Социология религии_общее (англ.) / Handbook of the Sociology of Religion

While often allied politically, they also become competitors for resources, tapping the same sources for funds, volunteers, and attention. Energy expended on differentiating themselves from other SMOs is that much less energy available for the main mission. If you cannot easily distinguish the four groups named above, you see the problem in a nutshell.

These tensions for PSMOs are clearly illustrated by the current dilemmas of the Christian Coalition (CC), an SMO founded by the evangelist Pat Robertson and dedicated to the issues of the Christian Right. The CC seems to have fallen between the two stools of galvanizing followers with moral imperatives and being a player in Beltway politics who can broker deals. Perhaps the crucial moment was the 1996 attempt by Ralph Reed to keep the CC in the center of the Republican campaign effort, even as the presidential candidate Robert Dole contemplated backing away from the GOP abortion plank so as not to antagonize moderates. Reed was criticized severely by social conservatives, many of whom were in fact the Coalition’s organizational competition within the Right. Shortly thereafter he left the organization to become a pure insider – a paid consultant to Republican politicians. And the Coalition seems to have lost its way – too grass roots to become just another Beltway lobby, too close to the GOP to mobilize a movement. From a historical perspective, this may be another example of a potential third party challenge – by that I mean the Christian Right generally – being absorbed into one of the major parties.

When organizational forms solidify with greater professionalism and bureaucracy, it also tends to produce more rigidity in movements’ strategies and tactics. The sit-in, the boycott, the march, the letter-writing campaign – all are available to almost any movement, and in fact are used in a great variety of causes. But a given group is likely to specialize. This hones its abilities, gives it expertise and legitimacy, and provides visibility – witness the United Farm Workers’ grape boycott or Operation Rescue’s clinic blockade. By the same token, the signature tactic can lead to ossification and impotence, as the powers-that-be learn how to respond effectively (McAdam 1983). At the same time, as movements shift tactics in order to remain effective, they run the risk of leaving their constituencies behind.

The anti-abortion movement, for example, has adopted increasingly radical and violent tactics in the face of its failure to achieve its goal. But different people seem geared for different types of protest. Thus, while there may have been some disaffected National Right-to-Life Committee people who began blockading clinics with Operation Rescue, the bulk of the latter’s constituency were not active in more peaceful and legal protests. Randal Terry’s own story of founding Operation Rescue indicates he was not involved in the organized lobbying and protest activities of already extant groups (Terry 1988).2 Similarly, Operation Rescue members have by and large not participated in the recent violence perpetrated by people associated with groups such as the Lambs of God, several of whose members are thought to have murdered abortion providers. Under consistent pressure from the government, Operation Rescue’s clinic-blockade tactic has been stymied; and the organization has withered accordingly.

2Of course, Terry could have deliberately omitted any reference to action in other groups as a way of emphasizing the innovation of Operation Rescue. But his expressed disdain for the strategy of more legal-minded and institutionalized SMOs makes his prior involvement in those groups seem unlikely. Whatever the case, he certainly did not feel the need to legitimate his activism by connecting himself with established anti-abortion SMOs.

In sum, social movement organizations range considerably, from highly organized and bureaucratized operations like the Christian Coalition, to loosely organized, almost haphazard bodies like Promise Keepers, to ephemeral “happenings” and kitchen-table operations with little more than a name, a letterhead, and a website.3

But organization matters. Promise Keepers’ very disdain for professionalism and formal organization has generally kept the movement from maintaining itself as a national presence that it established with its large rallies from 1995–8. The organization made its rallies free of charge, laid off paid staff, and did not allow a coherent bureaucracy to develop. By systematically refusing to nurture the organizational side of the movement, Promise Keepers has been unable to build on its once considerable momentum. Local groups continue to function, but more as support and prayer groups than as any presence in the public sphere (Williams 2001). It is an open question whether the rank-and-file who participated in stadium rallies would have followed a professionalized leadership into more politicized or institutionally focused action. But that option is clearly not available now, with the national presence in disarray.

