ORIGINS AND TRADITIONS INISLAM AND CHRISTIANITY*Bryan S. Turner

It can be argued that Islam and Christianity came to have thetheological and institutional characteristics they havebecause of their distinctive relationship to political empiresduring the period of their emergence and formation .

Islamemerged in the interstices of the Byzantine and Sassanianempires and was institutionalized as a theocracy which cameto have dominant power within its immediate geographicallocation .

Christianity by contrast was precluded from poli-tical control by the hegemonic position of the Roman Empireat Jerusalem, Alexandria and Rome itself .

Christianity wasborne into a social world that was already politicallyorganized so that

Christianity for a time served in significantmeasure as the faith of the proletariat of theRoman Empire ; whereas nascent Islam was thefaith, and indeed the raison d'6tre of anentrepreneurial class . (1)

Whereas Islam after 630 had effectively silenced local opposi-tion and, during the Umayyad dynasty, became a powerful state,Christianity during its decisive period remained a persecutedminority within an alien political system . From the earlyChristian point of view, the temporal power of Rome was bothforeign and transitory ; the problem was one of short-termreligious survival in the interregnum between the fall ofJerusalem and the restoration of the kingdom of God .

ForIslam, it was more a question of perfecting and consolidatinga sacred community which was already in existence . While Iwish to support this type of argument in part, I shall bemore concerned with the question of ideological interpreta-tions of the foundations of religion rather than with theempirical, historical problem itself .

I shall be concernedwith religious origins as normative criteria not as empirical

13

Bryan S . Turner 14

facts . It seems sensible to develop this approach in termsof a running commentary on Max Weber's treatment of charisma,social carriers and social classes in relation to the generalproblem of salvation religions .

While in general Weber wants to assert that ideas areinfluential in social action, new beliefs only become impor-tant in social movements if a number of conditions arefulfilled .

A charismatic leader as the bearer of new cultu-ral interpretations has to demonstrate that his personalauthority is genuine in the face of competing leaders andthis situation of competition involves an ideological contestin which new social leaders appeal to the specific needs ofdisciples . For a charismatic break-through to take place,a new leader must be able to recruit social groups on thebasis of a convergence between their socio-economic interestsand a new set of beliefs . These carriers transform theoriginal message in the direction of their own status require-ments and this process is an important aspect of the routini-zation of charisma along traditional lines .

There is aselective principle involved in the development of charismaticauthority whereby certain features of an innovatory culturalinterpretation are fitted into the social requirements of newrecruits .

For Weber, those social groups which become thebearers of new 'world-images' set their own peculiar stamp oncharismatic movements . When Weber discusses the attemptmade by intellectuals to systematize social thought, he notesthat the basic, irrational presuppositions of religious modesof thought are

historically and socially determined, at least toa very large extent, through the peculiarity ofthose strata that have been the carriers of theways of life during its formative and decisiveperiod . (2)

Weber's view of the importance of social carriers as bothpropagators of beliefs and transformers of pristine charismais fundamentally connected with Weber's position on therelationship between beliefs and economic interests .

Inthe same context, Weber makes the claim that

Not ideas, but material and ideal interests,directly govern men's conduct .

Yet very fre-quently, the 'world-images' that have been createdby 'ideas' have, like switchmen, determined thetracks along which action has been pushed by thedynamic of interest . (3)

Although 'interests' provide the dynamic of social change,charismatic leaders are important because they generate newideas which, when systematized as 'world-images', determinethe direction of social change . Weber complicates andmodifies this position by noticing that only those charis-

Bryan S . Turner 15

matic ideas which attract an audience and which are propaga-ted by social carriers become historically significant .

itis in reality the 'peculiarity' of the social bearers ratherthan the original charismatic conception of ideas which issignificant during 'the formative and decisive' epoch of asocial movement .

The social carriers of religious beliefsare crucial because they set a decisive mark on religiousmovements which becomes a normative standard for all laterdevelopments . In order to understand the major ideologicaland institutional differences between world religions, it isconsequently imperative for sociologists to study theirprimary social bearers .

It is the'blend, so to speak, ofthe 'material and ideal interests' of social carriers of themajor religions which came to provide the defining charac-teristics of world religions .

Thus, when Weber is once morediscuss : ng intellectualism in relation to religion in TheSociology of Religion, he says that 'the types representativeof the various classes' that propagated the world religionscan be summarized in a 'formula', namely the bureaucrat inConfucianism, the magician in Hinduism, the mendicant monk inBuddhism .

In Islam, the warrior seeking to conquer theworld ; in Judaism, the wandering trader ; and inChristianity, the itinerant journeyman . (4)

Weber is not saying that major religious beliefs are simplyreflections of class interests but rather that these carrierswere exponents of salvation doctrines which ' most readilyconformed to their social position' .

