welcome to another session of beliefs and believers. i am dr. john simmons and it's time to pull out those handkerchiefs cause we have reached our last dimension, dare i say it, the social dimension. but, we still got plenty more to do here, and some very interesting classes for you. with the social dimension, we want to look at how religion works, and the reason for that is we, as we've done the whole semester, is to appreciate religious diversity.

and we want to focus on the united states and look at some of the reason why we are so religiously diverse, and the reason for that is because we are going to be - continue to be become increasingly diverse, and we need to know how to appreciate other believers' beliefs and well do what we've been doing the whole semester. so by saying 'how it works' we want to see why we're diverse, why some religious organizations are successful, and why some don't make it. later we want - going to be wanting to look at what a cult is, what a sect is, so we can develop neutral ways of thinking about them, and overall hopefully in this segment we'll see that indeed we are religiously diverse, and a well educated person who wants to bring peace to the world, which we all do, has a good understanding of religion and at least can appreciate the dynamics. now, in this class we've already made the case several times that you don't necessarily need a religious institution to be spiritual; i think we've all agreed on that.

however religious institutions are the institutions that fill out the social dimension, so if we see how the pieces fit together, the dynamics work, we'll be better off in order to appreciate those who are inside religious organizations, those who are outside, and anybody in between. some questions and general comments before we launch into some graphics on religious diversity in the good old u.s. of a? >> when you mention we don't need the religious institutions to be spiritual, yet i think if you go long - too long a time, you do have to harken back to what gave you these ideas of spirituality. and i would think it would be the church, the temple, the synagogue. >> you're absolutely right, in the sense that over long periods of time, traditionally, that's where people draw their insights from; and again i am thinking of - we've talked about - we're back at the experiential dimensions, seems like years ago, but raw religious experiences,

kind of being like a pure white light, and religious institutions act as a prism, and the light comes through and it shades it in different ways. and what i think we're seeing is, well that has to be the way it is. it's very difficult to experience what people sometimes say is ineffable, what we can't even speak about. where do you find the symbols, where do you find the institutional trappings to lay upon it, how do you make sense of it in a community? and you are very right, my initial comment that, well we have this kind of spiritual impulse and instinct, well it comes in many different forms but especially when we talk about cults and sects, to go back to your comment about religious institutions, well where do cults and sects come from? we'll do a lot more on that in the next class, but usually a charismatic leader of one form or another, and we've met some cult leaders, and i hope by the end of this part of the class we won't be using that term in a negative way,

we've met j.z. knight and we've met cynthia jones and particularly cynthia who came into the class, so i think most people enjoyed her, but from the sociological definition, she is a cult leader. now when we met cynthia jones to go back and expand out your good comment here, when we met her, gosh in 1989, she was a person without institutional form who was working through deeply held spiritual ideas. but as i mentioned back then in those classes i tracked along and slowly but surely the trappings of institutional development came around through the social dimension, conquertize so to speak. until now we're really seeing with this diana's grove group she is running that we have elements we could pin point as being institutional. so, good point we don't want to throw out the institution because we're in the social dimension here.

but how those social dimensions work in the dynamics; another key theme i'd like bring out here is we are so used to thinking about, church as this beautiful huge cathedral say in europe, it seems like they've been here forever. and people from inside a religious organization like to think about it as their religion is eternal, it's not changing. but from the social dimension perspective or the sociological perspective it's very dynamic, it's very effervescent. in fact i use this term "religious ecology" just because sometimes i like to think about it, we have, janet's a biologist here, i like to think about that ecology model like an ecological niche in which there is new mutating species all the time. most probably die out, you can correct me janet but things emerge, mutations happen, most die out. and i'd like to think about sects and cults as mutations in a vibrant living ecological cultural pond which indeed

