INTRO: Individuals may have their own religious beliefs without belonging to any particular organization: they may firm their own personal and unique relationship with a God or some source of spiritual power. However, many members of society express their religious beliefs through organizations, and the organizations tend to shape those beliefs. There are many different types of religious organizations that need to be distinguished. CHURCH: Troeltsch 1931 was one of the first writers to try to
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INTRODUCTION A sect is a subgroup of a religious, political or philosophical belief system, usually an offshoot of a larger religious group. Although in past it was mostly used to refer to religious groups, it has since expanded and in modern culture can refer to any organization that breaks away from a larger one to follow a different set of rules and principles. For practical reasons, a cult or sect is sometimes defined as `any religious
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personal religious commitment and sect and cult formation. The German scholars Max Weber and Ernst Troeltsch were pioneers with regard to the relationships between sect and church membership, and social class and status group. In The Social Sources of Denominationalism (Holt 1929), H. Richard Niebuhr saw sects as the "churches of the disinherited"; because of their lack of economic and political power, the less privileged needed religion most, and sects and cults could provide their members with compensation
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the number of sects and cults and the number of people belonging to them. For example there is an estimated to be over 800 new religious movements and half a million individuals belonging to these and other non-mainstream Christian churches in the UK. Sociologists have offered three key explanations for this trend; marginality, relative deprivation and social change. Troeltsch had noted sects tended to draw members from the poor and the oppressed. Similarly, Max Weber argues sects arise in groups
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Churches are large organisations often with millions of members. Sects are usually a break away from a church usually because of disagreement and cults are new religions such as Scientology. The view that sects and cults are more important than the church may be due to the fact there are many of these new religious movements gaining status and becoming well known in certain societies. The reason they may be seen as more important than the church may be due to the fact the church is losing members
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MODEL ESSAY ANSWER “Assess the view that New Religious Movements are mainly for the middle classes and the young.” [33 marks] Introduction New Religious Movements are often viewed as non-traditional organisations, such as sects and cults. Sociologists believe that there are differences within such groups and thus, they could help to explain why certain social groups might find them appealing. Traditional organisations are often referred to as churches and denominations. They also might appeal
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patriarchy * Fundamentalist beliefs: rejecting change by reverting to supposed traditional values and practices. Religious organisations, including cults, sects, denominations, churches and New Age movements, and their relationship to religious and spiritual belief and practice * Typologies of religious organisations: churches, denominations, sects and cults, with examples of each New Religious Movements and typologies of NRMs eg world rejecting/accommodating/affirming; millenarian beliefs, with examples
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Unit 3 Sociology; Beliefs in Society Different theories of Ideology, Science and Religion An Ideology is a closed set of beliefs that reject other views. A Belief is a framework of ideas through which an individual makes sense of the world. They are generally connected to a religion and based on faith with no evidence needed. Science is based on evidence, factual, objective and regarded as the truth. Religion is based on faith, not truth. It is a fixed view of how the world is and claims to be
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society: • Different theories of ideology, science and religion, including both Christian and non-Christian religious traditions. • The relationship between religious beliefs and social change and stability. • Religious organisations, including cults, sects, denominations, churches and New Age movements, and their relationship to religious and spiritual belief and practice. • The relationship between different social groups and religious/spiritual organisations and movements, beliefs and practices
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were either sects or cults. Although the definitions of these terms have developed over the years to result in different meanings and connotations, many sociologists have attempted to distinguish between the characteristics of each organisation. In 1981, Troeltsch said that the characteristics of a sect include attracting those from the lower classes and that young children cannot usually directly enter a sect. These aspects are already deemed to be contrasting with those of a NRM. A cult,,, on the
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