Weber's approach tothe relationship between beliefs and interests can besuitably illustrated by his account of the origins andcarriers of Islam .

Weber's treatment of Islam begins with the observationthat the initial koranic message was one of asceticism, mono-theism and ethical prophecy but this initial cluster ofbeliefs was transformed by bedouin warriors in terms oftheir own status needs and military style of life .

Thepristine quest for personal salvation was transformed duringthe adoption of the prophetic message into the military questfor land .

This social carrier group simplified all of theethical demands of Muhammad's prophecy, especially thosebearing directly upon personal life and sexual ethics .

Thusthe asceticism of Islam was military rather than bourgeois .Even the Islamic heaven became a 'soldier's sensual para-dise' . (5)

This routinization of the original propheticethic produced a set of essentially feudal beliefs and atti-tudes, such as the acceptance of slavery and polygamy .

Byway of criticism, it can be argued that Islam does possesssome of these feudal-military characteristics, but not forthe reasons put forward by Weber .

At one level Weber's

Bryan S . Turner 16

factual assertions about the social carriers of both Islam andChristianity are highly dubious .

In the Islamic case, themain social carriers in the first century were Meccan mer-chants .

It was for this reason that there was a continuousstruggle between the values and life-styles of traders andwarriors which found its ideological expression in the con-frontation between 'tribal humanism' (muruwwa) and personal,urban piety (din) . The impact of an urban trading cultureon early Islam is partly borne out by the abundance of com-mercial terms in the Qur'an itself . (6)

While Weber's analysis of the carriers of majorreligions is theoretically seminal, the crucial issue is notso much the particular occupational structure of the ideolo-gical bearers of new beliefs, but the total relationshipbetween religious movements and their social environment atthe point of inception and early formulation . Weber failsto give adequate attention to the fact that, in one sense,Christianity started life as a 'religion of the dispossessed'whereas the early Islamic community enjoyed important politi-cal and economic assets, such as virtual control of theArabian trade routes . The other oddity of Weber's approachis that, while Weber treats the first century of Islam as thedecisive period in which Islam was propagated by a warriorstratum, the formative period of Christianity stretches fromthe Roman period to the Middle Ages .

It was in that periodthat Christianity as an urban, congregational religion wascarried by artisans . (7)

Hence, Weber does not appear toregard the Jewish origins of Christianity, the fall ofJerusalem and the political oppression of Christianity underimperial Roman control as contributing a distinctive ethos toChristianity in its later development . Against Weber'semphasis on occupational strata as religious carriers, it isimportant to concentrate on the total socio-political settingof religions at their point of origination .

Christianitydeveloped under alien political control and this situationgave a decisive emphasis to its whole conception of sufferingand power= Islam developed in a context where it was largelyfree from external military spoilation . These contrastedpolitical origins have given rise to a range of very differenttheological themes and religious institutions .

Obviously the situation was far more complex than thissimple contrast would suggest . It can be argued, as Brandondoes, that the Jerusalemite Christians were closely associa-ted with the Zealots and that the a-political orientation ofChristian belief was developed much later outside the Jewishcontext . (8)

Alternatively, the Christian separation of thereligious and the political could be claimed to derive from,or at least be foreshadowed by, the Essene Teacher ofRighteousness . (9)

The details of these debates within the

Bryan S . Turner 17

history of religions need not detain us since, regardless ofthe immediate background context, what cannot be seriouslyquestioned is the fact that Christianity developed as amessianic religious movement, fostered by the millenarianexpectations of persecuted minorities under Roman imperialpower .

Islam during its first century, despite Shiitecontroversies, was not messianic, not significantly millen-arian and not successfully persecuted .

The crucial factorhere is not the occupational structure of the ideologicalcarriers but the location of the religious movement in itstotal political and social context .

So far Weber has been criticized for certain empiricalmistakes about the nature of early Islam and for restrictingattention to the occupational structure of ideologicalcarriers rather than elaborating the total context of thefoundation point of a religious movement .

There is, however,a further question to be considered : Why should the originalsocial context of a religion or the peculiar needs of itssocial carriers have a long term impact of a decisive natureon the beliefs and institutions of a religion? UnfortunatelyWeber appears to have no clear conception of the problem ofthe stability and continuity of traditional religious inter-pretations .

It could be argued that, from a sociologicalperspective, one would want to pay more attention to the waysin which any particular religion is transformed by the pro-cesses of mission, acceptance and institutionalization .

itis well known for example that Islam changed in many importantways during its adaptation to the social and cultural environ-ment of the Indian continent .

Furthermore, the diffusion ofIslam in India was a long, gradual and essentially unevenprocess for a variety of different occupational and castegroups . (10)

The claim that the central and orthodoxbeliefs and institutions of a religion are formed decisivelyby either its original carriers or by its original contextwould have to cope with the empirical facts of the hetero-geneity of beliefs and practices .