the united states is and we're focusing, for the most part on the united states because it's such an interesting story to look at that, but yes that's kind of where we're headed with it. yes... >> as you were talking and mentioning so many of these different people, i think to a certain degree, this is just from me, that people who have this experience are like a magnet. they draw out people because other people are looking for that same definite feeling. and what happens is, they are forced into a situation of being a leader rather that seeking it. so the original is seeking the idea and the belief, the other people are drawn because she's got the answer or he's got the answer. which puts him in a position of power, which takes a lot of strength of personality and integrity to withstand. >> and we've see incidents where it has not gone well,

the reason i chuckled there when you mentioned that is i had a little laps in my respectful religious demeanor and watched "monty pythons life of brian." you haven't seen that? you ever want a story about an unwilling savior that's it. let me get rid of the questions then we'll go to the graphic. >> i was going to say from the things you've said john, we talked a lot about spirituality, but i think spirituality follows being spiritual. and i have met a lot of people who do not consider themselves religious, they may be atheist and yet they are spiritual people and it seems to me that being spiritual is an element of our humanity. and so that's why i think that precedes spirituality. >> i feel we're moving into the personal realm which is you know fine me because we're almost through the semester. but to step out of my more detached realm,

i absolutely agree with you. i have always thought, some what simplistically, that we have a physical dimension, and a intellectual dimension, and a spiritual dimension and all three need to be exercised in order to bring out the best and once one is bringing out the best then you see the most humaneness, quiet naturally coming out. where we've talked about the ethical dimension and proper patterns of action, well sometimes we get the cart before the horse in that instance, i think if people exercise that natural spirituality you speak of then we see more of that. but anyway let's move on here into the great united states, and we don't want to be united states centric here, but the reason we are looking at united states is the mass majority of the people who will take this class will probably be looking at that environment and it's incredibly diverse and so first i want to look at why it is, it is so diverse. and of course the first reason is the first amendment to the u.s. constitution,

the bill of rights. and how interesting that the founders thought that freedom needed to be put first and we see that. congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise there of, and those there are 16 simple words where culture shaking radical at the time. there can be no tax support at one church, no single group defines identity in relationship and at the same time people have freedom to believe what they will. so these two great clauses; no establishment, all other times it would make sense that a society needed one set of answers to profound life questions or at least something in the same bag and people would pay money to support that institution. well not the case here and of course free exercise, well that's raised some very interesting questions. i have a whole class on that in my religion in america tele-class and i just love the subject area. how far can you take free

exercise but generally it means you can believe just about anything you want, but you can't necessarily do anything that you want. which of course our friends the mormons that we looked at back in 19th century found some tensions in that area. the four factors; we'll here from j. gordon melton in this class we've heard from him before, but four factors contribute to a very diverse, a religiously diverse social environment here in the united states and they all make sense. we're doing sociology here and we want to look at some factors that have created this fertile, ecological, dynamic, growing, mutating niche that we have here in united states. of course religious freedom is the first one, without making it a plain clear playing field, leveling the playing field i guess that's what i'm trying to say. without that nobody can get on top, no one can be in charge so to speak.

immigration, second major factor. i brought my religion with me; we all came from somewhere else, even native americans. and people brought their religions with them they stayed here and they had the freedom to allow them to continue. prostilization, many of us have woken up on saturday morning, in our bath robes, trying to cook the pancakes. knock, knock, knock, knock, and our friendly jehovah witnesses want to speak to us about the true biblical path, or our friends the mormons want to cross the touch, but that's just most visible. we're free to speak to other people, as our hare krishna friends did, we can go out on the corners try to convince people to join up and that keeps it dynamic. see all these reasons are just not that it happened, we got diverse, there is still an impact on us-- we're still cooking here. another key factor; denominationalism, every time you get a lot of ationalisms you know you're talking sociology so you might as well get used to it here.

