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- Title
Messianic Personalism: A Role Analysis of the Unification Church.
- Authors
Parsons, Arthur S.
- Abstract
This paper reports the findings of a participant observation study of the role system of the Unification Church. After noting several strategic inconsistencies in the literature on roles and the organization of authority in the Church, the paper describes 1) the therapeutic ideology of "heart" elaborated by the Moonies; 2) the communal ideal they pursue, the personalized family; 3) the two fundamental role-sets of the Church: father and child, Abel and Cam; and 4) the organization of these roles in a therapeutic but hierarchical apparatus of charismatic relations. On the basis of its role system, the Church synthesizes the seemingly opposed social forms of personalism and authoritarianism in a distinctively therapeutic religion; it is an egalitarian gemeinschaft which organizationally integrates the "impulsive focus" of the contemporary narcissistic culture of emotions with its apparent opposite, the "institutional focus" of extreme religious fundamentalism.
- Subjects
UNIFICATION Church; PENTECOSTALISM; CHRISTIANITY; SPIRITUAL gifts; JESUS People; UNIFICATIONISTS
- Publication
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1986, Vol 25, Issue 2, p141
- ISSN
0021-8294
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/1385473