A similar objection wouldbe that, while the early community might lay the basis forthe distinctively orthodox beliefs of a religion, thesebeliefs come to characterize the religious elite rather thanthe great mass of the laity .

For example, if the Islamiccommitment to the doctrine of the omnipotence of God is theproduct of the early political success of Islam, then itcould be claimed that this belief was never fully acceptedin practice by converts to Islam .

The use of amulets inAfrican Islam has been frequently conjoined with the doctrineof omnipotence . (11)

Indeed, as Ernest Gellner suggests,there may be in Islam a regular oscillation between an ortho-dox syndrome of monotheism, egalitarianism and scripturalismand a heterodox syndrome of ritualism, mysticism and

Bryan S . Turner 18

hierarchy . (12)

The orthodox centre is preserved by theurban, literate ulama, while the periphery is the location ofboth religious and political dissent . (13) It would appeardifficult to maintain the claim that the social origin of areligion provides the prominent and durable characteristicsof that religion .

Weber appears to acknowledge this sort of transformationand adaptation of a charismatic, salvational religious messagein three different but related areas .

The institutionaliza-tion of charisma as a response to the problems of continuity,recruitment and organization brings about a subtle, butinevitable routinization of charisma . The creation ofreligious offices (the priesthood), regular criteria ofadmission to the movement and the standardization of doctrinedefinitely alters the nature of the religion over time .Furthermore, Weber also recognizes that different socialclasses because of their relationship to the market andbecause of their special status requirements have different'religious needs' which are satisfied in different ways bythe 'same' religion .

Weber illustrates this point in hisstudy of the religious proclivities of various social classes- peasants, urban artisans, nobility, merchants . (14)Finally, Weber notes that in every religion there is a groupof religious virtuosi who fulfill the ethical and ritualcommandments to their full, while the mass can only satisfycertain minimal religious requirements . (15)

Weber appearsto hold both that the social carriers of a religion providea distinctive role in defining the central characteristics ofa religion and that every religion will be progressivelymodified in terms of the routinization of charisma, thereligious 'needs' of social classes and by the problems ofthe religiously 'unmusical' mass .

Weber's treatment of this problem of the unity anddiversity of religion is only partly satisfactory .

As wehave seen, the major religions have been modified by mission,by recruiting new groups and by accommodation to new culturalenvironments .

My argument is that, precisely becausereligions evolve in diverse patterns, certain epochs come tobe regarded as normative principles of selection, as havinggiven a definitive statement and example of the religion inits most pure form . it is not the 'foundation event' asfactual history which is important but the interpretation ofhistorical origins which impinges upon contemporary practice .The teachings of Jesus, the letters of Paul and the acts ofthe Apostles have a status and ideological authority over andabove all subsequent events, epochs and teachers .

Thecredentials of a Calvin, a Luther or an Augustine are parasi-tic upon the normative authority of 'the foundation event'as the basis of later selectivity .

Similarly, Muslim

Bryan S . Turner 19

theology and practice is parasitic upon the sunna (literally,'the beaten path') of the Prophet . The view of the founda-tion of the religion as an 'ideal type' prior to the develop-ment of diversity and syncretism places certain restrictionsand limitations on contemporary ideological positions . AsMarx observes,

Men make their own history, but they do not makeit just as they please ; they do not make it undercircumstances chosen by themselves, but under cir-cumstances directly encountered, given and trans-mitted from the past . (16)

There may be some sociological point, therefore, to the trad-itional theological distinction between traditio, that whichis transmitted, and the institutions which transmit .

Whilethe channels through which charisma is acquired might behighly routinized, but the charismatic content is subjectivelyuncontaminated because it is claimed to be inextricably boundinto 'pure origins' .

As support for the view that 'the foundation event'provides the key principle by which later religious changeand evolution are evaluated, one can cite the fact that so-called reformist movements in religions are almost invariablyattempts to re-instate or resurrect the values and practicesof the early community, the primitive church or the standardsof the founding fathers .

The Hausa jihad, the Wahhabi andSalafiyya movements were specifically attempts to root outinnovations which were thought to be incompatible with 'true',that is 'original', Islam . (17)

Of course, many Muslimreformers of the nineteenth century defined 'original Islam'in terms and concepts which they borrowed from the moderncontext of European colonialism so that reform

led to a gradual reinterpretation of Islamic con-cepts so as to make them equivalent to the guidingprinciples of European thought of the time . (18)

The special problems and conditions of the present obviouslyinfluence a group's conception of what will count as the pureand original practices of the early community . While thisis clearly the case, it is still important to recognize thatcontemporary practices are evaluated and legitimated by anappeal to historical standards which are formulated in termsof a conception of the 'foundation event' .