DILEMMAS OF IDEOLOGY AND ORGANIZATION

Religiously based social movements and SMOs such as the anti-abortion movement or Promise Keepers are in many ways similar to secular ones. We live in a society in which all organizations tend to take similar forms – driven largely by the regulation of tax laws, accounting practices, and the standard corporate model of governance by boards of directors. Yet religion has distinctive contributions to make, both organizationally and rhetorically. And it presents distinctive challenges as well, both as a basis for organizing and as a motivating force for mobilizing action.

As discussed in the first section of this chapter, religion is a great provider of the rhetoric and symbols that a social movement needs both to attract members and to persuade the public. It is important to recognize, however, that the same religious language cannot necessarily perform both tasks. Ironically, the religious language that best mobilizes church members is often that which is most likely to raise the suspicions of the public at large, while the language most accommodating to public sensibilities is least likely to mobilize the faithful.

Religion offers, as noted, a moral language of good and evil that clearly divides the sides of any given issue into those who are on the side of light versus those who are not – this can produce both passion and perseverance in collective action. Furthermore, this kind of moral and religious language is clearly and easily understood by large portions of the American people as a way of understanding our public life. Not only are Americans generally religious as a people but also religion has a deep public cultural legitimacy. Americans generally think of their society as one that has a responsibility to be moral – in its domestic policy and in its dealings with the world. Our national “civil religious”

3A promising area for research would be to look at the effect of the Internet on movement activity. While it is certainly a good system for connecting activists across vast areas, I suspect that the individualized nature of participation siphons off some of the ability of groups to generate collective action. Individuals may find comfort and solidarity in chat rooms, but movement groups may well be hamstrung by that dynamic. And the temptation for every webmaster to form his or her own organization may splinter movements beyond effectiveness.

language clearly puts American history and destiny in a divine storyline (Williams and Demerath 1991).

And yet, it is arguable that narrow sectarian language has receded as a public language, particularly as a public political language. Morality and moral language is vitally important, it is the essence of our civil religious understandings. But it must be, at least on the surface, nonsectarian, inclusive, and embracing (note that in President George W. Bush’s 2001 inaugural address he mentioned “church,” “synagogue,” and “mosque”). Indeed, there is some expectation that even a civil religious language of critique – calling the nation to account for its lapses – should be framed in positive and optimistic terms. In that sense, our public religious language has an important debt to the idea of “progress”; that is, that we can overcome any limitations of the past and that the future will be more just and moral than the present. What this means is that even in those situations in which many people do not agree with a movement’s stated position on an issue, they will view favorably the religious language in which it is pitched, so long as it is the “right” type of public religious language.

Thus, religiously based social movements must strike a delicate balance in their relations with the media and the general public. To the extent that movements want to reach potential recruits, raise money from sympathetic constituents, and goad people into action, fiery rhetoric full of clearly sectarian language may be the best tool. I am convinced this accounts for much of the popularity of “culture wars” rhetoric (Williams 1997b). But to the extent that movements want to persuade bystanders, lure elected officials to their positions, or participate in institutionalized public processes, they need a civil religious language that maximizes similarities, plays to moderation, and speaks in general abstractions. Overplaying one side of this balance can leave an SMO either without fervent constituents or without greater political influence. The differences in media presentation between the early years of the Moral Majority, and the direction taken by the Christian Coalition under Ralph Reed, illustrate how each direction has potential pitfalls. The sectarian message of the early Moral Majority, particularly one episode when a Baptist minister told an audience that God does not hear the prayers of Jews (Kater 1982), alienated many Americans, and equated the Moral Majority name with intolerance. Despite protests to the contrary, the group had trouble shaking the public impression that it was really a narrow segment of culturally and religiously fundamentalist Protestants. As director of the Christian Coalition, on the other hand, Ralph Reed used to speak generically of “people of faith,” potentially opening the door to ecumenism and civil religion.

All SMOs require the media to get the message out, but less formally organized groups need the media more. They have fewer symbols and rituals with which to develop collective identity, fewer networks for recruiting members, and fewer material incentives to offer potential recruits. Lacking regularized organizational and political routines, they must provide moral shocks and dramatic public actions to gain media attention and galvanize sympathizers into action. The coin of their political realm is public exposure and moral indignation.

