54 Peter Beyer
The most widespread social forms of religion and religions in contemporary society
can be divided into four types: (a) organization, (b) state religion, (c) social movements,
and (d) communitarian/individual.^5 The last category is the limiting case that also
includes the boundary between religion that is institutionalized as such and that which
is at best only analytically distinct. None of the four is mutually exclusive.
1. Organized Religion
One of the more notable features of contemporary global society is the proliferation of
organizations in virtually every sphere of social life. Although these are certainly not
evenly distributed in this society, any more than is wealth or power, they effect social
life in all parts of the world. The most powerful of these are economic and political
organizations. Yet, both at the national and the international level, an ever increasing
number of nonbusiness and nonstate organizations make their presence felt in our
daily lives. Among these is a complex array of religious organizations of greatly varying
power, size, internal structure, and degree of stability. More than any of the other
forms, it is organizations that give religions the concrete presence that is at issue here.
Although the Christian Roman Catholic church (along with its numerous subsidiary
organizations such as religious orders) is no doubt the largest and most evident of these,
every other recognizable and recognized religion has them. They range from Buddhist
monasteries to Hindu temple organizations, from Muslim Sufi brotherhoods (tariqat)
to Christian Pentecostal churches, from organizations that run major Muslim, Hindu,
or Christian pilgrimage centers to international Daoist societies. Their span can be
anything from extremely local to worldwide, from the storefront church in Brooklyn,
New York, to the international Orthodox Jewish Agudat Israel. Moreover, organizations
are perhaps the most important mechanism for giving form to a new religion, or for
concretizing variations in already recognized ones. Some relatively new religions such
as the Baha’i Faith or the Church of Scientology, as well as old ones such as the Roman
Catholic church, locate organization at their theological core and have successfully
established themselves or maintained their presence largely through their concerted
organizational strategies.
The great advantage of organization in contemporary global society is that it offers
a very effective way of generating social boundaries that need not be all-encompassing.
Organizations define themselves by making a distinction between those who belong
and those who do not, between social action that is part of the organization and that
which is not. They structure that difference through rules that govern belonging or not
belonging, inside and outside, especially through social roles such as member, client,
office holder, and so forth. Organizations thus tend to be quite clear about who is
subject to their rules, when they are so subject, and where their most typical activity
takes place. Moreover, organizations almost always articulate a clear purpose to which
(^5) The typology suggested here may seem to bear some relation to the more familiar sociologi-
cal typology of religious collectivities that distinguishes denomination, church, sect, and cult.
While there is certainly an overlap as concerns the organized and state religion forms, the sect
and cult have little place in the present scheme. To the extent that they are represented at all,
it is under the organized, and to some extent under the social movement and communitar-
ian forms. A precise comparison is beyond the scope of the present chapter, as is a detailed
elaboration of the suggested typology.