294. Glock, Charles Y. "The Role of Deprivation in the Origin and Evolution of Religious Groups." In Religion and Social Conflict edited by R. Lee and M. Marty. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1964.
In sociology there is a general recognition of two major types of religious groups, following Weber and Troelsch: the church and the sect. The former is essentially conservative and in accord with its social context. Sects oppose the world, lack professional clergy, are fundamentalist in nature and demand conversion as prerequisite for membership. Neibuhr noted the dialectic relationship between the two types: as churches get along by going along, their compromises alienate some members who then seek out and construct a more intransigent stand. These people are economically deprived, and their membership in the new group allows them to compensate by feeling spiritually privileged. The inherent "puritanism" (p. 25) of the sect's elite and its accompanying ideology of middle-class values leads the membership to improve their socio-economic status; the sect becomes a church and the process eventually begins again.
Glock notes that not all religious movements arise in this form. Some have begun as full-blown churches, and some are middle-class ab ovo. Further, this scheme does not account for movements which are not schismatic but draw their inspiration from foreign sources.
Glock identifies five types of deprivation: economic, social, organismic, ethical and psychic. Economic deprivation may be judged subjectively or objectively. Social deprivation refers to structural social injustice, like that resulting from racism, sexism, etc. Organismic deprivation refers to poor health. Ethical deprivation arises when old categories and values no longer sustain a meaning for life and is relatively independent of the other types. It may commonly be found among the healthy well-off. Psychic deprivation is a rather indistinct category, arising from social deprivation, wherein one seeks a new philosophy "for its own sake" (p. 28), not for ethical prescriptions.
Deprivation is necessary but not sufficient for the founding of a movement. It must also be [seen to be] shared, it must lack [satisfactory] institutional means of abatement, and it must evoke leaders. Where the deprivation is economic, social or organismic, the solutions will tend to be secular unless the deprivation is inaccurately perceived [why?] or where other methods of redress are not available. Ethical and psychic deprivations inherently demand some transhuman authority for their resolution. Religious responses to economic deprivation are potentially revolutionary but in practice are only symbolically so. [This is debatable; Marxism, for example, has attributes of religion despite its overt rejection of the principle. Historical determinism is just as much a transcendent guiding principle as God is.]
Social deprivation tends to evoke partial reform, not total revolution. Religious movements concerned with healing tend to have it only as one aspect of a larger program. [This all seems to depend on an over-narrow view of the nature of religion; it seems implicit here that religious principles are necessarily transcendent, rather than immanent]. Glock notes the important point that deprivation need not be present, but only anticipated, to provoke movements. This accounts, e.g., for the NRA's political activism in the face of a threat that is only potential. Religions, it is suggested, do not resolve deprivations but compensate for them, and this is a valuable service, because unresolved deprivation otherwise leads to "self-destructive" behavior (p. 36) [and, it might well be added, religions relieve societies of the necessity of reform].
295. ÷÷÷. "Images of 'God,' Images of Man, and the Organization of Social Life." Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 11 (1), 1972: 1-15.
A very broad historical overview, based on Weber and Durkheim, of the changing ideological conceptions of God in the West and their bearings on social structure and its legitimation. Not a very interesting or helpful summary, except perhaps for its argument that Marxism, despite its atheism, is in fact a religion by virtue of its teleological historical determinism. Glock advances the dubious claim that science will replace old images of God and the just society, acknowledging implicitly at least that this is not science's job.
[Glock is certainly correct in his rather obvious assertion that science has eroded, for some people at least, the older capitalist view of man's ultimate responsibility for his own fate. But science cannot advance a new view that will meet the criteria for a viable social ideology. Indeed the scientific ideology is one that precludes its formation of any social ideology. The latter must be based on some view of more or less immutable reality as the basis for a traditionally validated predictability in society, but science's primary tenets are the immanence of change and the constant skeptical appraisal of received doctrine, especially within its own domain. This does not, of course, preclude science, or at least certain scientists, from making pronouncements about immutable truths, but, by its own doctrine, science is incapable of becoming a closed system of thought in which every anomaly is capable of explanation in terms of the system. If it fails to remain open to revision, science changes its nature and becomes a different order of poetry; it becomes, in fact, a religion, and the two enterprises are fundamentally different views of the cosmos.]
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