Sectarian Religion Research Articles

Practicing Salvation: Meat-Eating, Martyrdom, and Sacrifice as Religious Ideals in the Zhenkongjiao

The Zhenkongjiao is a Chinese sectarian religion that was founded in Jiangxi in 1862. By the 1950s, the movement expanded into the lower Yangzi region, Guangdong province, and among the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. Unlike many sectarian religions and Buddhist movements in late-imperial and Republican China, the movement advocated non-vegetarianism and performed animal sacrifice. This article first sheds light on how the Zhenkongjiao’s promoters structured its belief system to address and challenge prevalent discourses of vegetarianism and nonkilling as markers of religious practice. I also propose that the Zhenkongjiao’s repertoire of thaumaturgical rituals—which include animal sacrifice—cannot be studied in isolation, but should be situated within a sectarian religious paradigm where sacrifice was exalted as a soteriological ideal. This study demonstrates the agency exercised by the Zhenkongjiao’s apologists, who appropriated and hybridized dominant religious discourses and cultural images characteristic of Republican China (1911–1949) to justify their beliefs and ritual systems.

Sectarian Religion and Political Tolerance in the United States

Sectarian Religion and Political Tolerance in the United States

"As a Living Shrine I Came": Remembrance, Creativity, and Paradox in God's American Tomb

This article discusses the development of a sacred sense of place in an American sectarian religion and the complementary creation of a provocative twentieth-century religious "shrine" within that space. This "shrine" can be found near the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The edifice is the tomb holding the body of the African American minister and religious innovator named the Reverend M. J. Divine, better known as Father Divine, the founder of the International Peace Mission Movement. The creation of a North American indigenous religion, the tomb and shrine it represents a union of devotionalism and creativity, of tradition and innovation. This essay is centered on the birth of the shrine, as well as the memorial building, and the forces that gave birth to it within a religion whose doctrine generally resisted "shrinified" spaces.

Syncretic Sects and Redemptive Societies

Recent scholarship has demonstrated that “sectarian religion” can be regarded as one of the most important strands in China’s religious landscape. Notwithstanding the consensus about the religious, political, and social significance of sectarian religion in Chinese history, academics disagree sharply over questions of both definition and terminology. Building on the theories of Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu, this article defines a new approach for the understanding of sectarian religion in imperial and modern China. In the first part, I discuss four primary assumptions that have led to many misunderstandings and distortions in previous research. In the second part, I demonstrate the shortcomings of the recently introduced concept of “redemptive societies,” which implies a discontinuity between premodern sects and modern redemptive societies. In the last part, I construct a novel approach that aims to understand the workings of sectarian religion in sociological terms. 摘要 “民间教门”是中国宗教中最重要部分之一。尽管大部分学者已就民间教门的宗教、政治、社会意义达成了共识，但对于如何定义“民间教门”还莫衷一是。本文根据韦伯 (Max Weber) 与布迪厄 (Pierre Bourdieu) 的宗教社会学理论，提出一个新路径，来理解历史与当代的民间教门。第一，本文将讨论欧美学者民间教门研究中的四个引起误解的假设；第二，本文认为应放弃“救世团体”概念，因为它否定了传统社会“教门”与当代中国“救世团体”之间的连续性；第三，本文以宗教社会学为基础，提出一个新路径来促进对于“教门/教派”的跨时代、跨文化理解。

CHALLENGING INTELLIGENT DESIGN

In this analysis I argue that the Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design’s primary advocate, is more appropriately conceived of as a think-tank, and I attempt to broaden the discussion by identifying issues left unexamined when Intelligent Design (ID) is challenged as a scientific theory or treated as a sectarian religion. I propose an analytic framework that can be deployed to provoke controversy about ID by those who seek to protect society from the penetration of religious ideology into secular institutions. Using concepts from Actor Network Theory (ANT) enhanced with theoretical insights from public relations and risk communications, I argue that the Discovery Institute’s communication strategies include attempts to disrupt the translation of evolution into education and the cultural arena by establishing public trust using appeals to religion and morality, and exploiting anti-science sentiments.

