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Sectarianism, World View, and Anomie

1972; Oxford University Press; Volume: 51; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/sf/51.2.226

1534-7605

Hart M. Nelsen,

Crime, Deviance, and Social Control

Sectarianism is often viewed as reaction to due to economic deprivation or migration. It is argued here that rather than resulting from per se, sectarianism reflects particular world view, which is formed by individuals from lower classes and rural areas and having lower levels of reading. All data are from Southern Appalachian Presbyterians. One genre of sociologists of religion interprets religion as an expression of world view. Geertz (1968:406) has written that religious belief and practice people's style of life . . . is rendered intellectually reasonable; it is shown to represent way of life ideally adapted to world as it 'really' . . . is. Bellah (1968:413) states that religion provides an individual or group with most general model that it has of itself and its world.... It will be view here that religious ideology is related to social class and additional variables involved in formation of one's world view. Of special interest to Weber (1963) was prevalence of magical beliefs and practices among peasants in contrast to less traditional urbanites. Today's counterpart of magical beliefs and practices for rural, lower-class Americans is sectarianism, which can be conceived as one particular orientation toward reality, tending toward Hobbesian view of life as solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. A more Old Testament view of God emerges here, conception of God as wrathful and as righteous judge, rather than loving savior (see Brewer, 1962:205-207; Pearsall, 1959:106-126). Man's response is emotional and fatalistic; often backsliding, he is saved on occasions of revival. On other hand, researchers have sometimes directly linked sectarianism with From study of Puerto Rican migrants to New York City who attended store-front churches, Poblete and O'Dea (1960:25, reprinted in O'Dea, 1970) observed that the sect represents response of restructuralization of religious attitudes and orientations in condition of what Durkheim has called anomie. Suggesting that sect resembles quest for community, authors interpreted formation of sects as a way out of anomie (for additional assessments of linkage between and sectarianism, see Bell, 1957; Dean, 1968; Glock, 1964; Keedy, 1958). The strongest statement of this view of sectarianism was made by Holt (1940) who linked sectarianism with migration of rural people to city and resultant cultural shock. Dynes (1956:26), however, observed that Holt's cultural shock theory implies that sectarianism should be related to recent migration to city. Finding no association between recency of migration and sectarianism, Dynes (1956:28) concluded that the significance of sectarianism lies in its association with lower socioeconomic and that rurality and migration are important only insofar as they are status indicators. Dynes (1956:26) reported that he drew his sample from Columbus, Ohio, directory; and subsequently Glock and Stark (1965:189) have noted that sampling frame was biased against geographically mobile and lower classes. From secondary analysis of data from earlier surveys by Lenski (1963) and Ford (1962), Nelsen and Whitt (1972) compared Southern migrants to Detroit with Southern [226] * The data presented here were collected in 1967 under grant from Boards of Christian Education of United Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and Presbyterian Church U.S. Thomas R. Ford and Earl D. C. Brewer kindly made available Southern Appalachian Studies data for use in preparing scales at preliminary stage of this study. Mayer N. Zald, Leo Rigsby, and Anne K. Nelsen made helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.142 on Sun, 25 Sep 2016 04:49:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Sectarianism and Anomie / 227 Appalachians and nonmigrants residing in Detroit. They concluded that migrant did not experience culture shock and turn to sectlike religious expressions. Instead, migrants fell midway between rural and urban residents on religious and patterns. In sum, research by Holt and by Poblete and O'Dea links sectarianism and disorganization, while study by Dynes and secondary analysis by Nelsen and Whitt seemingly deny this relationship; thus there would be considerable value in more direct testing of relationship. Rather than resulting from economic deprivation and state of per se, sectarianism is interpreted as reflection of world view formed by individuals with limited, or simplistic, outlooks, i.e., from lower classes and from rural areas. There is correlation between religious ideology and life experiences, with sectarianism providing simplistic interpretation of life as experienced by marginal members of society. To claim that sectarianism solely represents way out of or reaction to migration and culture shock is to place undue emphasis upon role of in development of sectarianism. Providing one interpretation of lower-class life which includes a generally greater tendency to personal demoralization (Mizruchi, 1964), sectarianism does place strong emphasis upon fatalism, however. For to be cause or to intervene in process contributing to sectarianism, with independent variables of class and residence controlled, relationship between and sectarianism should remain; and with controlled, relationship between class and residence and sectarianism should diminish. This is relationship that will be tested in this paper. Instead, we expect to find reading level (being one measure of individual's penchant for abstract conceptualizing) to act as an intervening variable, whereas should not act in this fashion.