D*****r
发帖数: 6791 | 1 The main thing you’ve got to recognize is that success is really about
relationships and not about faith. What happens is that people form
relationships and only then come to embrace a religion. It doesn’t happen
the other way around. That’s really critical, and it’s something that you
can only learn by going out and watching people convert to new movements. We
would never, ever, have figured that out in the library. You can never find
that sort of thing out after the fact — because after the fact people do
think it’s about faith. And they’re not lying, by the way. They’re just
projecting backwards.
Something else: give people things to do. The folks in the Vineyard are
geniuses at that. It’s quite an adventure to go off somewhere and set up a
new church for them. The Mormons are great at giving people things to do
too. You know, they not only tithe money but they also tithe time. They do
an enormous amount of social services for one another, all of which builds
community bonds. It also gives you this incredible sense of security — I’m
going to be okay when I’m in a position of need; there are going to be
people to look out for me. That makes a difference. And if you want to build
commitment, send your kids out on missions when they’re nineteen! Go out
and you save the world for two years! Even if you don’t get a single
convert, it’s worth it in terms of the bonds you develop.
You’ve also got to have a serious conception of God and the
supernatural to succeed. Just having some “essence of goodness,” like the
Tao, isn’t going to do it. It just isn’t. It doesn’t even do it in Asian
countries, you know. They hang a whole collection of supernatural beings
around these essences. So to succeed you do best by starting with a very
active God who’s virtuous and makes demands, because people have a tendency
to value religions on the basis of cost.
— Rodney Stark, Sociologist who specializes in religions; professor at the
University of Washington， explaining his ideas on how and why religious
movements succeed, in Toby Lester, “Oh Gods!” (February, 2002: The
Atlantic Monthly) |
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