Peter Smith's video: Cohesion BF 1

Paper to be presented at the Oxford Baha'i Studies Seminar, 20 December 2020. How do religious movements maintain their cohesion? 2 important sociological mechanisms are the movement's central concerns ('motifs') and resource mobilization. This paper examines the first of these as it may apply to the Babi and Baha'i religions. My Patreon account: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=42165895&fan_landing=true My PayPall account: paypal.me/PeterSmith602 Review questions (If you are interested): Q1. What are some of the common reasons why religious and other social movements commonly split into sometimes competing sub-groups? Give examples. Q2. Why is coercion an inherently fragile means of ensuring cohesion in a particular religious movement? Give examples. Q3. What is the concept of a ‘religious motif’ advanced by Peter Berger? What are his ‘enthusiastic’, ‘gnostic’, and ‘prophetic’ motifs? Give examples of each. Q4. What is my concept of the ‘polar motif’? How was it expressed in (i) the Baha’i and (ii) the Babi religions? Q5. What did Berger mean by a ‘charismatic field’? Q6. Apart from the Babi-Baha’i cases, what other religions might be thought of in terms of the polar motif? Q7. What are the likely ways in which Berger’s three types of religious motifs will be expressed in (i) a religious movement’s form of organization, and (ii) the attitudes of its members to the wider world?