Religion and cybernetic concepts in the theory of action

Abstract

Parsons' works on the sociology of religion are traced through the major stages of their development. Attention is given to the wide scope of Parsons' interests in religion and especially to the consequences of the evolution of his general theory of action for his treatments of religion. The emergence in the 1950s and the elaboration in the 1960s and 1970s of Parsons' notion of a cybernetic hierarchy obtaining among the elements of action systems is treated as the conceptual key to his distinctive emphasis on the importance of religion for social order and social change. New four function paradigms are presented for analyzing religion as general action complex and for treating the cybernetically controlling part of religious culture in the functioning of the general action complex of religion. © 1982 Association for the Sociology of Religion.