There is con-sequently considerable internal diversity within religionsin terms of beliefs and practices, but there is also acertain ideological inelasticity which is brought about by acommitment to the earliest forms of a religion as thenormative criterion .

While a religious group may attempt to legitimate prac-tices in terms of this sort of principle, some aspects of areligious culture will be regarded as more important than

Bryan S . Turner 20

others . To bring out this point it will be useful to referto Raymond Williams' account of the notion of 'the selectivetradition' . (19)

Williams starts with the idea that not allelements of a culture are immediately relevant for the legi-timation of basic social activities, especially economicproduction . Thus, some aspects of a received traditionmight be continuously required for social legitimation andsuch aspects penetrate the society at every level of activityand awareness . By contrast with these dominant beliefs, someelements of culture may be of only residual importance, beingas it were remnants of previous activities of social construc-tion .

Finally, Williams refers to emergent beliefs which arecounter-points within a society and act as a challenge todominant values .

It follows from this perspective that'tradition' must be understood sociologically as a selectionfrom a diversity of beliefs and practices which have differentconnections with the fundamental social activities of a socialgroup .

In order to illuminate these basic distinctions, it isuseful to make an analogy between culture and wardrobes .Social groups legitimate their contemporary activities byclothing themselves in traditional dress which is selectedfrom a range of items within a cultural wardrobe . All con-temporary practice is a creative activity of interpretationand selection, but the activity is partly limited by thenature and availability of costumes .

The term 'selection'implies a continuous intellectual evaluation of alternativeforms of belief so that the model of cultural change implieddoes not allow for the fact that much of the work of selectionmight be performed unconsciously, habitually or mimetically .Although this analogy might have a built in rationalist bias,it does not render invalid the point that social activityentails a selection from and interpretation of availablesystems of belief and practice .

('Men make their ownhistory, but they do not make it just as they please' .)

Myargument is that at least one of the central criteria ofselection within a culture is 'the foundation event' whichacts as an ideal type of practice by means of which corrup-tions and developments can be evaluated . Contemporaryactivities and additions to basic beliefs are evaluated interms of historical origins, since these origins are held tobe pure and uncontaminated by later developments .

It is forthis reason that origins become a forum of ideological con-flict . Comparisons between contemporary practice andtradition can lead either to the legitimation of the culturalstatus quo or to reformation in terms of pristinebeliefs . (20)

Such a standard is clearly not static, butitself a process of evaluation since the origins of a tradi-tion are themselves matters of dispute and interpretation .

Bryan S . Turner 21

The nature of these 'foundation events' in Islam andChristianity differ from each other and entail differentproblematics . Both Christianity and Islam emphasize the factthat their foundation is to be located in human historyrather than in the activities of a mythical ancestor insacred time .

Of course, in both cases these dimensions oftime, sacred and profane, intersect (hence, the distinctionbetween history and Heilsgeschichte) .

This emphasis onhistoricity in the empirical world is very significant .Religions which have a distinctive awareness of a 'foundationevent' need to differentiate between religious time and reli-gious pre-history .

This temporal sequence from darkness tolight in one way justifies their existence as religions,indeed as the religion .

in Pauline Christianity, the newfaith is a New Covenant which breaks with its legalisticJewish pre-history so that Christianity regards itself theo-logically as an escape into grace .

Despite this sense ofhistorical rupture, there is also the notion of continuity inthe sense that religious pre-history prepares the way for anew covenant .

For example, Christ fulfills the religion ofthe prophets .

In Islam the foundation is conceived as adistinctive break with its historical background (the 'age oferror') but at the same time Islam completes the monotheismof Moses and Jesus .

The similarity seems to end here sincefor Muslims Islam is a systematic religion which is foundedand named by Allah as an historical event .

In the Qur'anAllah says 'This day I have perfected your religion for you,and completed my favour unto you ; and have chosen for you asa religion Islam' (Qur'an, 5 :3) .

As Smith notes in thisconnection,

Jesus was not interested in Christianity, but inGod and man, He could not have conceptualized'Christianity' . Muhammad, on the other hand,seems to some observers and to some Muslims tohave known what he was about when he talked ofIslam . (21)

Islam arose in a world where there already existed conceptualmodels of systematized religion and it is partly for thisreason that Islam is a highly reified form of religion fromits inception in its historical awareness of itself as areligion .

These interpretations of contrasted macro-politicalcontexts in which Islam and Christianity were founded giverise to distinctive themes in culture and institutions whichact as selective principles for later communities . Thedominant themes of these two religions revolve around thenotions of righteous suffering and temporal power .

Thesymbolic focus of Christianity is the cross and the cruci-fixion through which Christ is presented as both Messiah and

Bryan S . Turner 22

Victim .

