Introduction
This introductory chapter provides some of the conceptual tools that we shall need if we are to study religious and other organisations and understand the kinds of relationships that we need to build between them.
The chapter will begin with definitions of ‘institution’ and ‘organisation’, will understand both religion and society as institutional realities, and will locate religious organisations in a sector of their own, and faith-based organisations as hybrids lying on the boundaries between the religious and other sectors. The chapter will then understand the relationship-building context as one of multiple secularisations and desecularisations in an urban world, and will introduce the Thames Gateway in which many of the case studies will be located.
Institutions and Organisations
Some of the definitions that the Oxford English Dictionary gives of the word ‘institution’ are as follows:Among the definitions of ‘organisation’ in the same dictionary, the relevant one is as follows:
- An established law, custom, usage, practice, organisation, or other element in the political or social life of a people; a regulative principle or convention subservient to the needs of an organised community or the general ends of civilisation [ – the dictionary gives as examples the institutions of law, property, and slavery]
- An establishment, organisation, or association, instituted for the promotion of some object, esp. one of public or general utility, religious, charitable, educational, etc., e.g. a church, school, college, hospital, asylum, reformatory, mission, or the like; as a literary and philosophical institution, …
- Often occurring, like ‘institute’, in the designations of societies or associations for the advancement of literature, science, or art, of technical knowledge, or of special education.
- The name is often popularly applied to the building appropriated to the work of a benevolent or educational institution. (Oxford English Dictionary)
This definition is similar to the second and third definitions of ‘institution’, and it overlaps with, but does not repeat, the first. This suggests that organisations form a subset of institutions. So, for instance, money is an institution, but it is not an organisation, whereas a trade union is both an institution and an organisation.An organised body of people with a particular purpose, as a business, government department, charity, etc. (Oxford English Dictionary)
The agenda of this book is an institutional one, and not simply an organisational one. It is organisational, in the sense that much of the book will be about how religious and secular organisations relate to each other, and how we can facilitate improved relationships; but it is also about institutions such as marriage – institutions that are not organisations – and it asks how secular institutions and religious institutions relate to each other, how the religious and secular aspects of institutions that are both religious and secular might relate to each other, and how those relationships too might be able to be improved. In the case of non-organisational institutions – such as marriage – it might sometimes look as if we are trying to mediate between religious and secular aspects of the same institution. When this occurs we might find it useful to argue as if there were two separate institutions – religious marriage and secular marriage – that need to be reconciled. This will be legitimate if we recognise that we shall be using the ‘two marriages’ concept as a heuristic (educational) device, and that institutions such as marriage are inherently both religious and secular.
We shall also find ourselves using the word ‘institution’ in a third sense. As the Oxford English Dictionary suggests, ‘institution’ can refer to the building in which an organisation operates: and we shall sometimes find buildings functioning as mediating institutions.
We have already used the word ‘institution’ in three senses: in the sense of ‘institutions, including organisations’, in the sense of ‘institutions that are not organisations’, and in the sense of ‘buildings in which organisations operate’. I will occasionally use the term ‘non-organisational institution’ for the second of these types of institution where confusion with an organisational institution might arise, but otherwise the reader will understand from the context whether ‘institution’ means ‘institutions including organisations’ or ‘institutions that are not organisations’. If I use the word ‘institution’ to refer to a building then I shall be clear that it is a building about which I am writing.
Our agenda is therefore somewhat complex. We are asking how religious institutions and secular institutions relate to each other, and how we can facilitate such relationships; how the religious and secular aspects of institutions relate to each other, and how we can facilitate those relationships; and how religious organisations and secular organisations relate to each other, and how we can facilitate those relationships.
Religion as Institutional
Emil Durkheim defines religion as
This is a definition couched in institutional terms. Durkheim follows it with an organisational definition by suggesting that a ‘church’ is essential to religion because religion is ‘a collective thing’ (Durkheim 1915: 47) which connects practices and ideas together ‘to classify them and systematise them’ (Durkheim 1915: 429). If Durkheim had been writing today then he might have written ‘religious organisation’ rather than ‘church’, but the point is the same: a religion is institutional, made up of organisations and systematised and categorised beliefs and practices (all of which are institutional realities according to the definitions of ‘institution’ at the beginning of this chapter). We might object that Durkheim was a sociologist, and so was likely to think like this, whereas individual religious experience can sometimes be more important for members of faith communities. However, the problem with inner experience is that it is difficult to study, and in particular difficult to compare with anyone else’s religious experience in a systematic way (Bruce 1995: vii). This means that individual religious experience remains a private matter for the individual and of no social consequence – unless of course it issues in identifiable patterns of behaviour and language, at which point it becomes institutional.a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden – beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church all those who adhere to them. (Durkheim 1915: 47)
We have arrived at a definition of religion that encompasses religious practices, expressed religious beliefs, and religious organisations. We can conclude that religion is its institutions.
