Insiders,outsiders,advocates and apostates and the religions they study: Location and the sociology of religion

Cell A: Dominant religions studied by adherents

It is likely that most work conducted by sociologists of religion in the United States belongs in this cell. Research on American Protestantism dominates the field. Not only does much research focus on American Protestantism, but studies that look at “religion” in general often end up looking only at dominant religions. This is especially true for quantitative research that uses survey instruments because minority traditions may not show up in sufficient numbers to be included in the analysis.

The research on dominant religions shapes the questions that are asked, even when studies focus on other religious traditions. It is likely that most of the researchers doing this work are themselves members of dominant religious traditions, although they do not usually identify as such in writing up their work. It is interesting that the idea of natives researching their own culture has been suspect, yet researchers from the dominant group studying their own group are unremarkable and unmarked.

David Smilde and Matthew May reviewed the past 30 years of publications in the sociology of religion in five journals: American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review and Social Forces as well as Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion and Sociology of Religion (Smilde and May, 2010). They document an emerging “strong program” in the published articles where religion is increasingly studied as an independent variable. They found that research that looks at religion as an independent variable is also more likely to contain socio-evaluative components, particularly positive evaluations (Smilde and May, 2010: 23).

Building on a tradition with its roots in Durkheim and de Tocqueville, scores of studies have found that “religion” is beneficial for the individuals, families, neighborhoods, congregations, and/or the society as a whole. A recent example, based on large national surveys, is Robert Putnam et al. (2010)’s well-received American Grace. The researchers investigate the paradox of high rates of religious devotion and diversity coupled with a relative absence of religious conflict. They celebrate this American exceptionalism, and go on to show how participation in organized religious activities promotes social engagement. While the reader is overwhelmed with empirical “facts,” the research is deeply embedded in the Christian (Protestant) values that pervade American life and culture. This supports the argument of Cadge et al. that “Protestant Christian templates profoundly shape religious and secular organization and practice, the role of religion in public life, and research about it” (Cadge et al., 2011: 439). Definitions of what constitutes religion and pluralism are based in the experience of the dominant group.

Cell C: Dominant culture studied by non-adherents

This cell is part of the matrix, but in practice it is problematic. First, people who study dominant religions do not necessarily identify their own religious background, so we may not be able to separate research in this cell from research in cell A. Second, what does it mean to be a non-adherent? Anecdotal evidence suggests that many sociologists of religion grew up in an established, culturally sanctioned religious tradition, although they may not practice as adults. No doubt there is wide variation in the extent to which such people consider themselves outsiders or would be considered outsiders by their readers. It seems likely that this group is smaller than Cell A, simply because people who actually study religion tend to be those who believe it is important.

Those who truly believe religion is the opiate of the people may be busy studying things they think are more important—such as corporate capitalism or new media. Most do not spend a lot of time looking at religion. People who have no emotional connection (positive, negative or even ambivalent) to religion may also be less likely to have an intellectual connection. It particularly does not seem likely that there is a body of critical work produced by people in this cell. Commenting on Durkheim, an atheist who “provided the classic articulation of pro-religiousness”, Smilde and May point out that there is no one-to-one correspondence between positive evaluations of religion and a scholar’s own religious identity (Smilde and May, 2010: 6). ² Perhaps the significant factor is that disciplinary practices, including the methodological and rhetorical ones discussed below, provide a set of taken for granted assumptions about the utility of the dominant religion. These assumptions are so strong that many researchers who work within them will posit positive evaluations, without examining their own standpoints. It may be also be the case that there is a tradition of critique or even occasional exposes by outsiders, but that for various reasons those works do not become a part of what we inside the discipline read and cite.

Cell B: Marginal religions studied by natives

Doubly marginalized, accounts of religions outside of the dominant groups—sects, cults, foreign religions—by natives or adherents have frequently been treated with suspicion, although there are certainly exceptions. The issue of adherents studying the religions they practice is a complicated one. On the one hand, they are arguably well informed about the culture of the group and can ask good questions, based on their insider knowledge. In the 1998 re-issue of his book, Synagogue Life, Samuel Heilman argues for the benefits of beginning his study as a native, but then being able to use his training as a disciplined researcher to call into question what he had previously taken for granted in order write an ethnography that insiders would recognize and outsiders would find useful. Although Heilman is a native, he is also constrained by disciplinary practices. Fred Kniss’s (1997) study of conflict within the peace churches uses his insider knowledge of Mennonite history and culture to situate his case study of conflict in an unexpected location. While we learn about disputes over dress codes, congregational authority and religious practices, the study is not so much about religion as it is about larger questions regarding processes of conflict and social change.

Sometimes natives studying their own traditions bring agendas that are different from those of the outsiders. In her review of Ogbu Kalu’s African Pentecostalism, referenced above, Jane Soothill conveys her appreciation for the text, yet at the same time has difficulty locating his work in the scholarly arena. Kalu himself sees his project as distinct from the secular western social science that has dominated the field, and claims his work is “confessional.” Soothill’s conclusion describes it as “prescriptive” and a “Pentecostal wishlist” (Soothill, 2013: 132−133).

Another complication for adherents is that they may be members of or closer to one part of the sect than another. They might reflect the views of one side of a conflict, or of particular groups such as elite males rather than young people or elderly non-elite females. ³ Such partisanship needs not discredit the work, however. In fact, it is one way that research critical of a religion comes into the discipline. A reader of Nancy Ammerman’s Baptist Battles (1990), for example, is quite aware of the author’s sympathies with the losing side, yet that does not diminish the power of her analysis of the conflict.

