The social control of religious zeal : a study of organizational contradictions
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The social control of religious zeal : a study of organizational contradictions
(The Arnold and Caroline Rose monograph series of the American Sociological Association)
Rutgers University Press, c1994
Available at 3 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. 217-226) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
How has the organization of the Christian missionary movement managed to persist for almost two centuries? Jon Miller covers the activities of the Evangelical Missionary Society of Basel, Switzerland, from 1828 to 1918 as it struggled to bring its Pietist religious beliefs to the people of the Gold Coast of West Africa.
The mission gave different social classes an opportunity to interact in a way that would have been unlikely in Europe. Many of the missionaries became socially mobile, over the generations, through their evangelical work. In matters of governance, Pietist beliefs called for concentrated power at the center. That discipline channeled the zeal of the missionaries, but it alienated ordinary members and suppressed their initiative, while at the same time allowing creativity among eccentric nonconformists. Miller interprets these contradictions, explores their consequences at home and abroad, and explains how the mission persisted despite the personal pain its members experienced.
The mission remains active and influential in Africa to this day. This study of the passage of an organization through time will interest organizational sociologists, sociologists of religion, and students of social theory and social change.
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