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- Title
Joyful Disaster: An Ambivalence-Religion Hypothesis.
- Authors
Weigert, Andrew J.
- Abstract
Ambivalence is a rather recent and important concept for analyzing human emotions. Understood as both a generic experience and the result of sociohistorical forces, it is often an anxiety-producing condition that persons seek to resolve. Analysts of religion find ambivalence at the heart of the religious experience. Religion may function to resolve ambivalence by including contradictory expectations or emotions within a larger system of meaning. This leads to a new definition of religion illustrated in a brief historical review of Western Christianity. The modern situation, furthermore, presents a totally new son of ambivalence, namely, possible nuclear destruction. It is hypothesized that fundamentalist apocalyptic eschatology can be interpreted as a contemporary instance of religion's ambivalence-resolving function.
- Subjects
UNITED States; AMBIVALENCE; RELIGIOUS thought; EMOTIONS; CHRISTIANITY; ANXIETY; RELIGIOUS psychology; ESCHATOLOGY; RELIGION &; sociology; PSYCHOLOGY &; religion
- Publication
SA: Sociological Analysis, 1989, Vol 50, Issue 1, p73
- ISSN
0038-0210
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/3710919