Dialecticizing The Types

The sociology of religion has long agonized over types of religion-church, sect, denomination, and the like. Excellent recent works dealing with the matter stiU leave disquieting ambiguities unad-dressed. The problem is dealt with by specifying a typological system with levels of inclusiveness. The result of this is a veritable lexicon of types, all mapped out on some axes. In addition, a number of dia-lectically-inspired hypotheses iUustrate the h ppy tensions which are to be found within the property-space of typological ambiguities. Some implications for research are discussed. The Problem The point of departure for sociology done in the Weberian tradition is that the discov-ery of human phenomena reaches closure with the meanings which underlie conduct rather than with the conduct itself. The operative meaning for the sociologist in any given instance may on the one hand be the "actual existing meaning in the given concrete case of a particular actor " or the average meaning attributable to a given plurality of actors, or on the other hand a "theoretically conceived pure type of subjective meaning attributed to the hypothetical actor or actors in a given type of action " (Weber, 1978:4). Put simply, there are the thoughts which guide social conduct, and there are the sociologists ' categor-ies used to describe those thoughts from a human scientific perspective. This essay &als primarily in these latter categories. There have been many fine discussions of pure type categories in the sociology of reli-gion, under the rubric of church-sect contrasts (see inter alia Beckford, 1976; Johnson