ABSTRACT

As an individual, the prophet is often a lonely, iconoclastic figure, little concerned with sustaining a worshipping community, a given tradition or an accepted rite. From a perspective within sociological theology, the church and the priest are especially adept at being harbingers of sacred virtues that can be transposed into wider society, whereas the sect and the prophet are more gifted at making strident and sometimes much warranted denunciations of the same society. Church and sect, along with priest and prophet, in tandem and in tension, offer multifaceted Christian responses to society at large. In a context of widespread institutional decline exclusivism might be increasingly attractive to Western Christianity. Exclusivism was also a central criterion for Weber. For Weber the main differentiating factor between a sect and a church lay in its type of membership. One of the obvious problems facing Christian exclusivism has been to make sense of the 'saints' of the Old Testament.