Religious Typology Essay

A religious typology is the classification of religious groups according to their distinguishing characteristics. Sociologists have divided these characteristics into four main types of voluntary religious communities: Church type, Sect type, Denomination type and Cult type. Church organizations are those within founded religions whose members share a religious commitment to a spiritual life. Church type communities are made of larger structures and are concerned with maintaining doctrine, discipline and cult. Examples of these are religions Islam, Mahayana, Buddhism and Christianity. A Sect is a protest group that has broken away from its established religion.
They protest against the established religion because they believe it has compromised the purity of the faith. Sects also protest against society because they view it as worldly, materialistic and corrupting which is why they frequently alienate themselves from surrounding cultures. Sects tend to be …show more content…
Conversionist sects view the world as evil and corrupt, and call for a radically new approach to salvation. Revolutionist sects believe salvation will come soon but only through destruction of the natural present and social order, and salvation will come only by divine action. Examples of Revolutionist sects are Jehovah’s Witnesses, the early 1990s Branch Davidian community in Waco, Texas and the recent Aum Shinrikyō apocalyptic movement in Japan. Manipulationist sects seek worldly goals and do not withdraw from society; they do however seek spiritual means to be able to reach those worldly goals. Examples of Manipulationist sects are Deep Ecology, Scientology, Transcendental Meditation and Neo-Shamanism. Lastly, Utopian sects look towards the human reconstruction of the world on a communitarian basis and according to a certain divine plan in which evil is eliminated. Some examples are the Brüderhof communities and the Peoples Temple in