The Human Face of Church: A Social Psychology and Pastoral Theology Resource for Pioneer and Traditional Ministry

By Sara Savage and Eolene Boyd-Macmillan

Until now, Fresh Expressions has been about starting and sustaining mission initiatives among people with little or no church contact. As these projects mature, pastoral problems easily arise - how do you integrate the old with the new? How do you get an established congregation to change it views and practices? How do you cope with conflict? What if newcomers challenge set patterns of church behaviour rather than conform with them?

The publication is structured for use for training in local churches, theological colleges and as a research tool in postgraduate study.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Canterbury Press Norwich
• Release date: Oct 30, 2007
• ISBN: 9781786223791

Sara Savage

DR SARA SAVAGE co-authored the influential report Making Sense of Generation Y

Book preview

The Human Face of Church

The Human Face of Church

A Social Psychology and Pastoral Theology Resource for Pioneer and Traditional Ministry

Sara Savage and Eolene Boyd-MacMillan

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© Sara Savage and Eolene Boyd-MacMillan 2007

First published in 2007 by the Canterbury Press Norwich

(a publishing imprint of Hymns Ancient & Modern Limited,

a registered charity)

13–17 Long Lane, London EC1A 9PN

www.scm-canterburypress.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, Canterbury Press.

The Authors have asserted their rights under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Authors of this Work

Unless otherwise stated, all Bible references are from The Revised English Bible © Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press 1961, 1970, 1989.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978–1–85311–812–8

Typeset by Regent Typesetting, London

Printed and bound by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk

Contents

Acknowledgements

About the Authors

Foreword

Introduction

Part 1 Group

1. The Human Side of Church: Group Processes in Congregations

2. Words, Words, Words: Religious Discourse

3. No Conflict Here – We’re All Christians!

4. Empowering Leadership and the Spirit of the Group

5. Team-work

Part 2 Relationship

6. Oh, Those Difficult People

7. Healthy Relationships – in the Church?

8. Growing Faith

9. Wholeness and Holiness

Part 3 Resources

10. Church Consultancy: Tools for Facilitating Authentic Growth

Appendices

Appendix 1 Longer Learning Exercises

For Chapter 1 The Human Side of Church: Group Processes in Congregations

For Chapter 2 Words, Words, Words: Religious Discourse

Appendix 2 Questionnaires

For Chapter 3

For Chapter 4

For Chapter 5

For Chapter 7

Bibliography

Sources and Acknowledgements

For

Fraser Watts,

Director of the Psychology and Religion Research Group

Acknowledgements

We are grateful for wise and helpful feedback from our readers: Peter Hampson, John Loose, Mark Savage, Ron Boyd-MacMillan, Steve Croft, Duncan MacLaren, Eddie Gibbs, Eleanor Williams, and Christine Smith of SCM-Canterbury Press.

We also wish to thank the Cambridge Theological Federation for creating a hospitable teaching environment over the past nine years in which to ‘hot-house’ the principles and resources discussed in this book. Thanks also to our students for their wholehearted engagement. Many of the insights in the following chapters have been refined through their thoughtful reflection and practical experiences. Similarly, thanks to colleagues and students at TCA-Singapore for test-driving the text. We are grateful to our colleagues in the Psychology and Religion Research Group who have helped in so many ways: Nick Gibson and Liz Gulliford for their help with church consultancies, Fraser Watts for making this book possible, Jose Liht, Gary Davies and other colleagues for their administrative and moral support. Not least, sincere thanks are owed to the Mulberry Trust.

About the Authors

Dr Sara Savage is Senior Research Associate with the Psychology and Religion Research Group at the University of Cambridge, UK, and lecturer at the Cambridge Theological Federation. Sara is co-author of Psychology for Christian Ministry (Watts, Nye and Savage); The Beta Course, a multimedia pastoral care course (Savage et al); Making Sense of Generation Y: The World-view of 15–25-year-olds (Savage et al). Formerly a dancer and choreographer, Sara has abundant experience in fresh expressions through the arts. Decades of active Christian ministry in many places around the world have sharpened her research interests in the social psychology of church and religious organizations. Her current work focuses on young people vulnerable to recruitment for religiously motivated violence.

