Item Details

Granulated Faith-Holding: Examples from the Vocation of Science (Max Weber, Edward Shils, David Martin)

Issue: Vol 18 No. 3 (2015)

Journal: Implicit Religion

Subject Areas: Religious Studies

DOI: 10.1558/imre.v18i3.28053

Abstract:

The contention here is that however firmly faiths are formally promulgated in creeds and public declarations, there exist innumerable “granulated” ways in which they are ‘held’ by groups and individuals. There is little published research work on granulated faith-holding, particularly on informal and implicit calibrations of shared and multi-faith frameworks of conviction and commitment in relation to the structuration of faith traditions. Building on the work of Bailey, Schnell and Francis, in particular, the concept of “traditioning” is introduced to address the missing “historical” dimension to theorizing in this field. Three ideal-typical modes of granulated faith-holding are constructed: monist, dualist and pluralist, and explored in the context of the critical rational Wertfreiheit vocational scientific tradition. Key biographies of three major contributors to the sociological study of religion, culture and society—Max Weber, Edward Shils and David Martin—are employed as source materials for three contrasting cameos of granulated scientific vocational faith-holding. As granulated faith-holding is likely to be evident within other domains of culture and society, such as, for example, religion, politics, intimate relations, and “fanships” in sport, élite and popular culture, the article concludes with some general lines of application of the theoretical framework formulated here.

Author: William J. F. Keenan

View Original Web Page

References :

Abel, Theodore. 1948. “The Operation Called Verstehen.” American Journal of Sociology 54(3): 211–218. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/220318


Allport, Gordon W. 1950. The Individual and His Religion: a Psychological Interpretation. Oxford: Macmillan.


Anderson, Benedict. 1991. [1983]. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.


Archer, Margaret, S. 1988. Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


Bailey, Edward. 1995. “Let’s Listen to the Natives.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34(3): 391–392. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/1386888


———. 2012. “‘Implicit Religion?’: What Might That Be?” Implicit Religion 15(2): 195–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v15.i2.15481


Bailey, Stephen D. 1998. “Sacred.” In Encyclopedia of Religion and Society, edited by William H. Swatos, Jr., 443–445. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.


Batson, C. Daniel, Patricia A. Schoenrade, W. Larry Ventis. 1993. Religion and the Individual: A Socio-Psychological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


Bauman, Zygmund. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity.


Bell, Daniel. 1977. “The Return of the Sacred: The Argument on the Future of Religion.” British Journal of Sociology 28 (4): 419–449. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/589420


Bellah, Robert N., Richard Marsden, William Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Steven Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.


Belzen, Jacob A. and Anton, Geels, eds. 2009. Autobiography and the Psychological Study of Religious Lives. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.


Berger, Peter L. 1991. [1967]. The Sacred Canopy. Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books.


———. 1970. A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural. London: Allen Lane.


———. ed., 2010. Between Relativism and Fundamentalism: Religious Resources for a Middle Position. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.


Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books.


Brubaker, Rogers. 1984. The Limits of Rationality: An Essay on the Social and Moral Thoughts of Max Weber. London: Allen and Unwin.


Bucaille, Maurice. 2003. The Bible, The Qur’an, and Science: The Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of Modern Knowledge. Elmhurst, NY: Tahrike Tarsile Qur’an.


Colorado, Carlos D. and Justin D. Klassen, eds. 2014. Aspiring to Fullness in a Secular Age: Essays on Religion and Theology in the Work of Charles Taylor. Notre Dame, IL: Notre Dame Press.


de Chardin, Teilhard. 2001. [1960]. The Divine Milieu. New York: Harper Perennial.


Donahue, Michael J. 1985. “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Quest-Religiousness: Review and Meta- analysis.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48(2): 400–419. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.48.2.400


Durkheim, Émile. 1893. De La Division du Travail Social. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.


———. 1995. [1912]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press.


Elias, Norbert. 1971. “Sociology of Knowledge: New Perspectives. Part Two.” Sociology 5(3): 355–370. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/003803857100500304


Epstein, Joseph. 2010. “The Long Unhappy Life of Saul Bellow.” The New Criterion. December, 4–12.