Media demands for innovation and conflict give these informal – and often more radical – groups a leg up. There is a proliferation of cable talk shows that trade in confrontation and bumper-sticker logic. Moderation is not rewarded in these settings and the drive to garner attention and distinction pushes advocates to stridency and uncompromising moral positions. That this avenue to influence is self-limited by the

institutional structures and demands of policy formation – especially at the national level – should be evident. But in a crowded field of competing movement organizations, many PSMOs may feel that they have little choice.

To be sure, more moderate SMOs may benefit from the existence of more radical groups through what sociologists call “flank effects” (see Minkoff 1995). Institutional authorities, faced with some radical factions, become willing to deal with representatives of moderation. For example, by the mid-to-late 1960s, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee made Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference seem moderate to many whites who had been worried about Communists in the SCLC just a few years before. But the flank effect also can work in the other direction, forcing moderate groups to move to the edges. If they must compete for resources from within the same pool of sympathizers, moderate SMOs – especially those with large organizations to support – may be pushed to stretch their rhetoric and stridency in order to prove their fidelity to the cause.

Whatever the benefits of radicalism, it is important to bear in mind that many religious SMOs are not solely focused on political change. James Dobson’s “Focus on the Family,” or Jerry Falwell’s “Old Time Gospel Hour” have been important bases for Christian Right organizing. But that is not all they do. Like ordinary churches, they serve their constituents’ religious and family needs as well. One needs to be careful about assuming that average people using an organization’s services necessarily align completely with its political messages (or if they do agree, that they are willing to be active in that regard). People have the ability to select among many of the media messages they receive. In some of my own research, I was unable to find “direct effects” of exposure to politicized religious television; that is, those who watched the more political televangelists were not much more likely to be politicized than those who watched more traditional, nonpolitical TV preachers (Will and Williams 1986; see also Frankl 1987). It seemed as though respondents were able to watch such programs largely for their religious content and filter out the politics. Certainly many prominent clergy who have engaged in public politics have had difficulty sustaining their advocacy efforts (Falwell being the best example).

While organizational names, logos, and chains-of-command are meant to provide both the reality and image of unity, that unity should not be assumed (see, for example, the diversity of justifications for involvement in the Civil Rights Movement analyzed by Platt and Fraser 1998). Prominent religious activists use their ideological claims and rhetoric to try to create just such unity – they are not merely expressing the existing preferences of their constituents. It is obviously in their interest to inflate their membership numbers, but it is also in their interest to exaggerate the unity of that membership. Leaders portray themselves as the servants of their constituents – and there is some truth in that claim – but leaders also must create through their rhetoric some of that unity behind them. Promise Keepers is an obvious example here, where a number of sociological studies show that the rank-and-file participants in the stadium rallies have no common political agenda (see chapters in Williams 2001). Another example would be the Central American Peace Movement of the 1980s. While several groups, such as Witness for Peace and the Fellowship of Reconciliation, shared a common goal of opposing Reagan Administration policies, the grounds of their opposition, and the targets of their actions, were often widely divergent (Smith 1996a). Moreover, SMOs need victories to keep their adherents motivated and the media convinced of their

importance. As a result, they will often declare victory on the basis of little evidence, before more sober postelectoral analysis can be done.

Finally, the separation of the public and private spheres has become deeply entrenched in our society. True, many activists with religiously based messages decry that separation and see an irretrievably close relationship between public and private as necessary for a moral society. But, even among evangelical Protestants, that view is not the only perspective available. Evangelicalism has grown in the past two decades, and as it has grown it also has diversified. Many devout Christians are less interested in organizing to change government than in simply keeping government out of their lives – in the great American tradition of suspicion of institutions. If they are active at all it is a “defensive” activism that is not easily translated into more ambitious agendas.

In the final analysis, those who put their religious beliefs at the very center of their lives often have reservations about “fellowshipping” with those who do not share their beliefs, whatever their political similarities. To the extent that this reticence coexists with the development of activist religious SMOs, it is yet another sign of the disconnection between the institutions and practices of our political system on one side and the private lives and cultures in which ordinary Americans actually live.

