1999 Presidential Address

The Varieties of Sacred Experience:

Finding the Sacred in a Secular Grove

N.J. DEMERATH, III†

This paper contends that the social scientific study of religion has long labored under a chafing constraint and a
misleading premise. It suggests that our primary focus should be on the sacred, and that religion is just one among
many possible sources of the sacred. Defining religion “substantively” but the sacred “functionally” helps to
resolve a long-standing tension in the field. Broadened conceptions of the sacred and of “sacralization” help to
defuse the conflict among the two very different versions of secularization theory: the “all-or-nothing” versus the
“middle range.” Meanwhile, a conceptual typology of the sacred pivots around the intersections of two distinctions
(compensatory vs. confirmatory and marginal vs. institutional). This generates four distinct scenarios: the sacred
as integrative, the sacred as quest, the sacred as collectivity, and the sacred as counter-culture. The paper concludes
with three admonitions for research in the area.

One hundred years ago today, and barely minutes away, it is not unreasonable to suppose that
William James was ensconced in his Cambridge study hard at work on the Gifford Lectures that
were later published in 1902 as The Varieties of Religious Experience. Since this is a day for
looking back, it seems only right to pay homage to a social scientist whose work on religion pre-
dates the major works of even those great lions of the hunt, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Nor
has James yet been relegated to the remainder tables (cf. Capps and Jacobs, 1995). Indeed, Varieties
recently passed my personal test of a living classic when I realized I had left the copy at home that
I had planned to read on a train trip, and so ducked into the station’s paperback book stand on the
off chance of finding a suitable replacement. Lo and behold there it was — and the only book in
that tiny collection of paperbacks even remotely pertinent to our mutual interests today.
Of course, James would not have passed Durkheim’s muster. James was a psychologist not a
sociologist, and one who focussed on what Weber would later call the religious “virtuoso” rather
than the “mass” or its institutions. Still, James shared with Durkheim and Weber a fundamental
paradox. On the one hand, he, like them, was religiously “unmusical” in his personal life. On the
other hand, he, like them, provided an epiphanal account of religion’s importance.
Like all true classics, the works of all three scholars not only beckon us backward but propel
us forward. Both directions are appropriate on a day that marks a 50th anniversary on the eve of a
new millennium. As a way of pointing towards the future, James, Durkheim, and Weber share a
paradox within a paradox. While all three were deeply aware of religion’s importance, they were
also aware that religion is not as singular in its consequences as in its attributes. All three were
attuned to alternative and equivalent experiences that could be significant for either the individual
or the collectivity. This is a theme I want to develop further, one that is hinted at in the deliberate
mis-quote in my title. In stressing “The Varieties of Sacred Experience,” I am continuing a line of
inquiry that I began some time ago with Terry Schmitt (1998). Here I want to suggest a widening

† N.J. Demerath, III: Department of Sociology; University of Massachusetts; Amherst, MA. 01002; (413) 545-4068;
FAX (413) 545-3204; e-mail: [email protected]
Presidential Address: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion; November 6, 1999; Boston, MA.
2 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

of our normal perspective and agenda — a widening that I suspect James, Durkheim, and Weber
would all have approved.
What follows comprises five sections — each mercifully brief. First, I review some of the
existing rubrics for work on broader conceptions of the sacred and suggest a shared limitation
among them. Second, I suggest why a broadened concern for the sacred is important, especially
within the context of our sometimes raucous disagreements over secularization. Third, I propose
a way forward that turns on a new deployment of older functional versus substantive definitions
of religion. Fourth, I develop a conceptual grid that allows us to chart different sources and kinds
of the sacred. Finally, I shall offer a few tips for possible new research in the area.