Feyerabend, Paul K. 1978. Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. London: New Left Books.


———. 1999. For and Against Method. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.


Flanagan, Kieran. 2001. “The Sociologist as Liturgical Critic: David Martin’s Witness.” In Restoring the Image: Essays on Religion and Society in Honour of David Martin, edited by Andrew Walker and Martyn Percy, 151–175. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.


Fowler, James W.1981. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. San Francisco, CA: Harper.


Francis, Leslie J. and Mandy Robbins. 2004. “Belonging without Believing: A Study in the Social Significance of Anglican Identity and Implicit Religion among 13-15 Year-old Males.” Implicit Religion 7(1): 37–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.7.1.37.36037


Francis, Leslie J., Mandy Robbins and Emyr Williams. 2006. “The Unconventional Beliefs of Conventional Churchgoers: The Matter of Luck.” Implicit Religion 9(3): 305–314. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v9i3.305


Friedland, Roger. 2013. “The Gods of Institutional Life: Weber’s Value Spheres and the Practice of Polytheism.” Critical Research on Religion 1(1): 15–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/2050303213476104


Gadamer, Hans-Georg. 2004. Truth and Method. 2nd rev. edition. Translated by J. Weinsheimer and D. G. Marshall. New York: Crossroad.


Gellner, Ernest 2003. Postmodernism, Reason and Religion. London: Routledge.


Giddens, Antony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. London: Polity Press.


Gouldner, Alvin, W. 1973 [1962]. “Anti-Minotaur: The Myth of a Value-Free Sociology.” Social Problems 9(3): 199–213. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/799230


Healey, Denis. 1989. The Time of My Life. London: Michael Joseph.


Heelas, Paul, Scott Lash and Paul Morris. 1995. Detraditionalization. London: Wiley-Blackwell.


Hervieu-Léger, Danièlle. 2000. Religion as a Chain of Memory. Cambridge: Polity.


Hesse, Mary B. 1966. Models and Analogies in Science, revised ed.; Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.


Hobart, Mark. 1985. “Anthropos Through the Looking-glass: or How to Teach the Balinese to Bark.” In Reason and Morality, edited by Joanna Overing, 103–133. London and New York: Tavistock Publications. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203451533_chapter_6


Hochschild, Adam. 2011. To End All Wars: A Story of Protest and Patriotism in the First World War. London: Pan Books.


Hochschild, Arlie, Russell. 1979. “Emotion, Work, Feeling Rules and Social Structure.” American Journal of Sociology 85(3): 551–575. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/227049


Horton, Robert and Ruth Finnegan, eds. 1973. Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies. London: Faber and Faber.


Hountondji, Paulin J. 1983. African Philosophy: Myth and Reality. London: Hutchinson.


Hunter, Rodney. 2004. “Implicit Religion as a Commitment Process: Insights from Brickman and Bailey.” Implicit Religion 7(1): 20–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.7.1.20.36040


Jaspers, Karl. 1989. On Max Weber. New York: Paragon House.


Josselson, Ruthellen. 2009. “Afterword: Reflections of a Narrative Researcher.” In Autobiography and the Psychological Study of Religious Lives, edited by Jacob A. Belzen and Antoon Geels, 369–375. Amsterdam: Rodopi.


Keenan, William J. F. 2002. “Post-Secular Sociology: Effusions of Religion in Late Modern Settings.” European Journal of Social Theory 5(2): 279–290. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/13684310222225450


———. 2003. “Rediscovering the Theological in Sociology: Foundation and Possibilities.”Theory, Culture and Society 20(1): 19–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263276403020001919


———. 2014. “Believing, Belonging, Begatting: The Implicit Sapiential Faith of Academia.” Implicit Religion 17(1): 11–46. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v17i1.11


———. 2015. “Recycling Religion: Lance Armstrong”s Postmodern Spirituality of Suffering and Survivorship.” Journal of Contemporary Religion 30(1): 107–123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2015.986981


———. 2016. “The Phoney Holy War: A Critique of the Implicit Ideology of the Spiritual Revolution. Nine Fallacies in Search of a Counter-Revolution.” Implicit Religion 19(1) [forthcoming].


