The Social Adaptation of Marginal Religious Movements in America

Harper, Charles L.; Beau, Bryan F. Le

doi:10.2307/3712138

Cited by 12 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Any group departing from the status quo on claims of moral principle runs the risk of giving this impression. Marginal religious movements elicit resistance by threatening notions about how people ought to live (see Nancy Tatum Ammerman’s testimony in the case of the Waco Branch Davidians, 1993), and by calling into question, in their behavior and structure, the legitimacy of established values (Harper & Le Beau, 1993). Even if the actual morality of their choice is debatable, the very fact that do-gooders claim to base their behavior on moral grounds is an implicit indictment of anyone taking a different path, because moral dictates are by definition universal (Frankena, 1973, p. 25) and apply to everyone (Turiel, 1983, p. 36).…”

Section: Anticipated Moral Reproachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do-Gooder Derogation

Minson

Monin

2011

Social Psychological and Personality Science

294

120

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Two studies document do-gooder derogation (the putting down of morally motivated others), by studying the reactions of meat eaters to vegetarians. In Study 1, 47% of participants freely associated negative terms with vegetarians and the valence of the words was negatively related to how much participants expected vegetarians to see themselves as morally superior to nonvegetarians. In Study 2, we manipulated the salience of anticipated moral reproach by varying whether participants reported these expectations before or after rating vegetarians. As predicted, participants rated vegetarians less positively after imagining their moral judgment of meat eaters. These studies empirically document the backlash reported by moral minorities and trace it back to resentment by the mainstream against feeling morally judged.

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Section: Anticipated Moral Reproachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do-Gooder Derogation

Minson

Monin

2011

Social Psychological and Personality Science

294

120

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“…In America and England, by conS trast, the Church is an outsider. The American Church is an immigrant institution in an historically Protestant culture, and up until the 1960s at least, enjoyed little public legitamacy (see Harper and LeBeau 1993). The Catholic Church in England is in the shadow of the formally established Protestant church (Hornsby-Smith 1987).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This study's first hypothesis assumes that, as argued by Harper and LeBeau (1993), in countries where the Church is an outsider it is confronted with greater external pressure to legitimate its institutional structure and practicesv This means that the American and English bishops, relative to their Polish and Irish counterparts, are likely to make a stronger attempt to present the Church as a "normal" political actor accommodative of secular issues (see Cook, Jelen, and Wilcox 1992: 10). One way of achieving this goal is to pay greater attention to scientific reasoning, and another is to acknowledge the autonomy of legislation from Catholic morality.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural Differences in the Abortion Discourse of the Catholic Church: Evidence from Four Countries

Dillon

1996

Sociology of Religion

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Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.Oxford University Press and Association for the Sociology of Religion, Inc. are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Sociology of Religion. This essay investigates the cultural themes used by the Catholic Church in arguing against abortion in four different countries: Ireland, Poland, the V.S., and England 69 Wales. The focus is whether the Church differentiates its use of cultural arguments in accordance with its insider/oatsider institutional status} or the conteste(l nature of the ah;rtion policySmaking environment. The prevnS lence of womenHoriented themes is also explored. I find that in each count7y the Church draws more heavily on cmltural than on doctrinai sources of legitimation, arul exhibits a strong similanty in the sorts of cultural arguments used. There is a significant difference in the pattemed appeal to national identity in the U.S. and Poland, and its absence in England and Irekmd. Increased political sensitivity to pluralism and the social construction of cultural identity makes it difficult nowadays to legitimate institutional practices by invoking a pre-political (Offe 1984: 210) discourse of universal morality, or by appealing to collective national values (see Bellah 1975; Demerath and Williams 1985). Yet, the Catholic Church's opposition to abortion continues to be grounded in natural law and universally binding moral principles. The centerpiece of the Church's position on abortion is its belief that the natural right to life of the fetus is absolute, fundamental, and non-negotiable. Although the Church construes its anti-abortion position as doctrinally fixed, the same does not apply, however, to how it presents its teaching to the public.We already know from previous research that the Church establishes legitimacy for its stance on artificial contraception, homosexuality (Kowalewski 1993), and, in America, on abortion (Dillon 1995), economic justice, and nuclear disarmament (see Burns 1992; Cheney 1991), by combining doctrinal with culturally salient, secular arguments. Does this strategy characterize, however, the Church's teaching on abortion in countries other than the U.S., and does it result in cross-national differences in the Church's discourse on an issue that is central to its institutional identity?The Western trend of increased liberalization in abortion attitudes and laws since the 1960s has been interpreted as reflecting a postmaterial cultural shift

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“…But scholars, such as Kevin Christiano, William Swatos, and Peter Kivisto, restrict its uses by modem social scientists in academic literature, calling it an ethical breach (Christiano et al 2002, p. 11). As such, terms, such as alternative religious movements, emergent religions, marginal religious movements, and new religious movements (NRMs), have been suggested to take the place of cult (Harper and Le Beau 1993). Despite the critiques leveled against the use of the term, this study finds cult useful to explain the Majimaji situation and how local religion, Christianity, and Islam are intertwined in matters of violence and the remedying of the German colonialism in Tanzania.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Cults, Crosses, and Crescents: Religion and Healing from Colonial Violence in Tanzania

Rushohora

Silayo²

2019

Religions

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More often than not, Africans employed local religion and the seemingly antagonistic faith of Christianity and Islam, to respond to colonial exploitation, cruelty, and violence. Southern Tanzanians’ reaction during the Majimaji resistance presents a case in point where the application of local religion, Christianity, and Islam for both individual and community spiritual solace were vivid. Kinjekitile Ngwale—the prominent war ritualist—prophesied that a concoction (Maji) would turn the German’s bullets to water, which in turn would be the defeat of the colonial government. Equally, Christian and Islamic doctrines were used to motivate the resistance. How religion is used in the post-colonial context as a cure for maladies of early 20th-century colonialism and how local religion can inspire political change is the focus of this paper. The paper suggests that religion, as propagated by the Majimaji people for the restoration of social justice to the descendant’s communities, is a form of cultural heritage playing a social role of remedying colonial violence.

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The Social Adaptation of Marginal Religious Movements in America

Cited by 12 publications

References 27 publications

Do-Gooder Derogation

Do-Gooder Derogation

Cultural Differences in the Abortion Discourse of the Catholic Church: Evidence from Four Countries

Cults, Crosses, and Crescents: Religion and Healing from Colonial Violence in Tanzania

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