Reviewing Rubrics of the Sacred

If I give the impression of a lone wolf howling at a new moon, I should correct it quickly.
Investigating the wider sense of the sacred not only has a rich past but a burgeoning present.
Many of you have already made important contributions, and some of you are contributing papers
this weekend that I am eager to see. Meanwhile, it is worth considering several of the rubrics
under which much of this work has proceeded.
As early as 1967, Thomas Luckmann’s concept of “invisible religion” followed the path
blazed by his countryman, Ernst Troeltsch, who at the beginning of the century distinguished
between church, sect and the more prophetic “mysticism.” Also in 1967, Peter Berger broached
the “privatization” of religion, and continuing work along these lines suggests a spreading pool of
individualized beliefs and practices beneath religion’s institutional surface.
Of course, there are sociologists in the Durkheimian tradition who would object that a fully
individuated religion is an oxymoron. Unlike William James, they would even find fault with
James’ Harvard colleague, George Santayana in his classic definition of religion as that which
people do “in their own solitariness.” For those who spin at this thought like Durkheim in his
grave, there is always the more sociologically sensitive notion of a growing “folk religion” as
developed, for example, by James Mathisen (1992). This describes religious practices whose
symbols, beliefs, and rituals are far removed from the churches and temples of conventional
religion.
However, there are other broader conceptions of the sacred that have also become traditions
of their own. Since 1978, Edward Bailey has been hosting annual conferences on “implicit religion”
in West Yorkshire, England. For Bailey, “implicit religion” involves a convergence of “commitment,
integrating foci, and intensive concerns with extensive effects” (1998:22-24), and the papers
pivoting around this concept have varied widely.
Meanwhile, Larry Greil and Tom Robbins edited a 1994 collection on Between Sacred and
Secular: Research and Theory on Quasi-Religion. They are not the first to deploy the term; others
include David Bromley and Anson Shupe in their work on “religio-economic corporations” such
as Amway (1990, 1998), and the studies of healing groups by James Beckford (1984) and by
Meredith McGuire (1993). But Greil (1993) has distinguished between “quasi-religions,” which
are recognizably “religious” to outsiders though ambiguously so to insiders, and “para-religions,
“ which have the normal religious characteristics save for any reference to the supernatural. One
might describe the former as using religion as a means to other ends, while the latter pursue de-
mystified versions of religion as an end in its own right.
“Invisible religion,” “folk religion,” “implicit religion,” “quasi-religion,” “para-religion” —
all of these terms are associated with important developments in what I would prefer to call the
“sociology of the sacred.” And yet all of them share an important drawback in using a conventional
image of religion as their basic point of reference. This has three unfortunate consequences.
First, using religion as the model tends to narrow the search for the sacred to only those
things which are religious in character. To take just one example, as important as it is to examine
the Amways of the world, it is also important to examine other corporate settings which bear no
VARIETIES OF SACRED EXPERIENCE 3

overt relation whatsoever to religion and would not be remotely described as “religious” by either
outsiders or insiders.
Second, using religion as the model tends to imply that organizations, experiences, events
that fall short of the model may fall short in providing sacred consequences. My argument is that
religion is only one model — or rather only one array of related models — and that other sources
of the sacred can be equally valid even though far more variegated.
Third, using religion as a model suggests that when religion gives way to non-religious
alternatives, a secularizing short-changing has occurred. But this may or may not be the case for
reasons that are worth examining in somewhat greater detail. Since the issue of secularization has
become such a divisive hobgoblin amongst us, it is worth pausing over.

