Sectarianism, World View, and Anomie

Sectarianism is often viewed as reaction to anomie due to economic deprivation or migration. It is argued here that rather than resulting from anomie per se, sectarianism reflects a particular world view, which is formed by individuals from the lower classes and rural areas and having lower levels of reading. All data are from Southern Appalachian Presbyterians. One genre of sociologists of religion interprets religion as an expression of world view. Geertz (1968:406) has written that "in religious belief and practice a people's style of life . . . is rendered intellectually reasonable; it is shown to represent a way of life ideally adapted to the world as it 'really' . . . is." Bellah (1968:413) states that religion provides an "individual or a group with the most general model that it has of itself and its world...." It will be the view here that religious ideology is related to social class and additional variables involved in the formation of one's world view. Of special interest to Weber (1963) was the prevalence of magical beliefs and practices among peasants in contrast to the less traditional urbanites. Today's counterpart of magical beliefs and practices for rural, lower-class Americans is sectarianism, which can be conceived as one particular orientation toward reality, tending toward a Hobbesian view of life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." A more Old Testament view of God emerges here, a conception of God as wrathful and as righteous judge, rather than loving savior (see Brewer, 1962:205-207; Pearsall, 1959:106-126). Man's response is emotional and fatalistic; often backsliding, he is "saved" on occasions of revival. On the other hand, researchers have sometimes directly linked sectarianism with anomie. From a study of Puerto Rican migrants to New York City who attended store-front churches, Poblete and O'Dea (1960:25, reprinted in O'Dea, 1970) observed that "the sect represents a response of the restructuralization of religious attitudes and orientations in a condition of what Durkheim has called anomie." Suggesting that the sect resembles a quest for community, the authors interpreted the formation of sects as "a way out of anomie" (for additional assessments of the linkage between anomie and sectarianism, see Bell, 1957; Dean, 1968; Glock, 1964; Keedy, 1958). The strongest statement of this view of sectarianism was made by Holt (1940) who linked sectarianism with migration of rural people to the city and the resultant cultural shock. Dynes (1956:26), however, observed that Holt's cultural shock theory implies that sectarianism should be related to recent migration to the city. Finding no association between recency of migration and sectarianism, Dynes (1956:28) concluded that "the significance of sectarianism lies in its association with lower socioeconomic status" and that "rurality and migration are important only insofar as they are status indicators." Dynes (1956:26) reported that he drew his sample from the Columbus, Ohio, directory; and subsequently Glock and Stark (1965:189) have noted that the sampling frame was "biased against the geographically mobile and the lower classes." From a secondary analysis of data from earlier surveys by Lenski (1963) and Ford (1962), Nelsen and Whitt (1972) compared Southern migrants to Detroit with Southern [226] * The data presented here were collected in 1967 under a grant from the Boards of Christian Education of the United Presbyterian Church U.S.A. and the Presbyterian Church U.S. Thomas R. Ford and Earl D. C. Brewer kindly made available Southern Appalachian Studies data for use in preparing scales at a preliminary stage of this study. Mayer N. Zald, Leo Rigsby, and Anne K. Nelsen made helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.142 on Sun, 25 Sep 2016 04:49:14 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Sectarianism and Anomie / 227 Appalachians and nonmigrants residing in Detroit. They concluded that the migrant did not experience culture shock and turn to sectlike religious expressions. Instead, migrants fell midway between rural and urban residents on religious and anomie patterns. In sum, the research by Holt and by Poblete and O'Dea links sectarianism and disorganization, while the study by Dynes and the secondary analysis by Nelsen and Whitt seemingly deny this relationship; thus there would be considerable value in a more direct testing of the relationship. Rather than resulting from economic deprivation and a state of anomie per se, sectarianism is interpreted as a reflection of world view formed by individuals with limited, or simplistic, outlooks, i.e., from the lower classes and from rural areas. There is a correlation between religious ideology and life experiences, with sectarianism providing a simplistic interpretation of life as experienced by marginal members of society. To claim that sectarianism solely represents a way out of anomie or a reaction to migration and culture shock is to place undue emphasis upon the role of anomie in the development of sectarianism. Providing one interpretation of lower-class life which includes "a generally greater tendency to personal demoralization" (Mizruchi, 1964), sectarianism does place strong emphasis upon fatalism, however. For anomie to be the cause or to intervene in the process contributing to sectarianism, with the independent variables of class and residence controlled, the relationship between anomie and sectarianism should remain; and with anomie controlled, the relationship between class and residence and sectarianism should diminish. This is the relationship that will be tested in this paper. Instead, we expect to find reading level (being one measure of the individual's penchant for abstract conceptualizing) to act as an intervening variable, whereas anomie should not act in this fashion.