Dr Eolene Boyd-MacMillan is a Research Associate with the Psychology and Religion Research Group at the University of Cambridge, UK, and lectures at the Cambridge Theological Federation. She also serves as a counsellor with the Crossreach Counselling Service, Edinburgh. Eolene is author of Transformation: James Loder, Mystical Spirituality, and James Hillman and has contributed to the Ignatian spirituality journal, The Way. She has taught at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Hong Kong, served as a hospital chaplain at the UCLA medical centre, and facilitated ‘alternative’ gatherings in the USA, Hong Kong and UK. Formerly, she worked in the US Government, in both the US Department of the Treasury and the White House. Her current research focuses on conflict among church leaders with different theological stances.

Foreword

BY STEVE CROFT

Christian ministry is demanding in every generation. The Scriptures and the writings of Christians down the ages bear witness to this. For both lay and ordained ministers, working in partnership with the Spirit of God to begin and sustain Christian communities is a high calling, and often a difficult one.

The difficulty increases in times of rapid cultural change. We seem to be living through a time in the West when the way we have been church for many years is no longer working for – or connecting with – a growing proportion of our society. Traditional churches and their ministries remain extremely important as a means of God’s grace to those who are part of them and those who have some kind of Christian background. However, as society changes, churches are rediscovering the call to go and make disciples, and to re-imagine the church for a changing world. In turn, this is leading to a new movement of contextual mission and the forming of new Christian communities. These communities are shaped on the one hand by the gospel and the historic markers of the church; and on the other hand by their mission context and the uniqueness of the community they serve. Different terms are used to describe these new communities. In this book they are called emerging churches or fresh expressions of church (the term developed by the Church of England in the ground-breaking report, Mission Shaped Church).

The challenge facing the Christian community in our changing context is increasingly seen as threefold:

How do we sustain existing Christian communities in worship and mission?

How do we begin, and grow, new Christian communities for a changing context?

And how do we help both parts of this new ‘mixed economy’ live and flourish together?

These questions will affect every Christian minister in the next generation, whether serving as a cathedral canon, a youth pastor, a circuit steward, a vicar of five rural parishes or an inner-city evangelist.

The Human Face of Church is one of the first textbooks on Christian ministry to be written for this mixed economy of church life. The authors draw creatively on the great well of Scripture and Christian tradition. They also draw on the many insights of the human sciences, particularly psychology. The book has been shaped, like a fresh expression of church, by a twofold dialogue – a double listening – to both scripture and the world around us. Like all good textbooks it has emerged as the fruit of many years’ experience, as the authors taught and trialled the material with ministers-in-training.

I commend this important resource to you most warmly. Whether you use it as a handbook for a course on Christian ministry, or as a guide to use on your own to enrich and re-imagine your own practice, you will find this book a rich source of wisdom and insight to apply to your own situation.

The Revd Dr Steven Croft

Archbishops’ Missioner and Team Leader of Fresh Expressions

www.freshexpressions.org.uk

Introduction

Who is this book for?

This book is for everyone interested in the unfolding drama of the Christian church during a time of rapid change. Whether your faith community is thriving or just surviving, we hope these chapters will enable you to embrace and understand its human face. We have developed this social psychology and pastoral theology resource to support a ‘mixed economy of church’ comprising pioneer, traditional, lay and ordained ministries.