Society as Institutional
In one sense Margaret Thatcher was right when in an interview for Women’s Own in 1987 she said that
She might have put it better. She might have said that there is no such thing as a society that is not constituted by a ‘living tapestry of men and women’. Then she would have been correct: but she would still not have captured the whole of what society is. Society is its many individual members: but it is also the institutions that it contains, such as money, the family, marriage, the law, the State, voluntary organisations, companies, guilds, trades unions, and, more broadly, customs, economic structures, and social structures. These are ‘structures’, ordered patterns of activity, which we influence just as much as they influence us. To take one example: the institution of the family ( – a social institution to which Thatcher gave several honourable mentions in her interview for Women’s Own). Our families shape us, and the ways in which we form families and behave in families slowly changes the institution of the family.there is no such thing as society. There is a living tapestry of men and women and people and the beauty of that tapestry and the quality of our lives will depend upon how much each of us is prepared to take responsibility for ourselves and each of us [is] prepared to turn round and help by our own efforts those who are unfortunate. (Thatcher 1987)
Durkheim wrote that
Yes: and when I act as a brother, husband, or citizen, I influence the social structures to which those terms relate; and when I execute contracts I create or expunge money, and create or change organisational and personal relationships. Social facts change, and we change the social facts.when I fulfil my obligations as brother, husband, or citizen, when I execute my contracts, I perform duties which are defined externally to myself and my acts, in law and in custom. (Durkheim 1938:1)
Among the more pervasive social institutions or structures are the kinds of authority types that Max Weber researched. For Weber, ‘authority’ means ‘that a specific command will be obeyed’ (Weber 1922: 4), whether from expediency or custom, because we recognise the legitimacy of the authority structure. Weber identified three types:As with all other social institutions, none of these authority types is set in stone. They all change, and it is we ourselves who keep them in being, dispose of them, or change them. As Blumer puts it, institutions are
1.
‘Classical’, ‘legal’ or ‘bureaucratic’: ‘Legal authority rests on enactment; its pure type is best represented by bureaucracy’ (Weber 1922: 4). In relation to this type of authority, we obey a bureaucracy’s rules, not the people who work for the bureaucracy. It is the system of rules that constitutes the institution, and the individuals out of which the bureaucracy is constructed are there to fulfil the roles demanded by the organisation: so here we have a broad institution, ‘bureaucratic authority’, within which particular organisations function as institutions.
2.
‘Traditional’: ‘Traditional authority rests on the belief in the sacredness of the social order and its prerogatives as existing of yore. Patriarchal authority represents its pure type’ (Weber 1922: 6). Offices are held at the pleasure of the lord. Feudalism is its developed form. (Weber 1922: 8)
3.
‘Charismatic’: Charismatic authority ‘rests on the affectual and personal devotion of the followers to the lord and his gifts of grace (charisma)’ (Weber 1922: 8). Prophets exercise this kind of authority. There are no rules, only devotion to the charismatic leader’s mission. As the charismatic leader’s authority wanes, the community develops rules to regulate its life. ‘Routinisation’ occurs, and a bureaucracy evolves. (Weber 1922: 10)
This is true. However, when Blumer goes on to say thatsubject to pressure as well as to reinforcement, to incipient dissatisfaction as well as to indifference; they may be challenged as well as affirmed, allowed to slip along without concern as well as subjected to infusions of new vigour …. A gratuitous acceptance of the concepts of norms, values, social rules and the like should not blind the social scientist to the fact that any one of them is subtended by a process of social interaction – a process that is necessary not only for their change but equally well for their retention in a fixed form. (Blumer 1969: 18)
he has left out half of the process. The social processes and the rules in group life constantly influence each other. It is not possible to separate individuals, social groups, and a society’s institutions. They are locked together.it is the social process in group life that creates and upholds the rules, not the rules that create and uphold group life, (Blumer 1969: 18)
For our purposes, the conclusion to draw is that society is not just its individual members: it is also its institutions, some of which are organisations. Where these institutions are not religious – that is, where the main purpose of an organisation is not gathering for worship, or where an institution is not firmly attached to a faith community or a religious tradition – then I shall call them ‘secular’. There is also of course a sense in which religious organisations and other religious institutions are ‘secular’, because they belong to a secular society (by which I mean a society largely shaped by secular practices, thoughtforms, and institutions): but nevertheless, we shall find the distinction between religious institutions and secular institutions useful, because it identifies organisations or institutions as either secular or religious, enabling us to discuss relationships between religious institutions and non-religious institutions, and between religious organisations and non-religious organisations.
Organisations in Sectors
We can categorise organisations into different sectors (Torry 2014b: 50–70). An organisation that creates services and products for customers, and in the process makes a profit that is then distributed to its owners, will be in the private sector; an organisation that provides services to a population, and is governed by a State or other governmental institution, will be in the public sector; and an organisation governed by a group of individuals who come together voluntarily to provide for the needs of a particular group in society, and who do not extract a profit from the organisation, will be in the voluntary sector (Billis 1993: 234; Salamon and Anheier 1993: 537; Kendall and Knapp 1995: 68). Organisations are complex, and often relate closely to each other, so the boundaries between the different sectors will be fluid, and there will be numerous ‘hybrid’ organisations that could legitimately be located in more than one sector (Billis 2010). For instance, a voluntary organisation might be largely funded by a local authority, and might work in a field heavily regulated by central government. We probably ought to locate such an organisation on the boundary between the voluntary and public sectors. A healthcare provider might be private, in the sense of being a privately owned company or a private partnershi...