Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-xbtfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T05:17:09.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Theology and Sociology: Two Approaches To Religious Conversion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Antony Archer O P
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

This is intended to be a practical comparison between two approaches. Accordingly it would be as well to start with a few truisms that are shared between them. In the first place, people only discover themselves and the world through their relationships with other people and this relationship is primary. Perspectives on the world follow and are fashioned by these relationships. In view ©f this, theology may be said to be reflection on human experience specifically understood as directed towards God. Thus Schillebeeckx (1969:214) describes man, from a theological point of view, as ‘a free being who must define himself in and towards the world in dialogue with God’. This may be contrasted with the definition of one sort of sociology, ‘critical sociology’, described by Hansen (1976:3) as ‘an invitation to become an involved, critical explorer of human and societal possibilities’.

Unless the theologian is to consider for the most part his own experience (the source of much individualistic agonizing of an existentialist sort commonly characterized as bourgeois sociology) he must perforce draw on some systematic body of reflection on the human condition. Traditionally, this has been provided by philosophy, but in more recent times the social sciences have rather cornered the interaction business.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 62 , Issue 730 , April 1981 , pp. 180 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © 1981 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

Barth, Karl 1956 Church Dogmatics (1936–1969) Vol 4, pt 1 Edinburgh: T & TClark.Google Scholar
Billette, A. 1975 Récits et Réalties d'une Conversion Montréal: Presses de. l'universite de Montreal.Google Scholar
Cone, Lames H. 1977 God of the Oppressed London: SPCK.Google Scholar
Curran, C.E. 1969 A New Look at Christian Morality London: Sheed & Ward.Google Scholar
Desroche, H. 1974 Sociologie des Conversions? A partir d'une thèse récente Le Supplément, 110 (sep.) pp 370–83.Google Scholar
Hansen, Donald A. 1976 An Invitation to Critical Sociology New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Jones, E.S. 1960 Conversion London: Hodder & Houghton.Google Scholar
Lloyd Jones, D. M. 1959 Conversion: Psychological and Spiritual London: Inter‐Varsity Press.Google Scholar
Macmurray, J. 1936 The Structure of Religious Experience London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar
Ricoeur, Paul 1969 Le Conflit des Interpretations Paris: Editions du Seuil.Google Scholar
Schillebeeckx, Edward 1967 Revelation and Theology London: Sheed & Ward.Google Scholar
1969 God and Man London: Sheed & Ward.Google Scholar