ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses framework of common problems in the hope that consideration of the difference may help others toward a fruitful solution of these problems. The ethical component which is so prominent in Christianity generally is not missing from Sorokin's conception. In the Western case the phase of early Christianity was the most religious, characterized by a primarily ascetic disregard for virtually all worldly interests, and the practice of brotherly love within the Christian community itself. A particularly important test case is that of the interpretation of the relations of religious orientation, values, and social structure in the course of that development in the modern Western world which has eventuated in modern industrialism. The Christian community was constituted by the fact of common faith and common worship, but the contexts in which worship was paramount were differentiated from the context of love and charity which bound the community together in bonds of human mutuality.
