ABSTRACT
In various parts of the book so far we have seen how religion has figured in studies of social movements. In Chapter 2, we saw how early theorists of collective behaviour included religious movements in their taxonomies and conceptual frameworks, although they tended to regard these movements as expressive or value-oriented and, hence, less significant than social movements striving for purposive social change. Also in Chapter 2, we considered briefly how Nazism has been described as a ‘political religion’ (Evans 2007), which, we might add, could be equivalent to ‘civil religion’ (Bellah 1970), in that it performs the same social function as religion (i.e., promoting social cohesion), albeit with a secular content. And, in Chapter 4, we saw how the precarity movement has utilized religious imagery, inventing its own saint, San Precario, to protect all precarious workers (see Figure 4.2.2).
