The Prediction of Religious Change

Faced with a problem, an individual can either seek a solution or increase his relatedness to the environment; the latter gives him the strength to endure his problem. A desire for increased relatedness often means a heightened interest in religion because the religious institution and the spiritual relationship offer the greatest openness to the development of new relationships. The probability of religious change, then, is a function of the degree to which an individual's environment is problematic and the degree to which he is related to his environment. The extent of relatedness, in time, is a function of similarity, power, and knowledge. (Religious institutions tend to become specialized about either the similarity basis—Holiness Type or the power basis—Roman Catholic Type.) Finally, two other factors must be considered: 1) the extent of social opposition to change, the significance of which is a function of 2) the person's inner strength, i.e. his degree of self-relatedness

Degree (music) · Function (biology) · Institution · Openness to experience · Opposition (politics) · Political science · Power (physics) · Similarity (geometry) · Social science · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Law · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Social Psychology