Identity formation and re-formation within and beyond Christian Fundamentalism: a post-structural narrative analysis of power and resistance

Josie McSkimming

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

School of Social Sciences

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

July 2014

i Abstract

The process of Christian apostasy or disaffiliation, with its associated identity changes, is an under-researched area within the sociology and psychology of religion. The researcher’s encounter with such disaffiliation was originally from the point of view of a social worker and psychotherapist, providing assistance to people navigating this process. This study has its significance in aiming to situate such a journey of disaffiliation from Christian Fundamentalism (CF) within a relational framework of power, using the theory of Michel Foucault and post-Foucauldian scholars. Power is not understood in a repressive or dominating sense, but as a ‘net-like’ structure in which individuals simultaneously undergo and exercise power as ‘identity projects’.

The qualitative study uses a four-tiered analysis of the interviews of 20 people who have exited CF and moved to more diverse positions of belief. Firstly, dialogical narrative analysis is used to create a typology of plotlines of the process of identity re-formation out of CF. Secondly, a Foucauldian genealogy maps the subjectification of the Christian subject along the axes of truth, power and the self, illustrating the power apparatus of the ‘Christian normalising gaze’. Thirdly, a Bakhtinian lens refracts the data to analyse performed identity within a multi- voiced world. Finally, a reflexive explication of the co-construction of the story with the researcher examines power within the research relationship as well as the research participants’ self-placement on the ‘insider/outsider continuum’ of CF.

The findings suggest that former participants of fundamentalist churches tell potent stories of interiorised and self-monitored Christian identities. The process of exit occurs over years, with resistance being exercised through such ‘technologies of the self’ as counterstories of self- definition and re-formed ethical substance; the double life of internal protest, leading to an integration of the submerged self; alternative positioning, reading and independent thinking in regard to authoritative discourses. Implications for social work and psychotherapy following disaffiliation suggest a post-structural therapy may be useful. This study considers the individual stories of change as responses to relationships of power and discourse, even as acts of resistance, refusal and anti-pastoral revolt.

ii Dedication

To James, my partner and dearest friend

iii Acknowledgements

Undertaking a thesis about Christian apostasy would have been almost unthinkable for me some ten years ago—such has been my own journey of change and identity transformation. What was originally just a seed of an idea was helped to grow and come to fruition by the constant encouragement of my supervisors, Associate Professor Carmel Flaskas and Dr Michael Wearing.

I thank Carmel for her irrepressible sense of humour, searing intelligence, and for always keeping me focussed on the story, the structure and the big picture. I thank Michael for his painstaking attention to detail, his extraordinary knowledge of philosophy and social theory, and his unfailing belief in the project.

I also would like to thank Associate Professor Leanne Dowse for her encouragement to consider qualitative research so comprehensively, as well as guiding me towards a computer software program well suited to my project.

For my own changes, I have my late sister, the renowned poet Dorothy Porter, to thank for always encouraging me to challenge and subvert orthodoxy in its many guises, particularly religious. She has left me with a lasting legacy of being brave in the face of injustice, and being particularly alert to bullies and fakes. I hope she would be proud of me for completing this work. And big thanks to her partner, my dear sister-in-law Andrea Goldsmith, for her support, provocative questions and suggested reading along the way.

My Anglican-high-church-Jewish parents (yes, quite a hybridisation) and my dear sister Mary have coped patiently with my rampant evangelicalism over the years. Forgive me for any excesses or slights endured—you are unfailingly loving and always interested in my next ambitious venture.

I also have many dear friends to thank—including Rick, Wendie, Sue, Petrina, Tracy, Kerry and Lisa—who have supported and encouraged me through the rigours and rewards of leaving the church. I also thank my remarkable children and their partners, Sam and Rachel, Alex and Jaime, and Emily, who have taught me much more than they realise about life outside the church gaze.