Psychology serving the church – Christ, church and culture

Some readers may have qualms about applying modern psychology to Christian ministry. If so, this section of the Introduction is for you. Are we allowing contemporary culture to influence the agenda for the church? Yes, and it won’t be for the first time. In writing the fourth Gospel, John drew on the resources of his culture to communicate startling news. He used the Greek term logos and invested it with new meaning to communicate his message about Jesus Christ. Jesus himself drew upon the familiar images of his culture: farming, party-throwing, sheep-tending, house cleaning. The gospel set the agenda, and the New Testament writers then worked out what the gospel meant in their own cultures, and which cultural resources to use to convey it. Human understanding is always embodied in the living culture of each generation. Having a culture is inevitably part of what it means to be human – and Christian. The only real choice we have concerns which cultural resources to appropriate, and how.

With varying degrees of controversy, the church has always drawn upon the resources of its surrounding culture in order to communicate the gospel. We follow the lead of Jesus who entered completely into the culture of first-century Palestine in order to announce the Kingdom of God. Today, vast cultural shifts, church decline and pluralism make culture studies an essential part of good mission practice.

But do we want to appropriate everything? How do we discern what is useful in our culture, what to reject, or what to transform? H. Richard Niebuhr suggests five ways in which Christ and culture can relate. Niebuhr’s classic text, Christ and Culture, suggests a typology that continues to be used and debated today.¹ The first two types are polar opposites:

Christ against culture. This type understands that loyalty to Christ, to the new order, entails rejection of the world, the old order. The way of life contrasts totally with the way of death; and Christians must choose life. The power and oppression of the state is viewed as incompatible with the Christian faith. Christian discipleship requires rejection of, and withdrawal from, social and cultural institutions. (Examplars of this position are Tertullian and Tolstoy.)

Christ of culture. Faith in God and Christ, and the demands of such faith, are consonant with what is best in each culture. Faith is a philosophic belief about reality and involves ethics about the improvement of life. Jesus Christ is the great enlightener who stands for a peaceful, co-operative society achieved by moral enlightenment and training. Christians can be admired for the way they embody a culture’s highest ideals. Jesus is not only the Saviour of a select band of saints, but of the whole world. (Exemplars of this position are Abelard and A. Ritschl.)

The last three types agree that human beings require a cultural context, but that this context needs to be aligned with an understanding of reality as created, redeemed and sustained by the Triune God. The following three models, in different ways, take seriously both the consonance and the gap between Christ and culture.

Christ above culture. Christ is far above culture. Yet Christians must be involved in social and cultural institutions in order to shape them to reflect divine reality. Human beings need the laws of culture, but such laws should reflect the true nature of things. The institutions of church and state in the best of worlds can serve one another, yet each should retain some independence. (Exemplars of this position are Clement of Alexandra, Thomas Aquinas and Bishop Joseph Butler.)

Christ and culture in paradox. This type emphasizes the extent and thoroughness of human fallenness.² Culture represents human fallenness, but God sustains human beings in, and even through, culture. Moreover, God uses culture to turn people away from themselves and towards himself. (Exemplars of this position are St Paul and Martin Luther.)

Christ the transformer of culture. This type is more positive and hopeful concerning human culture than the ‘paradox’ type, yet is not quite as positive as the ‘Christ above culture’ model. Here, the problem of culture is seen in its need for conversion, not its need for replacement. The conversion of culture involves a radical rebirth, not simply guidance. The problem of culture is that it is vulnerable to perversion, in its religion, just as much as in any other expression. That vulnerability opens culture to conversion through Christ. (Exemplars of this position are Augustine, Wesley and F. D. Maurice.)

Niebuhr emphasizes that no one person or movement fits precisely within any one pure type; real life usually involves a messy mixture of attitudes towards Christ and culture. You may have found yourself resonating with aspects of some models, and not others. Living the Niebuhrian types creates distinctive Christian cultures. The church itself can become a sub-culture, such as that described by Dave Tomlinson in The Post-Evangelical.³ Even those who espouse ‘Christ against culture’ end up with a culture, such as the horse-drawn buggies and farming culture of the Pennsylvanian Amish. We cannot escape having an enculturated faith.