Longitudinal Trends of Religious Groups in Deregulated Taiwan: 1990 to 2009

Religious economies theory predicts that in a deregulated religious market, well-organized religions will thrive, and loosely organized religions will struggle and decline in membership. This research (1) tests this hypothesis with representative sample data from Taiwan between 1990 and 2009; (2) contrary to religious economies theory, finds significant growth of folk religion in Taiwan; and (3) highlights the growth of religious commitment among Taiwanese Buddhism—evidenced by a decrease in the overall number of Buddhist adherents and an increase in the proportion of Buddhists who are formal converts. Additionally, neither significant growth in congregational religion nor organized, sectarian folk religion is detected in the analysis.

The function of ‘Church’ in the sociology of religion in America

In large part, Max Weber’s essay ‘Church and sect in America’ was intended as a contrast between European and American societies at the turn of the 20th century. This could be pushed so far as to say that in fact the essay was not about religions at all but rather about the relationship between an old-order class system and a new-order class system in which sectarian religion provided a conduit to validate worldly success (i.e. the Protestant ethic), which directly contrasted with the institutional ‘style’ of the established churches of Europe, into whose membership one was born and through whose structures (e.g. church schools, including the universities) one’s social position was established. ‘Church,’ then, is in some respects a residual category for Weber, more of a background that would enable him to foreground what he saw as a new basis for ordering class/status within the new world. Over time, denominationalism in America hybridized churchly and sectarian elements to create a new socio-religious dynamic by which a central core of ‘nonsectarian’ religious affirmations created a variant mode of religious participation in which multiple religious options served functions historically associated with national churches in Europe. Postmodern globalization, however, has created new opportunities and challenges as institutionalized religions reach beyond historic geopolitical borders.

Religion in education in South Africa : was social justice served?

The promulgation of South African policy regarding the place of religion in public education was delayed until 2003, after a lively debate. The National Policy on Religion in Education effectively banned confessional, sectarian religion from public schools, but allowed for the teaching of Religion Studies as an academic subject and for religious observances, on condition that these were offered in a fair and equitable manner. Given the nature of the debate around religion and education in South Africa,1 it can be asked whether the state has served social justice through this Policy. A discussion of human rights, social justice, morality and the role of the state leads to the conclusion that although the state never actually mentioned the philosophical or moral driving forces behind the Policy, it is most likely that it applied tenets of secularism, value-plurality, pragmatic political expediency and modus Vivendi. This was probably the best route for the state to follow considering how, in the past, education suffered from the over-emphasis of divisive factors. Revised policy could arguably take cognisance of how actors on the ground dealt with this conundrum. Keywords: human rights; morality; religion; religion/religious education; religion in education; social justice; South Africa; state

Time in Abu’l Faz.l’s Historiography

History writing in medieval India was predominantly set within the framework of Islam without becoming a branch of theology. The temporal parameters were almost invariably drawn from the hijrī era, which sharply divided time into the age of jahaliyat, ignorance, and one lit up by Islam. It was also primarily centred on the history of the ruling Muslim dynasties whose political lineage was delineated through, and was confined to, the world of Islam. Abu’l Faẓl, courtier, historian and friend of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), deploys an alternative conception of historical time which flows uninterrupted from Adam down to Akbar, disengaging history writing from its Islamic axis. Indeed, he is rather contemptuous of the hijrī era. His Akbar Nama projects a worldview premised upon a universal religiosity in lieu of a sectarian religion. This constitutes his ‘rationality’ which connects it to the ethos evolving at the base of Indian society

Women of the Sisters' Hall: religion and the making of women's alternative space in Taiwan's economic restructuring

