Survey results show significant gender differences in the experience of respect from and satisfaction with relationships with the middle administrative part of the wider church called here the judicatory e. Women clergy experienced greater loneliness and isolation, financial strain and thinking that closure affected their job search; their job search was also significantly longer than that of men. Respectful judicatory relationships are negatively related to many but not all vocational stresses.
The paper closes with implications for judicatory support of clergy leading churches to closure. As such, they are hybrid structures with inherent tensions between communal norms such as equality, transparency and respect, and institutional demands such as a hierarchy of authority, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability.
Although earlier research has documented a gender gap among clergy in compensation, full-time placements, attainment of higher-level leadership positions, and acceptance of their leadership, we still do not understand whether access to judicatory, as well as congregational support, differs among men and women pastors serving congregations that eventually close Zikmund et al. This paper draws on survey and interview data from a five-denomination national study of pastors who had the experience of closing their churches Cafferata This point of church crisis and vocational vulnerability offers a unique opportunity to examine whether career challenges such as spiritual or emotional stress, health issues, or access to resources such as financial or spiritual support from a judicatory differ among women and men.
Further, it enables us to examine how the demise of their congregation subsequently affects the vocations of men or women clergy, for example, whether they are equally able to secure their next position and experience satisfaction with their new ministries and lives. This research is important because the rate of church decline is rising across mainline Protestant denominations and more pastors, both men and women, will experience this ministry in their vocation Voas and Chaves ; Roozen ; Pew Research Center For example, the Episcopal Church lost almost a quarter of its members between and Goodhew Old-line Protestant churches like those in this study are becoming older and more fragile as congregations fail to replace themselves with newer generations McKinney ; Funk and Smith Economic displacement associated with the Covid pandemic may accelerate this trend.
Even when not closing a church, serving as a pastor can be challenging Chaves and Eagle ; Ellison et al. Similarly, in non-religious job sectors, a cultural presumption of male superiority or dominance has been shown to affect hiring, job evaluation and promotion, pay, and access to in-group and mentoring supports in occupations such as nursing, science, law, medicine or business Heilman ; Eagly and Heilman ; Carli and Eagly ; Vial et al.
In secular occupations, roles that require a high degree of agentic behavior such as authoritative decision-making, commitments to effectiveness and efficiency, self-advocacy and emotional distance are more difficult for women to negotiate successfully Ridgeway ; Zheng et al.
Like women in other occupations, women pastors may be more inclined to exercise charismatic or inspirational personal authority and to see themselves as empathic, transformational leaders Brescoll ; Ramsay ; Zikmund et al. A transformational leadership style is built on relationships of respect, trust and communality; it is emotionally expressive, inspires motivation for others to participate and contribute, and values the development and mentoring of community members. In contrast, prevailing gender norms make it easier for male clergy to exercise a transactional or laissez-faire leadership style where relationships are more formal, exchange-based, and focused on task completion.
Research has confirmed that women leaders are seen as more effective when they exercise both inspirational motivation seen as agentic and individual consideration that is seen as communal Zheng et al.
This study therefore expects women pastors may be more likely than men to be disappointed when denominational colleagues and superiors fail to respect their dignity by not accepting their identity, including them as much as their male colleagues in professional work, being fair, understanding them, recognizing them, or, in other words, when judicatories fail to exercise inclusive, transformational leadership.
Failure to accept their pastoral identity, or unfair demeaning of their competence may be a unique source of stress for women pastors. Although one study found women pastors find greater social support in their congregations and among colleagues and the church hierarchy than men McDuff and Mueller , that research was confined to clergy in two non-hierarchical denominations DOC and UCC.
Other studies show that women pastors find less support in their work than men. For example, women priests in the Church of England reported overt and hidden congregational hostility to their leadership as well as a lack of respect among colleagues in the wider church such as being talked about behind their backs, openly criticized, belittled in public, overly scrutinized, and not being listened to Greene and Robbins They reported being placed in appointments at a higher risk of failure as well as in congregations lacking empathy for the constraints of motherhood and work-life balance.