The sufferings of Christ are viewed as not merelyaccidental to his ministry but a central and significantpart .

Christ's sufferings do not diminish but confirm his .religious status . The opposite is true of Muhammad andIslam since the Prophet's secular failures brought intoquestion his role as prophet of God .

Similarly, the contentof Christ's earthly ministry was importantly concerned withhealing and the relief of suffering, whereas Muhammad'sactivities centred on such issues as the framing of a socialconstitution for Medina and reconciling the social conflictsof competing tribal groups . Muhammad is treated as neithera worker of miracles nor a figure through whom one mightintercede with God .

In so far as Muslims do refer toMuhammad as performing a miracle, they point to Muhammad'sability to give human utterance to God's word .

Islam and Christianity have taken very differentapproaches to the question of human suffering . A typicalform of Christian pastoral advice is that personal sufferingis not ultimately an alien, destructive experience but atrial through which the individual can come to a deeperappreciation of personality . The Christian attitude is oneof personal, patient acceptance .

Marx, who regarded Chris-tianity as the essence of religion in general, gave classicalexpression to this attitude when he epigrammatically notedthat religion is

the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart ofa heartless world, just as it is the spirit of aspiritless situation . (22)

The Islamic attitude to suffering is notably at variance withthe Christian tradition .

While the Qur'an gives lengthyconsideration to human suffering, in Bowker's view sufferingis 'almost dissolved as a problem', (23) because in Islamthere is an over-riding emphasis on God's omnipotence .Thus, the Qur'an requires that

suffering should be contested and as far aspossible alleviated .

This is the foundation ofthe very detailed and specific requirements inthe Quran for a truly Muslim society, thatparticular instances of suffering should beremoved . (24)

Because of this crucial difference, the characteristic theo-logical dilemmas of the two religions have taken distinctivecourses .

In Christianity one of the central theologicalcontroversies has focused on the contradiction between thefact of human suffering and God's goodness . The problem oftheodicy, as Berger points out, continuously threatens todisrupt the very foundations of the Christian 'world-image' .The main contradiction in Islam centres on God's omnipotenceand human free will .

If God is all powerful, He must also

Bryan S . Turner 23

be the author of the sin for which men are eternally damned .The problem for Muslim theologians has been to resolve thedifficulty of God being both omnipotent and just .

Thevarious attempts to solve these dilemmas need not detain us ;we may simply note that Muslims and Christians have developeddifferent doctrines of God in which suffering and power havebeen important issues .

In Islam it is the power of Godwhich has normative salience ; God reveals Himself throughthe koranic revelation which descends to man .

Christianitygives prominence to God's grace and His redemptive activity .It follows that the counter-part of Christ in the Islamicsystem of theology is not Muhammad but the Qur'an itself . (25)

These basic theological standpoints are fundamentallyrelated to the 'foundation events' of the two religions .

Thesuffering of the early Christian community as an oppressedsect gives a normative warrant for subsequent teachings on thevalue of deprivation as the result of worldly exploitation .The triumph of early Islam guarantees the efficacy of Allah inthe world for later interpretations .

Given these theologicalcomponents which are tied into the 'origins' of these reli-gions, we can expect that the themes of suffering and powerwill be echoed in contrasted religious experiences and atti-tudes .

Since salvation and suffering are not central toIslamic beliefs, it is not surprising that Islam has no realdoctrine of redemption .

Lazarus-Yafeh, who argues that 'theidea of redemption is certainly not a central one inIslam', (26) suggests two reasons for this situation .Firstly, the Islamic community in the Sunni tradition wasitself a charismatic one in which membership conferred auto-matically a redemptive status for Muslims . (27)

There aregrounds for saying that in Islam redemption was sociologicallyrather than specifically personal and religious .

Secondly,the doctrine of fi.tra (man's inherent ability to know andworship God) made redemption almost irrelevant .

The Chris-tian doctrine of Original Sin implies that the main spiritualdanger is a fall from grace, a loss of good health .

InIslam, it is straying into error which is the primary dangerso that, while Christians pray for God's grace, Muslims prayfor guidance .

These characteristic differences can besummarized in the following terms :

the type of religious experience most favoured inChristianity is the personal acceptance of redem-ptive grace which is to transform the inwardsprings of life . . . .

The type of religiousexperience favoured in Islam is, then, the activepersonal acceptance of prophetic truth, which isto discipline and orient one's total life . (28)

Christianity is, normatively speaking, a redemptive fellowshipheld together by sacraments, viewed as institutionalized means

Bryan S . Turner 24

of grace, which separates the religious community from thewider society . By contrast, Islam treats the social andreligious fellowship as normatively continuous and coter-minous .

The most obvious institutional contrasts between Islamand Christianity which derive ultimately from their contras-ted 'foundation events' would centre on the following issues .Firstly, since Islam was a theocratic empire which precludedany radical distinction between religion and politics, Islamdid not develop in principle any separation of the religiousand the secular in the field of law .

