By Philip Wood

The social sciences have long been familiar with the idea that social phenomena have ‘functions’, i.e. that phenomena exist because they play a role in ensuring the survival of an entire ‘social organism’. I would like to return to some of the problems of Darwinian models within the social sciences at a later date, but, for the time being, I will attempt to apply this functionalist model within the conjoined histories of religion and social commentary.

Functionalism has an implicitly historical framework. If a given institution or movement exists in one time period then its function should be retained in a future time period, even if within a different guise. There are some obvious problems with this idea as a universal tool of analysis: it assumes the comparability of the same societies in different periods and the similarity of its behaviour and ‘goals’. But neither can it be universally rejected- there are clearly societies where new institutions have evolved to fill the gap left by the demise of older ones. In the sociology of religion a prime example might be the encouragement of material investment amongst religions of the middle classes, the Weberian observation of the connection between Protestantism and capitalism that has also been observed for Judaism and forms of Buddhism and Islam.

I would like to suggest a similar continuity between the functions provided by eschatological and millennial forms of Christianity in early modern Britain and its successors in the Victorian period and twenty-first century environmentalism. These continuities were not those of the histories that these communities and interests groups wrote for themselves: they did not generate their own internal solidarity by looking back to other groups as antecedents. Instead the continuity is suggested from observing the role filled by all these groups as vehicles for apocalyptic sentiment. Read more »