The Radical Resurgence

A Sociological Examination of the Traditional Elements of Religion

Religion comes first as a family or clan or personal endeavor to win the services of supernatural force in situations not otherwise controllable. Out of this endeavor a priestly caste comes into being and the gods are born. The recognized existence of specialists in the manipulation of the gods becomes the point of departure for a new system of relationships, a new mode of association between men and gods. This new system constitutes a church. It is a separate and distinct institution of society. It has its own traditions, its own learning and its own scheme of education for transmitting its knowledge and training its generations of experts. It has its own household and its own household economy. It bears the same relation to the rest of the community as any other institution seeking to live and grow in and with the complex striving disorder of works and beliefs we call civilization.

Since the Protestant Reformation in Europe, churches have multiplied and their importance has decreased. The Reformation was itself postulated on the principle that the relation between a man and his gods — or at least their revealed word — was primary and direct. It repudiated the well- known doctrine of Roman Catholicism that only through the mediation of a church, i.e., through the intervention of professional mediators, can a man establish communication with his gods…. Nevertheless, the institutional habit is so deeply ingrained in the social inheritance of the moderns that a religion without an institutional setting is difficult to conceive….

So far as religion exercises a recognizable modifying influence upon society, it does so through the medium of churches. Let us, then, inspect the general structure of the church, and get a view of its anatomy. On the first appearance the institution, however small and poor the example may be, looks pretty complicated.