Comparing Cortlands and Apples in the Secularization Debate

By now it seems clear that there are two secularization theses, not just one. The first is the all-
to-nothing argument descended from the Enlightenment anti-Christs. It holds that religion was
once all dominant in pre-Reformation Europe and the undifferentiated societies of underdeveloped
countries and tribal settings, but that religion is now in linear decline and destined to disappear
altogether in more complex nations. Rodney Stark and his fellow divines are correct that both
ends of this thesis involve more fiction than fact and are easily rebutted. There was never a society
in history or in anthropology that did not have its secular aberrations; forecasting some future
society that is totally without religion is a myopic exercise in anti-ideal types.
Meanwhile, there is a second strand of secularization theory that is the middle-range product
of 20th century theorists. It eschews the all-or nothing poles of religious omnipotence and religious
disappearance. Focusing instead on the dynamics between these extremes, it develops lesser
scenarios of secularization that are non-linear in that they are subject to reversals, and asymptotic
in that they are unlikely to ever bottom-out at zero.
One reason why secularization is never likely to even approach a zero point is due to the
countervailing process of “sacralization.” Without arguing some cultural version of Newton’s
third law that for every force in the direction of secularization there must be an equal and opposite
force on behalf of sacralization, I have suggested in some detail that the two processes are more
symbiotic than conflicting, and their combination is a major factor in producing continued religious
vitality through change rather than religious decline and irrelevance through changelessness in a
changing world (cf. Demerath, 2000 a & b).
But note the three operative terms here: “sacred,” “secular” and “religion.” Which of the
three doesn’t belong? The sacred-secular distinction has a lustrous pedigree in both theology and
social thought. Because sacred and secular are long-standing poles at opposite ends of a widely
accepted continuum, religion itself appears to be the outlier. Nor is religion a synonym for sacred.
Surely there are religious phenomena that have lost their power and are no longer sacred. Just as
surely there are sacred entities and symbols that have a compelling power without being religious.
One way to clarify the matter is to reconsider the often confusing distinction between
substantive and functional definitions of religion. Of course, substantive definitions characterize
religion in terms of its descriptive attributes — for example, belief in some supernatural order or
a system of ritual activities and symbols that typically occur within some kind of organizational
structure. By contrast, functional definitions are characterizations in terms of consequences —
for instance, experiences of self-transcendence, or Durkheim’s suspiciously tautological emphasis
on “beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a church all those
who adhere to them.”
Instead of using both types of definition for religion, there are major advantages to restricting
the substantive to religion while reserving the functional for the sacred. This preserves the basic
thrust of both terms. Religion is, after all, a category of activity, while the sacred is nothing if not
a statement of function. More important, this makes the relationship between the two empirically
4 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

problematic. As already suggested, religious activities do not always have sacred consequences,
or put more helpfully, the degree to which the consequences are sacred is a critical variable that
must be explored.
Meanwhile, separating the functional consequences of the sacred from the substantive activities
of religion has another advantage. The narrowed conception of religion becomes only one possible
— albeit one very important — source of the broadened conception of the sacred. Expanding the
range of sources of the sacred also expands the terms for the debate over secularization. Restricting
either secularization or sacralization to religion imposes an unwarranted constraint. Since any
culturally impregnated activity has potentially sacred functions, we need to consider secularization
as a process that may affect a much larger inventory of any society’s cultural stock, including its
political, economic, scientific, and familistic values and practices. By the same token, the
countervailing process of sacralization may also involve these non-religious spheres. Moreover,
sacred elements from one sphere may serve to erode the saliency of sacred elements from another
sphere, and/or compensate for erosion once it has occurred.
All of this brings to mind Joseph Gusfield’s review of my dissertation and first book, Social
Class in American Protestantism (1965). The book reported on a secondary analysis of surveys
conducted in five denominations by my major advisor, Charles Glock. Despite Charlie’s efforts
help me bring the project up to par, Gusfield was not wholly persuaded by the results. No fan of
survey research generally, he was especially suspicious of the link between my data and my
theory. He said it reminded him of an old “Mutt and Jeff” cartoon that portrayed Mutt on his hands
and knees searching for a quarter in the dark of night under a corner street lamp. “Is this where
you lost the quarter?” asked Jeff. “No,” replied Mutt, “I lost it in the middle of the block, but the
light’s better here.”
After more than 30 years, the pain has subsided somewhat. Moreover, I have at last found an
equally deserving target for the Gusfield lance. Too often we look for the sacred under a religious
street lamp, when we should be searching amongst other experiences in the middle of the block.
Of course, religion itself remains a crucial and compelling substantive phenomenon in its own
right. But any probing analyses of its sacred or secular tendencies and consequences must occur
within a broader context. This is increasingly the case in increasingly complex and differentiated
societies — even without subscribing to the tangled new narratives of a putative post-modernity.

