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Reviews Pagans and Christians by Robin Lane Fox (1986) and The Social Structure of the Early Christian Communities by Dimitris Kyrtatas (1987). (DCL)

"Das Christentum ist seinem Selbstverständnis nach eine Liebesreligion, aber seine Geschichte
ist nicht zuletzt auch eine Geschichte der Gewalt. Der Text versucht diesen Widerspruch zu erklären. Er untersucht mit den Mitteln der Analytischen Sozialpsychologie, ausgehend vom Text der Bibel, was in dieser Religion der Ausübung von Gewalt
entgegenkommen kann." (Autorenreferat)

In his late work on Christianity, Talcott Parsons obviously built upon the writings of both Durkheim and Weber. While he departed from the idea that increasing differentiation of the system of action did not have to threaten the unity of the system as a whole, his emphasis on structural differentiation was also complemented by one on value integration. He believed that, especially in the New World, religion (i.e. Christianity) has gradually become able to impose its definition of the situation in highly different, highly heterogeneous contexts of action. In this paper, I reconstruct Parsons' historical-sociological analyses of the relation between Christianity and modern society. I discuss how Parsons appropriated the writings of Durkheim and Weber – in ways which did not fully exploit the potential of some of these writings. I suggest some alternatives, which rely less on a concern with value integration (Durkheim) but more on one with the differentiation of meaning systems (Weber).

Christianity has influenced Western culture more than any factor save human nature itself, and yet its influence is now greatly diminished. Reactions to this have usually taken the form of a Hegelian affirmation that Christianity, having served its historical purpose, is no longer important in itself; a nostalgic conservatism which rejects the culture of modernity simply; or a revivalism which ignores it. An alternative view rests on an analysis of culture and the enlightenment process of secularization to which the Church reacted by closing in on itself until the Second Vatican Council affirmed the legitimate autonomy of the secular. The Church itself, partly to blame for secularization through its practical demystification of nature and attempt to coercively supplant all pre- and non-Christian religious experience, should engage modernity while giving witness to human dignity and promoting a more human culture. Such a constructive recovery of Christian culture must avoid both politicization and moralism.