In Emerging Churches Gibbs and Bolger understand the emerging church in all its variety as inviting the whole church into cross-cultural engagement. Being cross-cultural assumes that there are aspects of the church that are counter-cultural, and that a ‘crossing’ needs to be made, back and forth, between Christ and culture. Niebuhr’s discussion of his typology helps us to think about this ‘crossing’, along with each type’s historical signposts.⁴

We write The Human Face of Church crossing back and forth between Niebuhr’s types. As Christian authors, our over-riding aim is to apply psychology (in this text, empirically based social, developmental and cognitive psychologies, along with clinical, counselling and theoretically based depth psychologies) to serve the Christian faith. This implies that the Christian faith is super-ordinate in terms of our aims, analytic lens and ideals: Christ above culture. We also take a dialogic approach, zig-zagging between Christian and psychological perspectives, allowing the conversation to deepen in a transformative direction: Christ transforming culture. We find a good deal of consonance between psychology and the gospel. Many of psychology’s founding fathers (for example, Freud, Jung, Allport, Frankl, Fromm, to name a few) were raised in deeply religious environments, and wrestled with human problems at a profoundly existential level. Those who desire to see humanity made whole and transformed share common ground: Christ of culture. At times, we are critical of a superficial use of psychology in promoting a culture of consumerism and self-preoccupation: Christ against culture. When theology and psychology are brought into close dialogue, as in James Loder’s ‘logic of transformation’ (see Chapters 3 and 8), we see a paradoxical and transformative relationship at work.

That is how we have done it. We hope that this brief x-ray of our internal workings will equip readers to make their own judgement concerning how to apply psychology to the human dimension – the human face – of church.

How to use this book

New terms to describe new ways of being church are flying about. We use the term ‘emerging church’ to refer generically to what is called in the Anglican and Methodist denominations ‘fresh expressions’ of church. We also use ‘fresh expressions of church’ interchangeably with ‘emerging church’. This free-wheeling use of terms will remind you that nothing is yet pinned down: the church is truly emerging in new ways.

In the Catholic Church, base communities represent one form of emerging church. The Church of Scotland (Presbyterian in the US) refers to these initiatives as ‘churches without walls’. ‘Nonconformist’, ‘independent’ or ‘seeker sensitive mega-’ churches may represent an earlier form of emerging church; some will continue to be in the forefront of experimenting with church forms and others may be very similar to the mainline denominational churches. Whatever your form of church, emerging or traditional or any mixture, this book is for you. The human face of church is part of every faith community, and whether you are a pioneer minister just starting out or a seasoned minister with 30 years under your belt, the topics of this text are relevant.

There are learning exercises throughout the chapters, for example, Pause for Thought and Discussion Points. We had in mind various readers while we were writing these. Pause for Thought enriches individual reflection. Others will work well in the context of a taught course. Discussion Points are intended to spark discussion and debate.

Chapters conclude with: ‘To engage further with the material’ followed by a list of action steps that can help stimulate creative thinking and lead to implementing new ideas. Chapter 10 ‘Church Consultancy’ provides the framework (for both students and instructors) for a major coursework project.

In a number of chapters, we point you to questionnaires that are vital to the learning process, located in Part 3: Resources. We strongly urge you to turn to them where indicated.

In some chapters, we invite you to interact with the material through an analytical exercise. These are designed to be somewhat challenging so that you engage with the insights on a deeper level.

The book is divided into three parts.

Part 1: Group will help you to understand faith communities as dynamic systems, replete with social processes that sometimes take on a life of their own (Chapter 1). This understanding underpins change management, open communication (Chapter 2), conflict resolution (Chapter 3), empowering leadership (Chapter 4) and healthy teams (Chapter 5).

Part 2: Relationship zooms in on the inter-personal relationships that make up faith communities. Sometimes these are with difficult people (Chapter 6), at other times we are blessed with healthy relationships (Chapter 7). Healthy relationships gear us toward growing faith (Chapter 8) and wholeness and holiness (Chapter 9).