The Shari'a is ideally,although not always in practice, a total compendium ofethics, religious duties, etiquette, legal and politicalresponsibilities which covers all aspects of private andpublic life .

Secondly, Islam has no sacerdotal priesthood ;the ulema is a collectivity of legal scholars, koranic expertsand administrators controlled by the state .

Thirdly, Islamattempted to institutionalize the political and religiousleadership of the community under the one umbrella of thecaliphate-sultanate . These differences between the tworeligions are obvious and well known . It seems, therefore,more valuable to look at more subtle institutional contrastsin order to find further comparisons between Islam and Chris-tianity .

Such a comparison is offered by the relationshipbetween martyrdom and saintship .

Saintship in Christianity developed out of martyrdom, onthe one hand,and out of the Jewish institution of sacrifice,on the other .

Since Christianity originated as a persecutedgroup with strong chiliastic expectations, martyrdom repre-sented a religiously valued, honorific passage into the nextworld .

When the political situation of Christianity wastransformed in 313 by Constantine's recognition and toleranceof Christianity, the martyr role became gradually obsoleteand there followed a re-interpretation of the nature ofsaintship .

Islamic saints could not, by contrast, developout of martyrdom . In general, the saint-martyr virtues ofChristianity - humility, patient suffering, charity and for-giveness - have not been central to the life-style of IslamicSufism.

The martyrs of Islam, in so far as they exist atall, were believers who died for the sake of empire, notbecause of the existence of alien political powers . Thissituation was closely connected with the fact that Islam wasan independent political force and not a minority encapsula-ted within a hostile empire .

The main contrast within Islamin terms of its orientation to the world is not so much adistinction between the religious and the secular, but betweenthe household of faith (dar-al Islam) and the world of dissi-dence (dar-al Harb) .

Whereas religion for Christians andManicheans is a sacred community working in and upon an alienenvironment,

Bryan S . Turner 25

for Jews, Muslims and Zoroastrians it is a body ofuniversal law and a community which is boundthereto and which is the world at its best . (29)Another subtle difference between Islam and Christianity

can be discovered by considering the question of sin, confes-sion and absolution .

In Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt,Gilsenan notes that, while the institution of confession isgenerally absent in Islam, a limited form of confessionalpractice ('itiraf) is employed in the Hamidiya brother-hood. (30)

In this group the confession is voluntary butmuch encouraged . While the confession may have importantfunctions for the brotherhood, the Sheikh cannot promise anyforgiveness and absolution . The absence of a comprehensiveconfessional apparatus in Islam

is linked with the notion of the Absolute Trans-cendence of the Omnipotent God, and with the natureof Islam . . . .

Certainly the sense of sin, of thefall from grace, of spiritual guilt and the wholetheodicy of suffering are virtually absent fromIslam by comparison with most of the ChristianChurches . (31)

One can point to a range of cases in Islam such as 'itiraf,acts of contrition (32) and acts of repentance (33) whichresemble the Christian institution of confession, but ingeneral the confessional and its supporting theology is notpresent in Islamic culture for the reasons suggested byGilsenan .

In turn, the concepts of guilt, suffering andgrace are to be explained by reference to certain normativelyaccepted interpretations of foundation events .

To illus-trate this extension of Gilsenan's position, I wish to givea brief account of the development of the confessional inChristianity .

In theory, the passion of Christ had destroyed thepowers of evil through an act of atonement ; the task of theearly community was simply to survive between the- First andSecond Coming .

In practice, the early Church was faced bythe difficult theological problem that its baptized memberswere not consistently free from sinning .of sin among the apparentlyChrist's expiation of humanthe ritual of baptism . In

allowearly Church began towhereby sinners couldcommunity . Only onehad been baptized andbefore the wholemajor sins - fornot be absolved .

The continuationsaved called into questionsin, or at least the efficacy ofresponse to this problem, theacts of penance and confession

be cleansed of sins and restored to theact of penance was allowed those whothis act had to be performed publicly

community . Furthermore, there were certainexample, homicide and idolatry - which couldAs the Church began to settle down to a

life on earth, so to speak, with the non-appearance of the

Bryan S . Turner 26

millenium, the theology and institution of confession beganto change .

The sacrament of penance in the confession becameobligatory and frequent ; it also became private and thepriest was bound by secrecy under the 'seal of the confession' .By the beginning of the Middle Ages, the confessional cameincreasingly under the control of parish priests rather thanunder the bishops . As practical guides for parish priests,Penitential Books began to circulate which gave advice on thelength and type of penance according to the nature of thecrime .

Once the bishops had lost centralized control ofpenance and confession, a wide variety of practices, interpre-tations and abuses developed in Christendom .