Kellert, Stephen H., Helen E. Longino and C. Kenneth Waters, eds. 2006. Scientific Pluralism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.


Koestler, Arthur ed. 1949. The God That Failed. New York: Columbia University Press.


Kuhn, Thomas S. 2000. The Road Since Structure. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.


Lakatos, Imre. 1978. The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes: Philosophical Papers. Volume 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621123


Levi-Strauss, Claude. 1968. The Raw and the Cooked. New York: Harper.


Little, Andrew G. 1914. Roger Bacon: Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press.


Macpherson, Crawford Brough. 1962. The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: From Hobbes to Locke. Oxford: Clarendon Press.


Mannheim, Karl. 1968. [1936]. Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. Translated by Louis Wirth and Edward Shils. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.


Martin, Bernice. 1981. A Sociology of Contemporary Cultural Change. Oxford: Blackwell.


Martin, David. 1965. Pacifism: A Historical and Sociological Study. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.


———. 1969. The Religious and the Secular. London: Routledge and Keegan Paul.


———. 1973. Tracts against the Times. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press.


———. 1978. A General Theory of Secularization. Oxford: Blackwell.


———. 1980. The Breaking of the Image: A Sociology of Christian Theory and Practice. Oxford: Blackwell.


———. 1990. Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Blackwell.


———. 1996. Forbidden Revolutions: Pentecostalism in Latin America and Catholicism in Eastern Europe. London: SPCK.


———. 1997. Does Christianity Cause War? Oxford: Clarendon.


———. 2002a. Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish. Oxford: Blackwell.


———. 2002b. Christian Language and its Mutations: Essays in Sociological Understanding. Aldershot: Ashgate.


———. 2005. On Secularization: Towards a Revised General Theory. Aldershot: Ashgate.


———. 2008. Sacred History and Sacred Geography: Spiritual Journeys in Time and Space. Vancouver, BC: Regent College Publishing.


———. 2011. The Future of Christianity: Reflections on Violence and Democracy, Religion and Secularization. Aldershot: Ashgate.


———. 2013. The Education of David Martin: The Making of an Unlikely Sociologist. London: SPCK.


———. 2014. Religion and Power: No Logos without Mythos. Farnham: Ashgate.


———. ed. 1969. Anarchy and Culture: The Problem of the Contemporary University. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.


Masood, Ehsan. 2010. Science and Islam: A History. Toronto, ON: Totem Books.


McGuire, Tammy. 2010. “From Emotions to Spirituality as Contemporary Concerns: “Spiritual Labour” as the Commodification, Codification and Regulation of Organizational Members” Spirituality.” Management Communication Quarterly 24(1): 74–103. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0893318909351432


Mendelson, Charlotte. 2013. Almost English. London: Mantle.


Merton, Robert K. 1973. [1942]. “The Normative Structure of Science.” In The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, edited by Robert K. Merton. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.


Mitroff, Ian I. 1974. “Norms and Counter-Norms in a Select Group of the Apollo Moon Scientists: A Case Study of the Ambivalence of Scientists.” American Sociological Review 39(4): 579–595.


Mulvihill, Margaret. 1989. Charlotte Despard: A Biography. London: Pandora.


Munz, Peter. 2004. Beyond Wittgenstein’s Poker: New Light on Popper and Wittgenstein. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.


Musil, Robert. 1955. [1930]. The Man Without Qualities: A Sort of Introduction the Like of It Now Happens. London: Seeker and Warburg.


Newman, John Henry. 1885. An Essay on the Development of Doctrine. London: Longman Green.


Oakes, Guy. 2003. “Max Weber on Value Rationality and Value Spheres.” Journal of Classical Sociology 3 (1): 27–45. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2094423


Pärna, Karen. 2012. ““Spiritual Labour”: Working on the Spiritual Marketplace and Producing Spirituality.” Implicit Religion 15(4): 395–405. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v15i4.395


Parsons, Talcott. 1951. The Social System. New York: Free Press.