Part 3: Resources puts the theory into practice. In Chapter 10 ‘Church Consultancy’ are tried and tested tools for managing change in church contexts.

Two Appendices include questionnaires, case studies, analytical exercises, lists of resources and further discussion on selected topics.

Notes

1 See Stassen, Glen, Yeager, D. M. and Yoder, John Howard (1996), Authentic Transformation: A New Vision of Christ and Culture, Nashville: Abingdon Press.

2 Also referred to as depravity.

3 Tomlinson, Dave (1995), The Post-Evangelical, London: Triangle.

4 Duncan McLaren (2004), ‘Deep River: Church in Society’ in Mission Implausible: Restoring Credibility to the Church, Milton Keynes, UK: Paternoster Press, discusses the strategies characteristic of the different forms of relationship among Christ, church and culture in Niebuhr’s typology, and similarly argues the inescapability of negotiating these relationships.

Part 1: Group

1. The Human Side of Church: Group Processes in Congregations

We begin with a story. This story – within a story – was first told by Ivan in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov. It takes place in fifteenth-century Spain, at the height of the Inquisition.

One day, Jesus comes back. He wanders through the streets and squares of a southern town, where just the day before 100 so-called heretics had been burnt at the stake. The story-teller narrates, ‘He appeared quietly, unostentatiously, and yet – strange, this – everyone recognizes him. Saying nothing, he passes among them with a smile of infinite compassion.’

People who touch his garment are healed, a blind man’s sight is restored. He even raises a small girl from the dead. The crowds erupt, shouting and sobbing. At this very moment, the Grand Inquisitor, a man of ninety, emerges from the cathedral. The crowd meekly parts, and they bow their heads to the ground. He then has the Visitor arrested.

Later, receiving the Prisoner, the Grand Inquisitor says to him, ‘I know who you are.’ He accuses the Prisoner of meddling. The old man sentences the Prisoner to being burnt at the stake the next day.

The gist of his accusation against the Prisoner is that whereas the Prisoner has acted to ensure humanity’s freedom, the Grand Inquisitor acts to ensure humanity’s happiness. He ensures their happiness by providing them with bread, with certainty, and with belonging. The people, claims the Grand Inquisitor, cannot bear the freedom that Jesus has left them with; it was uncharitable of him to attempt this. All those centuries ago, by refusing the temptations in the wilderness, Jesus had said no to buying people’s loyalty with bread, or with a display of miracles on demand, leaving them only their free wills and consciences from which to act. ‘But the people are mere sheep,’ said the Grand Inquisitor, ‘and you have asked too much of them. This freedom is an intolerable burden, which we have toiled for 15 centuries to remove.’

The only response the Prisoner makes is to draw near to the old man, and kiss him on his bloodless ninety-year-old lips. The old man shudders and cries, ‘Go, and do not come back … do not come back … ever!’¹

A fanciful story? Perhaps. Yet this story about Christian freedom undermined by human organizations taps into something that we know about ourselves, something that social psychology has demonstrated through numerous experiments: we prefer to have our loyalty bought with the bread of certainty and belonging. We struggle to act and think on our own. In churches, as elsewhere, we conform in order to feel secure about our thoughts and our actions.

The sociologist Max Weber observed a cyclical process among religious movements that he called ‘the routinization of charisma’.² Weber argued that any great vision requires a human process to carry it through time, sometimes in the form of ‘a man, a mission, a movement, or a monument’.³ Even with the Body of Christ, the life-giving charism⁴ has to be embodied in a routine – in some form of human organization. Yet, life-giving visions do not fit easily into neat boxes. So, the very process that gives the vision continuing life also begins to kill it. When the maintenance of the institution (which protects the charism) becomes the institution’s primary purpose, the death of the charism is on the horizon. Only a spiritual revival or reform will re-ignite the gift. In our era, fresh expressions of church⁵ and the re-traditioning of familiar forms of church march alongside many initiatives to re-ignite the gift.