RELIGIOUS SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

In Jose Casanova’s (1994) analysis of the “deprivatization” of religion in the contemporary world, he notes that for religion to have an effective public presence it must accept the basic institutional terms of modernity. One of these terms is an institutional differentiation between religion and government. Even in those places where religion dominates the state, such as postrevolutionary Iran, there are concessions made all the time to the practical demands that operating a modern nation-state demands. While no significant religious group in the United States has serious expectations of dominating and controlling the state, the same observation holds about participation in legitimate politics. The price of getting on to the playing field of American politics is a willingness to play by the dominant – and admittedly secular – rules. Religion matters in American politics, but as my discussion of civil religion demonstrated, American public religion is expected to be conciliatory, often generalized and abstract, fundamentally universal (if not always completely inclusive), and at least formally tolerant of pluralism (Williams 1999). Granted, many Americans do not see expressions of Christianity as “sectarian,” and to that extent our civil religion is basically Protestant and majoritarian. But many of the same people who are completely comfortable with a Christmas nativity scene on the city hall lawn, or with presidential candidates who claim to be “born again” Christians, still feel it is a basic violation to claim publicly that other religions are false or shouldn’t be granted full rights of free exercise. Perhaps those implications just seem a little impolite (a different take on the idea of a “civil” religion) but that uneasiness with sectarian triumphalism is a cultural obstacle for any religiously based social movement that proclaims its faith foundations too vociferously.

While this tension between the sectarian and public religious expression may be thought of as an external dynamic for movements (that is, between a movement and its environment), there is a parallel tension within any religiously based movement. When a social movement is basically a moral crusade, the passion and dedication that it produces among adherents is a great advantage. But how does one “ratchet down” such

passion when a movement needs to make some of the compromise necessary to participate in pluralist politics? If politics is a fundamentally moral endeavor for movement members, isn’t a political compromise actually a moral compromise? How does one “deal” when the only acceptable moral position is complete victory? Indeed, studies of religiously based movements repeatedly show the extent to which collective action stumbles or struggles once the terrain moves from public expression of moral outrage to crafting public policy (see Demerath and Williams 1992; Williams and Demerath 1991).

So there becomes a tricky balancing act between organizational coordination, political effectiveness, and ideological purity. Organization rigor and political involvement without sufficient attention to ideological standards appear too much like “politics as usual” to members and the movement looks more interested in power than in moral reform to bystander publics. In other words, the movement looks so much like any secular political effort that it loses much of the benefit of its religious resources. However, overly strident moralist ideology, unconnected to practical considerations or harnessed to organized cadres of adherents, can produce either absolutist politics or empty and publicly disregarded rhetoric. In other words, the latter case appears either to be the impractical meddlings of preachers into the “real world” about which they are ill-informed or a religious crusade that is a threat to public pluralism.

This dilemma – between a specific, but often exclusionary, sectarian faith and an open, pluralistic, but often bland or generic public religion – is a core concern to contemporary society. How does one have a truly “public” sphere if it is built only on the narrow, partial languages of particular religious faiths? By contrast, how can a society have a truly inclusive public life if the languages of religious faiths are not allowed in debates about public policy? Habermas (1987, 1989) has considered these problems at length and is, in the end, pessimistic about religion’s capacity to contribute to “rational discourse” in public life. Religion’s reliance on revealed truth, and its claims to ultimate and final authority, makes it a cultural system that is incompatible with the needs of an inclusive, public sphere. Yet Dillon’s (1999a) study of pro-change Catholics shows that not all religion is of a single cloth. Some forms of religious language and thinking are quite open to reason, to reform, and to negotiating the ways in which society should be arranged. The ultimacy of religious truth, for these faithful people, does not mandate any particular social arrangements. Thus, their religion can indeed inform a lively and vibrant public dialogue within society (see also Hart 2001).

In the end, many religiously based movements succeed in navigating the twin dilemmas of ideological purity and worldly involvement and efficacy. This is testimony to the dedication and resourcefulness of activists, as well as evidence for the deep legitimacy religion has in American culture. Religion has a presumption of “disinterestedness” and a resonance with the lives and motivations of many people in our society. Many religiously based social movement efforts turn out to be ephemeral and unsuccessful, showing some of the challenges that religion faces when trying to influence public life in the contemporary world. By contrast, many of these efforts emerge from the margins of American society and its political scene – they are the vehicles of people who often do not have the resources to influence public life in other ways. Thus, religion is often the best way for disadvantaged populations to make their voices heard. If for no other reason, religion, organization, ideology, and activism in the public sphere will be elements of American life indefinitely.