Scouting the Sacred Alternatives

Any reconnoitering of the sacred is daunting. This is especially true if one defines the sacred
in terms of experienced consequences rather than surface substance. Almost any social experience,
process, or phenomenon may qualify. In fact, charting the sacred involves an exploration of inner
space that is every bit as challenging as the astronomer’s exploration of a continually expanding
outer space. And yet we are not exactly starting at ground zero. No scholars are better equipped
for the task than social scientists of religion. Scholarship on religion even provides the bearings
for a possible conceptual map to guide the search.
In developing this map, I want to begin with two distinctions that have proved helpful for
understanding religion itself. Then — in a move that will surprise no one familiar with my work —
I shall try to distill four types of the sacred that lie at the intersection of the two distinctions. Now I
realize that typologies reflect a form of intellectual doodling that is the last refuge of a theorist gone
to seed. On the other hand, I have always tried to honor the advice of that distinguished academic
guru, W.S. Gilbert. You may recall his counsel in the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, “Patience:”

“You must lie upon the daisies and discuss in novel phrases of your complicated state of mind.
The meaning doesn’t matter if it’s only idle chatter of a transcendental kind.
And everyone will say, as you go your mystic way:
‘If this young man expresses himself in terms too deep for me,
VARIETIES OF SACRED EXPERIENCE 5

Why what a very singularly deep young man, this deep young man must be.’”

With that in mind, consider a first distinction between sacred experiences that are either
confirmatory or compensatory. By “confirmatory,” I mean those experiences that reinforce our
standing and affirm our identity by providing support, assurance, and security. In contrast, by
“compensatory” I mean those experiences that supply release or relief from demeaning or
unfulfilling rounds by providing alternative commitments and communities. The distinction is at
least reminiscent of a number of classic parallels, whether church versus sect, or William James’
own religion of the “healthy minded” versus the “sick soul.”
Meanwhile, a second distinction is between sacred experiences that are either marginal or
institutional. By “marginal” I mean those experiences affecting people who either are or perceive
themselves to be outside of the mainstream. By “institutional,” I mean those experiences that
occur within a culturally vested collectivity. Again, there are close parallels within the religious
literature. I have already alluded to Troeltsch’s view that an increasingly individualized “mysticism”
was to be the religious wave of the 20th century. I have also noted that his mentor, Max Weber,
saw an important difference between the religion of the virtuoso and the mass. But, of course,
there are also other parallels outside of the religious literature; for example, Victor Turner’s (1969)
distinction between liminality and communitas.
Now, if you are still with me, let me push matters one step further and suggest that the two
distinctions between marginal and institutional and between comfirmatory and compensatory
combine to generate — voila — four types or cells within which one can glimpse “the varieties of
sacred experience.” The four cells involve respectively the sacred as “integrative,” the sacred as
“quest,” the sacred as “collectivity” and the sacred as “counter-culture.”