but it's just the way the previous three factors have created an environment and how people organize. in other words, we don't really have anyone major church, what we have is many denominations, no establishment clause, free exercise allows again for a level playing field. so, lots of different choices and volunteerism simply means that people voluntarily can go to a religion of your choice, voluntarily they can get up out of that pew and go somewhere else if they're looking for some other answers that are not getting there or some other experience, or they can even start their own religion, or they can participate in no religion what so ever and that's the incredible nature of life here in this country. so what these four factors do, is they create an environment, a social environment that is very diverse. and that's why i like to bring in this idea that i already leaped into already in the class,

that of religious ecology. i like the image, religious because we are talking about religions or spiritual paths and ecology. ecology is, well i've kind of gone through it already but i love the term because it necessarily means in a relationship, interconnection, interaction, growth, life, death, the whole sphere that we see in biology is transferred on to a social situation. and at least in the united states not in countries where there is a single dominant religion, we talked about israel here and i say my experience there is there's indeed a kind of religious ecology there, but it's much more static compared to the dynamic changing kinds of things that go on in the united states. so here shortly, i want to bring in a roll in, just a quick roll in of j. gordon melton, we'll be coming back here shortly and looking at two churches in our own region

that are very successfully entered in to the pool of, shall we say, our pond of religious ecology they survive well and we're going to talk about why that is. but the key word to keep the analogy going is "adapt," they adapted well to their immediate social environment so, a key phase. before doing that i want to bring out this interview with j. gordon melton. we've met him before, he was defending j.z. knight, well not defending, he'd studied her and he spoke about some of her experiments. but he is a premier historian of religion; he's written the encyclopedia of religion and an interesting point, this man is an extremely devout conservative methodist minister. and yet, he has devoted almost his entire life to chronicling other people's beliefs, and with great respect. i learned so much from the man. anyway he just is going to, from the mouth of an expert, explain why it is important

to have an appreciation for religious diversity. j. gordon melton. in our quest to understand the importance of the religious diversity, we're at the chicago theological seminary on the university of chicago campus and with us is dr. j. gordon melton the director of the institute for the study of america religion. now gordon could you tell us how important it's really is to understand and appreciate religious diversity? >> i could offer several reflections on that. one is the simple fact that it's there, if we're students of religion and how it functions in the society, then we should be aware that people are very, very diverse in the way that they express their response to the divine. we all do it differently and that leads directly to the kind of moral imperative that's before us. our neighbors believe differently, behave differently than we do. if we are to have

a whole community, if we are to bring people together in a cohesive world that can live without violence and without the high crime rates with all of the negative things that we have. one very important building block of that kind of community is knowledge and understanding of people who are different than we are, but who never the less share the same human concerns, who have the same moral spirit, who want to live at peace with us. >> you've authored the encyclopedia of american religion which is in its eighth edition, what has your studies brought to you or helped you discover about religious diversity in america? >> well the encyclopedia project really started out as a little book to document all the different groups in america. i didn't have the idea to create an encyclopedia originally, but we kept finding more

and more groups that nobody had ever written about, and nobody knew existed, some of them quiet large. so the encyclopedia became a project to document all of the different groups and to provide some kind of frame work for understanding them. we found that there was quiet a bit of diversity; 1,500 or more groups in the united states alone. but at the same time, many of these groups were slight variations on other groups so that while there is this wide spectrum of religion. there are also these family groupings of religion; religious groups that are very close to each other but different in some kind of way. and we now have a much better understanding of why our religious landscape is the way that it is. >> see he used "religious landscape" which is i guess a similar terminology, it's kind of kind of ecological perspective.

but we pass the ethical dimension when we talk about proper patterns of action and i love how his fundamental answers to questions about why should we appreciate different religions is, how did he put it a moral imperative? that we need to do this, we need to appreciate. and of course we've been down the pike enough time in this class so far, that you know i am not saying just go up and embrace and believe anybody else's religion. that's not what walking a mile in some ones moccasins is about. yes, jamie you had your hand up. >> from your world wide view, you've traveled extensively, does it seem to you that we as the country are more religiously diverse than most of the countries, especially english speaking countries? >> absolutely, it's extraordinary and those various factors that we see contributed that. one of the most-- martin marty said this i wish i could get the quote right but, he is a nice guy probably won't sue me, but he said that you are okay if you have one major religion in a social environment. you get two and you've got some

