Religious Social Movements in the Public Sphere 323
organizations have at least one common challenge – coordinating political action at
a national level often requires bureaucratic and professionalized levels of formal orga-
nization far exceeding typical local and grassroots efforts. Organization is hardly new
to movement politics. Labor unions have used highly centralized and bureaucratized
organizations for decades – a fact that not coincidentally often results in criticisms
of them for being more like corrupt political parties than like social movements. But
the contemporary social movement scene has a new version of the social movement
organization – something scholars call “professional social movement organizations”
(PSMOs; Zald and McCarthy 1987). Unlike labor unions, these do not necessarily rely
on preexisting constituencies; they often try to build a membership across a number
of social categories and groups, but one that is rallied around a particular attitude or
commitment. They usually do not offer services or material benefits, but rather focus
advocacy on social and political change. They both lobby (a more institutionalized
political tactic) and organize protests outside of the standard channels for expressing
influence. At the same time, they rely on professional staffs, routinized actions, and
organizational hierarchies, thus becoming established players within an issue domain.
PSMOs such as the National Organization of Women, the Sierra Club, or the National
Right-to-Life Committee are now major players on the political scene.
Admittedly, something seems slightly amiss in the idea of aprofessionalsocial move-
ment. If social movements are challenges to the status quo that rely on passion and
volunteer action, how can they be professionalized? If they employ paid professionals
who calculate rationally the battles to fight and the tactics to pursue, how can they
continue to inspire volunteer adherents to sacrifice for a moral cause? And if a PSMO is
headquartered in Washington, DC, and is tackling national issues with a paid staff, how
faithfully does it represent the ideas, beliefs, and commitments of local constituencies?
The tension between ideology and organization is nowhere more clear than in the
form of the PSMO. And yet these abound. How did this new organizational form come
about?
In the mid-1970s, scholars began to notice that the social changes of the 1960s had
produced a general culture of protest, creating a “social movement industry” of organi-
zational networks, organizing techniques, and, most importantly, experienced activists-
organizers who were available to bring their expertise to any social issue deemed worthy
(Zald and McCarthy 1987). Professional activists were people with organizing expe-
rience in a variety of movements, and their organizing was often done as full-time
employment. Focused on the “supply-side” of social movement activity, this analysis
assumes that social dissent is relatively consistent and (usually) widespread, and thus
that the problem is not the extent of the demand for social change but the resources to
achieve it. The resources include organization, money, and members, as well as less tan-
gible items like ideological appeal and symbolic legitimacy. These are the very things
that social movement professionals can help supply.
I am not suggesting that professional movement organizers are not motivated by
their causes. Most of them believe deeply in what they are doing, do not work for just
any cause, and rarely get rich from their efforts. What has become significant is their
ability to make their vocational attempts at social change into occupations. There is a
well documented spillover effect (Meyer and Whittier 1994) among activists, in that
those who gain experience in one movement cause often go on to get involved in
other causes, and their knowledge spills over into later efforts. The influence on the