Cell D: Marginal religions studied by non-adherents

Cell D includes all the research done on sects and cults by individuals who are not members of the groups they study. There is less research in this category than in Category A, but it presents some interesting issues for our consideration. “Sects” and “cults” are both terms that have been used in the sociology of religion to designate religions that exist in tension with the dominant society. Adherents differentiate themselves from those around them by their beliefs and practices. This presence of tension has to a considerable extent shaped sociological work on marginal religions. For sociologists, sects are splinter movements that originate when leaders or small groups of people break away from a dominant religion (a denomination or the established church) seeking purer or more radical religious expression. Sects maintain high boundaries and claim an exclusive truth. Sociologists have different interpretations of how cults differ from sects. Some argue that both separate themselves from the dominant culture, and that the main difference is origination. Richardson (1993) argues that while sects break away from another religion, cults can be newly invented, or, as was the case with some of the “new religions” of the 1960s and 1970s, newly imported from other countries with little or no previous presence in the US. For others, the distinction lies in sects having formal organizational structures, whereas the essence of the cult is an individual’s religious virtuosity and the relationship between the followers and the leaders (Campbell, 1977). Another usage focuses on the degree to which the religious organization sees itself as uniquely legitimate with an exclusive truth (Robertson, 1970). Sects are exclusive, demanding that their adherents remove themselves from the broader culture and seek the true path among the believers. In this view, cult membership, however, can exist alongside continuing involvement with mainstream religion or other practices. Following analysis of what we know about the ancient mystery cults, this usage understands cults as embracing views and practices that are in tension with the dominant culture, but not as taking an exclusive stance so that a person can be a member of culturally dominant religion and also engage in cultic practices, focusing on healing or spiritual enlightenment (McGuire, 2002: 157−158). ⁴ In popular usage, calling a group a cult has been so negative that some sociologists argued for avoiding using it entirely, instead talking about “new religious movements” or NRMs (Barker, 1986; Lewis, 1995).

The 1960s and 1970s saw the growth of a visible presence of new religious movements in the US and Western Europe. In the popular view, some of the movements were viewed as coercive and dangerous, believed to gain membership by “brainwashing” naïve recruits from among the young adults drawn to the counterculture. An active deprogramming industry developed. Some deprogrammers kidnapped converts and then submitted them to coercive therapy regimes to get them to drop their allegiance. Psychologists whose encounters were likely to be with people who had unresolved problems with their experiences (and/or parents who were unhappy about their children’s choice) focused on the negative effects of cult membership often in alarming and highly publicized writings.

Sociologists and scholars in religious studies were more likely to compare membership in groups such as the Hare Krishna or Moonies with joining a Catholic religious order, and to normalize participation. ⁵ In relation to negative depictions in the media and from the psychologists, sociologists tended to defend the new religious movements. Drawing parallels to marriage, some sociologists focused on members’ choice to join, and also that members who were dissatisfied could, and did, leave (Wright, 1987). In some cases, scholars became advocates, for example, testifying in child custody cases reporting a lack of harm in raising children in the environment of a new religious movement (Richardson, 2006). Even in disastrous events such as Jonestown or the Branch Davidian tragedy, sociologists recognized abuses among the leadership, but they also noted the impact of a group’s existence in the broad context of hostility, and argued that media stereotypes fueled government interventions that exacerbated the negative outcomes (Hall, 1987; Lewis, 1995).

In this area of research, researchers who were not themselves members did implicitly and sometimes explicitly support and defend the groups they studied. But arguably this stance has a different meaning when the religions being defended are themselves marginal. In cases where the religion is not mainstream religion or part of the dominant culture, normalizing cults or sects could involve an implicit or even explicit critique of the dominant culture. Furthermore, without necessarily evaluating the marginal religions themselves, social science research repeatedly confirmed that indeed the public perception of cults is negative (e.g. Bromley and Breschel, 1992; Olson, 2006; Pfeifer, 1992). That negative perception shaped even the terms that sociologists used to classify these religions. A popular textbook argued that the environment for new religions is so hostile that even using the word “cult” could contribute to harm and constituted an ethical breach (Christiano et al., 2002).

In a context where sociologists were defending marginal religion against popular attacks, it was initially difficult to get a hearing for sociological work that was actually critical of sects and cults. When feminist researchers began to uncover stories of sexual abuse of female devotees by leaders, for example, they had to figure out how to frame their critical concerns in ways that would not exacerbate generalized biases against cults and sects (Goldman, 1999; Jacobs, 1989). One form that criticism of marginal religion could take is separating out criticism of the leaders (who may be guilty of abuses or even criminal charges) from criticism of followers. It can be difficult to do that, however, without making the followers look simply like dupes and losers. Criticisms of the marginal religion can also be coupled with criticism of the dominant culture. In studies of Jonestown, a case with a clearly negative outcome, for example, some researchers described the deviant activities of Jim Jones, but also emphasized the desperate conditions of the followers, many of whom were poor, minority women, and children before joining the movement. These analyses document racial tensions in California, and they criticize society’s failures and point to the larger society’s responsibility for the vulnerable condition of those who joined Jones’s movement (Hall, 1987). Criticism of Jones and his movement are also placed in a critical analysis of a larger context. In cases where the religion is not mainstream religion or part of the dominant culture, researchers position themselves in relation to both the sect or cult, and the dominant culture.

In a critical evaluation of research in the New Religious Movement tradition, Marion Goldman called attention to a selection bias in this body of work. She notes that “groups experiencing significant tension and overt hostility with their host societies have received disproportionate popular and scholarly attention over the last four decades (Goldman, 2006: 88). She contends that the concentration on violent and apocalyptic cults has limited attention paid to novel religions and their forms of accommodation to the dominant society. A shift away from focusing on the sects and cults that exist in the greatest degree of tension could have an impact on when and how sociologists act as advocates for marginal religions.