This second volume of Dr Stark's broadly-based work deals with sectarian religion, i.e. with those religious groupings which tend to condemn, and to withdraw from, the surrounding society and thereby form part and parcel of the revolutionary forces of their age and country. The author shows that the alliance between church and state which is characteristic of some cultures induces the dissatisfied strata to alienate themselves from the official church as well as from the official state, status and value system, and to produce contra-cultures of their own which tend to be negatives of the dominant institutions and ideologies. The bulk of the illustrative material is drawn from Russian and English history; a typology of sectarianism is attempted; and there are several collateral investigations, e.g. on religious dissent among the upper classes and on the multidenominationalism which has developed in the United States of America.