BIPOLAR CONCEPTIONS OF AMERICAN RELIGION

A number of political observers and social scientists have suggested that post-1950s America has seen a cultural and/or religious polarization that has increased the level of conflict in our public and private lives. Various ways of explaining this divide have been put forward, but most share a unidimensional, bipolar conceptualization of the conflict. For example, explanations of the decline of liberal Protestant denominations have posited cultural polarization between “locals” and “cosmopolitans” (Roof 1978) or between “traditional Christianity” and “scientific humanism” (Hoge and Roozen 1979).

Wuthnow (1988), in his influential work on religious restructuring, suggests that American religion has been restructured into liberal and conservative camps, a divide that increasingly occurs within denominations rather than between them. The effect is that the general level of social conflict is raised. Increased conflict occurs within denominations around liberal/conservative issues, and the restructuring also leads to polarization in the larger culture. This occurs as individuals experience an attenuation of denominational loyalty, transferring their commitment to “para-church” and other special interest groups that are part of the liberal or conservative nexus and crosscut denominational organizations.

Wuthnow (1988) refers primarily to religious liberalism and conservatism, but he views these two camps as also sharing liberal or conservative views on moral, social, and political issues. The ideological affinity within the two across issue domains contributes to the macro-social polarization. Others concur with Wuthnow’s claim of a widening “great divide” in American religion, but debate whether this divide occurs primarily within or between denominations (cf. Roof and McKinney 1987; Olson and McKinney 1997).1

But it is Hunter (1991, 1994) who has explored the recent polarization in American culture most generally and before a larger public audience. He views the situation more apocalyptically than most other analysts and has helped to bring the notion of a “culture war” into the American public consciousness. Like others, Hunter sees Americans divided into two opposing camps, but the key distinction he draws between the two camps is the issue of cultural or moral authority. The “orthodox” camp adheres to “an external, definable, and transcendent authority” while the “progressive” camp follows “the prevailing assumptions of contemporary life” (Hunter 1991: 44–5). Hunter analyzes this polarization across a range of cultural fields and suggests that it poses a threat to the democratic order. Hirschman (1991), writing from the leftward end of the political spectrum, makes a similar argument about the recent polarization of public discourse, referring to the sides as “reactionary” and “progressive.” However, unlike the other analysts noted here, he views the recent polarization as a normal part of the cycle of public political discourse and concerns himself more with the form of the debate than with its content.

A second related set of bipolar distinctions is found in the venerable literature on the tension between individual and community. Marty’s (1970) notion of a split between “private” and “public” religion has been highly influential in both the sociology

1There are others of course who question the restructuring thesis more fundamentally. For example, Ammerman (2000) suggests that many congregations still retain and intentionally construct strong denominational identities.

of religion and the writing of American religious history. Bellah, in much of his writing (alone and with colleagues), has dealt with the polarization between “utilitarian individualism” and “civic republicanism” (e.g., Bellah 1975; Bellah and Hammond 1980; Bellah et al. 1985).

What all of these scholars share is a bipolar conception of the American religious or cultural scene. The most significant problem with this conceptual logic is that it assumes that all or nearly all individuals and groups (or at least those who matter in the public discourse) fall into one of two camps. Occasionally there are passing references to the fact that, of course, there are many groups who do not fit the picture and many individuals who fall somewhere between or outside the poles, but these references are seldom more than passing (e.g., Hunter 1991: 105). Groups that do not fit the proposed bipolar conception are left outside the explanatory model. Methodologically, this makes it difficult to disconfirm hypotheses. Substantively, it leads to three problems: (1) it masks important distinctions within and between the two parties; (2) it exaggerates the level of conflict in society; and (3) it ignores the presence and impact of groups that do not fit the model, groups that may serve as mediators of conflicts or exert countervailing influences in their own right.

In the following section, I propose a multidimensional conception of the cultural battleground that addresses these problems. It takes into account the polarization around the policy issues noted by Wuthnow and others; the authority issue noted by Hunter; and the individual/community tension noted by Marty, Bellah, and others. By proposing a two-dimensional rather than a one-dimensional map, I make space for groups and individuals who are usually ignored in bipolar theories – groups that lie outside the mainstream discourse. This facilitates more nuanced explanations and hypotheses about the dynamic process of religious change and conflict.

