Tag Archives: orthopraxy

Here is a link to a cute video on how to be an Evangelical. It is similar to the books and spoofs on how to act and speak yeshivish.

However it is quoted on a religion blog to discuss how religion is learning to follow set patterns of speaking according to its habitus (in Bourdieu’s sense) rather than its doctrines. Meaning a year in Israel is about learning to speak a certain way. Now, that is not the end of the story. The blog has a commenter

While it is worthwhile to consider the extent to which a cult, sect, denomination or ecclesia can be identified by its various styles of habitus, it is also useful to consider the concept of “ortho-praxy.” Every collectivity, sacred or secular, has its subtle aspects of orthodox social action (social behavior, G. H. Mead).
Ortho-praxy (orthopraxy) is a concept frequently used in the study of religions and spiritualities, including comparative religious studies as an inter-disciplinary field and the sociology of religion as a section of the ASA.

The way he is using the term orthopraxy in a GH Mead sense is as an acquired was to speak and conduct social interaction. People we call believers are those who have learned to have the correct acquired way to talk. The one who learns catch phrases like “baal teshuvah” “your not yotze”“it is against the mesorah” “it is a kiyyum” “one has to do teshuvah” are the orthopraxy, since they have correctly learned how to practice a way of speech. On the other side, those who stop speaking like that and don’t accept that way of labeling are not the orthoprax since they are no longer speaking correctly.
From a sociological perspective, Orthoprax is not about keeping halakhah but about acting and talking like a believer. Those correctly acculturated are orthopraxy, those who stop speaking correctly even if they keep halakhah would not be orthoprax. Skepticism, rationality, liberalism or disinterest all cause one to speak differently to other people. When discussing Evangelicals, researchers like John G. Stackhouse, Jr. consider orthopraxy part of the correct beliefs, when one no longer believes then one is not orthoprax.