318 Rhys H. Williams
can provide the comfort people need when they feel defeated, and gives them stories
to help convince them to keep on. For example, it was common in the Civil Rights
Movements for leaders – who were often clergy – to bolster morale with biblical stories
such as the Israelites’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt or the trials of Job (Williams
and Ward 2000).
As the anthropologist David Kertzer (1988) has argued, all social life gets expressed
through ritual and this applies to social movements as well. Ritual helps produce sol-
idarity and emotional connection to others, even if there is not complete agreement
on every issue or how they should be addressed. Ritual, whether in the form of rallies,
or protest marches, or membership meetings, fuses the cognitive, the affective, and the
moral dimensions of action (see Jasper 1998). So, for example, Civil Rights Movement
rallies often resembled religious services (e.g., Morris 1984; Robnett 1997; Williams and
Ward 2000) complete with a monetary collection. Other large-scale social movements
have used gatherings that are reminiscent of the tent revivals used by evangelical re-
ligions (e.g., Williams and Alexander 1994). In sum, religious beliefs, symbols, rituals,
and stories make sense of the world, give a vision as to how it could be different, and
justify and support the spirits of those trying to make that vision a reality. It can form
the basis of an effective social movement culture.
Religious Organizations and Movement Activity
Along with the cultural dimensions necessary to prompt and sustain action, religious
organizations often play a crucial role when social movements are trying to mount
sustained efforts. The 1955–6 boycott of segregated buses in Montgomery, Alabama,
was greatly facilitated by the coordination of carpools done through several African-
American churches (Morris 1984). In that case, the pastors of several churches were
movement leaders (the best known being Martin Luther King, Jr.), but even when clergy
are not directly in leadership positions, they often give time during worship services for
announcements (Williams and Demerath 1991). This provides a crucial legitimacy for
organizing efforts. And perhaps most important, members of religious congregations
are familiar with and often skilled at coordinated action – they have experience with
volunteering and know what it takes to get people where they are supposed to be when
they are supposed to be there. The famed blockades of abortion clinics done by the
group Operation Rescue relied on churches as places for people to assemble before
goingen massto the blockade site (Ginsburg 1993; Williams and Blackburn 1996).
Thus, churches (and synagogues, mosques, sanghas, etc.) possess available meeting
places, recognized leadership, fundraising capacities, and connections to many parts
of the communities in which they exist. Above all, congregations are groups of people
already connected by social networks and used to cooperative activity. Typically people
do not “join” social movements as isolated individuals; more often, they get drafted
into participating in activities that other people they know are participating in – social
networks, not isolates, make up movements. Local religious congregations are exactly
that – connections of social networks.
Furthermore, religious congregations are generally fairly homogeneous groups of
people. The voluntarism that governs religious participation in American culture means
that people “self-select” for the religious associations they are involved in. Racial seg-
regation is a well-known feature, but congregations are also divided by ethnicity,