A Comparative Sociology of World Religions: Virtuosi, Priests, and Popular Religion

2. Religious Action: A Weberian Model

Religious Action A Weberian Model The comparative questions asked in this work require a conceptual framework that will be sensitive to differences across the world religions and between elites and masses within each religion but that will also be sufficiently broad to avoid one becoming lost in a multitude of differences and details. Most works in comparative religion have attempted to make sense of the complexity by breaking up each religion into several dimensions, such as beliefs, doctrines, myths, rituals, mysticism , and institutions. Many sociologists have followed such distinctions, but this has had the disadvantage of conceptualizing religious behavior in terms of dimensions that differ from the dimensions used in the analysis of nonreligious behavior. An alternative is to treat religious behavior as one form of action and to distinguish its dimensions in line with the dimensions of any action: goals, means, and conditions. This was the framework introduced by Max Weber, and considering the enormous influence that Weber’s works have had on sociology, it is surprising how few sociologists have adopted religious action as a framework. Max Weber: The Understanding and Dimensions of Religious Action Following Max Weber’s discussion of action, the aim here is an “interpretative understanding” and “causal explanation”1 of religious action. As in other forms of social action, actors in religious action attach subjective meanings to their behavior and take into account the behavior of others. There are many schema and theories of action, but their central components are in all important respects identical to those of Weber: the actor, who may be a person or collectivity; ends; means; and conditions. The ends, means, and conditions are understood here from the subjective 2 20 viewpoint of the actors. The end is the future state of affairs toward which actors understand their action to be oriented. The means are those objects, persons, groups, or processes that actors understand can be used or manipulated in the realization of their ends. The conditions are those objects, persons, groups, or processes that actors understand cannot be used or manipulated but that must be taken into account or addressed. The first task is to distinguish what is particular to the ends, means, and conditions of religious action that will make the term religious appropriate . Weber did not define a special category of “religious action,” but his typology of four ideal types of social action provides some clues of the directions to follow in establishing such a category.2 The first type, zweckrational, instrumentally or purposively rational social action, appears to have the least applicability to religious action. No end is sacred; every end competes with others in terms of their relative costs, benefits, and secondary consequences. The ends are of a this-worldly nature, and actions of this type are most likely to be found in the modern economic sphere. A clear distinction can be made between means and ends (this type is sometimes translated as means-ends rationality), and actors will apply what they consider the most efficient means in order to achieve a given end. The second type, wertrational, encompasses important types of religious action, but Weber’s formulation presents some ambiguity. In one formulation, no meaningful distinction exists between means and ends; action is performed as a value “for its own sake,” without reference to its consequences. A religious commandment or a good deed, for example, might be performed by actors who feel that they could not possibly act in another way. Weber implies, however, that means and ends can also be distinguished in this type as long as the end is regarded as absolute, to be pursued whatever the costs and regardless of the chances of success. Salvation in the world religions provides a clear example of an absolute end. It is typically believed that only certain means will achieve an absolute end, and in the case of salvation, religions stipulate particular paths as the only means of redemption. Some religions present a number of means to salvation that complement each other, and in such cases actors may consider them in terms of their relative importance or believe them to vary in appropriateness according to context. The third and fourth types of social action, the traditional and affectual , are both on the borderline of action because they are not meaningfully oriented in terms of conscious means and ends. Traditional action Religious Action | 21 in the sense of ingrained habit, which is un...