And the hugest thanks are reserved for my husband James, for his constant love and companionship on the disaffiliation journey. It has been very rough at times, and I thank him for being my partner and inspiration along the way. And how can I forget his unfailing and

iv meticulous technical support in the face of my Luddite tendencies. Without his help and love, this thesis would never have even got off the ground.

And finally, this project only exists because twenty generous and open-hearted people were willing to share their stories of disaffiliation with me. I hope this project truly reflects their stories faithfully and bears authentic testimony to all their journeys. My most sincere thanks to them all. And of course, any errors are all my own.

v Publications and Presentations arising from the writing of this thesis

MCSKIMMING, J. (2013a) Shared passion within a diversity of interests: a credible and stimulating alternative: the interdisciplinary conference ‘Storytelling: global reflections on narrative’. The International Journal of Narrative Therapy and Community Work, 2, 84–87.

MCSKIMMING, J. (2013b) The storying, re-storying and de-storying of the Christian Fundamentalist self: the migration of identity of people who leave fundamentalist and evangelical Christian communities and the stories that inform the change process. 4th Global Conference - Storytelling: global reflections on narrative. Prague: Inter-disciplinary.net.

MCSKIMMING, J. (2014) Identity formation and re-formation within Christian Fundamentalism: journeys of faith—interrupted. In: REID, H. & WEST, L. (eds.) Constructing narratives of continuity and change: a transdisciplinary approach to researching lives. Oxford: Routledge.

Please note that the spelling used in this thesis follows The Macquarie Dictionary (2009) Sydney: Macquarie Dictionary Publishers

All poems by Dorothy Porter are taken from: Porter, D. (2013) The best 100 poems of Dorothy Porter. Collingwood, Vic., Black Inc.

vi Table of Contents Page

Declarations ...... Error! Bookmark not defined.

Abstract...... ii

Dedication ...... iii

Acknowledgements...... iv

Publications and Presentations arising from the writing of this thesis...... vi

Part One ...... 2

Introduction...... 2 Identity, change and this study...... 3 Christian Fundamentalism ...... 5 The study of former members of fundamentalist churches...... 6 The insider/outsider continuum ...... 9 The structure ...... 9 Final considerations: the significance of the study ...... 11 Conclusion ...... 13

Chapter 1 ...... 14 The historical emergence of Christian Fundamentalism and Christian Evangelicalism, and the cultural milieu of the research project ...... 14 Introduction and definition of fundamentalism...... 14 Focus on the Protestant Reformation tradition within CF, rather than Roman Catholicism, or cults and sects ...... 17 Christian Fundamentalism (CF) and Christian Evangelicalism (CE) ...... 18 The Sydney Experience ...... 19 Growth of CF as a Social Movement...... 22 General Social Movement Theory ...... 23 Power and Social Movement theory ...... 25 Specific intersection of CF with LGBT community...... 28 Specific intersection of CF with gender...... 31 Conclusion ...... 32

Chapter 2 ...... 33 Literature Review: Contemporary research into Christian disaffiliation...... 33 Memoir...... 33 vii Deconversion: under-researched, and mostly from survey data...... 34 Qualitative Research (QR): primarily humanist, individualistic, psychological and explanatory ...... 36 ‘Believing without belonging’...... 38 Consideration of context...... 38 Australian research ...... 39 Typologies and phases...... 40 Conclusion...... 42

Chapter 3 ...... 43 Foucault and the Christian subject...... 43 Introduction ...... 43 Background and aims ...... 43 Foucauldian genealogy...... 45 The dispositif...... 47 The triangle of truth, power and self in genealogy...... 48 Truth...... 49 Truth, confession and obedience within Christianity...... 51 Power...... 54 Sexuality ...... 56 Pastoral Power ...... 56 Self ...... 58 Conclusion...... 61

Chapter 4 ...... 63 The post-panopticon literature: resistance and freedom...... 63 Introduction ...... 63 Post-Foucauldian scholarship and governmentality...... 63 Post-Foucauldian feminist scholarship...... 64 Performativity and inscription...... 66 Resistance, counter-conduct and counterstories...... 68 Gilles Deleuze ...... 72 Mikhail Bakhtin...... 75 Freedom...... 77 Conclusion...... 79

