Michael P. Carroll

“World Religions” in Introductory Sociology Textbooks In Search of the Sociology

A section on “world religions” (WRs) is now routinely included in the religion chapters of introductory sociology textbooks. Looking carefully at these WR sections, however, two things seem puzzling. The first is that the criteria for defining a WR varies considerably from textbook to textbook; the second is that these WRs sections contain little or no sociology. These puzzles are resolved, however, once we understand that under the guise of promoting “diversity,” these sections are really affirming the universality of what has long been identified as a distinctively modern and very Western view of religion. The article concludes with some practical suggestions for improving the religion chapters in introductory textbooks. One such suggestion is that paying more attention to Native American “religion” would be a useful way of introducing students to the view that religion is a social construction that has no stable transhistorical and transcultural meaning.

Myth, methodology and transformation in the Old Testament: The stories of Esther, Judith, and Susanna

Michael P. Carroll is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario, London. Applying the structuralist tools developed by Claude L6vi-Strauss to the stories in the Old Testament (OT) is nothing new. In fact, although LeviStrauss himself has tended to focus on myths drawn from South American societies, I suspect that his disciples have focused more on the myths of the ancient Israelites, as contained in the OT, than on the myths of any other single pre-industrial society. Some of the more well-known investigations which have used structuralist principles to analyze the OT include Douglas (1966), Leach (1969), Andriolo (1973), Carroll (1977), and Marshall (1980).1 Strangely enough, however, almost all of these investigators have more or less ignored the one concern that has come to dominate L6vi-Strauss’s own analyses, namely, a concern with the process whereby one myth is ’transformed’ into another, apparently quite separate, myth. We must remember that in L6vi-Strauss’s very first article on myth (first published in 1955; later reprinted as a chapter in his Structural Anthropology,1963),2 he presented three distinct hypotheses, which can be summarized as follows:

The not-so-crypto crypto-Jews of New Mexico: update on a decades-old debate

ABSTRACT For over two decades an academic debate has raged over a possible crypto-Jewish presence in New Mexico. On one side are scholars who advance two claims: first, that many of New Mexico’s early colonists were crypto-Jews and second, that practices associated with some Hispano families in modern New Mexico reflect crypto-Jewish traditions originating in the colonial period. On the other side are scholars who question the evidentiary basis of both claims. This article provides an update on this debate by (1) reviewing scholarly reviews of two key monographs published since the debate first erupted in the mid-1990s and (2) by presenting new data relevant to the possibility that modern claims of ‘crypto-Judaism’ derive from Adventist proselytizing. The article concludes with an assessment of the many reasons why the original hypothesis has been, and will likely continue to be, popular despite the doubts that many scholars have raised.

The Early Robin Hood and “The Myght of Mylde Marye”: Revisiting the Lived Experience of Catholicism in Late Medieval England

A number of reformist commentators in late medieval England suggested that stories about Robin Hood were especially popular with people who were not especially devout. On the other hand, notwithstanding these reformist comments, we also have evidence that Robin Hood stories were sometimes used as sermon exempla, which suggests that they were seen (at least by some preachers) as promoting acceptable forms of Catholic devotion. At one level, the use of these stories as sermon exempla derived from the fact that in these early stories (quite unlike later stories) Robin was depicted as committed to the Mass and devoted to the Virgin Mary. The real value of these early stories about Robin Hood, however, is that they allow us to problematize two historiographical assumptions that continue to guide the thinking of English historians studying late medieval Catholicism. Thus, English historians (including the revisionist historians who have otherwise done so much to document the vitality of English Catholicism on the eve of the Reformation) continue to mimic official Catholic doctrine in suggesting that for English Catholics, Christ was the supernatural being who stood atop the Catholic pantheon, and that Mary and the saints were viewed only as intercessors with no independent power of their own. By contrast, the evidence from the Robin Hood stories (and from other stories used as sermon exempla) very explicitly depicts a rank ordering in which Mary not only had independent power, but independent power which eclipsed that of her Son.

Rodney Stark's One True Vision: retrograde historiography and the academic study of religion

Although Rodney Stark is best known for his work on religious economies, he has recently turned his attention to the social effects of monotheism. If we look carefully on the theoretical trajectory evident in this recent work, what we find is a social-evolutionary approach to religion that was prevalent in the 19th century, but long ago assumed by most academics to be discredited. Furthermore, as becomes increasingly evident going through this series, the particular social-evolutionary sequence that Stark constructs has been shaped by a vision of Protestant triumphalism, and a privileging of evangelical Protestantism, that also belongs to an earlier time. While it would easy to ignore Starks work (and the last two books in this series do seem to have been ignored in academic circles), there are reasons (which include the popular appeal of his work and his treatment of Islam) for taking his work seriously.

Durkheim on the emergence of religion: Reviewing the archaeological evidence (at last)

ON. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life’ is usually taken to be one of Durkheim’s most important works. It comes as something of a surprise, then, to realize that the hypothesis which lies at the core of Elementary Foryns, namely, the hypothesis regarding the social evolutionary origins of religion, has never been evaluated in light of some very relevant archaeological evidence which has accumulated over the last 60 years. Conducting just such an evaluation is the primary goal of this article.