real serious problems but if you get ten or 12 or 30, then the edges get worn down just a little bit. and what melton is talking about is having 1,500 different religions that's a lot of-- yes and it's amazing. and to use some of our tools so far i think the primary reason, though not vastly the majority reason is doctrinal differences of course and we're back to interpreting if it's christian, of course the vast majority of the groups are christian but here there is another mind blower. in the united states where 88% of the people who claim to be religious are christian, well okay but there is probably something like 900 different christian organization. and so the difference often times mes down to doctrine but also ritual, how are we going to sprinkle, are we going to dip, are we going to do hymns. so we passed through that somewhat in the doctrinal dimension but never the less what he is saying - and we are seeing

increasing diversity for those very reasons. immigration; mung peoples coming in from the cambodia area, muslims coming in from iraq or iran anytime there is a totalitarian or religio-political upheaval around the world and people can escape, they'll come here and they have the right to bring their religion. now you probably know by now, of all the things that excite me, and i'm like a kid in a candy store when it come to religious studies, but the one area that i just really go bananas on - of course i'm mixing metaphors, candy store and bananas in the food store any way - it's new religious movements. how immigration brings religion procetise - but it's the new religious movement dynamic is what really gets me going and of course we'll see that in the next class. just a couple of things here, on the graphics we want to look at two regional religions, very different but they have

successfully adapted to their ecological niche and i want to work on that point here so you can see how that happens. we'll meet rev. lowe and sheryl pero at tabor lutheran church, you may not have heard tabor lutheran obviously most of you are from the chicago area. but i bet you've heard of the second example we are going to look at, willow creek community church out in the bulky suburb south barrington, i believe. amazing stories, very different stories but both of them have successfully adapted, and i want to show why to do a truly sociological song and dance here for you, but you will see this. i want to talk about the dilemmas of institutionalization. and the first point with these dilemmas is they don't just affect religions, they affect every single kind of institution. every time you bring a group of people together and your institution lies around a set of ideals,

you have to find some way of balancing these dilemmas. and, now think about this in your club, in your church, in your school, united states government, believe me our good president is wrestling with the dilemmas of institutionalization, the chicago bulls has just gone through are in the midst of a terrible wrestling with the dilemmas. so once we look at these we'll see it's like water in pond, water in the institutional pond, it's inevitable. very common sense, but the point that i want to make as we move through this is that willow creek, in its own way and tabor lutheran in its own way managed to find balance between these dilemmas through adapting to their ecological niche. so the first one; mixed motivation among members over time. see what the dilemma right off the bat the dilemma is, the more successful you are, the more failure lurks in the corners and we all know that.

and that's what's driving this whole dilemma is, okay you have done well you have got lots of members, but if you've got older members in the church and younger members, they begin to disagree about lots of things. and see where we're really headed with this is, we'll pick it up in the next class, but in a free society when that disagreement becomes too much, bye bye. people split off, they join new organizations or to get me going sometimes they even start their own new one. so mixed motivation got to keep people happy, balance. maintaining the vitality of the symbol system is so important in religion. you've got to keep those symbols vital, myth and ritual they have to mean something. you don't know how often i've heard student say, "i left my church because it didn't mean anything to me," and what they're talking about is some of the key rituals, some of the key stories. you have to keep it meaningful and to do that you have to keep it relevant. and in particular

with bill hybels at willow creek community church, he does an incredible job of keeping the ancient christian mythos and the ritual practices quiet relevant to peoples lives. so tough row you get too, relevant, and we'll talk about secularization, then you loose that religious edge here. this is one that affects everything, organizational elaboration versus movement effectiveness. back in 1969 here at governor state when you wanted to get some financial aid, you probably just walked up to the president and said, "can i have five bucks," and he'd say, "sure." now you got to go through all these forms. so the more successful you become, the more elaborate things become and the more people can become alienated. sure, janet. >> and john, some of those areas people sometimes want to go back to the basics, you have of these get to the basics movements that happened i think out of this, may be? >> praise your genius, because that's exactly what we're headed into that into the next class,

