Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
A church is a religious group that accepts the social environment in which it exists, a sect is a religious group that rejects it. [6] [2] The church-sect typology and the notion of a church-sect continuum or movement from the sect to the church came under strong attack in the sociology of religion of the 1960s onwards.
Sociology of religion is the study of the beliefs, practices and organizational forms of religion using the tools and methods of the discipline of sociology.This objective investigation may include the use both of quantitative methods (surveys, polls, demographic and census analysis) and of qualitative approaches (such as participant observation, interviewing, and analysis of archival ...
Beckford is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Warwick, a Fellow of the British Academy, and a former president of both the Association for the Sociology of Religion and the International Society for the Sociology of Religion. He has authored or edited a dozen books about new religious movements and cult controversies and has ...
Religious persecution is the systematic oppression of an individual or a group of individuals as a response to their religious beliefs or affiliations or their lack thereof. The tendency of societies or groups within societies to alienate or repress different subcultures is a recurrent theme in human history.
In a commentary of the hadith Sahih Muslim, entitled al-Minhaj, the medieval Islamic scholar Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi stated that "one of the collective duties of the community as a whole (fard kifaya) is to lodge a valid protest, to solve problems of religion, to have knowledge of Divine Law, to command what is right and forbid wrong conduct ...
According to Marx, religion in this world of exploitation is an expression of distress and at the same time it is also a protest against the real distress. In other words, religion continues to survive because of oppressive social conditions. When this oppressive and exploitative condition is destroyed, religion will become unnecessary.
Cult is a term often applied to new religious movements and other social groups which have unusual, and often extreme, religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals.
Millenarianism or millenarism (from Latin millenarius 'containing a thousand' and -ism) is the belief by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which "all things will be changed". [1]