It may be hard for pioneering expressions of church to imagine that, some day, they too may host the unwelcome process of routinization. Imagine a multi-faith chaplaincy that aims to meet the pastoral needs of a new community.⁶ Everything about the project is vibrant and challenging. This chaplaincy for people working in construction companies is already under way; eight volunteer chaplains are involved. Stage two will involve the development of chaplaincy to people using a sports and music arena; and stage three will involve managing a building for worship and community development, with pastoral care of new residents and employees in offices and shops. This multi-faith project envisions the faiths worshipping separately, in no way denying differences, but doing chaplaincy work in a shared community. A fabulous, far-reaching vision like this seems an unlikely candidate for ‘the routinization of charisma’. Any such entrenchment is likely to be some years away. But the sheer enormity of the workload, and the human need for a bit of peace and quiet, may be enough for normal social processes to interact with the vision in unanticipated ways.

As we move with the church into the twenty-first century, whether through traditional or fresh expressions of church, leaders need to be aware of the ambiguous role all human organizations play: they both enable and constrain. Yet, we cannot do without them. Any network of relationships, however fluid, requires some organizational context in order to survive long-term. The church as an organization, in whatever form, is here to stay. We write this book for a ‘hinge’ generation – a generation on the cusp of both old and new forms of church. Our message is that we need to learn the social psychological lessons from both past and present experiences of church. Without this understanding, we will blindly replicate the processes that kill the gift, resulting in crippled versions of the church’s own ideal. Whatever ecclesiology or other perspective you bring towards emerging and traditional forms of church, the topics discussed in this chapter apply. Whatever else the church is in spiritual terms (and we as authors believe in that ‘more’), at the very least the church is a human organization. It is worth looking at what happens when human beings gather together.

To help you to recognize group processes in your faith community, through examples, empirical research in social psychology, and exercises,⁷ you will learn in this chapter about:

Conformity:

Five factors.

Curbing undesired conformity.

Not conforming or dissenting.

Social identity:

Reducing inter-group conflict.

Conformity

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Discussion Point —> Churches are conforming places

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We all would like to think that we are immune to the kind of group pressure illustrated by the cartoon by Dave Walker (2006). After all, no direct request to comply has been made. Surely we can stand or sit when we choose? Yet, next Sunday, if we are in church, the odds are that we will stand up to sing when everyone else does. How deep does this tendency towards conformity run?

cartoon.jpg

Try this. Stare at a tiny pinprick of light in a completely dark room. Very soon the light will appear to move erratically, even though the light source actually remains stationary. This is called the autokinetic effect. Back in 1936, an experimenter put participants in a darkened room with only a pinprick of light, and asked them to tell him what they saw. The experimenter, Muzafer Sherif, tested participants both alone and in groups of two or three.⁸ Alone, participants reported widely divergent amounts of movement. In groups, participants invariably reached a common point of view about how much the light ‘moved’. Responding out loud in the group, the participants conformed to one another’s responses. The experience of being in a group produced a consensus, without any explicit pressure so to do. Even in subsequent testing, in which the participants were again alone, each participant’s response conformed to the previous judgement arrived at while in the group, no matter how different their initial, solitary judgement had been.

In a church gathering, there is an implicit agreement about when to stand for a hymn. This is benign; why sing in chaos? However, an implicit pressure to conform can seep into all areas of church life, eroding the life-giving charism. We tend to notice conformity more readily in others than in ourselves. Visit a church of a different persuasion. The first thing that is likely to spring to mind is: ‘Oh, they are all like that’ (be they endlessly genuflecting, happy/clappy, frozen in formality, doubtfully dissecting, or Bible thumping). Of course, in our own church we are distinct individuals, involved in the proceedings from a deep sense of our own integrity. We prefer to think of ourselves as inviolable, rational individuals.

