Search results

Religion and religious communities as active components of each social and cultural set and as major factors in its functioning, may contribute to social processes and relations or affect them both integrationally and disintegrationally. The paper lays out the theoretical and methodological grounds (functionalism) for the analysis of these processes and relations. As the examples of the integrational influence on the social and political processes in Croatia following all the social and political changes, we can mention the activities of the Catholic Church (particularly in the diaspora) and, to a degree, those of the Pentecostal Church, while the disintegrational influence was exemplified by the activities of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The text also includes a comparative analysis of the empirical data obtained from two studies carried out in Croatia (based on several partial indicators), which indicate a marked turn towards religiosity. Highlighted are possible individual and social aspects of these changes as well as the need for a complex and systematic monitoring of the religious developments in Croatia, the results of which might point to the possible integrational or disintegrational potentials of this "new religiosity" within broader social framework. (SOI : PM: S. 191)

The term charisma was first used in theological writings. In the Old Testament literature, the term occurs only twice. However, in the New Testament it occurs seventeen times. It is used by St. Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians, in the Letter to the Romans, in the Second Letter to the Corinthians. In the political context, the word charisma has been lavishly used in the analyses of national-socialist and stalinist regimes. Charismatic legitimation is, primarily, a feature of various types of dictatorships and no of democratic, constitutional states. This is probably why charismatic aspects are so notorious in most contemporary social theory. (SOI : PM: S. 144)