Polkinghorne, John. 2000. Faith, Science and Understanding. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.


Popper, Karl R. 1961. The Poverty of Historicism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.


———. 1963. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.


———. 1972. Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach. Oxford: Oxford University Press.


———. 1976. Unended Quest: An Intellectual Biography. London: Routledge.


Radkau, Joachim. 2011. Max Weber: A Biography. Translated by Patrick Camiller. Cambridge: Polity Press.


Ricoeur, Paul. 1995. “Intellectual Autobiography.” In The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, The Library of Living Philosophers Volume XXII, edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn. Chicago, IL: Open Court.


Riis, Ole. 2012. “The Emergence of Post-dogmatic Religion.” Implicit Religion 15(4): 423–438. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v15i4.423


Rilke, Rainer Maria. 2011. [1908]. Letters to a Young Poet. Translated by Stephen Mitchell. New York: Knopf.


Rokeach, Milton. 1951. “Toward the Scientific Evaluation of Social Attitudes and Ideologies.” Journal of Psychology 31: 97–104. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00223980.1951.9712795


Russell, B. 1926. The Danger of Creed Wars. London: Fabian Society.


Schleiermacher, Friedrich D. 1996. [1799]. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultural Despisers. Translated by Richard Crouter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511814969


Schnell, Tatjana. 2009. [2004]. Implizite Religiosität: Zur Psychologie des Lebenssinns. 2nd ed. Lengerisch: Pabst.


———. 2011. “Experiential Validity: Psychological Approaches to the Sacred.” Implicit Religion 14(4): 387–404. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v14i4.387


———. 2012. “On Method.” Implicit Religion 15(4): 407–422. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v15i4.407


Schnell, Tatjana and William. J. F. Keenan. 2011. “Meaning-Making in an Atheist World.” Archive for the Psychology of Religion 33: 55–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/157361211X564611


———. 2013. “The Construction of Atheist Spirituality: A Survey-Based Approach.” In Constructs of Meaning and Religious Transformation, edited by Herman Westerink, 101–118. Vienna: Vienna University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.14220/9783737000994.101


Schroeder, Ralph. 1992. Max Weber and the Sociology of Culture. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.


Shils, Edward. 1956. The Torment of Secrecy: The Background and Critique of American Security and Policies. Chicago, IL: Dee.


———. 1961. The Intellectual Between Tradition and Modernity: The Indian Situation. New York: Mouton.


———. 2006. Tradition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.


———. 2006. A Fragment of a Sociological Autobiography: The History of My Pursuit of a Few Ideas. Edited by Steven Grosby. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.


Smart, Ninian. 1996. Dimensions of the Sacred. London: Harper Collins.


Taylor, Charles. 1995. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.


Ter Borg, Meerten B. 2012. “Beyond.” Implicit Religion 15(4): 571–576. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/imre.v15i4.571


Waters, Anne, ed. 2004. American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays. Oxford: Blackwell.


Watson, Paul J., Ronald J. Morris and Ralph W. Hood Jr. 1992. “Quest and Identity within Religious Ideological Surrounds.” Journal of Psychology and Theology 20(4): 376–388.


Weber, Marianne. 1975. Max Weber: A Biography. Translated by Harry Zohn. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers.


Weber, Max. 1946. [1919]. “Politik als Beruf,” Gesammelte Politische Schriften (Muenchen, l921), 396–450. Originally a speech at Munich University, 1918, published in 1919 by Duncker and Humboldt, Munich. In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 77–128. New York: Oxford University Press.


———. 1992. [1920] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Talcott Parsons. London: Routledge.


———. 2002. [1920] The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Translated by Stephen Kalberg. Oxford: Blackwell.


———. 1946. [1922]. “Science as a Vocation.” In From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited and translated by Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, 129–156. New York: Oxford University Press.


———. 1949. “Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy.” In The Methodology of the Social Sciences, edited by E. A. Shils and H. A. Finch. New York: The Free Press.


Wilcox, Melissa M. 2002. “When Sheila is a Lesbian: Religious Individualism Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Christians.” Sociology of Religion 63(4): 497–514. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3712304