Sectarianism in Early Judaism

Sociological Advances

David J. Chalcraft

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781845530839
• eBook ISBN: 9781317491385
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

'Sectarianism in Early Judaism' applies recent developments in sociological analysis to sect formation and development in early Judaism. The essays examine sectarianism in a wide range of different forms: the many layers of redaction in religious texts; the development arcs of sectarian groups; the role of sectarianism across Jewish history as well as in the time of the Second Temple; and the relations within and between sects and between sects and wider society. The book aims to establish a conceptual framework for the analysis of sects and, in doing so, makes particular use of the work of Max Weber and Bryan Wilson, exploring the limits of their typologies and sociological theories.

Part I
MAX WEBER ON SECTS AND VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM

THE DEVELOPMENT OF WEBER’S SOCIOLOGY OF SECTS: ENCOURAGING A NEW FASCINATION

David J. Chalcraft

Despite a long fascination with his seminal contributions to the sociology of religion, Max Weber is often overlooked in the literature when it comes to his ideas about sects and sectarianism.¹ Or rather, on the occasions when he is mentioned his contribution to the sociology of sects is passed over very quickly. His founding figure status, not his ideas, are usually acknowledged before the author swiftly moves on to consider Troeltsch² or some later theorist considered more suitable to the task in hand either because they are thought of as faithful followers and extenders of Weber’s own “undeveloped” ideas, or as having surpassed Weber’s apparent limitations (e.g. Hunt, 2003: 34 35; Johnson, 1971; Jokiranta, 2001: 226; Stanton, 1992; Stark and Bainbridge, 1979: 122). Frequently, when Weber and Troeltsch are treated together as some kind of partnership the analysis is more often based on Troeltsch’s ideas than on Weber’s, with the result that the exposition of Weber’s work is at best limited and at worst inaccurate and often wrong (e.g. Wilson, 1966: 209 10; 1988; Hill, 1973, McGuire, 1997: 142). It is typical for interpreters to suggest that where Weber’s work held out potential then that potential was not fulfilled by Weber himself (since he did not apply his ideas in any works or did not return to the distinction and amplify it or some such) or, on an alternative track, to argue that Weber’s work actually is severely limited. This is most notably because the church sect typological distinction, with which he is credited, is seen as culturally specific and time bound, reflecting a western and even a Christian centric perspective that was imposed on other non western cultural and social processes. In such discussions the interpreter often makes reference in passing (i.e. without page citation) to Weber’s Sociology of Religion or to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, as if it was solely in these locations that Weber dealt with sects and that somehow or other they were the most significant discussions.

In this essay I intend to show, on the contrary, that there are a considerable number of texts and passages to be considered in reconstructing Weber’s ideas about sects and that doing so provides sufficient evidence that Weber attempted to move the church sect dimension out of any potential culturally specific orientation. In the process I hope to contribute to the ongoing investigation into the biography of Weber’s sociological projects (Tenbruck, 1989; Hennis, 2002a, 2002b) and remind readers of the range of Weber’s ideas as they relate to sects. I begin with some observations on Weber’s ideal typical characterization of sects, before providing a survey of key writings that carry Weber’s further conceptual and substantive treatments of sects. Throughout the survey I highlight the salient differences between texts that illuminate Weber’s development of his sociology of sects.

Weber’s Ideal-Typical Treatment of Sects

One way in which Weber’s approach to the sociology of sects would appear to be limited to his own horizons is tied up with his ideal typical methodology.³ In the course of all his writings Weber does not develop an ideal type of a sect with a number of logically connecting attributes. He develops neither a generic type (under which all varieties of sects can be seen as a variation) nor a series of subtypes⁴ (where a defining set of characteristics are firstly developed to identify a sect in general and then to further differentiate between different sects on the basis that the sects classified, whilst sharing the characteristics to “qualify” generally as a sect, vary in other ways to the extent that they are best thought of as a different type of sect). Rather, Weber prefers a polar type construction, and highlights one feature in particular as essential to understanding the difference between a sectlike religious movement and a churchlike religious movement, and for assessing the cultural significance of either.

The defining feature of a sect in Weber’s polar type construction is that of a religious community founded on voluntary membership achieved through qualification. Why this element is of causal significance for Weber within his own research into the development of central features of Western cultural development is because in order to join a sect the potential member must bring their conduct and lifestyle to the standard demanded by the Sect (if not already plainly of that standard) or have their conduct brought into line through a process of sectarian education. Either way everyday life is affected. Weber is interested in the variable impact of sects on everyday life, in particular on practical conduct, on economic life – or even more precisely, on the development of the unique bourgeois Lebensführung of western modernity. Because of this overriding interest it is this feature of the sect he emphasizes most strongly and is often the dominant question Weber is posing to any sectlike religious movement he is considering. This variable is then considered to be the most significant in accounting for the impact of religious movements on cultural and social change; in particular in accounting for the differing impacts of religious movements that are more or less church-like or sect-like.

