William Sims Bainbridge & Rodney Stark 
The Future of Religion 
Secularization, Revival and Cult Formation

Religion is alive and well in the modern world, and the social-scientific study of religion is undergoing a renaissance. For much of this century, respected social theorists predicted the death of religion as inevitable consequence of science, education, and modern economics. But they were wrong.


Stark and Bainbridge set out to explain the survival of religion. Using information derived from numerous surveys, censuses, historical case studies, and ethnographic field expeditions, they chart the full sweep of contemporary religion from the traditional denominations to the most fervent cults. This wealth of information is located within a coherent theoretical framework that examines religion as a social response to human needs, both the general needs shared by all and the desires specific to those who are denied the economic rewards or prestige enjoyed by the privileged. By explaining the forms taken by religions today, Stark and Bainbridge allow us to understand its persistence in a secular age and its prospects for the future,




This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Religion is alive and well in the modern world, and the social-scientific study of religion is undergoing a renaissance. For much of this century, respected social theorists predicted the death of religion as inevitable consequence of science, education,

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments


1 The Nature of Religion

2 Of Churches, Sects, and Cults


I THE RELIGIOUS ECNOMY

3 The Spectrum of Faiths

4 Religious Regionalism


II SECT MOVEMENTS

5 The Eternal Exodus: Causes of Religious Dissent

and Schism

6 American-Born Sect Movements

7 Sect Transformation and Upward Mobility:

The Missing Mechanisms

 

III CULTS

8 Three Models of Cult Formation

9 Cult Movements in America: A Reconnaissance

10 Client and Audience Cults in America

11 Cult Membership in the Roaring Twenties

12 Scientology: To Be Perfectly Clear

13 The Rise and Decline of Transcendental Meditation


IV RECRUITMENT

14 Networks of Faith: Interpersonal Bonds and Recruitment

to Cults and Sects

15 Friendship, Religion, and the Occult

16 The Arithmetic of Social Movements:

Theoretical Implications

17 The ‚Consciousness Reformation‘ Reconsidered

18 Who Joins Cult Movements?


V SOURCES OF RELIGIOUS MOVEMENTS

19 Secularization, Revival, and Cult Formation

20 Church and Cult in Canada

21 Europe’s Receptivity to Cults and Sects

22 Rebellion, Repressive Regimes, and Religious Movements


Bibliography

Index

Über den Autor

Rodney Stark is one of the leading authorities on the sociology of religion. Stark has authored more than 150 scholarly articles and 32 books in 17 different languages, including several widely used sociology textbooks and best-selling titles. William Sims Bainbridge earned his doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1975. Altogether he has published about 300 articles and written or edited 40 books in a variety of scientific fields.