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

3. Elites and Masses: Max Weber, Weberian Scholars, and Marxist Analysis

Elites and Masses Max Weber, Weberian Scholars, and Marxist Analysis This chapter has two aims. The first is to present Weber’s comparisons of the world religions, systematized within the conceptual framework of religious action. The presentation is slanted in accordance with the major themes in this work that diverge from Weber’s own major organizing principles and questions. I am concerned far less than Weber with the effects of religious differences on practical behavior (this was, perhaps, his major organizing principle), and I make the differences between the elites and the masses, and the interaction between them, the most important focus. Weber’s analyses lead into the second aim of this chapter: to point to those “environments” of religious action that will contribute to an understanding and explanation of the similarities and differences of elite and popular patterns of religious action. Weber’s writings on the principal social carriers and organizations of the world religions are an important contribution to this endeavor, but just as in the previous chapter I drew on non-Weberian theoretical traditions to arrive at a more comprehensive scheme of religious action, so too in this chapter I draw on Marxian analyses of religion to strengthen the account of the social-structural factors that are relevant to explanations of the similarities and differences between elite and popular forms of religion. Max Weber: Patterns of Action in the World Religions Religious Goals The world religions differ in their emphases on and conceptions of salvation . The distinction between a salvational and nonsalvational religion 3 37 was sometimes confused in Weber’s writings with the distinction between ethical and magical religion, but he portrayed Confucianism as a religion with an ethic that knew nothing of salvation. Confucianism was concerned with the cultured person’s fate and self-perfection in this world. The ultimate aim of the Confucian was “only long life, health, and wealth in this world and beyond death the retention of his good name.”1 Taoism did include a salvational goal, the achievement of non-existence through union with the divine, but there remained a strong worldly orientation in Taoism, especially in its use of magical techniques and its emphasis on avoiding mortality in this world.2 Weber’s classification of Islam in this context is unclear: although it had salvational elements, it was primarily a religion of world adjustment that had, like Confucianism, a strong political component. With its emphasis on the holy war and its promises to warriors that they would enjoy paradise if they died in battle, Islam lacked a conception of ethical salvation .3 Judaism was a salvational religion, but Weber also emphasized its this-worldly character: the this-worldly promises of the Israelite prophets were contrasted with the Hellenic mysteries of the Orphic religion, with their promises of the beyond.4 Among those religions with an emphasis on salvation, a distinction can be made between those with a single and universal mode of salvation and those that limit the highest form of salvation to a religious elite. Weber distinguished among three aims of salvation in Hinduism: rebirth on earth or in paradise (as a god or near to one), immortality of the soul in various forms, and cessation of individual existence through unity with the divine. Insofar as the masses were concerned with salvation (and this was rarely the case), the best they could hope for was rebirth in a higher form. A person could be reborn in hell, but this was a temporary condition, for in contrast with Christianity, in Hinduism there was no eternal reward or punishment for deeds and omissions in this ephemeral life. The ultimate form of salvation, possible only for the virtuosos, was to escape from the wheel of meaningless deaths and reincarnations. This escape did not signify a rejection of suffering, sin, or an imperfect world but rather a rejection of the transitory nature of the world (including the world of gods). Despite its opposition to the caste system, Buddhism also made clearly drawn distinctions between the salvation aims of virtuosos and the masses. Whereas the virtuoso monks sought nirvana, the everlasting tranquillity of absolute annihilation, the laity sought rebirth in one of the transitory godly paradises.5 38 | Elites and Masses The monotheistic religions made no distinction between religious elites and the masses in the nature of the salvation that they might attain, but here also, in most religious contexts, salvation was...