Outline/provide sociologist explains to why does people join a sect or cult.
Outline/provide sociologist explains to why does people join a sect or cult.
A sect is an organisation whose members join it of their own free will. A sociologist Moore (1988) defines a sect as a ‘usually fairly small membership and very exclusive in their acceptance of members. They place great stress on obedience and strict conformity to the rules of the sect. They believe that only they know the correct way to Heaven. Examples of sects include the Moonies and Jehovah's Witnesses’. However, a cult can be defined as followers of an unorthodox, extremist, or false religion who often live outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader.
Sociologists such as Max Weber argue that there is a close link between religion and social stratification and, in particular, the idea that different social classes interpret religion according to their social experiences and circumstances. He argues that, as people seek to make sense of both the world and their social position within it, religion provides a "ready made” ideological structured for interpretation. The attraction of sects to marginal social groups was that they provide both an explanation of a person's position in society and, most importantly, they provide a source of prestige or status - the members of a sect feel as if they are an elite (whether this involves a privileged position in the eyes of God, access to knowledge denied to the "non-elite" or whatever). In this respect, membership of such groups provides the individual with a source of desired social status that is denied to him / her by secular society.