The Sacred as “Integrative:” This type represents marginal experiences that are confirmatory. In
some sense, the combination may seem a contradiction. After all, how can people outside of the
normal rounds appreciate experiences that confirm these rounds? But here is that great array of
rituals that bring individuals out of the cold and into the warm embrace of a social unit. Religion’s
own integrative mechanisms range from Sunday School to conversions, confessions, and
communion. But there are other sacred equivalents outside the temple.
Here are the myriad variations of Van Gennup’s “rites (of) passage,” those crucial processes
that turn rookies into veterans and celebrate the results. Of course, socialization, re-socialization,
and Helen Rose Ebaugh’s (1988) de-socialization occur throughout the life course. Meanwhile,
there are other forms of integration and re-integration. For example, here are the “twelve-step
programs” that routinize a form of reclamation. John Rice (1994) compares Alcoholics Anonymous
with Co-Dependents Anonymous. Other such programs involve marginalizing excesses as diverse
as gambling, overeating, sex, and religion itself. Yes, now there are even twelve-step programs for
“religio-holics.”
But healing events of all sorts fit here — witness the “surgeon as God” syndrome. And apart
from the formal rituals and group activities in this cluster, there is a wide array of integrative
experiences that may qualify as sacred, however temporarily. These include falling in love,
encounters with nature, and epiphanal responses to sacred symbols such as a flag or a song.
The Sacred as “Quest:” This cluster involves compensatory marginality, or attempts to seek
new meanings and experiences for those who find the old inadequate. The questing scenario is
classically illustrated by the religious virtuoso, including that great theologian of our time, Sheila
Larsen, who has shared the habits of her heart through Robert Bellah and his co-authors (1985).
Another form of religious quest involves what Robert Wuthnow (1988) has termed “special purpose
groups.” These ecumenical movements pursue specific objectives in the public arena that generally
involve either policy changes or opposition to such changes, often through the use of what Rhys
Williams and I (1998) have called “cultural power.”
Meanwhile, questing also includes more explicitly non-religious cases. Here is where the
6 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

first of many cliches light our way, as in the mantra, “I`m not really religious but I am very
spiritual.” Wuthnow (1998) has recently chronicled the rise and changes in the spirituality quest,
and Clark Roof’s new book describes “the spiritual marketplace” (1999). This sort of quest can
take many forms, including what Susumu Shimazono (1999) calls “New Spirituality Movements.”
But as Shimazono points out, the spirituality quest can also take more amorphous cultural forms.
In fact, China’s Falun Gong seems to illustrate a spiritual guest that is partly organized and partly
floating in the early morning cultural air.
The most recent issue of Social Compass edited by Hildegard Van Hove (1999) explores the
“New Age” syndrome in considerable depth and cross-cultural breadth. However, the development
of new spiritual pursuits sometimes involves a recycling of the old, as in the rise of wiccan, astrology,
and the occult. William James himself noted the experience afforded by drugs — perhaps not
surprising from a member of the same Department of Psychology whose Timothy Leary was later
to put such a sheen on LSD. Meanwhile, a wide variety of therapies, especially psychoanalysis
qualify for this category (cf. Siskind, 1994). At the same time, there are now philosophers dispensing
their wisdom through the Yellow Pages. And questing may involve new political causes and economic
ideologies, not to exclude the scholar’s own quest for what may momentarily pass for truth.

The Sacred as “Collectivity:” Here we have the institutional version of the confirmatory syndrome.
This, of course, is Emile Durkheim’s somewhat padded cell. Not surprisingly, religious examples
spring quickly to mind. I have argued elsewhere that Protestantism provided an even clearer
contribution that Max Weber’s appropriately debated “spirit of capitalism;” this innovation involves
the advent of the “congregation.” (Demerath, 1998). However, any version of a religious community
qualifies here, from the congregation to the parish and the order.
The broader concept of “civil religion” also qualifies, though not always as a “religious”
collectivity. Robert Bellah’s (1967) seminal work notwithstanding, Wuthnow (1988) has argued
that “technology” is at the core of a new civil consensus in the United States. Moreover, I think
Phillip Hammond (1994) would agree that it is not so much that what is religious becomes civil
but rather that what is civil becomes sacred, as in our constitutional system and its founding
documents. Even Durkheim himself (1912) was at pains to suggest that a civil canopy involving
national commitments and commemorations need not take religious form (cf. also Johnston, 1991).
Kai Erikson (1966) and Albert Bergesen (1984) both remind us that political witch-hunts can take
become sacred rituals.
In fact, it was precisely this message that encouraged Turkey’s great leader, Kemal Attaturk,
to detach the nation from its Ottomon Islamic legacy and establish a secular state that has lasted
through thick and recent thin since the 1920’s. Other examples would certainly include the former
Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.
Indeed, this alerts us to yet another guiding cliche concerning “communism as a religion” —
or, more properly, as something sacred. All of us have read and perhaps groaned at undergraduate
papers on the topic. And yet like most cliches, this one has more than a kernel of truth. Despite
communism’s anti-religious ideology, it has produced one of the great experiments in another
form of sacred collectivity, as suggested bitterly in Arthur Koestler’s “the God that failed” (cf.
Crossman, 1950). Surely communist states have had strong religious parallels at many turns,
from their utopian visions to their self-conscious political “liturgy” and their “congregational-
style” work groups with routinized “confessionals.” In fact, their current phase of ideological
“secularization” offers an ironic clincher to the religious parallel.
Of course, nations have long been sacred collectivities of sorts, though structural states without
cultural binding are often vulnerably secular. The point is especially clear in today’s swirling
currents of cultural nationalism in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Indonesia’s soon
to be “former” East Timor, not to mention among Catholics in Northern Ireland, Palestinians in
Israel, Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, Sikhs in India, Tamils in Sri Lanka. But in some ways, each of
these instances represents a clash of competing sacred conceptions — the nationalist movements,
VARIETIES OF SACRED EXPERIENCE 7

