Some Sociocultural Aspects of Two Revivalistic Religious Groups in a Puerto Rican Municipio

Cook, Howard Scott, Some Sociocultural Aspects of Two Revivalistic Religious Groups in a Puerto Rican Municipio, un-published thesis, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Caribbean Studies, May 1963.

The present study … was designed to focus principally on the internal structure and functioning of two religious groups, located in Caguas, Puerto Rico, considered as discrete socio-cultural units within a larger social system. Following a detailed account of the social and cultural traits of each group, the writer will proceed to compare them in terms of the Church-Sect typology. In particular, on the basis of structural and functional analysis, he will attempt to ascertain the degree to which the secularization process, as a unidirectional phenomenon, can be said to explain the present cultural, psychological, and sociological traits of each group. In other words, a principal task of this study is to explore the possibilities of multi-directional manifestations of the secularization process in the internal structure and functioning of the Caguas groups. Finally, an effort will be made to shed some light on the following hypothesis, which is a corollary of the ‘unidirectional’ proposition: As an initially sect-like religious group, through time, begins to lose its sect-like characteristics and assumes church-like characteristics, do the members change accordingly or is there a turnover in the membership itself.