In the U. In the Episcopal church, men reported greater assistance from Bishops in their job search than women, and gender inequalities persist in income, access to senior positions, and the ability to achieve work-life balance Price Respect is a nearly universal dimension of ethics.
Following this model, this study measured clergy satisfaction with these dimensions of respect from their congregations and their judicatories. The persistence of gender bias even after acceptance of women into professions such as science has been well noted Pickett Such bias may shrink support by judicatories as well as congregations considering them for positions after their church closes.
Satisfaction with respect from their congregations and judicatories will differ by gender, with male pastors being more satisfied than women pastors;. Satisfaction with respect from congregations and judicatories will be associated with mental health of pastors one to three years post-closure when the written survey was completed.
The experience of overall vocational stress such as difficulty finding a new position will be associated with lower satisfaction with mutually respectful relationships with congregations and judicatories. Women will have more difficult vocational trajectories following a church closure than men, i. This study examines the experiences of a universe of women and men clergy in five mainline Protestant denominations Episcopal, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian and United Church of Christ who closed their churches over a span between and , depending on the denomination.
Table 1 shows measures used in statistical analyses. Clergy variables include age, gender, marital status, church experience first or second appointment vs. Feel lonely and isolated in your work?
Have doubts about your abilities as a pastoral minister? Seriously think of leaving for a secular occupation? Seriously think of leaving for another type of ministry?
Table 1 shows reliability coefficients. For each question, please give the one answer that comes closest to the way you have been feeling. Did you have a lot of energy? Have you felt downhearted and depressed? Did you feel worn out? Have you been happy? Multivariate analysis used backwards stepwise regression for two dependent variables: Mental Health and Overall Vocational Stress.
In summary, the research shows that women clergy who experience the closing of their churches report are less satisfied with respect from their judicatories but not from their congregations than men clergy. Further, their overall vocational stress after closing was lower. Relating to Hypothesis 2, Fig. One possible consequence of work stress is worsening health Hypothesis 2.
In a logistic regression, gender was not significant. Hypothesis 3 expects that respect from the judicatory might have overall mental health consequences beyond the closure. Zero-order correlations reveal that mental health scores at the time of the survey 1—3 years post-closure were not related to gender or respect but to age and church experience, stress encountered while serving the church that closed, and also, what happened after the church closed.
They were also higher for those with more church experience, i. Thus, their current health and context were more important to mental health than the stresses of serving a declining church. Hypothesis 4 relates respectful relationships with overall vocational stress after the church closed.
Table 2 shows that men and women were equally stressed by the need to find another position but significantly more women than men experienced financial strain from losing their position. Importantly, women clergy are significantly more likely than their male counterparts to perceive signs of stigma associated with a church closing.
There were no gender differences in reporting of shame. Vocational stress was also significantly less among pastors in a multi-church appointment. Gender is not a significant variable when respect and these other sources of stress and supports are taken into account. Relating to Hypothesis 5, women experienced greater difficulty than men securing their next position.
Figure 4 shows that among men, respect by the judicatory is associated with lower job search time, but for women this does not hold. Hypothesis 5 suggested that gender differences in satisfaction with judicatory relationships might persist after serving and finding new positions. The study confirmed that women clergy reported less satisfaction than men clergy with relationships with the wider church denominational officials and other clergy when the survey was conducted one to three years after closing.
These differences may reflect gender differences in current access to denominational support as well as any difficult experiences serving their churches that closed and vocational transitions.
This means leading a congregation, and oneself, on a journey into grief and hope of new life. This experience is therefore a crucible for leaders of any gender, a context in which pastors risk loneliness and isolation from colleagues and superiors, feelings of shame, worsened health, and challenges in finding their next position. The aim of this research was to learn whether these affect vocational and personal outcomes among clergy closing churches, and whether there are gender differences in access to these resources.
All of these are true for both women and men clergy. Vocational stress after closing a congregation is also significantly higher for younger pastors and lower for those in multi-church calls.
Younger pastors may lack mutually respectful long-term relationships with colleagues and superiors available to older, more experienced clergy. The study also found gender differences in satisfaction clergy colleagues and superiors such as bishops, with greater disappointment among women pastors that judicatories fail to engage in mutually respectful relationships and transformational leadership.
