Max Weber on Churches and Sects in North America: An Alternative Path toward Rationalization Author(s): Colin Loader and Jeffrey C. Alexander Source: Sociological Theory, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring, 1985), pp. 1-6 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/202165 Accessed: 27/05/2010 13:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=asa. 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During the four months for the first time, which is curiousgiven the manifest of his stay, he sought out ordinaryAmericans in all relevance of its subject matter. The reason for this walksof life and almost every section of the country. oversight would seem to be the existence of later, The fruit of this activity,according to Marianne,was "revisedversions" of the essay,especially "The Prot- his discoveryof the "moralkernel" beneath Amer- estant Sects and the Spirit of Capitalism."'The ica's objectified shell. "Weber eagerly absorbedall latter, regarded in the words of one leading inter- this," she writes. "He was stimulatedto give effort- preteras "the attempt to give a more comprehensive lessly of his own resourceswhat was able to delight scope to his empiricalobservations [from "Churches these simple people, and thus he unearthedin them and Sects"] and to give them a scientific underpin- the treasures of the experiences of a lifetime (p. ning,"2 was among the first of Weber's essays to be 299)." Weber himself wrote that the trip had wid- translated.3 The implication seems to be that the ened his scholarlyhorizons as well as improvinghis later version is more comprehensive and sophisti- health. "Its fruits in this respect can, of course, not cated, hence that the original is superfluous. We be seen for some time (p. 304)." disagree,believing that the originalis remarkablein What did Weber see in Americathat stimulated a number of ways, and even, in certain important him so? We believe that it was a glimmer of a way respects, far superior.4 First, the essay sheds new out of the "iron cage" of reified modern society. light on Weber's intellectualbiography and the con- Modernity was depicted throughout the German tours of his scientific development. Second, it has universitysystem6 in dualistic terms similarto Fer- significant implications for the interpretive debates dinand T6nnies's famous set of types, Gemeinschaft which rage around the Weber corpus. Finally, it and Gesellschaft.The Gemeinschaftrepresented the retains contemporaryempirical and theoreticalsig- traditional,pre-industrial "community," which was nificancein its own right. Its implicationsfor a range seen as an organictotality in which an elite governed of differentspecialities are strikingindeed.s in the name of values common to the entire group. The Gesellschaft,on the contrary,represented mod- I ern, industrial"society," a mechanisticgrouping of individualswho felt no common will or values,shar- Weber's trip to America in 1904 came at an ing only a set of instrumentalends. The epitome of important time in his life, just as he began to emerge the Gesellschaftto most Germanacademics was mass from the debilitatingmental illness that had forced democraticsociety. Most importantly,the Gesellschaft him to withdraw from a promising academic career. was seen as something essentiallynegative7-as the In the year before his trip, he had written four major decay of the Gemeinschaft,as the dissolution of the essays-two on methodology, one which continued organicunity into an atomistic "sandpile"in which his agrarian studies from the 1890's, and the first material interests became independent from the part (unpublished before the trip) of The Protestant meaningfulideal realm. The process of moderniza- Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism-all of which moved tion from Gemeinschaftto Gesellschaftwas viewed, in him further away from the academicmainstream in these terms, as a tragic one in which somethingwas which his career had begun. Yet, while these studies irretrievablylost.8 It was to resist this trend that declared his independence from the old order, Weber mainstreamacademics sought to reinforce the tra- at this point had no positive alternative. ditional elites, which included, along with them- We believe that one potential positive programme selves, the nobility and the bureaucracy.9 crystallized for Weber on his American trip and that Weber never identifiedwith this traditionalposi- the residue of this crucial experience was formalized tion. The very forces which most academicssaw as in "Churches and Sects," published in 1906. Cer- the antidote to the Gesellschaft-Protestantreligious tainly in Marianne Weber's account of the trip one ideals,academic learning, the bureaucraticestablish- can see that it marked an important shift in Weber's ment and even the nobility-were describedby him personal outlook (Marianne Weber, Max Weber:A as contributors to the modernizationprocess.'0 In Biography,trans. Harry Zohn, New York 1975: 279- "Churchesand Sects,"for example,he describesthe 304). She records how the other German intellec- established(Lutheran) church of Germanyas indif- tuals accompanying the Webers were repulsed by ferent to values,as rigidlyinstitutionalized and overly the cold, impersonal products of the new world's abstract when compared to the highly committed "capitalistic spirit," which they contrasted to Ger- sects. In placing a rather mystical ceremonial ele- man "congeniality" (Gemiitlichkeit).Weber, on the ment beside an ambition for secular power, the 1 2 LOADERAND ALEXANDER establishedchurch is seen by Weber as inherently origins to the Reformation.He distinguishes,then, hypocritical.Further, the church is identified with between "modernization"and "secularization."While both the state bureaucracyand the Germantradition the two can be coterminous,they are not necessarily of learning (Bildung),the basic components of the synonymous. Germanelite.11 Because these two concepts are not identicalfor At the same time, however, Weber was attracted Weber, he believes that in modern societies the throughout much of his work to the same dicho- "functions"of religioncan be maintainedeven while tomizingframework as his traditionalcolleagues, and the institution is altered. These functions can be to the same vision of decline. Insofaras these pow- fulfilled by secular groups, whose role is largely erful sympathies ruled his later work, he ascribed defined by the nature of the religious community only instrumental motives to modern actors and from which they grew. Historicallyprior religious groups, for values in modern society had become communities, then, established the dominant cul- dissolved into reified forms. In such a modern soci- tural code or schema, and the succeeding forms ety, ethical and moral problems are reduced to the embody this initial impulse. Thus, Weber wrote: existentialconcerns of heroic individuals.This treat- "The tremendous flood of social structures which ment of modern society in Weber's later work, in penetrates every nook and cranny of Americanlife other words, conforms to the Gemeinschaft-Gesell-is constituted in accordancewith the schema of the schaftdichotomy. [religious] 'sect'" (p. 36). The ethical and moral In "Churchesand Sects,"however, one sees another identityof contemporaryAmerican institutions, par- view of modernity which stands more fully at odds ticularlyvoluntary organizations like honorificorders with thatof Weber'scolleagues, a view whichbecomes and clubs, is determined by the moral and ethical very much muted in the later revisedversion of the qualitiesof America'searlier Protestantsects. essay. This aspect concerns the possibilityof break- This unusualunderstanding of secularizationleads ing throughthe iron cage. Weber, unlikemost other to a decisive critique of the univocal rationalization Germanacademics, did not seek to retreat to some thesis and, in turn, to an extensive elaborationof kind of organic Gemeinschaft,traditional or "mod- the decisive role played by religion in modernity. If ern." Any attempt to combine an organicunity with