Chapter 5 ...... 81 Methodology...... 81 Introduction ...... 81 viii Why narrative: philosophical background ...... 82 Defining narrative ...... 84 A Qualitative Research philosophy...... 85 The narrative interviews...... 88 The active interviewer and co-construction of meaning ...... 89 The use of Dialogic Narrative Analysis (DNA)...... 90 Plotlines...... 90 The Foucauldian Genealogy ...... 91 The nuanced ‘how’ and Bakhtin ...... 92 Co-construction of meaning and performed identity...... 93 Research design ...... 94 Participants, recruitment and sampling ...... 94 Recording and transcription ...... 97 Interview design and process ...... 98 ‘Bracketing’ the researcher’s story ...... 98 Type of interview...... 99 Reliability and validity...... 100 Ethical considerations ...... 102 Limitations ...... 103 Conclusion ...... 103

Part Two...... 105

Chapter 6 ...... 105 Data Analysis and Storying...... 105 Plotlines: 1...... 105 Introduction to the Four-Tiered Analysis...... 105 Turning points...... 105 The layers of analysis...... 106 Sample Overview...... 107 Plotline 1: The immersion within CF with certainty, towards rejection of CF, towards an ‘emancipated’ sense of self...... 109 Sadie, Barbara, Louise, Tom, Charlie, Lucy, Belinda, Ollie...... 109 Conclusion ...... 122

Chapter 7 ...... 124 Data Analysis and Storying...... 124 Plotlines: 2 and 3 ...... 124 Plotline 2a: The double-life, towards a re-defined sense of Christian self ...... 124 ix Martin, David, Ruth ...... 124 Plotline 2b: The double-life towards no Christian identity ...... 129 JoJo, Sue, Wendy, James, Rachel, Max ...... 129 Plotline 3: The ‘mind of the believer’, to cognitive dissonance, to ‘anti-scripturalism’, with no Christian identity ...... 139 Michael, Rob and Arthur...... 139 Conclusion...... 147

Chapter 8 ...... 148 A Genealogy of Identity ...... 148 Foucauldian Lens: The Context of Truth ...... 148 Correct thinking versus independent thinking, and disciplinary practices...... 149 Silencing...... 155 Fear generated about apostasy...... 157 Circular arguments ...... 157 Relationship to leaders, pastoral power and deciphering the truth about oneself...... 159 Conclusion...... 164

Chapter 9 ...... 165 A Genealogy of Identity ...... 165 Foucauldian Lens: The Context of Power...... 165 Panopticism, the Christian normalising gaze and interiorisation ...... 165 Internalised surveillance...... 166 Small group surveillance and inculcation...... 167 Christian counselling and godly gossip...... 170 ‘Cultic’ rules...... 172 Conditional acceptance, pleasing others, and tiers of ‘acceptable Christian’...... 174 Exclusion, strategic power and other consequences for ‘difference’ ...... 176 Power, sexuality, and heteronormative discourse and practice ...... 180 Patriarchy and Sexism: the internalised acceptable man and woman...... 180 Heteronormative discourse and gay sexuality...... 186 Conclusion...... 190

Chapter 10 ...... 192 A Genealogy of Identity ...... 192 Foucauldian Lens: The Context of the Self...... 192 Refusal expressed as internal protest...... 193 Reversing the gaze and the cultivation of independent thinking and research, combined with a new ‘space’...... 196

x Speaking out, particularly protesting homophobia and gender roles...... 202 Alternative ethical substance and deterritorialising ...... 208 Alternative Christian and other spiritual journeys ...... 208 Re-forming the self with a new ethical substance...... 210 Conclusion ...... 215