Against the background of Taiwan's recent economic restructuring, this article investigates the lives of a group of working-class women who were believers of I-Kuan Tao, a sectarian religion, and who had by and large decided to remain single in order to better practice their religious teaching. They lived together in an I-Kuan Tao temple. This article situates singlehood in the literature of resistance and sees it as a strategy of these women seeking an alternative lifestyle from the culturally prescribed roles of wife, mother and daughter-in-law. Three interlocking factors are particularly important to an understanding of these women's experience: cultural (the Taiwanese patrilineal family), religious (I-Kuan Tao), and economic (Taiwan's post-World War II export-oriented industrialization and its recent economic restructuring). Paradoxically, while trying to establish an alternative social space, these women were also seeking cultural legitimacy for their choice. Marriage resistance, in this case, was an act of both transgression and conformity. Yet the different readings that these women and their families applied to their situations, as well as the ingenuous strategies they deployed to solve their predicaments, also added new elements to the cultural repertoire which, collectively considered, might broaden the range of options for future Taiwanese women who attempt a similar life trajectory. In this article, I therefore caution against a totalizing understanding of the concept of resistance based on its final result, but call for a more nuanced analysis focusing on the process.

Partnerships in creative activities among schools, artists, and professional organizations promoting arts education

This work brings together documentary and anecdotal evidence to analyze arts partnership education programmes. The author draws comparisons between the programmes and between sectarian religion and social justice movements.

The Public School and Sectarian Religion

The Public School and Sectarian Religion

Fictions of Freemasonry: Freemasonry and the German Novel (review)

Goethe Yearbook 283 Koepke weaves an admirably tight web of biographical data, adroitly linking it to major literary, social and political currents of the age. His remarks on interpretations of the tale will be useful to those approaching the work for the first time. He reviews major critical approaches to the text from the late nineteenth century to the present, balancing the pros and cons of the various interpretations. Rather than privileging any particular point of view, he provides the reader with tantalizing, provocative possibilities, what he aptly calls "teasers" (xxviii). This edition has many merits, but one wishes that the introduction had been given a more attentive final proofreading. Several instances of editorial oversight detract from the readability of the text. The last three lines of p. ν are repeated on p. vi, and on p. xi a complete sentence is sandwiched between two sentence fragments which, when they are linked, appear to yield a complete thought. Though hardly crucial, such deviations as "an lonely man" (xiii-xiv) tend to be distracting. The Camden House Peter Schlemihl is a handsome hardcover edition whose visual appeal is heightened by its reproduction of the eight droll and sprightly engravings by Peter Cruikshank which were included in Bowring's 1861 edition. Macalester College David Sanford Abbott, Scott, Fictions of Freemasonry: Freemasonry and the German Novel. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1991. While Freemasonry traced its origins to various ancient sources, the builders of the temple of Solomon, the creators of the Egyptian pyramids, even the Rosicrucians, the first Grand Lodge was founded in London in 1717. Dedicated to the principles of the Enlightenment, and aspiring to the goals of harmony and friendship in a sort of sectarian religion, it opened its doors to aristocrats, intellectuals, businessmen, and even prominent tradesmen . The lists of this and other lodges throughout the eighteenth century represent a sort of "who's who" of the Enlightenment, including such figures as Wren, Pope, Hogarth, Boswell, and Burns in Britain; Franklin, Washington, and Revere in America; Lafayette, Voltaire, and Montesquieu in France; and Klopstock, Kotzebue, Haydn, Mozart, Lessing, Goethe, and even Frederick the Great in the German-speaking countries. Because Freemasonry expressed the ideals of the Enlightenment through the use of elaborate symbols and rituals, it developed a dual identity and character. On the one hand it claimed to be non-political, but played a profound role in encouraging the transformation of authoritarian governments to democratic principles in the American, French, Italian, and German revolutions. On the other hand, it saw itself as nonsectarian, a demystifying and desacralizing religion of man, but its concern for ritual and symbol spawned a romantic fascination with mysticism and esoteric knowl- 284 Book Reviews edge. In turn, because of its egalitarian principles which allowed men of different classes and social strata to mingle on an equal footing, its secretiveness , and its conception of itself as a sectarian religion in opposition to the established institutions, many authorities looked suspiciously on the Freemasons as subversive and even revolutionary. These concerns led them either to suppress the lodges, or to encourage the foundation of various alternative secret societies as a sort of counterweight. This complex mix of dual identities, secret societies, international conspiracies , and mystical symbols has provided a rich and fertile supply of material for writers and artists over the last two centuries. Among the German -speaking peoples, the Geheimbundroman held a special fascination. In a lucid and illuminating study, Scott Abbott traces the dual identity of Freemasonry in the German league novel. Writing not a history of Freemasonry or masonic imagery in German literature per se, Abbott argues that an awareness of the concern for the dual nature of Freemasonry, political /nonpolitical as well as secularizing/mystical, helps us to trace a thematic continuity among a number of novels. Focusing primarily on Schiller's Der Geisterseher (1787-1789), Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1829), Gutzkow's Die Ritter vom Geiste (1850/51), Hofmannsthal's Andreas oder Die Vereinigten (1930), Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (1924), and Günther Grass's Die Blechtrommel (1959) and Hundejahre (1963), Abbott offers a series of cogent and suggestive readings. Despite its Enlightenment principles, Schiller always remained suspicious of Freemasonry...