on the one hand, and the current state apparatus, on the other. This is also apparent in the Chinese
government’s repression of the Falun Gong. As the party strives to maintain its own secularizing
sacred standing, new competition becomes a special threat.
Meanwhile, there are other, less expansive collectivities that carry sacred potential. Sports
events have often served as sacred festivals for forming and maintaining collective identity, and
there is now a shelf of works representing a convergence from scholars of both sport and religion
that sport is indeed a religion, or at least intensely sacred (viz. Prebish, 1993; Albanese, 1992).
Michael Novak (1976) talks of sport as the “consecration of the American spirit.” More recently
Joseph Price (1999, 2000) has just completed a study of the “de-consecration rites” marking the
closing of four baseball stadia that have been replaced by newer “shrines” in Seattle, Detroit,
Houston, and San Francisco. If and when that day comes for Boston’s Fenway Park, we may
expect the Pope herself to do the sacramental honors.
Of course, sport as religion is another common cliche that one dares not dismiss too quickly.
At the same time, there is remarkably little done on the reverse syndrome of religion as sport. This
is clearly a field whose day has not yet arrived. However, the late Charles Page did once refer to
the “basketballization of American religion” in discussing the proliferation of church recreation
leagues as proselytizing devices (Page, 1952).
Insofar as any group or organization becomes institutionalized, it has been suffused with
value, become an end in itself, and requires ritual affirmation (cf. Hermanowicz and Morgan,
1999). Even those “new institutionalists” Paul DiMaggio and Woody Powell (1991) would agree.
So would Daniel Hervieu-Leger (2000), who puts the matter less normatively and more cognitively
in her conception of religion or the sacred as a “chain of memory” that affords continuity across
both time and people.
In these terms, work itself may be a sacred calling quite apart from any Lutheran or Protestant
Ethic. Family and kinship networks often have sacred resonance. Sacred collectivities may also
involve any of the organizational cultures reviewed by Ouchi and Wilkins (1985). These may
range from the business corporations described by Meyer and Rowan (1977) and Zucker (1991)
to the Amway sales organization described by David Bromley (1998), the English pub portrayed
by Edward Bailey (1998), or a vast array of secular voluntary associations that may yield what
Robert Putnam (1995) and others refer to as “social capital.” Note, however, that not all
organizations with social capital have what might be termed “sacred capital,” though every
organization with sacred capital will have social capital to some degree.

