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Becoming a Sectarian: Motivation and Commitment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Bryan R. Wilson
Bryan R. Wilson*
Affiliation:
All Souls CollegeOxford
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Extract

During the period of their emergence and growth, sects are generally discussed in terms of opprobrium, perhaps because most of those who have written about them have been people not only of other theological persuasions, but often people with vested professional interests in sustaining their own theology against that of others, or, occasionally, they have been men of decidedly rationalistic temper, eager to condemn all religion by reference to what they take to be the latest and most patent religious outrage to common sense. By the time a sect becomes a historical phenomenon it is likely that those still interested in it will discuss it with a measure of detached objectivity: for contemporary sects, only sociologists are likely to espouse the same canons of ethical neutrality and objectivity that are, perhaps so much more easily, endorsed by historians in their treatment of things past.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 15: Religious Motivation Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian , 1978 , pp. 481 - 506
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1978

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References

1 It is difficult to agree with William James when he wrote, ‘Converted men as a class are indistinguishable from natural men; some natural men even excel some converted men in their fruits . . .’ The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: New American Library of World Literature edn, 1958) p 192. Sectarians generally are readily distinguishable from ‘natural men’, although that is generally more completely the case of those who belong to sects where conversion is (as it was in the cases to which James principally referred) a sudden experience.

2 These responses were elicited by asking people to relate, in the course of recounting how they came to join the movement, ‘What, apart from the Truth itself [the movement’s teachings], first attracted you to Jehovah’s Witnesses?’; ‘Have you experienced any blessings?’; ‘Did you have any difficulties in becoming a Witness?’; and ‘Has being a Witness occasioned any changes in your life?’

3 Jehovah’s Witnesses consider that the bible proscribes the ingestion of blood.

4 Glock, C. Y., ‘The Role of Deprivation in the Origin and Evolution of Religious Groups’, in Lee, Robert and Marty, Martin E. (editors), Religion and Social Conflict (New York 1964) p 27.Google Scholar

5 Aberle, David F., ‘A note on Relative Deprivation Theory as applied to Millenarian and other cult movements’, in Thrupp, Sylvia L., Millennial Dreams in Action, Comparative Studies in Society and History, supplement 2 (The Hague 1962) pp 209-14.Google Scholar

6 The later formulation is to be found in Glock, C. Y. and Stark, R., Religion and Society in Tension (Chicago 1965) cap 13.Google Scholar

7 Glock, C. Y., Ringer, B. B. and Babbie, E. R., To Comfort and to Challenge (Berkeley/ Los Angeles 1967).Google Scholar

8 For a typology of sects, albeit not specifically directed towards the problem of religious motivation, see Wilson, B. R., Religious Sects (London 1970) pp 36–47 Google Scholar, and for some reflections on the use of such a typology, Wilson, B. R., Magic and the Millennium (London 1973) pp 9–30.Google Scholar

9 James A. Beckford, ‘Accounting for Conversion’ unpublished paper, 1977; for a critique of the relative deprivation thesis in accounting for conversion among Jehovah’s Witnesses, see Beckford, , The Trumpet of Prophecy: A Sociological Study of Jehovah’s Witnesses (Oxford 1975) pp 154–8.Google Scholar

10 Thus, while Christian Scientists are encouraged to offer ‘testimonies’ both in their regular meetings and in their journals (usually of specific experiences of healing), and while Pentecostalists have ample opportunity to recount their own conversion experiences, Jehovah’s Witnesses have no such institutionalised provision. Some of those whom I interviewed told me that they had never before recounted their own experience of joining the sect.