Eventuallypenance became highly commercialized . It was against theseforms of abuse and laxity that the Protestant reformerspreached a new conception of sin and grace .

It is importantto bear in mind, however, the institution and importance ofconfession did not simply disappear after the Reformation .Confession obviously survived in Catholicism and was indeedgiven a new lease of life by the Jesuits, but it also con-tinued in most other branches of Christianity . Anglicanismdeveloped a particularly strong system of casuistical thoughtand practice, while we can also find the institutional equi-valent of confession in such practices as the Methodist classmeeting .

Christianity can hardly avoid some sort of confes-sional or penitential practice because of the conceptualcontradiction between Christ's redemptive ministry and thecontinuation of sin in the Church itself .

Such a contradic-tion is hardly possible in Islam because Muhammad was essen-tially a messenger of God, not a redeemer, but this contrastis also bound up with the differences in the social originsof Islam and Christianity .

The need for a confessional-penitential system arose ina context where the Christian community regarded itself as achosen remnant but did not possess political power .

Therewas an important sociological need to maintain a high degreeof internal group solidarity against external threats .

Con-fession is a more efficient mechanism than excommunication orexpulsion for re-affirming beliefs .

The Christian traditionhas consistently regarded confession as a socially therapeu-tic and remedial institution for coping with various forms ofdeviance within the community . Through confession, thepenitent not only acknowledges his own responsibility forsins but re-affirms beliefs about sin and guilt and acceptsthe authority of the community to bestow absolution . Somesort of remedial institution can be expected wherever a gapis perceived between the actual practice of members of asaved community and expectations about proper behaviour . itis obviously the case that this sort of problem emerged inearly Islam when those who had confessed 'There is no god but

Bryan S . Turner 27

God' seemed to behave in ways inconsistent with submission tothe will of God .

The Kharijites, for example, could be citedas a sectarian movement in Islam to establish a rigorous,puritanical definition of membership which would expel deviantmembers .

Early Sufism itself could be regarded as an asceticreaction against laxity within the Islamic community . Whilethere is clearly a tension in Islam between the continuationof deviation from community norms and the definition ofmembership in terms of a submission to God, Islam does notseem to have developed a widespread, systematic confessionalinstitution .

It may be that Islam was able to tolerate awider range of norms and practices among its members preciselybecause in the classical period Islam was not politicallythreatened, because it was not a persecuted group .

Providedthe basic monotheism of Islam was not in question, otherbeliefs and practices did not have to come up for systematicinspection .

The hadith certainly give this picture .

Onerelates a meeting between the Prophet and Abu Dharr :

When I sat down near him, he said to me :Whosoever sayeth : There is no God but God anddieth in this belief, will enter Paradise .

Ireplied : Even if he should have fornicated andstolen? He answered : even if he should havefornicated and stolen .

(The question andanswer are repeated three times .)

The fourthtime Muhammad added : Even though Abu Dharrshould turn up his nose . (34)

It may be also that Islam was more able than Christianity torely upon the binding power of the Holy Law in addition topolitical control as a method of containing deviation .While the situation of Islam might present unresolved socio-logical issues, confession in Christianity seems to developout of a situation in which the expectatLons of a righteousminority without political power about a Second Coming provedillusory, or at least uncertain .

In conclusion, the problem of integration and diversitywithin religious cultures has a clear bearing on the wholequestion of the relationship between beliefs and socialstructures .

Sociological interpretations of this relation-ship have occupied various points along the materialist-idealist continuum ; religious beliefs are either simplereflections of more basic social structures or they aredirectly and causally influential in shaping social inter-action . In this paper, I have attempted to complicate thiscontinuum by pointing to a certain inelasticity in patternsof belief, specifically to the internal limitations and con-straints on continuous ideological changes of traditions,particularly sacred traditions .

While selection can be madefrom a diversity of, beliefs within a single system of

Bryan S . Turner 28

tradition, this selection is ideologically constrained byselective principles which in turn are normatively fixed byinterpretations of historical foundations .

It is becauseof the normative importance of these interpretations thatthe original socio-economic context of world religions is ofsuch interest to sociology .

Or at least it ought to be .In order to explain why one set of beliefs rather than someother set comes to have central significance in a religionit will not be enough merely to study the general functionalrelevance of religious doctrines .

The functional analysisof religion might provide an explanation of the continuityof religion as such (as in Durkheim's Elementary Forms), butit will not provide a very satisfactory analysis of the spe-cific content of religion in terms of dominant themes .

Inthis paper I have attempted to suggest some ways in whichthe origins of a religion can come to have a perennial signi-ficance as interpretive schema .