This was true as they served their closing churches, and also 1—3 years after their churches closed. As well, the study also found significant gender differences in vocational concerns and trajectories after churches close.
Can hamsters get stressed? What are the slogans on fairness and equality? What does the constitution say with regard to equality? What is Nebraska's motto? What the denomination of Australia's currency was before decimal currency? What is the Equality of all persons? Was St. Patrick born before the Protestant Religion was created? If an equation is simplified by removing parentheses before the properties of equality are and applied what property is and used?
What is Nebraska's state motto? Can a democracy exist without both opportunity and equality before the law? What feelings might a couple have before their wedding?
What was the main religion of Virginia before ? How does someone become a Pastor? Can a democracy possibly exist without both equality of opportunity and equality before the law? What is Greenland's main religion? Peter waldo contribution on reformation? How much is a mexican coin? The concept of equality before the law was introduced to the Constitution in the? What does the word America mean in the pledge of allegiance? What is the difference between Catholic and Protestant saints?
Study Guides. For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore. Focus on her rhetorical strategies. How is she trying to persuade people of the rightness of her position? What feelings does she appeal to? What ideas and passages of the Bible or other documents does she think will make her case? The first discussion passage offered here gives an example of one of her most important strategies: she stresses the fact that as a Christian woman, she understands her readers, sympathizes with them, and shares their feelings and concerns.
The first passage presents a great example of a text that would appeal to nineteenth-century readers in multiple ways. If one guesses what she might be quoting and why, students can be encouraged to see that she is using the authority of the Bible and her closeness to her reader as a southern woman to make herself a trustworthy source. Here she makes the argument that the laws of God are in conflict with U. One of the laws that caused the most upheaval in northern states was the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of , a law that required Americans to turn over runaway slaves.
In the fourth passage the abolitionist takes her arguments a step further. She uses the words and images of the final judgment and quotes Jesus to warn women that they are themselves sinning if they do not act against slavery.
While she never directly addresses the passages in the Bible that support slavery, she uses the Bible and Christian tradition in other ways to make the case that slavery is neither Christian nor patriotic and that believers must act or face divine justice for their failure. This is a good chance for them to practice their online research skills to do some detective work. Short phrases and quotations, when put into a search engine, can easily lead them to Bible passages.
This lesson is divided into two parts, both accessible below. Four excerpts with accompanying close reading questions provide an analytical study of the texts. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.
And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession ; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour. But they faced a great obstacle: the Bible, the book that the vast majority of Americans, North and South, looked to for guidance, contained many passages that sanctioned the slave system.
Slave owners and their supporters readily pointed to chapters in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus, which outlined the many laws surrounding slavery but did not condemn it. Anti-slavery supporters knew that they needed to appeal to Christianity to make their case. But how to go about it? Always outspoken, she converted to the more evangelical Presbyterian Church at a young age, and increasingly became convinced that slavery was an immoral and unchristian system that denied human rights. Expelled by the southern Presbyterians for her views on slavery and the equality of women, she left the South for Philadelphia and joined the Religious Society of Friends Quakers , another evangelical group that had been the earliest and most ardent opponents of slavery.
The power of these arguments was demonstrated by their effect: copies of her essay were burned publicly in South Carolina, and even the Philadelphia Quakers felt that she had gone too far. She uses the image of branches on the vine. The women are the branches, the vine is Christ. What effect might this have on her readers? This might help her readers listen to what she has to say. A case in point would be the evolution of belief in the Catholic Church.
However, in the 21st century, the Catholic Church appears to be adapting its attitudes towards modernization. Pope Francis has also addressed contemporary issues of climate change. At the U. We are at the limits. Throughout history, and in societies across the world, leaders have used religious narratives, symbols, and traditions in an attempt to give more meaning to life and to understand the universe. Some form of religion is found in every known culture, and it is usually practiced in a public way by a group.
