The Sociology of Religion, Part 1: Established Religion

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The International Library of Sociology

THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

The International Library of Sociology

THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
In 8 Volumes

I	The Economic Order and Religion	Knight et al
II	Islam and the Integration of Society	Watt
III	Religious Behaviour	Argyle
IV	The Sociology of Religion Part One: Established Religion	Stark
V	The Sociology of Religion Part Two: Sectarian Religion	Stark
VI	The Sociology of Religion Part Three: The Universal Church	Stark
VII	The Sociology of Religion Part Four: Types of Religious Man	Stark
VIII	The Sociology of Religion Part Five: Types of Religious Culture	Stark

THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

A Study of Christendom

Part One
Established Religion

by

WERNER STARK

First published in 1966
by Routledge

Reprinted in 1998, 2000
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
or
270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

First issued in paperback 2010

1966 Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

The publishers have made every effort to contact authors/copyright holders of the works reprinted in The International Library of Sociology. This has not been possible in every case, however, and we would welcome correspondence from those individuals/companies we have been unable to trace.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Sociology of Religion: Part One - Established Religion
ISBN 978-0-415-17588-3 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0-415-60556-4 (pbk)
The Sociology of Religion: 8 Volumes
ISBN 978-0-415-17823-5
The International Library of Sociology: 274 Volumes
ISBN 978-0-415-17838-9

Publishers Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent

Preface

I started to write the present volume shortly after taking up my duties at Fordham University, i.e. on or around I April 1963, but in a way I have been getting ready for it all my life. When I was a student of the social sciences at Hamburg, I tried to explore some of the adjacent fields as well, and I attended several of the lecture courses given by the Professor of Modern History, Justus Hashagen, especially his lectures on the History of the Reformation and the History of the Counter-Reformation. Hashagen was a thinker of great depth and a teacher of consummate skill, and he has left an indelible mark on my mind. The way in which he marshalled his facts and analysed them, and the spirit of understanding in which he treated and presented them, appeared to me then, and still appear to me today, well-nigh ideal.

Later, as a student of law at the University of Prague, I was fortunate in having another broad avenue of access to the phenomena of religion opened to me. Canon law at that time still loomed fairly large in the syllabus, and canon law was taught, not by one, but by two Professors, Ludwig Wahrmund and Heinrich Singer. Wahrmund had early in his life been in the Church, but had moved further and further away from orthodoxy and had ended up by conceiving and presenting an entirely secular picture of his subject. Singer had gone in the other direction. His was essentially the believers approach, and although he was first and foremost a man of learning, he was at the same time also a man of faith. Thus it was possible to learn from him how to appreciate the greatness of canon law, while Wahrmund showed up its limitations. A positive and a negative attitude, awe and criticism, are notoriously difficult to reconcile, but it is good for a young man to have them both impinge on him and struggle for his soul.

When the desire to write on the sociology of religion first formed in my mind, I had to consider how broadly I should define the area which 1 was to investigate. Would it be possible for me to elaborate an all-inclusive picture embracing all history and all geography as well? It was not long before I recognized that this was impossible. Given the time and the strength at my disposal, I had to confine myself to Christendom, including only so much from other cultures, like the Egyptian or the Japanese, as would serve as a helpful foil to my main topic, and that alone is what is colloquially described as a tall order. The literature to be mastered is mountainous, and I have by no means read more than a fraction of it. Still, on the day on which this preface is written, with the first two volumes ready for the press and about a third of the third volume down on paper, I find that I have taken cognizance of over 300 publications, and I submit, in all modesty, that this is as much as I could have done if not, indeed, as much as anyone can do in the circumstances.

A work like the present is likely to run into opposition, and I should like to say, by way of anticipation, a word about it. In England, I fear, prejudice will make critics say that I am prejudiced. They would say this, however unprejudiced my attitude, and for this reason I will neither be surprised nor greatly moved by the taunt. When I told a young English friend that I was preparing a book on the sociology of religion, he exclaimed: You are bravel Most British intellectuals nowadays sport an agnostic philosophy, if they do not directly despise religion; yet it is a curious fact that religious discussions still excite them and rouse their aggressiveness. To those who may complain that I have written as a partisan, I say here in all earnestness that I have studied the subject sine ira, and that I have done my best to show the facts as they really were and are.

In America, it is a very different feature that may cause misgivings, for toleration is genuine and far-reaching in the country. But American sociology has become increasingly addicted to the principle of specialization, and my material and analysis are rather general. To those who are in the habit of concentrating on a small area of investigation, my canvas may well appear too wide, yet I make no apologies for my attempt to give a comprehensive overview of the Christian tradition. It ill becomes him who uses the microscope to belittle the neighbour who works with the telescope. Both are useful members of the republic of letters, and the citizenship of the one is not inferior to that of the other.

My thanks are due to two of my colleagues, Fr. Edwin A. Quain, S. J., and Fr. Robert J. McNamara, S. J., who have read my manuscript and given me their kind encouragement. Mr. Rasio Dunatov, also of Fordham University, has helped me to bring consistency into my transliteration of Russian names, by no means an easy task. It is a special pleasure to me to acknowledge my great indebtedness to Dr. Madeline H. Engel, a former student and now also an academic teacher, for her careful and critical consideration of my text from the linguistic point of view. It would not have been possible to find a more willing or reliable or competent coadjutor. My wife (herself a disciple of the late Justus Hashagen) has not only typed the manuscript, but done innumerable research jobs for me, great and small, and without her my work would have been measurably, if not immeasurably, poorer.

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