Sherif’s autokinetic experiment is often regarded as a signpost in the history of social psychology. The prevailing view of human nature in the West had been to focus on the individual, as if people are self-contained entities. Social psychology began to unveil the inherently social nature of the human personality. We all exist in a matrix of relationships, and this affects something as ‘biologically based’ as visual perception. A later series of classic experiments conducted by Solomon Asch demonstrated the power and pervasiveness of conformity.⁹ Asch asked eight participants to make correct judgements about which line in a group of three was identical to another or fourth line (see Figure 1.1).

1_1_p7.jpg

The task was easy, with only one line of the three actually matching the fourth (s) line. However, seven of the eight participants were undercover ‘confederates’, in league with Asch. Only one person was the real (‘naïve’) participant (and he was placed second to last among the other seven participants). Asch secretly instructed the confederates to give correct answers on the first and third series of lines, and to give an incorrect answer on the second series. The real aim of the experiment was to see how the ‘naïve’ participant responded when everyone else gave wrong answers.

Over many repetitions of the task, many conformed to the group’s wrong answers, even though the correct answer was obvious. 28% of the ‘naïve’ participants conformed to others’ judgements much of the time. 47% conformed some of the time, and 25% never conformed. So, there are individual differences, but conformity is widespread. It seems to be normal for people to change their opinions, even their perceptions, when they are at variance with other members of their group.

The church has long relied on the power of conformity to help people to behave in accordance with Christian principles. St Paul exhorts us to ‘Put on Christ’ (Romans 13.14) and ‘Be conformed to Christ’ (Romans 8.29). The story of Western civilization owes much to the power of conformity. In the chaotic power vacuum left by the fall of the Roman Empire, civilization in Europe was made possible by the norms of peace and mutual trust valued in Christendom (a process called ‘the normative pacification of Europe’).¹⁰ This happens in the local church, too. If we regularly rub shoulders with people who love, forgive and help others, we are likely to do some of this ourselves. This can have enormous benefits, as sociologist David Martin has observed in Latin American Pentecostal churches.¹¹ Through immersion in church life, those trapped in cycles of alcoholism, drug addiction and wife-beating, can escape. Families stabilize, adults hold their jobs, children go to school, and poverty is reduced. Thanks are due, at least in part, to the power of conformity.

Post-industrial, postmodern Western society bequeaths to each of us a personal project: the project of the self.¹² We no longer inherit an unquestioned role or identity in society; we have to create our own sense of self. In this context, the power of conformity in churches plays a more ambiguous role. Conformity both enables and constrains the development of an authentic self. During the Iraq invasion in 2003, some churches in the UK encouraged only one opinion concerning these international events and ostracized anyone with a different view. People accepted the group view, or kept quiet about their disagreement, or felt they had to leave. The opportunity for learning and growing that disagreement provides was missed. Maintaining the ‘unity of the Spirit’ by suppressing all other viewpoints ultimately exacts a high price.

Since the early experiments on conformity, subsequent studies have identified various nuances and factors involved. People are slightly less conforming since the social upheavals and questioning of authority that characterized the 1960s and 1970s. But on the whole, people still do conform to norms set by others. We exist in a matrix of relationships, and because we are social beings, this exerts a pressure to conform.

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Pause for Thought

Think about the norms of conformity in your faith community. Perhaps the norms regard preferred dress-codes, or types of career. Perhaps the norms coincide with only one political or social viewpoint. Think about which norms seem to be positive, which seem relatively neutral, and which potentially suppress an authentic expression of selfhood. What would happen if you dissented from any of the norms?

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The influences of conformity can be divided into two strands: informative and normative influences. When we don’t know much about the topic at hand, we look to others to tell us ‘what is’. When we need to rely on other people for information, or to define reality for us, informative influences are at work.¹³ We go along with the majority opinion on the latest Christian trend. Surely they must know!