The practice of religion can include feasts and festivals, God or gods, marriage and funeral services, music and art, meditation or initiation, sacrifice or service, and other aspects of culture. There are three different ways of defining religion in sociology — substantial definitions, functional definitions, and family resemblance definitions — each of which has consequences for what counts as a religion, and each of which has limitations and strengths in its explanatory power Dawson and Thiessen, The problem of defining religion is not without real consequences, not least for questions of whether specific groups can obtain legal recognition as religions.
In Canada there are clear benefits to being officially defined as a religion in terms of taxes, liberties, and protections from persecution. Guarantees of religious freedom under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms stem from whether practices or groups are regarded as legitimately religious or not.
What definitions of religion do we use to decide these questions? It has to be imported from the Amazon where its ingredients are found. But because it contains N,N-dimethyltryptamine DMT and harmala alkaloids, it is a controlled substance under Canadian law.
Importing and distributing it constitute trafficking and are subject to criminal charges. Other neo-Vegetalismo groups who use ayahuasca in traditional Amazonian healing ceremonies in Canada, but do not have affiliations with a formal church-like organization, are not recognized as official religions and, therefore, their use of ayahuasca remains criminalized and underground.
The problem of any definition of religion is to provide a statement that is at once narrow enough in scope to distinguish religion from other types of social activity, while taking into account the wide variety of practices that are recognizably religious in any common sense notion of the term. Substantial definitions attempt to delineate the crucial characteristics that define what a religion is and is not.
These definitions are strong in that they identify the key characteristic — belief in the supernatural — that distinguishes religion from other types of potentially similar social practice like politics or art.
They are also easily and simply applied across societies, no matter how exotic or different the societies are. However, the problem with substantial definitions is that they tend to be too narrow. On the other hand, functional definitions define religion by what it does or how it functions in society. Is religion for example the only means by which social groups struggle with the ultimate problems of human life?
The third type of definition is the family resemblance model in which religion is defined on the basis of a series of commonly shared attributes Dawson and Thiessen, The idea is that a family — even a real family — will hold a number of, say, physiological traits in common, which can be used to distinguish them from other families, even though each family member is unique and any particular family member might not have all them. You can still tell that the member belongs to the family and not to another because of the traits he or she shares.
It is also possible to define religion in terms of a cluster of attributes based on family resemblance. This cluster includes four attributes: particular types of belief, ritual, experience, and social form. This type of definition has the capacity to capture aspects of both the substantive and functional definitions. It can be based on common sense notions of what religion is and is not, without the drawback of being overly exclusive.
The incredible amount of variation between different religions makes it challenging to decide upon a concrete definition of religion that applies to all of them. The first dimension is one that comes to mind for most Canadians when they think of religion, some systematic form of beliefs. Religious beliefs are a generalized system of ideas and values that shape how members of a religious group come to understand the world around them see Table They define the cognitive aspect of religion.
These beliefs are taught to followers by religious authorities, such as priests, imams, or shamen, through formal creeds and doctrines as well as more informal lessons learned through stories, songs, and myths. Belief systems provide people with certain ways of thinking and knowing that help them cope with ultimate questions that cannot be explained in any other way. Weber argues that the problem of theodicy explains the prevalence of religion in our society.
In the absence of other plausible explanations of the contradictory nature of existence, religious theodicies construct the world as meaningful. The second dimension, ritual, functions to anchor religious beliefs. Rituals are the repeated physical gestures or activities, such as prayers and mantras, used to reinforce religious teachings, elicit spiritual feelings, and connect worshippers with a higher power.
They reinforce the division between the sacred and the profane by defining the intricate set of processes and attitudes with which the sacred dimension of life can be approached. Examples of rites of passage common in contemporary Canadian culture include baptisms, Bar Mitzvahs, and weddings. They sacralize the process of identity transformation. When these rites are religious in nature, they often also mark the spiritual dangers of transformation. The Sun Dance rituals of many Native American tribes are rites of renewal which can also act as initiation-into-manhood rites for young men.