The Sacred as “Counter-Culture:” Finally, this last of the four categories involves institutional
forms with a compensatory function. Put more simply, here are movements, organizations, and
communities that offer a distinct — and sometimes aggressive — alternative to the societal
mainstream. I mean the term counter-culture to include milder forms of sub-cultures; after all, it is
difficult to imagine any true sub-culture that does not turn at least a partially rough edge to the
parent culture surrounding it.
Once again, the syndrome is hardly alien to religion. Here is the world of sects and cults —
i.e. of old versus “new religious movements.” But the category is also home to a wide range of
non-religious counter-cultures that carry potential sacred significance for their participants. The
Ku Klux Klan, Skinheads, Survivalists, and Operation Rescue provide examples on the right; the
left responds with radical wings of the civil rights movement, anti-nuclear activism, environmental
conservation, and the gay and lesbian cause.
Virtually every ascriptive distinction has the potential for generating sacred movements of
resistance and assertion. This includes ethnicity, social class, age, and gender. Movements often
develop when personal identity is fused with forms of aesthetic expression — hippies, rappers,
punk rockers, Deadheads, Trekkies (cf. Porter and McLaren, 1999) — or possibly athletic teams
such as the “bleecher bums” of the old Brooklyn Dodgers, the Cleveland Brown’s “dogpound,” or
English soccer “hooligans.”
8 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

Any form of sacred magic can be both a resource to be harnessed and a threat to be controlled.
In some ways, religion offers a safe structural location for magic, and it is important to other parts
of society that religion maintains the franchise and keeps magic within traditional boundaries. For
example, charisma is especially volatile. When it is attached to unconventional persons rather
than conventional offices, its counter-cultural potential is released. Hence, the paranoia sometimes
visited upon new sacred movements of all sorts in hitherto secular settings.
This dynamic currently lurks in a broadening interpretation of church and state. From the
Supreme Court’s decisions in the 1960s concerning conscientious objector eligibility during the
Vietnam War to the recent Religious Freedom Restoration Act and its successor statutes, there has
been a tendency to re-interpret the First Amendment in terms of the sacred rather than religion. In
granting dispensations to anything defined as equivalent to religion, the door of free exercise
would be opened to a wide range of new practices. Clearly the courts are far from resolving the
matter.
So much, then, for a brief canvass of the kinds of groups and experiences that are most likely
to produce a sense of the sacred on non-religious terms, and some of their implications. But what
are the terms of the sacred itself? What are some of the important assumptions behind the sacred?
And what sorts of research can help us to test and refine those assumptions?

Secular Tips for Sacred Research

Although a major theme in the foregoing is that a search for the sacred must not be tethered
to religion, there is no question that religion remains an important sacred source in its own right
and that the study of religion offers important lessons for the study of the sacred at large. Indeed,
many of the issues we have either resolved or repressed with reference to religion now resurface
as we begin to sail — perchance to drift — in a much larger sea.
How should we define the sacred? Would we know a sacred consequence when we saw one?
Can we really study the sacred objectively without experiencing it personally? On the other hand,
can we really study the sacred once we have experienced it personally because of the biases this
introduces? Does every viable social unit need some common sacred commitments and experiences?
What about every individual? Is it possible to imagine both fleeting and enduring sacred
experiences? Is there some foolproof test that will yield a universal certificate of sacred authenticity?
You will be relieved to know that I have no plans for a full immersion in these waters here.
Certainly there are other swimmers worth citing — for example, Richard Fenn (1974, 1984) and
Hervieu-Leger (2000). Still, a few superficial tips may be in order as a way of suggesting some
aspects of a research agenda. Three admonitions seem particularly important:

1) Always Use Variables Instead of Absolutes, Absolutely:

