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1. In ordinary speech, “anonymity” refers to the concealing of one’s name, to remaining nameless, thus avoiding being questioned as a person. Anonymity is both a protection and a threat. By it individuals escape the control of a group or society and protect themselves against attack by a collective. Anonymity is also a mark of individualizing, a loss of the social relations that belong to the wholeness of the person, a loss of rootage in society. The consequences might be loneliness, substance abuse, the threat of suicide, or crime. 2. Sociology seldom deals with anonymity. The word …

1. Custom as a Social Phenomenon “Custom” is the general term for regular forms of social practice that are recognized by a society and may be expected in it. It embodies social norms with sanctions to enforce observance. For the most part, customs are less obligatory than laws. Laws are what one must do, customs what one must do or ought to do or may do. The dominant morality of a society finds expression in custom as a collection of social norms. Even in older tradition, the conduct conforming to custom is viewed as moral conduct. Yet custom covers more than…

1. Modern Problems and Issues The term “foreigners” defines individuals or social groups in relation to a particular state. People become foreigners when they stay in a country other than their own. Depending on the circumstances in the host country, their presence may or may not be welcome. The social problem involved in the concept is twofold: foreigners live as aliens, as those who do not belong; and they are seen by residents to be aliens, not to belong. Different situations give rise to specific…

1. Historical Development The beginnings of empirical social science lie in the field of statistics of the 17th and 18th centuries. Under the influence of the Belgian Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874), “moral statistics,” already common in Germany, was developed as an attempt to show the causal dependency of the individual on general social factors. In addition, under Quetelet among others, official governmental statistics began to be gathered in the second half of the 19th century. The first scientific…

1. Definition The sociology of churches is part of the sociology of religion. It deals with the social forms of Christianity, its influence on society in general, and the way in which it is affected by social factors. Compared with the sociology of religion, it has its own essentially narrower themes. It differs from pastoral sociology inasmuch as, like the sociology of religion, it is value-free. But the distinction is fluid. In general, pastoral sociology is the scholarly social analysis of the …

[German Version] I. The Concept – II. Sociology of Religion – III. Practical Theology I. The Concept Present-day sociology considers individualization a central feature of modern societies (Society: I, II). It is rooted in the process of social differentiation or, more precisely, in the development of functional subsystems that for the most part have their own organizational structures. Individuals no longer necessarily belong to every subsystem. Commonly – though not always – membership in subsystems comes through individual choice. Understood in this sense, individualization is “structural in…

[German Version] taken in the narrow sense of the term, refers to worship proclamation by two preachers engaged in dialogue with one another. Used in a broader sense, however, it may also denote an agenda of fundamental criticism that is dissatisfied with the monological character of the sermon from the pulpit and seeks alternatives that would seem less authority-dependent and more efficient in terms of communication theory. German discussion in homiletics has been debating the issue since the 1960s. The discussion was most intense betwe…

[German Version] I. Philosophy – II. Theology – III. Ethics – IV. Practical Theology I. Philosophy…

[German Version] In everyday language, a neighbor is someone who lives “next door” to us, whom we see (or at least know by sight), whom we hear, and in whose life we involuntarily participate. As a rule, we cannot choose our neighbors. They are simply there, and we must …

[German Version] I. Social Sciences and Ethics – II. Practical Theology I. Social Sciences and Ethics The term the masses (or the crowd) is a peculiarly modern, strongly normative designation for a great number of human beings thought of as an amorphous whole. Since antiquity there have been references to disorganized groups of people, uneducated and hence susceptible to demagoguery ( óchlos, plebs), but the modern use of the term presupposes specific processes of deracination in industrial societies along with the concomitant obsolescence – real or supposed – of organic conceptions of society such as have characterized Western notions of social conditions since Plato, as articulated in the generally accepted social theories of the early 19th century (G.W.F. Hegel, F.D.E. Schleiermacher). …

[German Version] I. History of Religions – II. Church History – III. Current Situation I. History of Religions…

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[German Version] I. Terminology – II. Social Sciences – III. Practical Theology I. Terminology From the 18th century on, the German term Handlungswissenschaft denoted the study of trade ( Handel). It thus came to represent one of the precursors of modern economics. Nowadays it has this meaning only in historical contexts. Its present-day usage refers to the disciplines that deal with action in the broadest sense, from trade through pedagogy …

[German Version] I. Practical Theology The systematic study of the church as a social entity (Churched) began with A. v. Oettingen in the 19th century. In the context of practical theology, the church studies published by P. Drews beginning in 1902 produced accurate descriptions of the life of the church. These were joined in subsequent decades by smaller individual studies, especially of the religiosity of industrial workers. Pastoral sociology began to take shape in France and the Netherlands, buildi…

[German Version] I. Religious Studies – II. Archaeology – III. Old Testament – IV. Judaism – V. Christianity – VI. Missiology – VII. Funerary Art I. Religious Studies A burial manifests and represents the culture-bound nature of personality and religious traditions that shape community; consequently, it is also a key to the metaphysics of cultural and civil religion. …

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[German Version] I. History of Religion – II. Old Testament – III. New Testament – IV. Church History – V. Dogmatics – VI. Ethics – VII. Practical Theology – VIII. Church Law – IX. Judaism – X. Islam I. History of Religion…

[German Version] I. Sociology and Social Ethics …

[German Version] …