Prayer and Liturgy as Constitutive‐Ends Practices in Black Immigrant Communities

Bibliographic Data

ID8975557
AuthorsMargarita A Mooney (Department of Sociology Yale University P.O. Box 208265 New Haven CT 06520‐8265 USA), Margarita Mooney (Yale University, corresponding author), Nicolette D Manglos‐weber (Department of Sociology The University of Notre Dame, corresponding author)
Year2014
Volume44
Issue4
Pages459-480
Publication date2014-07-08
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal for the Theory of Social Behaviour (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-8308 • E-ISSN: 1468-5914
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/jtsb.12066
OpenAlexW1488885170
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited33

Much social theory tends to emphasize the external goods of social practices, often neglecting the internal goods of those practices. For example, many analyses of religious rituals over‐emphasize the instrumental and individualistic ends of prayer and liturgy by describing such religious practices as effective means for achieving external ends like positive emotions, psychological benefits, social status, or social capital. By contrast, we use a neo‐Aristotelian virtue ethics perspective to analyze the relational goods, such as trust and intimacy, which are expressed and sustained through ritualized social practices. Using ethnographies of H aitian and G hanaian C hristians in the U.S. , we demonstrate that prayer and liturgy can also be understood as constitutive‐ends practices, practices in which human persons engage to sustain relations with others because there are goods inherent to those relationships. We further argue that in many religious practices, the end goals and the means—i.e. specific aspects of the practice—are inseparable. Our approach to developing theory combines critical engagement with numerous other theorists and also exploring how well various theories can explain the motivations and experiences of participants in the religious rituals where we conducted our ethnographies

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Ethnography · Individualism · Liturgy · Perspective (graphical · Prayer · Social capital · Social science · Sociology · Theology · Anthropology · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Religion and Society Interactions · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology · Religious studies · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology

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