Chapter 11 ...... 217 The ‘how’ of resistance and Bakhtin: understanding resistance through interactional positioning and voicing...... 217 Introduction...... 217 Double voicing and ventriloquation...... 218 Laughter may degrade power...... 223 A further dialogic moment: providing advice to a mental health professional...... 228 Conclusion ...... 229

Chapter 12 ...... 231 Co-construction: the role of the interviewer in the construction of identity stories ... 231 Introduction...... 231 The researcher’s background ...... 233 Set-up and recruitment...... 234 The insider/outsider continuum: ‘how in, or how out are you? How out, or how in, am I?’ ...... 235 Being a therapist and a researcher: story co-construction...... 244 Agreement and Disagreement...... 248 Conclusion ...... 253

Final Discussion and Conclusion ...... 255 Background...... 255 Methods and findings...... 256 The genealogy...... 258 The resistance...... 259 Further refraction ...... 261 Limitations and suggested directions for future research ...... 262 Final words...... 263

Bibliography ...... 264

Appendices...... 281 Appendix A...... 281

xi Sample letter sent to various leaders/pastors of non-fundamentalist congregations ...... 281 Appendix B...... 282 Description of the Project...... 282 Brochure provided to church leaders to advertise the study...... 282 Appendix C ...... 283 Description of the Project...... 283 Brochure provided to non-church-goers to advertise the study...... 283 Appendix D ...... 284 Participant Information Statement And Consent Form ...... 284 PARTICIPANT INFORMATION STATEMENT AND CONSENT FORM ...... 284 Appendix E...... 287 Interview Schedule ...... 287 Appendix F...... 289 Synopses of the 20 participants in the study...... 289 Appendix G ...... 292 Transcription Conventions ...... 292

xii I am not here silent and alone

Do you hear the fighting hiss of this geyser in me?

I stand my ground in the undaunted spray and company of my own words.

Dorothy Porter, The Ninth Hour

…for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Archaic Torso of Apollo

Listen: you are not yourself, you are crowds of others, you are as leaky a vessel as was ever made…

Rebecca Solnit The Faraway Nearby

1 Part One

Introduction

The background story of this thesis began forty years ago, when I stepped forward at a Christian youth camp in Sydney, and accepted the evangelist’s urging to make Jesus Lord of my life. The subsequent shaping and reshaping of my evangelical Christian identity within a particular context of power led to many identity stories being told and retold throughout my life, until in fact such stories began to change and my evangelical identity was de-storied.

This thesis explores individual journeys of the formation of the Christian subject within Christian Fundamentalism (CF) and Christian Evangelicalism (CE), and how the Christian identity may change through the process of leaving these particular church communities. It is a study in Christian disaffiliation and deconversion, within a particular system of modern power. Power is not understood in a wholly repressive or dominating sense, but with a Foucauldian understanding as a ‘net-like’ structure in which individuals simultaneously undergo and exercise power leading to a particular governmentality of the self.

The process of Christian apostasy, or disaffiliation from mainstream Christian churches, has traditionally been marginalised and under theorised within the psychology and sociology of religion (Streib et al., 2009, Gooren, 2011). This thesis layers a social constructionist understanding with a post-structural lens in an attempt to consider Christian disaffiliation as a particular type of identity formation and re-formation within the governmentality (the social practices whereby people are governed) of CF. To this end, a qualitative research study involving in-depth interviews of twenty participants who have left CF will provide an original and creative contribution to the underexplored area of how the power of the fundamentalist Christian community may be a regime in which the Christian subject is constituted by self- modification and self-construction.

The thesis is in two parts. Part One focuses on the historical emergence of CF, the previous literature on Christian disaffiliation and the methodology of the study. The Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian analytic frame provides a critical analysis of the social practices of power and knowledge, particularly within CF. Part Two comprises the study itself, with seven chapters of layered data analysis, each describing a different lens through which the data was projected.

