Immanence and Transcendence: Connections with Personality and Personal Life

TLDR: The Reformation debates between the Reformers and their adversaries can be seen as analyses of the nature of life in an association or in a social system and thereby as extending our understanding of these two forms of social organization.

Abstract: Several years ago, I found that a group's being organized as an association or a social system had important consequences (Swanson, 1967, 1971). Societies in early modern Europe were likely to become Protestant if they were organized as associations. The more definite a society's organization as an association, the more likely it was to become Calvinist rather than Lutheran (or Anglican). Societies organized primarily as social systems were likely to remain Roman Catholic. I came to these findings by a familiar route, that is by drawing on sociology for an understanding of religious developments. But one can move in the opposite direction as well. The debates between the Reformers and their adversaries can be seen as analyses of the nature of life in an association or in a social system and thereby as extending our understanding of these two forms of social organization. The things we learn from that approach can improve our account of any historical event in which the distinction is important. The Reformation is but one such event. In this paper I present evidence from new studies that turn on the distinction between association and social system. Each study concerns relations between personality and social structure as suggested by the Reformation debates. In each case I describe some feature of these relations as conceived at the Reformation. Then I cast them in a more general form and look at samples of primitive societies and/or American families to see whether expected relations to association/social system do in fact appear.