They confer great prestige onto the pledgers who go through the ordeal, but there is also the possibility of failure. The sun dances last for several days, during which young men fast and dance around a pole to which they are connected by rawhide strips passed through the skin of the chest Hoebel, During their weakened state, the pledgers are neither the person they were, nor yet the person they are becoming.
In particular, they can access powers that both relieve or induce anxieties within a group depending on the circumstances. In relieving anxieties, religious rituals are often present at times when people face uncertainty or chance. In this sense they provide a basis of psychological stability. When fishing in the sheltered coves of the islands very little ritual was involved.
It was not until fishermen decided to venture into the much more dangerous open ocean in search of bigger and riskier catches that a rigorous set of religious rituals were invoked, which worked to subdue the fears of not only the fisherman but the rest of the villagers. In contrast, rituals can also be used to create anxieties that keep people in line with established norms. In the case of taboos , the designation of certain objects or acts as prohibited or sacred creates an aura of fear or anxiety around them.
The observance of rituals is used to either prevent the transgression of taboos or to return society to normal after taboos have been transgressed. This failure could only be resolved through further specific rituals Smith, In this example, sociologists would note that the taboo acts as a form of ritualized social control that encourages people to act in ways that benefit the wider society, such as the prevention of overhunting.
A third common dimension of various religions is the promise of access to some form of unique spiritual experience or feeling of immediate connection with a higher power. The pursuit of these indescribable experiences explains one set of motives behind the continued prevalence of religion in Canada and around the world. From this point of view, religion is not so much about thinking a certain way i.
These experiences can come in several forms: the incredible visions or revelations of the religious founders or prophets e. While being exposed to a higher power can be awe inspiring, it can also be intensely overwhelming for those experiencing it. These experiences reveal a form of knowledge that is instantly transformative.
The historical example of Saul of Tarsus later renamed St. Paul the Apostle in the Christian New Testament is an example. Saul was a Pharisee heavily involved in the persecution of Christians. While on the road to Damascus Jesus appeared to him in a life-changing vision.
The experience of divine revelation overwhelmed Saul, blinded him for three days, and prompted his immediate conversion to Christianity. As a result he lived out his life spreading Christianity through the Roman Empire. Are these types of experiences open to all members or just those spiritual elites like prophets, shamen, saints, monks, or nuns who hold a certain status?
Are practitioners encouraged to seek these experiences or are the experiences suppressed? Is it a specific cultivated experience that is sought through disciplined practice, as in Zen Buddhism, or a more spontaneous experience of divine inspiration, like the experience of speaking in tongues in Evangelical congregations? Each religion has their own answers to these questions. Finally, the forth common dimension of religion is the formation of specific forms of social organization or community.
Dawson and Thiessen elaborate on this social dimension shared by all religions. First, the beliefs of a religion gain their credibility through being shared and agreed upon by a group.
It is easier to believe if others around you who you respect believe as well. Second, religion provides an authority that deals specifically with social or moral issues such as determining the best way to live life.
It provides a basis for ethics and proper behaviours, which establish the normative basis of the community. Even as many Canadians move away from traditional forms of religion, many still draw their values and ideals from some form of shared beliefs that are religious in origin e. Third, religion also helps to shape different aspects of social life, by acting as a form of social control, and supporting the formation of self-control, that is vital to many aspects of a functional society.
Fourth, although it may be on the decline in Canada, places of religious worship function as social hubs within communities, providing a source of entertainment, socialization, and support. By looking at religions in terms of these four dimensions — belief, ritual, experience, and community — sociologists can identify the important characteristics they share while taking into consideration and allowing for the great diversity of the world religions.
Residential schools were a key institution responsible for the undermining of Aboriginal culture in Canada. These schools were created with the purpose of assimilating Aboriginal children into North American culture Woods, In the government legally mandated that all Aboriginal children between the ages of seven and fifteen attend these schools Blackburn, They took the children away from their families and communities to remove them from all influence of their Aboriginal identities that could inhibit their assimilation.
Many families did not want their children to be taken away and would hide them, until it became illegal Neeganagwedgin, Under the Indian Act, they were also not allowed lawyers to fight government action, which added greatly to the systemic marginalization of these people.