As his work develops across time, the church sect typology is placed in a much broader sociological context of comparative historical work, to the extent that the concept of sect and the concept of church become one instance of wider phenomena of a conflict between, for example, virtuosity and mass religion, between office charisma and personal charisma and between the differences between voluntary associations and compulsory organizations. Moreover, it is fairly obvious from the start that the ideal typical discussion does not mean to imply that a sect can only come into existence if there is a prior parent orthodoxy or church against which it protests. In fact, to read the ideal type in this way is indeed to render the tool culturally specific to the emergence of sects in western Europe during a period when the Church and State were undifferentiated. This latter point becomes clearer in passages in Economy and Society and elsewhere which illustrate that Weber rejected one or two common criteria in talking about sects, which clearly indicates that for Weber a sect does not need a parent, nor an orthodoxy or a church to “qualify” as a sect in Weber’s sociology.

The definition of the essential feature of the sect as opposed to “church” is consistent across the work, but the implications of this essence are drawn out in differing directions given the context of the discussion at different points in Weber’s oeuvre. It is very important to understand how this process unravels in Weber’s development, and the manner in which the church sect typology is transformed. I argue that this transformation renders the church sect typology of more universal sociological application than the seemingly ethnocentric concepts of church sect, as first formulated (and as received in the history of the sociology of religion), would seem to imply.⁵

The Texts wherein Weber Discusses Sects

The development of Weber’s thinking about sects needs to be traced as it develops over the course of his entire oeuvre in particular texts. The following texts have been selected as being the most significant for purposes of mapping out Weber’s central ideas and their development.⁶ The “Protestant Ethic writings” are essential, and include the two editions of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (Weber, 1904b, 1905, 1920a) and all the versions of the essay which eventually became The Protestant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism (1906a, 1906b, 1920b). The speeches Weber made at the First German Sociological Association’s conference in 1910 often relate to our theme (Weber, 1924), and I concentrate on one in particular where, in the second half of his report as Treasurer to the Society (the Geschäftsbericht) Weber calls for the development of a sociology of voluntary associations which includes the sect (Weber, 1924: 44249; Weber, 2002b; Kim, 2002) . Attention is then turned to Weber’s two major writing projects, both beginning in 1910 and remaining incomplete at his death, namely, the sociology compendium, Economy and Society (ES) (Weber, 1968), and the Economic Ethics of the World Religions Series (EEWR).⁷ In relation to the former the sections most pertinent to Weber’s discussion of sects include that entitled, Political and Hierocratic Domination (PHDom) (Weber, 1968: 1158211) and in relation to the latter, I concentrate, albeit briefly, on the two more conceptual essays from the series, the Introduction (Einleitung) (Weber, 1948c) and the Intermediate Reflections (Zwischenbetrachtung) (Weber, 1948b). For reasons of space no mention is made of the individual substantive studies from EEWR – Ancient Judaism (Weber, 1952), The Religion of India (1958) and the Religion of China (1951), although these studies are key to the consideration of the crosscultural applicability of Weber’s conceptualizing of the sect and will be returned to in later expositions.

The Development of Weber’s Treatment of Sects: A Survey of Relevant Texts

The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–1905 and 1920) Although The Protestant Ethic (PE) is perhaps Weber’s most famous work in the sociology of religion, and although he emphasizes the importance of Calvinism and of the Baptist sects for his thesis, it is not actually in this work that Weber presents his most developed ideas about sects; and this is the case, even though he revised the text of the PE in 1920 (leading one to assume that later findings about sects would be incorporated in the revisions)⁸ after further research in the comparative sociology of religion.

It is in the first edition of PE (Weber, 1904–1905), in the second essay that makes up that whole (1905 = 1930: 95 183), that we encounter Weber’s first formal statements about the nature of sects and how they should be distinguished from “church.” Weber clearly says in the PE that his main concern is not with issues of organization and discipline of either Church or Sect; he is concerned with ethical practical conduct and the reasons for the differences between the practical conduct of various religious groups and what the dogmatic as well as the psychological factors were that influenced that conduct.