Religious Insanity in America: The Official Nineteenth-Century Theory

Throughout much of the nineteenth century, psychiatrists and ordinary citizens agreed that one of the chief causes of mental illness was religious excitement. Discovery of hitherto untouched data from the 1860 census, giving supposed cause of insanity for 2,258 inmates of 17 asylums, provides the opportunity for exploring the alleged role of religion in producing insanity. Enshrined in publications of the U.S. government and in the chief psychiatric texts as part of the official theory of madness, the idea of religious insanity may have served a number of functions for the new profession of psychiatry, as well as offering afflicted families an optimistic interpretation of mental problems. A mixture of medical, moral and religious ideas, the dominant psychiatric theory cast opposition to high-tension, sectarian religion in an apparently scientific context.

Sectarian Religion and Political Action in China

Why were religious sects in China so often associated with political violence? From the Five Pecks of Rice sect at the end of the Han to the Boxers and Red Spears in the twentieth century, the Chinese authorities have blamed heterodox religious ideologies for inciting people to act against the government. The authorities often repressed even sects that never engaged in violent opposition to the government. The Luo Sect, for example, which was popular among canal men during the Ming and Qing dynasties, was persecuted in spite of its generally pacific behavior (Overmyer, 1978; Kelley, 1981). The Yiguan Dao in Taiwan today is similarly illegal, although it carries on no political activities (Jordan, 1978; see also Jordan's article in this issue). Why did the government shun even nonpolitical religious sects so strongly? Overmyer (1976: 4) argues that sectarian violence, when it occurred, was based on sectarian ideology-destruction of the state is one way for people to express their eschatological dream

Chinese Sectarian Religion - Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China. By Daniel L. Overmyer. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass. and London, England, 1976. pp. xi, 295. - Millenarian Rebellion in China: The Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1813. By Susan Naquin. Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1976. Pp. xii, 384. £15.75, $22.50.

Chinese Sectarian Religion - Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional China. By Daniel L. Overmyer. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Mass. and London, England, 1976. pp. xi, 295. - Millenarian Rebellion in China: The Eight Trigrams Uprising of 1813. By Susan Naquin. Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1976. Pp. xii, 384. £15.75, $22.50. - Volume 12 Issue 2

The Conception of Sectarian Religion: An Effort at Clarification

Religious groups have be'en classified along a sect-church continuum for many years, though little consensus exists concerning the essential characteristics of sectarianism. In an effort to clarify this term, four sect groups are analyzed in terms of fourteen descriptive inventories of sectarian characteristics that have been developed by researchers. Though some characteristics in every inventory apply to all four groups, there is enough difference among them to question use of the term sect to describe all of them. As a result, it is proposed that only two criteria be used to define sects: (1) exclusive membership based on personal religious experience, and (2) a total ideology of life and ethics.