but that's what i would say. that impulse, you're sitting in your church and you've heard about the parking lot paving committee, the church organ versus the pipe organ committee, you've got this committee and that committee. you've heard too many committees and finally you say, "no i want spirituality, i want to go back to it," and so you may, in a free society get up and join a sect, sects as we'll see tend to have just the impulse you named which is to go back and renew the true faith. which is very different from doing something completely innovated but you're quite right. the response to all these dilemmas potentially, to use our ecological model, is new species; new species will form in the form of sects for the most part and cults. sects are much more common and we'll get to the definitions in the next class, i think you'll see why. cults are very rare which is why in particular, i'm interested in groups like the ramtha folks and cynthia jones because

they really are much more rare and much more tension surrounding them. so another need for concrete definition versus legalism, you know the term dogma. here we're looking at the doctrinal dimension from the point of view of religion, but when you have to define who you are but at the same time what if it's just legal jargon, a bunch of stuff to say, it doesn't have the power of belief. so all these things press on religious organizations, they pushed down on them because you see how the dilemma is, the more successful you are, the clearer the doctrines are. you got to look - you think about religions such as roman-catholicism with great long history of theological texts and thinking that develops over time. so you've got to watch legalism. and of course last but not least is, the balancing of power factions. very difficult no matter what your organization is, power factions tend to happen.

and again someone made a comment in the other class about church polity, but in a democratic i mean that's why democracy, you can see the implications of this through politics, that in democracy there has to be some peaceful, hopefully way that you can balance factions otherwise power can be very corrupting. >> i was just going to say that some years ago when the catholic church chose to anglicize their services there were a lot of people right after that, that said "it was so much more spiritual." didn't understand, they admitted they didn't understand what it meant, but it was just what they were used to and had a feeling for them that english just couldn't handle. and here it's the same thing it's just said differently but they couldn't their church split, including some of the priests i understand. >> and that it's those kinds of dilemmas, that's a perfect example yes, susan.

>> but it isn't that catholics didn't understand it. they all did because you had your latin column here, and your [inaudible] prayer book and you had your english, or your french, or your african, or whatever you spoke on the other side. the thing that was lovely about it and it really was that no matter where a catholic went to mass in the world, that mass was in latin and it was familiar. i will never forget, my roommates expressions when we're watching a mass in african and it was latin and i was singing along at that point she said, "what, say what, you understand that?" oh yes, oh yes and it was a oneness kind of the function of it wasn't to be a overly mysterious or anything else it was a sign of unity. now you can still find that some places and will still find masses with gregorian the thing now is you can find all different kinds masses any places, it's still the same words, but if go to paris it will be

in french and if you got to zaire it will be in - >> i like your comment about the unifying factor, it's like everybody who's a muslim praying facing mecca. you need that kind of unifying factor there. >> and it did have a very good feel to it. also i mean the fact, what went right along with it was having the altar face the people. i know when my parent went to a mass in the bahamas their alter was already facing the people and they said they could never feel quite the same about the altar facing the back wall. and also in those prayer books was a picture of what the priest was doing with his back to us. so i don't think there are very many who wished that that would go back to the old way. >> but you know sure. >> i think this is a very individual thing. i had a patient a couple of years ago who was dying of cancer, and as the chaplin i tried to walk with him on a spiritual plane and i tired to find out

something about his own spiritual journey. and i learned that when the changes took place after the second vatican council, this man felt no longer at home in church and he eventually just stopped going to church. now this was a religious man he had a little alter next to his bed, there was a little standing crucifix, he had flowers there were little plastic flowers there, he said now that he had to stay downstairs and his hospital bed was downstairs he missed his little alter up stairs. so, this was a new insight for me because i felt very much like susanna. i was grateful that the liturgy was in english,