SEPT 15 OBSERVATION, MEASUREMENT, CLASSIFICATION

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SEPT 15 OBSERVATION, MEASUREMENT, CLASSIFICATION
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TOPICS

• Observation of Religion
• Accounting for Accounts
• Measurement of Religiosity
• Religiosity of the Seminar Participants
• Classification of Religions
• Church/Sect Typologies
• Other Typologies

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OBSERVATION

• Delineation of Boundaries What is inside the
  frame of reference
• Direct Observation
• Participant-Observation
• Interpretation of Accounts

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• Maximum Feasible Immersion
• The ethnographer as cultural bridge
• Accounting for Accounts

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MEASUREMENT

• Defining Unit of Analysis
• Sampling
• Reliability

• Validity
• Dimensionality (Scaling)

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PRAYER AMERICAN DATA

• EVER PRAY Steady 90 (1948-2003)
• PRAY AT LEAST 2X/DAY Declined from 40 to 30
  from 1950 to 2000. May have increased slightly
  since 2001
• WHO PRAYS MOST Baptists and small fundamentalist
  sects
• WHO PRAYS LEAST Jews (only ¼ daily)

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CHURCH ATTENDANCE

• Approximately 40 attend weekly
• Protestants have been steady 40 for the last 50
  years. But Episcopalians lowest among
  Protestants (33)
• Catholics in steady decline from 75 in the 1950s
  to little more than 50 now
• Jews least likely to attend weekly
• Mormons most likely to attend weekly

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AFFILIATION

• Percent affiliated has grown steadily in America
  for 250 years from about 10 or less to currently
  approximately 66
• How may this fact be reconciled with
  secularization theory?

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ASPECTS OF RELIGION CAN BE MEASURED AT THE
DENOMINATIONAL LEVEL AS WELL AS AT THE INDIVIDUAL
LEVEL
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AS WEBER EMPHASIZED, RELIOUS AFFILIATION IS
CORRELATED WITH SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS

• But the differentials in the USA have become less
  over the past 50 years

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HOW RELIGIOUS IS THE CLASS? Rank Order as an
average of all ten scales

• 1. Stephen (most)
• 2. Laurie
• 3. Andrea
• 4. Shruti
• 5. John

• 6. Elizabeth
• 7. Sara
• 8. Ben
• 9. Michael
• 10. Katie
• 11. Greg (least)

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HOW THE SCALES CORRELATE
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CLASSIFICATION
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CHURCH SECT TYPOLOGIES

• Church-Sect A Counter-Reformational Perspective
• Church-Denomination-Sect Riddle How do you
  know when a sect has become a denomination?
  Answer When it gets a Fax machine and a Xerox
  machine.
• Church-Denomination-Sect-Cult The currently
  widely accepted fourfold distinction

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CHURCH

• Inclusion of all members of a society and a
  belief in the right to a monopoly over the
  collective and personal religious life of that
  society.
• A close alliance with the secular powers and a
  mutual buttressing of legitimacy.
• Membership based on birth not conversion
• Examples Catholic, Russian Orthodox (pre-1917),
  Tibetan Buddhist (pre-1959).

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SECT

• A sect is formed by breaking away from a church
  or denomination.
• Exists in a state of tension with the secular
  world
• Refusal to compromise on doctrine or practice.
• A sense of elitism. The sect represents the true
  doctrine that the church has fallen away from.
• Examples Amish, Zen Buddhists, Sufis, maybe the
  Mormons

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DENOMINATION

• A sect that has become more church-like.
• Examples Presbyterian, Congregationalist,
  Methodist, Baptist, Quaker

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CULT

• A residual category
• Definition a matter of controversy
• New Religious Movements
• Some define a cult as a bad religion
• Most base definition on the presence of a living
  charismatic leader who holds the religious body
  together. The leader is more important than
  doctrine.

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TYPES OF PROTESTANT DENOMINATIONS

• Mainline
• Charismatic
• Pentecostal
• Evangelical
• Fundamentalist
• Social Gospel

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TYPES OF SECTS-- YINGER

• Acceptance Sects help individuals with their
  problems (AA, Christian Science)
• Aggressive Sects try to change the world
  (Wahabi, Jehovahs Witnesses, Salvation Army)
• Avoidance Sects get away from corrupting society
  (Amish)

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TYPE OF SECTS-- WILSON

• Reforming (Salvation Army)
• Withdrawing (Amish, Mennonites)
• Managing (Christian Science)
• Revolutionary (Adventists, Millenarians)

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The major religion of the world can be
classified along these dimensions.

• Theology
• Eschatology
• Practice
• Leadership
• Ethics
• Membership Criteria

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