Following Marx, one mightobserve that when men

appear to be engaged in the revolutionary trans-formation of themselves and their material sur-roundings, in the creation of something whichdoes not yet exist, precisely in such epochs ofrevolutionary crisis they timidly conjure up thespirits of the past to help them; they borrowtheir names, slogans and costumes so as to stagethe new world-historical scene in this venerabledisguise and borrowed language . Luther put onthe mask of the apostle Paul. (35)

While we have been solely concerned with the problem of'borrowed language' in Islam and Christianity, the argumentabout the importance of origins would have to be developed ina number of different directions for different religions .It may well be that, from a comparative perspective, thecommitment to the notion of a single foundation event issomewhat rare in religious development . This commitment inIslam and Christianity to a unique foundation may have pro-duced a certain institutional and ideological inflexibilitywhich would be a sociological disadvantage in adaptation torapidly changing social environments .

In a modern plura-listic world, an exclusive view of a single foundation wouldappear to be, something of an ideological encumbrance .

NOTES

I would like to thank Andrew Walls, Trevor Ling and MMichael Gilsenan for their comments on earlier formula-tions of this paper .

They are of course absolved ofresponsibility for its final presentation .

Bryan S . Turner 29

1 Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History, New York1957, p . 37 .

2 Hans Gerth and C . Wright Mills, From Max Weber, London1961, p . 281 .

3 Ibid ., p . 280 .4 Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion, London 1965, p. 132 .5 Ibid ., p . 264 .6 Charles C . Torrey, The Commercial-Theological Terms in the

Koran, Leiden 1892 .Weber, 1965, op . cit ., pp . 82-5 .7

8 S .G.F . Brandon, The Trial of Jesus of Nazareth, London1971 .

9 Edmund Wilson, The Dead Sea Scrolls, London 1971 .10 Richard M . Eaton, 'Sufi Folk Literature and the Expansion

of Indian Islam' in History of Religion , vol . 14 (2),1974, pp . 117-27 .

11 Lamin Sanneh, 'Amulets and Muslim Orthodoxy' in Inter-national Review of Mission, vol . LXIII (no . 252), 1974,pp . 515-29 .

12 E . Gellner, 'A pendulum swing theory of Islam' in Annalesde Sociologie, 1968, pp . 5-14 reprinted in R . Robertson(ed .), Sociology of Religion, Harmondsworth 1969, pp .127-38 .

13 Cf . E . Shils' discussion of centre and periphery in'Tradition' in Comparative Studies in Society and History,vol . 13, 1971, pp . 122-50 .

14 Cf . chapters on the religion of the privileged and non-privileged classes in The Sociology of Religion .

15 Aspects of this are discussed in M . Hill, A Sociology ofReligion, London 1973 .

16 Karl Marx 'the Eighteenth Brumaire . . .' quoted in D .McLelland, The Thought of Karl Marx, London 1971, p . 61 .

17 Cf . George Rentz, 'The Wahhabis' in A .J . Arberry (ed .),Religion in the Middle East, Cambridge 1969, pp . 270-84(vol . 2) .

18 Albert Hourani, Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, London1962, p . 344 .

19 Raymond Williams, 'Base and Superstructure in MarxistCultural Theory' in New Left Review (no . 82), 1973,pp . 3-16 .

20 On 'revolutions of tradition' cf . Hill, op . cit .21 W .C . Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion, New York

1964, p . 97 .22 K . Marx and F . Engels, On Religion, Moscow 1957, p . 42 .23 John Bowker, Problems of Suffering in Religions of the

World, Cambridge 1970, p . 101 .24 Ibid ., pp . 116-17 .25 W.C . Smith, 'Some Similarities and Differences between

Christianity and Islam' in J . Kritzeek and R. BayleyWinder (eds), The World of Islam, London 1959, pp . 47-59 .

Bryan S . Turner 30

26 Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, 'Is there a concept of redemption inIslam?' in Studies in the History of Religions (Supplement

27

28 Marshal G.S . Hodgson, 'A Comparison of Islam and Chris-tianity as Framework for Religious Life' in Diogenes,no . 32, 1960, p . 54 and p . 59 .

29 Ibid., p . 68 .30 Michael Gilsenan, Saint and Sufi in Modern Egypt, Oxford

1973 .31 Ibid., p . 107 .32 R.W . Austin, 'I seek God's Pardon . . .' in Studies in Com-

parative Religion, Spring, 1973, pp . 92-4 .33 John Kingsley Birge, The Bektashi Order of Dervishes,

London 1965, p . 170 .34 A.J . Wensinck, The Muslim Creed, 1938, Cambridge p . 46 .35 K . Marx, 'The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte' in

Surveys from Exile, Harmondsworth 1973, p . 146 .

to Numen) vol . 18, 1970, p . 168 .W . Montgomery Watt, 'The Conception of the CharismaticCommunity', Numen, vol . 7, 1960, pp . 77-90 .