A MAP OF THE MORAL ORDER IN THE UNITED STATES

Wuthnow (1987), in trying to develop a more objective approach to cultural analysis, describes an overarching ideological system or “moral order” within which religious and political movements pursue various interests. Wuthnow, of course, is not the only observer to posit such a system. A similar conception is present in many of the works discussed earlier. But in addition to the problems of unidimensionality noted above, most analysts have been rather vague about exactly what makes up the American moral order. In order to more concretely specify its key constituent elements, I propose four paradigms that may be used to characterize different positions within American religious and political ideology.

I do this based on a two-dimensional heuristic scheme. Adding another dimension makes it possible to propose a kind of “ideological map” of the moral order. Such a map still permits the analysis of a dominant or mainstream ideological spectrum, but also permits inclusion of various peripheral positions, and, thus, analysis of the relationship between the periphery and the mainstream. That is, the various configurations of these paradigms will influence ideological conflict both within peripheral ideologies and between them and the mainstream.

The two dimensions represent two central issues in any “moral order.” The first is the locus of moral authority, and the second is what constitutes the moral project. The first issue is concerned with the fundamental basis for ethical, aesthetic, or epistemological

standards (i.e., the nature of “goodness,” “beauty,” and “truth”). The second issue addresses the question of where moral action or influence should be targeted. That is, if goodness, beauty, and truth are to be enhanced, what needs to be changed? There is something of a parallel here to Weber’s (1925/1978) distinction between wertrational (value rationality) and zweckrational (instrumental rationality). That is, the issue of moral authority is concerned with the grounds for defining or evaluating ultimate ends, while the question of the moral project is concerned with means to those ends. The former provides the foundation for central values. The latter provides the foundation for particular policies.

Identifying two distinct ideological dimensions can help us to distinguish some key differences between various bipolar theories. That is, the restructuring theories of Wuthnow and others focus on issues related primarily to the second dimension, religious or political moral projects. Hunter, by contrast, deals primarily with tensions over the question of moral authority. Furthermore, the poles on each dimension represent the tension between the individual and the collective that most analysts of American political culture have noted. On the first dimension, the locus of moral authority may reside in the individual’s reason or experience or it may reside in the collective tradition. On the second dimension, the moral project may be the maximization of individual utility or it may be the maximization of the (collective) public good. While I am provisionally presenting these two dimensions as dichotomies forming distinct ideal types, the later discussion will indicate that I actually view them as spectra along which a wide variety of ideas may occur. The two dimensions are crosscutting and interact in complex ways.2

With respect to the first issue (locus of moral authority), the paradigm of modernism holds that the fundamental authority for defining ultimate values (goodness, beauty, and truth) is grounded in an individual’s reason as applied to and filtered through individual experience. Reason is located in particular individuals in particular times and places. Thus, there is a denial of traditional transcendent absolute authority. Authority is always subject to rational criticism and legitimation. Ethics are situational, in that determining the good requires the application of reason to particular circumstances. Since modern society is based on reason in the form of scientific technologies and rational forms of social organization, modernists are optimistic about progress and tend to be open to change. Furthermore, insofar as rationality is basic to human nature, human nature is basically “good.” There is within modernism, therefore, an inherent trust in human beings resulting in an emphasis on individual freedom and civil liberties. The expressive individualism of recent decades noted (and often decried) by many of the scholars discussed above is a product of modernism as a fundamental paradigm.

Within religion, modernism has been the focus of much conflict during the past century. Modernism legitimized rational criticism of ecclesiastical and biblical authority. Religious modernism holds that (a) religious ideas should be consciously adapted to modern culture, (b) God is immanent in and revealed through human cultural development, and (c) human society is progressively moving toward the realization of the Kingdom of God (Hutchison 1982). Religious conservatives have, of course, opposed

2Will and Williams (1986) propose a similar typology. However, by making “right versus left” one of the dimensions, they preclude the possibility of anomalous paradigm configurations of the sort I will discuss later.