Strict religious sects cyclically erode into laxness and spawn stricter splinters

Evidence

First, people are not always willing to engage in these extravagant displays, and there is variability in the degree to which people want to do them. In fact, cultural demand for extravagant religious behaviors appears to wax and wane over time even within the same group. (Consider, for example, how strictly American Catholics followed religious doctrines and rituals in the past, compared to the lenient lifestyles of mainstream American Catholics today.) In their book The Churching of America, sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark observe a common cyclical pattern seen in American Christian denominations between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Sects come into existence, gain adherents, and establish themselves, and as they get older and enter the mainstream, they soften their doctrine and demand less of their adherents. Dissatisfied with the laxness of what is now a mainline church, splinter groups emerge that once again attract adherents by offering a more strict and zealous version of the faith, only to once again expand and succumb to the effects of time, leading to further schisms, and so on. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 336

Categorization

• SEED: The Finke-Stark sectarian cycle is a clean analytical frame for an essay on how religious rigor is self-undermining without constant schism — and a useful lens on the Catholic Church in Silence, which has already softened by the time Rodrigues arrives.