Werner Stark - The Sociology of Religion, Part 5: A Study of Christendom

THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION

The International Library of Sociology

THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
In 8 Volumes

A Study of Christendom

Part Five
Types of Religious Culture

by
WERNER STARK

First published in 1972

by Routledge

Reprinted in 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002

by Routledge

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First issued in paperback 2010

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group

1972 Routledge

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Sociology of Religion: Part Five A Study of Christendom

ISBN 978-0-415-17600-2 (hbk)

ISBN 978-0-415-60575-5 (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

Contents

APPENDIX I.

Preface

I started to work on my Sociology of Religion on or about 1 April 1963; I am writing this preface on 19 February 1971. Thus I have spent almost eight years on the five volumes, the last of which I am launching today.

My investigation has grown to considerable size: there are altogether close to 1,900 pages. The explanation, if not the justifiscation, of this bulkiness lies in the method which I have applied, and which might be called the method of significant detail. It consists in giving for every proposition that is stated, for every assertion that is made, a number of illustrations which, between them, build up a comprehensive and realistic picture. I remember discussing this procedure once with the late Karl Mannheim; he gave his opinion that it is totally appropriate for studies in the area of cultural sociology. I certainly have found it rewarding. But its necessary consequence is an increase, sometimes steep, in the number of words.

What I have not attempted to do is to cover every nook and cranny of the field. Of course, most important aspects are discussed, but I have not made all-inclusiveness a major preoccupation. What is usually called the social function of religion is first considered in the closing part, and then only partially. I have not, for instance, gone into the help which religion gives to the norm-system of a society and thereby to that societys functioning. The reason for this omission is not fortuitous. As I see sociology and its division and integration of labour, the relation between custom and law on the one hand and religion on the other belongs to the subject called social control, that is, to general sociology, and not to a speciality, the sociology of religion. I may announce, however, that my next research effort is to take in that very field. I intend to write a work to be entitled: The Social Bond: An Investigation into the Bases of Lawabidingness. In this wide framework, something will have to be said about the religious factor as it operates within the system of social control.

A special word of explanation must still be added about the treatment of the last hundred and fifty years. They are not allotted the same measure of space as the first eighteen centuries of our era. The reason is obvious or nearly so. This is a study of Christendom, but with the French Revolution there began a process of de-Christianization which makes the decades that followed it less interesting not, of course, in themselves, but from our specific point of view. This applies particularly to the present volume. It deals with inclusive cultures, and the inclusive culture of the modern age, reckoning it from about 1800 onward, is increasingly and predominantly secular. Ernst Troeltsch felt exactly as I do: he brings his Social Teaching of the Christian Churches to a conclusion with the end of the eighteenth century because with the nineteenth century, church history entered upon a new phase of existence (vol. II, p. 991). He has been criticized for this and so shall I be, for many are vitally interested in politics, taking the word in the widest sense, or in current affairs, to express it differently, and they prefer to read about the present more than about the past. With me, this incentive is very weak. What I set out to do was to achieve understanding of an historical phenomenon, and to present my findings to others so that they may understand also. The outline of my work was therefore determined by that historical phenomenon, and the main emphasis had to be placed on the periods in which it showed itself in its most evolved, most characteristic form. I have, however, given due, and, I hope, adequate attention to the years of comparative decline as well, as every reader will find who has the patience to hear me out.

Since the fourth volume was published, two of my kind helpers have assumed greater burdens. Dr. Madeline Engel is absorbed in onerous academic work of her own; she has also become Mrs. Thomas Moran; and Father Robert McNamara is now Dean of Loyola College, Chicago. Nevertheless, they have remained by my side, and thereby they have further increased my debt of gratitude to them. It is my hope that they will be rewarded by the possession of as good friends as I have. Father Quain has kindly read this manuscript as he has the earlier ones, and my wife has continued to slave for me as she has always done. In relation to all of them I am in the position of an undischarged bankrupt.