WAVERING SAINTS, MASS RELIGIOSITY, AND THE CRISIS OF POST-BAPTISMAL SIN IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY - A WEBERIAN READING OF THE SHEPHERD-OF-HERMAS

As a religious sect that anchored its salvation pledge in an exclusive promise of spiritual empowerment the early Christian movement called its converts to virtuoso standards of religiosity. Following their bap tismal regeneration believers were obligated to remain 'sealed' in pur ity thereafter, in expectation of pending eschatological deliverance. Signs of moral slippage would thus constitute a negation of those sect arian claims, threatening thereby the continued viability of the movem ent Operating in an environment of persecution, and shaken by the prot racted non-event of cosmic redemption, growing numbers of believers fo und the exacting purity requirements impossible to uphold, An optimal organizational resolution of that crisis would require the restoration of wavering saints to spiritual status, to be achieved through remedi al adjustments in penitential practice. Drawing upon Weber's model of the sect-church dynamic this study offers a sociological hermeneutic o f The Shepherd of Hermas.