The churches were responsible for daily religious teachings and daily activities, and the government was in charge of the curriculum, funding, and monitoring the schools Blackburn, There were as many as 80 residential schools in Canada by Woods, It was known early on in this system that there were flaws, but they still persisted until the last residential school was abolished in As we now know, the experience of residential schools for Aboriginal children was traumatic and dreadful.
Within the walls of these schools, children were exposed to sexual and physical abuse, malnourishment, and disease. They were not provided with adequate clothing or medical care, and the buildings themselves were unsanitary and poorly built. By , there were more than 8, lawsuits against the Churches and Canadian government for their role in the residential schools Woods, A lawsuit filed by former students of the Alberni Indian Residential School was one of the first to get to the Supreme Court of Canada, and the first to deem both the government and church equally responsible.
Apologies are still being made on behalf of the churches involved in the residential schools, but the effects it has had on the Indigenous peoples and their culture are perpetuating today. The Christian churches and mission groups have done good things for societies, but their role in these residential schools was immoral and unjust to the Aboriginal people.
In every society there are different organizational forms that develop for the practice of religion. Sociologists are interested in understanding how these different types of organization affect spiritual beliefs and practices. They can be categorized according to their size and influence into churches ecclesia or denomination , sects, and cults.
This allows sociologists to examine the different types of relationships religious organization has with the dominant religions in their societies and with society itself. A church is a large, bureaucratically organized religious organization that is closely integrated into the larger society. Two types of church organizations exist. The first is the ecclesia , a church that has formal ties with the state.
As such, the ecclesia forms the national or state religion. People ordinarily do not join an ecclesia, instead they automatically become members when they are born. In an ecclesiastic society there may be little separation of church and state, because the ecclesia and the state are so intertwined. In some ecclesiastic societies, such as those in the Middle East, religious leaders rule the state as theocracies — systems of government in which ecclesiastical authorities rule on behalf of a divine authority — while in others, such as Sweden and England, they have little or no direct influence.
In general, the close ties that ecclesiae have to the state help ensure they will support state policies and practices. For this reason, ecclesiae often help the state solidify its control over the populace. The second type of church organization is the denomination, a religious organization that is closely integrated into the larger society but is not a formal part of the state.
In modern religiously pluralistic nations, several denominations coexist. So historically, in Canada, denominationalism developed formally as a result of the Treaty of Paris in , which granted Roman Catholics the freedom to practice their religion and informally as a result of the immigration of people with different faiths during the expansion of settlement of Canada in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
These are both denominational and non-denominational, meaning not officially aligned with any specific established religious denomination. About one-third are nondenominational, and one-fifth are Southern Baptist, with the remainder primarily of other Protestant denominations.
Several dozen have at least 10, worshippers and the largest U. Some even conduct market surveys to determine these needs and how best to address them.
As might be expected, their buildings are huge by any standard, and they often feature bookstores, food courts, and sports and recreation facilities. They also provide day care, psychological counseling, and youth outreach programs. Their services often feature electronic music and light shows. Despite their popularity, they have been criticized for being so big that members are unable to develop close bonds with each other and with members of the clergy that are characteristic of smaller houses of worship.
On the other hand, supporters say that mega churches bring many people into religious worship who would otherwise not be involved. A sect is a small religious body that forms after a group breaks away from a larger religious group, like a church or denomination. Sects are relatively small religious organizations that are not closely integrated into the larger society.
They often conflict with at least some of its norms and values. Their migration from Tyrol, Austria, due to persecution eventually lead to their immigration to the Dakotas in the 19th century and then to the Canadian prairies, as conscientious objectors following WWI.
Typically, a sect breaks away from a larger denomination in an effort to restore what members of the sect regard as the original views of the religion. Because sects are relatively small, they usually lack the bureaucracy of denominations and ecclesiae, and often also lack clergy who have received official training.
Their worship services can be intensely emotional experiences, often more so than those typical of many denominations, where worship tends to be more formal and restrained. Members of many sects typically proselytize and try to recruit new members into the sect.