Normative influences are at work when we conform to the behaviour of those around us in order to avoid being ‘the odd one out’.¹⁴ We may not think the others are necessarily right, but in complying, our reward is group membership. Some of Asch’s participants admitted afterwards that they agreed with the confederates’ wrong judgements so that they could ‘fit in’ with the group. In church, we might remain standing during the sixth chorus, despite back strain, lest we appear lacking in zeal. We might agree with others that Alpha is superficial or ‘too middle class’, even though we thoroughly enjoyed the course ourselves. Research suggests that most groups effect both kinds of influence (informative and normative),¹⁵ and the church is no exception.¹⁶

Churches have potentially all of the factors that lead to a high level of conformity. Within the broad categories of informative and normative, at least five factors influence whether or not we will conform (adapted from Psychology for Christian Ministry).¹⁷

1 The size of the group. A large (50+) group with most people in agreement will exert a powerful influence towards conformity. A person thinks: ‘They must know what they are talking about. They cannot all be wrong.’ However, if a group has an excessively high degree of uniformity, then its viewpoint will exert less power than a more diverse group (‘They must be all a bunch of zombies!’). Here, the opinion of all seems more like an opinion of one and therefore more easily resisted by another one. Jill visited a church where all the people seemed to be the same age and stage in life. They dressed alike, behaved in the service in more or less the same way, and said similar things when greeting her afterwards. Jill felt as if she had travelled to another planet. Feeling like an alien, and glad of it, she decided to resist the unspoken pressure to conform. A very diverse, large church makes it also slightly easier for the Jills of this world to resist the pressure to conform.

2 The importance of the group to an individual member. The more important the group is to a particular person, the more likely that she or he will conform to the group’s behaviour. Similarly, the more important membership in that group is to a person, the more likely it is that the person will conform in order to ensure membership. Sam does not exercise much influence in any group except his local parish. This is the one place where he feels valued and important. He does whatever it takes to stay involved in church, even if it means pretending he agrees. Because church matters to most people who attend, the possibility for an unhealthy degree of conformity exists.

3 The person’s concern with being liked. Some people feel the need to be liked more powerfully than others. This difference among people is in part connected to the extrovert and introvert distinction in human personality. Extroverts feel the need to belong to a group more strongly than introverts; the difference is not about liking people, but on how their brain is wired to maintain an optimal level of stimulus. According to the research of Hans Eysenck,¹⁸ the way a part of the brain of extroverts functions means that the under-stimulated extrovert requires continuous input to keep the brain functioning at an optimum level.¹⁹ In other words, extroverts are slightly bored: they are looking for action and this includes seeking out other people. So, the external, social world is fascinating and vital for extroverts. Dorothy Rowe²⁰ asserts that for extroverts belonging to a group is so important that rejection by the group can threaten the extrovert’s vital sense of being a self. Thus, an extrovert may conform more readily than an introvert in order to be liked. This will be true in a church context as much as in any other context.

In contrast, the ARAS (ascending reticular arousal system) of an introvert functions in such a way that they tend to become over-stimulated. Introverts reach overload more quickly. An introvert needs more solitude, lest over-stimulation sets in. An introvert may not be so devastated by rejection from the group, as the introvert’s sense of self comes from personal achievement and the requisite internal clarity. Instead, says Rowe, introverts may dread invasion by the group. An introvert may conform outwardly (while resisting inwardly), simply to be left in peace!

We would all like both: to belong, and to have personal clarity and achievement. However, one tendency will dominate. To this at least partially biologically based aspect of personality, add individual experiences of insecure relationships or rejection. People rightly come to church to receive some healing from such experiences. And yet the inherent social dynamic of conformity in churches can produce a heady mixture of people looking for, but failing to find, acceptance and the freedom of being authentic.

4 The ambiguity of a ‘stimulus’. The more ambiguous something appears, the more people rely on others for interpretations and explanations. If alone, a person will probably wrestle with the ambiguity, and struggle to make sense of it. In a group, people will often rely on