12.4 Religious collectivities

It is normal for people to organise themselves into groups, organisations or associations. This happens in the area of commerce, labour, sport, culture, politics, education, social welfare and so on. Religion is no exception in this regard.

In order to express itself socially, the formation of organisations or associations within which people can enter into relationship with the holy or, more specifically, with the supernatural or divine, often occur. There are different types of religious organisations, of which we will discuss the following types briefly: denomination, ecclesia, sect and cult.

Although most of these terms have a Christian origin and connotation - the typology was originally thought out by the German sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920) and the theologian Ernst Troeltsch (1865-1923), they are useful in the sense that each of them represents a certain type of structure. These terms will therefore be used to describe certain types of organisations that may, or may not, occur in other religious traditions.

Ecclesia

The most important characteristic of the ecclesia (Greek for "church") is that it covers a large geographical area, which is either national or international. We tend to use the Greek word because "church" is too ambiguous in English: it can mean a specific organisation, the collection of all Christians, or a building!

The area covered and the vast number of members involved, are responsible for a complicated administration. Authority within the ecclesia is normally centralised and moves along a well–established hierarchy. Since the ecclesia is sufficiently large and well established to accommodate internal differences, various kinds of sub–organisations and leaders exist within the larger group.

Today the Roman Catholic Church is a good example of an ecclesia. On the other hand, bodies like the World Council of Churches or the World Alliance of Reformed Churches cannot be regarded as ecclesiae because membership is totally voluntary and the member churches retain their individual identities. Perhaps the Lutheran World Federation can in some ways be regarded as an ecclesia. All Lutheran churches all over the world belongs to this federation. However, it would be different from the Catholic church since the Lutheran Church in South Africa and, say, the one in Sweden are both separate denominations, each with its own autonomy.

As society changes, an ecclesia may gradually be reduced to the status of a denomination. In Britain, where the Anglican Church was in the ecclesia category for a long time, other denominations have increased in importance to such an extent that the influence of Anglicanism has decreased considerably.

Denomination

A denomination is a large group which has been well established and enjoys wide acceptability in the community. Usually a denomination is quite tolerant towards another denominations, but rather intolerant towards sects (see below), which are seen as narrow minded and reactionary.