2 Identity, change and this study

‘Identity’ and ‘the self’ have in more recent years become an intriguing source of study particularly as ‘new psychology’ (Shotter, 1984: 49) meets sociology in considering identity less as within one’s skin or from an essential core, and more negotiated and constructed within communities (Shotter, 1984, Gergen and Gergen, 1984, Gergen, 1991, Bauman, 2001, Gergen, 2009a, Gergen, 2009b). The postmodern era as understood by social constructionism thus challenges all fixed notions of the self, as people exist in a state of continuous construction and reconstruction. The assumption is made that what we say and how we talk matters, which challenges the positivist tradition that words we use can somehow be taken to more or less neutrally represent an underlying reality (Hedtke and Winslade, 2004: 35). The idea of the individual as a transcendent entity is thus met with scepticism, as society is understood as inhabiting and constituting ‘the very core of whatever passes for personhood: each is interpenetrated by its other’ (Sampson, 1989: 4).

Social constructionism thus questions what has been called the representationalist assumption (Wittgenstein, 1958, Gergen, 1991, Gergen, 2009a). This posits that knowledge of the world is a product of induction, or the building or testing of general hypotheses by so-called objective criteria rather than highly circumscribed by culture, history and social context. The psychologist John Shotter1 challenges the representationalist assumption when he asks why we take it for granted that we each have minds inside our heads, ‘and that they work in terms of mental representations which resemble in some way the structure of the external world’ (2008: 16). He also suggests that identity or ‘psyche’ (if it exists at all) has ‘constantly contested and shifting boundaries; something we can recollect in one way one day, and in another the next’ (1997: 17), as he imagines alternative, relational versions of the self within various social ecologies. An example of such a social ecology is the microcosm of CF.

Historically, the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (the so-called ‘Mozart of psychology’ due to his untimely death from tuberculosis in his late thirties) has also been influential in the realm of social constructionism. His theory of ‘private speech’ developing out of social dialogue with parents and caregivers (Vygotsky, 1986) has, according to Shotter, indicated that our ‘inner’ lives are ‘neither so private, nor so inner, nor so systematic and logical as has been assumed’ (1993: 61). The profound influence of the Russian literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogism is also noted at this point, as he answers the question about self-awareness in the

1 Where available and appropriate, I have used first names as well as surnames while referencing within this thesis. This has the primary objective of rendering female authors visible rather than the assumption of the universal ‘he’. 3 following way: ‘to be means to communicate…to be means to be for the other…Man (sic) has no internal sovereign territory; he is all and always on the boundary’ (1984: 287). Indeed, he understands the ‘unfinalised’ self as the outworking of the unbroken flow of dialogical, responsive activity—a self in the context of a multi-voiced, polyphonic world (Bakhtin, 1986).

While social constructionism may be considered part of the postmodern theoretical landscape of identity, it has been critiqued for its ‘cloying humanism’ invoking the familiar old self of humanist philosophy, the self as agent, and the focus of all sense-making activities (Rose, 1998: 177–178). Similarly, while discourse may be helpfully considered as integrally concerned with talk and texts as part of social practices and may be successfully analysed (Potter, 1996), it is much more than that in terms of shaping identity. Discourse may be further understood as sets of statements intrinsically connected with disseminated power and historical and cultural contexts, in which the storying of the fundamentalist Christian identity is likely to occur. It is thus the argument of this thesis that discourse and language within CF are strategically aligned with social practices within the power/knowledge alliance that constructs and re-constructs identity. The focus of this study is therefore a Foucauldian critical interrogation of the constituted domain of discourse, the rules of formation and conditions of existence of statements that are sayable, activated and appropriated within CF (Foucault, 1978b).