If a sect succeeds in attracting many new members, it gradually grows, becomes more bureaucratic, and, ironically, eventually evolves into a denomination. A cult or New Religious Movement is a small religious organization that is at great odds with the norms and values of the larger society. Cults are similar to sects but differ in at least three respects. First, they generally have not broken away from a larger denomination and instead originate outside the mainstream religious tradition.
Second, they are often secretive and do not proselytize as much. Cults, more than other religious organizations, have been subject to contemporary moral panics about brainwashing, sexual deviance, and strange esoteric beliefs.
However, research challenges several popular beliefs about cults, including the ideas that they brainwash people into joining them and that their members are mentally ill. In a study of the Unification Church Moonies , Eileen Barker found no more signs of mental illness among people who joined the Moonies than in those who did not.
She also found no evidence that people who joined the Moonies had been brainwashed into doing so. Another source of moral panic about cults is that they are violent. In fact, most are not violent. Nevertheless, some cults have committed violence in the recent past. Two years earlier, the Branch Davidian cult engaged in an armed standoff with federal agents in Waco, Texas. A few cults have also committed mass suicide. Similarly, in Canada, on the morning of October 4th, , a blaze engulfed a complex of luxury condominiums in the resort town of Morin-Heights, Quebec.
Firefighters found the bodies of a Swiss couple, Gerry and Collette Genoud, in its ruins. At first it was thought that the fire was accidental, but then news arrived from Switzerland of another odd set of fires at homes owed by the same men who owned the Quebec condominiums. All the fires had been set with improvised incendiary devices, which made the police realize they were dealing with a rare incidence of mass murder suicide involving members of an esoteric religious group known as the Solar Temple.
From the recorded and written messages left behind by the group, it is clear that the leaders felt it was time to effect what they called a transit to another reality associated with Sirius. It is important to note that cults or new religious movements are very diverse. They offer spiritual options for people seeking purpose in the modern context of state secularism and religious pluralism.
Members of new religions run the risk of being stigmatized and even prosecuted Dawson, Modern societies highly value freedom and individual choice, but not when exercised in a manner that defies expectations of what is normal.
Even at a young age he claimed to be in touch with supernatural beings Gorman, At its height it had over followers around the world, many of whom sent over large sums of money.
The Aquarian Foundation was based on the teachings on the Theosophical Society, which was an organization formed in New York City in Theosophy had much in common with the beliefs of Buddhism and Hinduism, such as the belief in reincarnation. It was radically different than the dominant Christian belief of the time. Theosophy also promoted the idea that there was a spiritual world beyond death inhabited by evolved spiritual beings, whose wisdom could be accessed through the occult reading of esoteric signs and the intervention of spiritual mediums Scott, These isolated areas provided a place to get away from the social pressures of the outside world.
However, an insurrection took place when Brother XII announced to his followers that he was the reincarnation of the Egyptian God Osiris. Between and , a series of trials involving Brother XII occurred, which included allegations of misusing foundation funds and having extramarital affairs. News reports claimed that he used black magic to cause witnesses and several members of the audience to faint Rutten, Wilson himself became increasingly authoritarian and used social pressure to convince members into performing gruelling physical labour that was virtually on the same level as slavery.
He did this by telling them these activities were tests of fitness to advance their spirituality. In , the group was finally dissolved and Wilson disappeared from the Nanaimo area along with hundreds of thousands of dollars of Foundation money and Mabel Skottowe one of the women with whom he was accused of having an extramarital affair.
They reportedly left by tugboat and eventually made their way to Switzerland. The majority of reports say that he died in Switzerland in , though some that say he was seen in San Francisco with his lawyer after his alleged death.
According to Cowan , because most people have little direct knowledge of cults and mainly get their information through sensationalist media reports, cults are easily presented as targets of moral panic for being immoral, extreme or dangerous. The three main accusations that cults face are that they engage in brainwashing, acts of sexual deviance and social isolationism. Each of these accusations applied to the media reports on the Aquarian Foundation although their dominant theme centered on the claim that Brother XII was a fraud.
While some people think of religion as something individual because religious beliefs can be highly personal , for sociologists religion is also a social institution.
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