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Sociology of Religion Advance Access originally published online on August 28, 2009
Sociology of Religion 2009 70(3):213-231; doi:10.1093/socrel/srp037
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org.

Maria of the Oak: Society and the Problem of Divine Intervention*

Daniel B. Lee

California State University, Channel Islands

E-mail: daniel.lee{at}csuci.edu


  Abstract

Maria of the Oak is a religious shrine located within an ancient grove of oaks in Germany. Thousands of religious pilgrims visit the site each year because of the "healing and helping power" of a legendary oak tree. This paper analyzes the content of written documents left by visitors and discusses the religious function and form of society that is reproduced. From the perspective of social system theory, religion appears to use this specific location to structure personal expressions of the sacred into a relatively organized but freely developing chain of communication that is devoted to solving the problem of recognizing and steering divine intervention. Maria of the Oak functions when the social system of religion successfully shifts responsibility for experiencing divine intervention from itself to individual believers. This shifting creates the opportunity for religion to inform itself with the other-reference of cooperating pilgrims, without breeching its own operational closure.

Keywords: communication, system theory, folk religion, pilgrimage, operational closure, interpenetration

* Direct correspondence to Daniel B. Lee, Department of Sociology, California State University Channel Islands, Camarillo, CA 93012, USA.


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