Religious Social Movements in the Public Sphere 317
implications for religiously based social movements, is the subject of the second part
of the chapter. In somewhat oversimplified terms, I will first discuss religion as a factor
in “internal” movement dynamics of motivating and organizing, and then move to
consideration of the “external” dynamic between movements and their environments.
In the conclusion, I will outline the basic dilemmas contemporary public life presents
for religion and social movements.
Religion and Movement Culture
A social movement requires a distinct “movement culture” that will convince people to
get moving and keep them committed. People must become convinced that something
is wrong with the world and needs fixing, and that they should be active in fixing it.
Furthermore, they need a source of support to keep their spirits up during their efforts –
both to console them when they fail and to convince them to keep working and not
walk away after initial victories. For example, Gamson (1992) discovers that people must
attain a cognitive framework for collective action that has three necessary components:
Injustice; agency; and identity. Alternatively, Snow and Benford (1988, 1992) describe
the need for diagnosis (of the world’s ills), prescription (a solution to these problems),
and motivation. In other words, people have to believe there is an injustice that can
be corrected, be able to identify who perpetrated the injustice, and feel some moral
responsibility for addressing the situation.
It is easy to see how religion could provide these rhetorical elements for a movement.
Religion is at its essence a cultural system that appraises the moral status of the world in
terms of a divine, rather than a worldly, standard. The world as-it-is is not an ultimate
value for most religions – they see the world as wanting in important ways, and the
appropriate model is godly, rather than of this world. Moreover, religion can give a fairly
complete “explanation” as to why the world is the way it is, and how it became that way.
This framework provides a moral universe in which concepts such as “injustice” have
meaning. Furthermore, because religious beliefs are often central to people’s sense of
identity, they feel the wrong intensely and are willing to sacrifice to right it. Participants
in a religiously based social movement often have their sacred duty and their immortal
souls at stake in their actions. So, for example, activists often describe themselves as
having “no choice” about their involvement in movement actions, and note that they
believe they are following God’s will. Thus inspired, many activists will get involved
in “high risk” activism that involves civil disobedience and even jail time. Not only
does faith give activists the courage to do these things, it often provides a rationale for
breaking the law – that is, the necessity for obedience to a higher law makes breaking
human laws justified (see Epstein 1991; Williams and Blackburn 1996).^1
In sum, religious ideas and beliefs can reveal aspects of the world to be unjust or
immoral, can provide the identity that people draw on when they are urged to get active
on an issue, and can give them a sense of agency because it convinces them that their
action matters. And when the movement encounters difficulties and set backs, religion
(^1) There is no clear connection between strength or intensity of religious belief and involvement
in social movement activism. Some strongly held beliefs might even discourage activism, if
they convinced adherents that their duty lies elsewhere. However, for those who do believe
that their religious duty involves trying to reform the world, those beliefs offer them a powerful
justification and motivation for their movement participation.