal adherence to Biblical teachings and apocalyptic ideological tendencies, are conspicuously absent. Of greater significance, while most religious movements seek to modify or transform societal norms and values, the Reform Movement is striking for its attempt to bring its norms and values into greater conformity with those of the larger society. This apparent ambiguity provides a useful point of departure for analysis of the Reform Movement, and a possible basis for the reformulation of theory. To state the question simply-is Reform Judaism a church or a sect? This issue has been raised many times in terms of criticism of the church-sect typology as it was first formulated by Troeltsch and unsuccessfully redefined by subsequent sociologists. In a recent paper Benton Johnson offers a clear statement of the problem:

CHRISTIANITY AS A CROSS–CULTURAL BOND IN THE BRITISH SOLOMON ISLANDS PROTECTORATE AS SEEN IN THE RUSSELL ISLANDS

ISLAND society is anything but simple. Levers' large coconut estates employ a multiplicity of categories of people who are kinsfolk, friends and strangers : categories of race, of language, of occupation, of marital status, of educational achievement and of religion. Members of at least five Christian sects and heathens live here. Amongst the employees there are accredited missionaries, Sunday school teachers, lay readers and church members in sectarian hierarchies and there are rain-makers, sorcerers, traditional healers of the sick and so forth amongst the heathen. And all of these work within the complex of a large business enterprise. Further, plantation society has relationships with the Russell Islanders, the Tikopian new settlers and the large number of people who come and govisitors to the Group. In the Russell Islands I worked mostly on Levers' estates but I also had a look at the Russell Islanders and the Tikopian new settlement. The subject of religion is a vast one so, for the purposes of this paper, I have indulged in a little divination. Some aspects of religion were suggested by the Pawa School Song.

Kerala in Crisis

T HE PRESENT POLITICAL CRISIS in the tiny state of Kerala may well affect the entire political development of India and also influence Communist international strategy throughout the Middle and Far East. Kerala, located on India's southwest coast and embracing the former princely states of Travancore and Cochin, and the Malabar coast, is the smallest of the fourteen states of Indiaand has the distinction of being the only one in which the Communist Party controls the state government. In 1957 after the last election, Kerala's fifteen million people gave the Communist Party a substantial plurality (some thirty-five percent of the total votes cast) which its leaders were able to convert into a legislative majority by forming an alliance with independents and several Communist followers in the state parliament. Kerala is in many ways a unique state in India. Heavily populated (about a thousand persons per square mile), approximately fifty-three percent of its people are Hindu, one third Christian, and the balance principally Muslim. Its Christian population includes a Catholic community dating back many centuries, as well as more recently established Protestant groups converted by missionaries from Great Britain, Germany, Canada and the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The liberal outlook of the Maharajas of Travancore and Cochin permitted the Roman Catholic, Syrian Christian, Nestorian Christian and various Protestant sects to flourish in the area. Moreover, Jews migrating to the Malabar region of Kerala found a religious haven there. The Hindus in Kerala have followed traditional South Indian caste lines, the Brahmin group being noted for its conservative orthodoxy in religion and the Nairs for their emphasis upon commerce, education, tolerance and social service. As a result, a significant percentage of the population have either followed or been exposed to the liberal traditions of a JudeoChristian set of cultural values and have fought with zeal to protect what they conceived to be their rightful heritage. Kerala is also different from all other parts of India (with the possible exception of West Bengal) in its marked emphasis on education by the various communities. Approximately seventy percent of the people are literate and newspapers abound. The people, even including those in the lowest rungs of the social and economic ladder, are relatively well informed on the political happenings in the nation. They have decided opinions on political issues and personalities. It is not at all unusual to find the lowly sweeper reading a daily

The religious element in Mau Mau

The Mau Mau leaders were very fully aware that the Kikuyu are by nature an intensely religious people, who could not do without a religion of some sort—people who needed the mental comfort of a “belief”. They knew too that among their own people there were hundreds of thousands who had lost all faith in the religion of their ancestors but who had never accepted Christianity except in a nominal way. The failure of so many to accept Christianity in a deep and real sense arose from the fact that the Christian mission churches had not been content to teach only the simple teaching of Christ but had added to them much that was not in the New Testament, but which was the doctrine of the particular mission or Christian sect to which they belonged. Nevertheless, these tens of thousands of nominal Christians were people who were well acquainted with the outward forms of Christian worship and who had attended church services, so the pattern was a useful one to use. This was more particularly so since this was also the pattern used by the separatist African churches which existed in the tribe, churches which were linked with the Independent Schools movement. And so the outward patterns of Christianity, hymn-singing, formal prayers, sermons, and the recitation of a creed, were adopted as the foundations of the Mau Mau religion, which was to draw the Kikuyu to the political cause of the K.C.A.