There are two main themes in the treatment of sects in the PE. First, that a sectarian tendency derives from notions of an aristocracy of the religious which encourages differentiation of individuals from each other on religious grounds which is a logical working out of certain theological doctrines; and, second, Weber provides a treatment not of a sectarian tendency but of actual sects, where the sectarian tendency has reached its logical conclusion in the formation of the “believer’s church.” It is in this latter context that the clearest formulation of the church sect typology is to be found within the PE. Weber explains as follows:

This means that the religious community, the visible Church in the language of the Reformation Churches, was no longer looked upon as a sort of trust foundation (Fideikommisstiftung) for supernatural ends, an institution (Anstalt) necessarily including both the just and the unjust...but solely as a community of personal believers of the reborn, and only these (Gemeinschaft der persönlich Gläubigen und Wiedergeborenen und nur dies). In other words, not as a “church” (“Kirche”), but as “sect” (sondern als eine “Sekte")

(1930: 144; 1920: 152-53).

The contrast church sect, is here parallel to the contrast between Anstalt and Gemeinschaft – the terminology used to contrast church and sect will alter across time as we shall see. The footnote discussion to this definitional statement needs a little comment in this connection since Weber adds the important terminological words “Sekte” and “Kirche” to the footnote discussion, since these “technical” terms were not used in the footnote in the first edition (but are in the main text) and it is also clear that the contrast between “voluntary” (already in the first edition) and “compulsory” is made because of the relation between Verein (a form not used in the PE, where Gemeinschaft was the preferred term) and Anstalt, that Weber has developed in-between the two editions of the PE, as we shall see, and which include within them the sect and the church respectively (i.e. the church is an instance of an Anstalt). The footnote can be reconstructed as follows (italic indicates addition in 1920)

such a religious community⁹ could only be voluntarily (voluntaristisch) organised as a sect, not compulsorily as a Church (als Sekte, nicht anstaltsmässig: als Kirche), if it did not wish to include the unregenerate and thus depart from the Early Christian ideal. For the Baptist communities it was an essential of the very idea of their Church, while for the Calvinists it was an historical accident

(1920: 153; 1930: 254).

Overall however, a comparison of the two editions as they relate to sects indicates that the majority of the variants that exist pertain mainly to the production of the later sect’s essay and matters of bibliography. In other words, tracing the later development of Weber’s treatment of sects must look outside the PE texts themselves to discover the trends. For the moment, I turn to consider the theme of “sectarian tendencies” that Weber develops in the original PE.

For Weber the Protestant Reformation led to an alteration in the institutional means available for the religiously motivated to address their needs, and led to a fundamental alteration in the organization and prevalence of ascetic practices in everyday life. The other worldly asceticism of the monks (to use terms Weber develops) is replaced by the inner worldly asceticism of the ascetic Protestants. The motivated laity is increased in Weber’s view given the impact of certain theological ideas that developed in the wake of the Reformation. For Weber, it requires the doctrinal developments within Calvinism, above all, and the psychological effects of those doctrines on individual believers to bring about the selection of inner worldly asceticism in the pursuit of the calling from a range of alternatives, and a commitment to it. Weber writes of the impact of the Calvinist reformation, following the Lutheran developments, on religious life in the following terms:

The drain of asceticism from everyday worldly life had been stopped by a dam, and those passionately spiritual natures which had formerly supplied the highest type of monk were now forced to pursue their ascetic ideals within mundane occupations. But in the course of its development Calvinism added something positive to this, the idea of proving one’s faith in worldly activity. Therein it gave the broader groups of religiously inclined people a positive incentive to asceticism. By founding its ethic in the doctrine of predestination it substituted for spiritual aristocracy of the monks (geistlichen Aristokratie der Mönche) outside of and above the world the spiritual aristocracy (geistliche Aristokratie) of the predestined saints (Heiligen) of God within the world. It was an aristocracy which, with its character indelebilis, was divided from the eternally damned remainder of humanity by a more impassable and in its invisibility more terrifying gulf than separated the monk of the Middle Ages from the rest of the world about him, a gulf which penetrated all social relations with its sharp brutality

(Weber, 1930: 121; 1920: 120).

Weber continues by observing that it is the doctrinal possibility of an “aristocracy of an elect,” that is, a sectarian tendency that could result in the development of actual sects...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• INTRODUCTION
• Part I MAX WEBER ON SECTS AND VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS WITH SPECIFIC REFERENCE TO SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM
• Part II SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO SECTARIANISM IN SECOND TEMPLE JUDAISM
• Index of References
• Index of Authors