Residence, Moral Traditionalism, and Tolerance of Atheists

A secondary analysis of data from the 1958 Detroit Area Study and the Gen- eral Household Survey of the Southern Appalachian Studies indicates that the relation- ship of tolerance of atheists to place of origin and present place of residence cannot be completely explained by the differential distribution of social class variables and reli- gious beliefs across geographical areas. Part of the residence-tolerance relationship stems from residential differences in education and moral traditionalism, but a substan- tively significant direct effect remains after these and other factors are controlled. These data do not support Glock and Stark's contention that conservative religious doctrines are responsible for rural-urban differences in tolerance. The relationship of theological variables to tolerant attitudes toward atheists results from their association with educa- tion and moral traditionalism. Several studies indicate that urban, in contrast to rural residents are both more tolerant of differences (Fischer:a; Lipset and Raab; Nelsen and Yokely; Selz- nick and Steinberg) and less often committed to conservative (fundamen- talist and sectarian) religion (Ford:a; Nelsen and Whitt; Nelsen et al.). Some researchers (e.g., Fischer:a; Glock and Stark) suggest that rural-urban dif-- ferences in religion are important in generating the residence-tolerance rela- tionship. But some questions remain. (1) What aspect of religion is involved? And (2) To what extent do religious differences account for the residence- tolerance relationship? This paper explores these questions as they bear on residential variation in attitudes toward atheists. One argument suggests that rural-urban variation in the content of religious belief has little to do with the residence-tolerance relationship. This position posits a direct causal connection between urban residence and tolerance, arguing that the experience of living in cities is inherently conducive to tolerant attitudes, all else being equal. Both Simmel and Wirth theorized that manyof the distinctivefeatures of urban social life and personalityare products of the city's large population size, high density, and structural and cultural differentiation. Wirth contended that these conditions encourage universalism and tolerance by loosening the individual's ties to traditional sources of social solidarity. Stouffer suggests that similar processes should lead to increased tolerance among migrants, and Pettigrevy interprets regional differences in willingness to end racial segregation as a reflection of variation in structural

The Established Church as an Agent of Change

The revolutionary potential of sectarian religion and a common anti-organizational bias result in the common assumption that by definition an established church does not serve as a change agent in its society. This assumption is challenged and a model is set forth which states conditions under which a national established church which is a sub-unit of an international religion can assume the role of agent of change. The results of a case-study of Roman Catholicism in Paraguay lend support to the model. It is shown that Catholicism in Paraguay is in a position of power, and that its present radical stance is due largely to its acceptance of new theology from its Roman parent. The critical and innovative role of Paraguayan Catholicism is regarded as a rational response of the organization of Catholicism to the Paraguayan environment. The limits of its change-agent role are discussed. The research, based on a variety of field methods, was done in May-July, 1972.

Communality as a Dimension of Ecumenical Negativism

An analysis of the rejection of ecumenism suggests a higher correlation with the degree of communality felt within a religious group than with other qualities associated with sectarianism (e.g., economic or educational deprivation, provincialism, etc.). The advantage of communality as an index of ecumenical negativism is that it spans theological defenses and class differences. Two middle-class Baptist groups are analyzed which demonstrate a vigorous program coupled with a high degree of primary group activity. Despite theological and socio-economic similarities, the propensity to merge is minimal. The implication is that organizatonal ecumenism threatens meaningful relationships and traditions in a mass society. The sociology of religion has often quite rightly viewed the theological rigidity and peculiar standards of sectarian religion as a consequence of socioeconomic or educational deprivation and provincialism. If this reasoning is carried to its conclusion, the attainment of higher economic or educational status ought to result in greater religious tolerance and the relaxation of barriers against other competing religious denominations. A sociological analysis of contemporary ecumenical negativism hints at a necessary refinement of this perspective. Wilson's (1966: 126) incisive explanation of the ecumenical movement suggests a different course of analysis. He proposes that organizations amalgamate when they are weak rather than when they are strong. In consequence, Wilson (1966: 176) observes that ecumenism may be a policy not only induced by decline but encouraging decline. We would expect then to find that an ecumenical church would be in the midst of operational difficulties, such as a shortage of clergy, budget deficits, decreasing attendance, or apathetic membership. The nature and extent to which the ecumenical effort is related to decline is yet' to be accurately documented. At the same time, it is important to note that Wilson views the religious situation in North America after having first analyzed the condition of the church in Britain. The church which encourages unity and thus evidences a high level of theological tolerance is usually assumed to have a membership demonstrating greater socio-economic security. Conversely, the church that is negative to, ecumenism is conceived as comprised of a membership of lower socio-economic status that erects rigid barriers of theological opposition as