I mean this in several senses. First, rather than define the sacred absolutely, I would
prefer to measure it in a way that admits the wide variance of experiences and commitments
that may or may not qualify. This is especially important if the sacred is characterized in
terms of its subjective functions rather than in its objective substance. And yet this strategy
is not quite an endorsement of the “whatever turns you on” school of social science,
since some consequences may not be self-conscious or even acknowledged, and one
must ask of the sacred consequences for collectivities as well as individuals. Still, it is
important to begin to gain a sense of both central and aberrant tendencies. One could
certainly stake definitional claims on behalf of, say, experiences of self-transcendence,
collective identity, ritual affirmation, or systems of meaning taken on faith. But these are
themselves best left to empirical investigation rather than canonical fiat.
Variance also applies to the independent variables affecting the sacred. Who
experiences what sorts of the sacred under what conditions? What are the correlates of
crisis and change versus order and stability? Are there different combinations of sacred
VARIETIES OF SACRED EXPERIENCE 9

commitments in which some are primary and others secondary, some mutually exclusive
and others mutually complementary? Do different dimensions of individual and social
life play host to different but compatible forms of the sacred? Which dimensions are
more compelling in their sacred needs?

2) Compare, Compare, Compare — Especially the Incomparable: From the wider

perspective of the sociology of the sacred, the social science of religion is an extended
“case study” that focuses on only one syndrome among the many possible. In addition,
most of the remaining work on the sacred has also taken the case study form in exploring
the sacred qualities of one particular group, experience, or event.
While these results are valuable, they could become much moreso with a more explicit
comparative feature. Of course, there is often an implicit comparison built in with some
generalized version of religion. But specific comparisons are particularly helpful in
beginning to address some of the empirical questions above. How do healing groups
compare with political movements in their culture and structure? How do individuals
involved in healing groups and political movements compare with those involved in
religious sectarian movements in terms of the inputs required and the outputs derived?

3) Smell the Weeds As Well As the Flowers: Not surprisingly, the social scientific literature
on religion has focused almost exclusively on the cultivated world of the religious garden
rather than the wilder growths in the sacred woods. Again, I don’t mean to demean the
value of research on religion in its own right, if not for its own sake. But insofar as our
agenda includes examining sacred functions broadly construed, focusing solely on
religious groups and experiences sets a large part of any population aside. Not to put too
fine a point on the matter, there is a world out there that needs our attention. Even if we
accept the most generous estimates of religious involvement in one of the world’s more
putatively religious nation, I feel a little like the late Carl Sagan in calling your attention
to the “millions and millions” of lives lived in an ostensibly secular fashion. Plumbing
the sacred depths — and shallows — of these lives should also be part of our responsibility
and challenge.

This is especially so in light of recent developments in cultural analysis — the larger field of
which we are a piggy-backing part. Today’s emphasis is on culture as cognitive and instrumental
rather than culture as normative and expressive. As a result, there is now an entire dimension of
culture begging for attention. Surely there is no one better equipped to respond than students of
religion. Since the sacred is nothing if not normative and expressive, this might well become our
special preserve and distinctive competence.

Conclusion

Finally, I suppose Presidential addresses represent a rare moment when at least a few
confessions are in order. Like the boy with chocolate on his nose who later confesses to have
licked the cake, I doubt that at least my first confession will surprise many of you:
Although I can claim to share precious little else with James, Durkheim and Weber, I do
identify with their religious tin ears. I first became interested in religious research as a way of
exploring why others heard melodies that eluded me. But recently, I have found myself taking on
different roles for different audiences. When I am among my often secular sociological colleagues
who are afraid that religion may be like a virus that is catching on exposure, I commend religion
vigorously as one of the great social forces and social laboratories. But when I am among colleagues
more attuned to religion, I am inclined to seek out new chords and tonalities, if not total cacophony.
You should have little trouble identifying which role I have adopted this afternoon. You
10 JOURNAL FOR THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

should also it little surprising that my favorite definition of a social scientist of religion is one,
who with four children, keeps two whom as a control group.
And yet I have tried to argue this afternoon that one who is religiously tone deaf is not
necessarily consigned to a world of soundless secularity. In fact, for me the social scientific study
of the sacred has had its own sacred gratifications. Since this is in no small part due to the meaning
and belonging I have derived from so many of you over the years, I can only close by offering my
deepest gratitude.

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