338 Fred Kniss
on the map. Although right-wing purists would tend to be located in the northeast
corner and left-wing purists in the southwest corner, the boundaries of these categories
are porous. The line connecting the two extremes is the realm of mainstream discourse.
There are clear, sharp, often bitterly contested differences between positions along this
line, but those located within the mainstream understand the differences. There are rou-
tinized vocabularies, procedures, categories, etc., for discussing and negotiating these
differences. Most negotiation takes place in the “ambiguous middle.” Here is where the
majority of political institutions are located. This is the area where compromises are
formed, where the observer finds the juxtaposition of seemingly incompatible elements
of opposing paradigms as “politics make strange bedfellows.” The implementation of
policies formulated at either “purist” location tends to gravitate toward this middle.
I argued above that bipolar conceptions of cultural conflict ignored the presence
and role of peripheral groups – groups that did not fit either of the two opposing
categories. This is an important theoretical shortcoming, especially at a time when the
importance of “the periphery” is highlighted in theories of social change. Many of
the most influential contemporary theories of political and economic change posit a
dialectical relation between core and peripheral institutions. This tension provides the
engine for social change processes.
Cultural or religious change and conflict operate within a similar dialectical system
of ideological tensions within and between mainstream and peripheral cultural groups.
Elsewhere (Kniss 1988), I make this argument in some detail. To shorten the long story,
the two-dimensional map proposed above helps to specify exactly how some groups
might be peripheral to the mainstream. Figure 23.2 suggests where some peripheral
groups might be located on the map. Recognizing the presence of groups that lie out-
side the mainstream and specifying the ways in which they are peripheral allows the
analyst to include them in an explanatory model and to consider how they might affect
or be affected by mainstream tensions and/or polarization. Note, however, that there is
a significant difference between my conceptualization and some of the core/periphery
theories. Consider, for example, Shils’s (1975) theory of the cultural center and pe-
riphery. For Shils, the center is the “ultimate,” “irreducible,” “sacred” realm of society’s
most important symbols, values and beliefs. I am suggesting that these values exist
most purely at the periphery, while the center is the realm of ambiguity and competi-
tion over ideas.The periphery has been especially fertile ground in American religious
history. Various historians (e.g., Gaustad 1973; Moore 1986) have argued that religious
innovation on the periphery is the defining characteristic of American religion. In par-
ticular, there has been a striking amount of activity in the southeast quadrant of the
map. In many of the new religious movements in America over the past two centuries,
a millenarian impulse produced a collective moral project, the establishment of a new
social order, and stressed the moral authority of the collectivity, even though that au-
thority may have been embodied in a charismatic leader (Bettis and Johannesen 1984;
Tuveson 1968). The Mormons are the prime example of such a group.
But other less exotic religious groups are also peripheral to the American cultural
mainstream as I have mapped it. Mennonites, Amish, and related groups belong there,
as I will discuss in greater detail later. So, too, do many of the African-American Protes-
tant groups, who have combined traditional notions of religious authority with a more
progressive social ethic, focusing on transformation of the social order. This was most
evident in the central role played by “conservative” African-American religious groups