Photoessay #2095 - Collective Effervescence

My professor was starting to present some recent research he's doing with megachurches.  He's analyzed a huge amount of fairly recent data from those attending megachurches.  He didn't collect the data but he gets to use it.

Where he's going is that the intense emotional experiences that members of these congregation report correspond to large levels of oxytocin which gives large amounts of well-being.  He also describes these experiences as involving a large number of people, mutual focused attention and shared emotional moods.  He sees this phenomena as positive for the individual and for society.  Since the aims of these organizations is generally benign and moral, this gives many individuals positive opportunities for experiencing solidarity, camaraderie and spiritual experience.

Personally, this whole thing frightens me as I can see the immense personal and capital power concentrated in these institutions which can be used to exclude whole classes of infidels.  Such as myself and my family.

Maybe he hasn't experienced this.

I also don't buy Luhrmann's idea that the new evangelical non-demonational movement arose out of the counter-culture.

An interesting label for this is 'collective effervescence' described by Emile Durkheim in 1912

Durkheim describes this theory as when the "act of congregating" becomes a "powerful stimulant," drawing people together and transporting them into an "extraordinary height of exultation."

Interesting that I got this definition from Koach  College Outreach, a project of the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, which I don't quite know what that is.  Took the picture from them also.

Too many mysteries. 

I'm getting close to submitting my paper.  Today at UW, I checked out some latest issues of Delaware History and Georgia Historical Quarterly mainly to see the form and figure out the first few paragraphs of my paper.  The Preface (why I wrote this paper) is all that appropriate.