Therefore, while acknowledging social constructionism as a parallel contemporary theoretical tradition, this project moves beyond it—towards a post-structural and anti-methodological Foucauldian genealogy of the discursive formation and re-formation of the Christian fundamentalist self. This research thus represents a study of identity formation in the context of power, truth and subjectivity (Foucault, 1981, Foucault, 1980d) not in a traditional humanist sense of a person, or the ‘I’, narrating him or herself in a particular way to find meaning, but through an analysis of the ‘topography of subjectification’ found within CF (Rose, 1998: 33). In other words, while this study has echoes of constructionism, it is not to language, meanings and communications that the specificity and discursive construction of the Christian subject is found. Rather, the turn is deliberately made toward the analysis of techniques, apparatuses and the assemblages of language; not to what language means, but to what it does (Rose, 1998: 178). To be clear, understanding identity change beyond CF is not found when the social context is merely considered as background, but when it is understood as the colony of the social production of the Christian subject.

Christian identity is understood as being less about ‘the-self-negotiating-the-self’ from a series of options, but more a microanalysis of the conditions under which the self may be

4 constructed, reconstructed, self-constructed and ultimately deconstructed. A Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian perspective thus provides conceptual possibilities to turn the analytic gaze upon the process of subjectification within and beyond CF, and make visible the work done to constitute the subject. As the lens is turned toward the folding of exteriority into interiority (Deleuze, 1988) to construct the Christian self, an analysis will follow of the emergence of practices and regimes of truth that allow some to speak and others to be silenced, the discourses and criteria of truth that are internalised and lead to self-modification, and devices of disciplinary and productive power. Such a Foucauldian analysis will unravel how people become seamlessly enmeshed in the fabric of CF within a system of technologies of power and technologies of the self (Foucault, 2003). The purpose of this project then is to investigate how the Christian subject may submit to, internalise, and also promote certain privileged discourses that intensify his/her own and others’ subordination or subjection.

Christian Fundamentalism

While ‘fundamentalism’ will be discussed in detail in Chapter 1, the relationship of authoritative discourse and the constitution of the Christian subject may be introduced. Christian Fundamentalism (CF) has historically emerged as a thoroughly modern, well- adapted social movement (Almond et al., 2003), rather than a return to any unvanquished ignorance of the Dark Ages. Indeed the emergence of fundamentalism within the Abrahamic religious traditions in the late twentieth century has been described by Karen Armstrong as a form of ‘militant piety’ (2001). It is therefore not simply extremism or conservatism, but represents a kind of rebellion against the secular hegemony of the modern world. While all fundamentalisms are distinctly different, they may have ‘family resemblances’ in the Wittgenstein sense (Ruthven, 2005), including a beleaguered attempt in the face of ‘the other’ to preserve and bulwark a distinctive identity.

The argument of this thesis that the social construction of identity within CF cannot be divorced from the operation and implications of power means that Christian conversion itself is not understood as simply a private moment—but as Manuel Castells suggests, a re- formation of the self in terms of social order and political purpose. The fortress of Christian life and family in fundamentalism is re-constructed by the assertion of patriarchy, the sanctity of marriage, and above all, the authority of men over women (2004: 25).

The power thus lies in specific discourses and strategies, which need to be maintained and protected by the organisation as it reinforces particular value-based identities. As CF enforces a particular version of the Biblification of people’s lives, it is suggested that a kind of collective, heavily-fortressed and self-perpetuating solipsism may emerge. Therefore, the 5 positioning in this thesis borrows from Michel Foucault. That is, the general theme is not an analysis of the society of CF per se as a ‘living reality’ or ‘ideal type’ in a Weberian sense (1904/1949), but rather the analysis of the play and development of programs, technologies and apparatuses that invite the governing of oneself and others. What emerges is the possibility of a re-fashioned ‘political spirituality’, as people discover different ways of governing the self and of dividing up the true and false in life (Foucault, 1991b: 82).

The study of former members of fundamentalist churches

To examine the process of the constitution of the Christian subject and the associated migration of identity, the study consists of a dialogical narrative analysis of in-depth, semi- structured interviews of twenty people who had previously been committed members of fundamentalist churches but who have now moved to more diverse positions of belief.

In considering the appropriate methodology for this study, the key considerations were the constructed nature of identity in a context of power relations and the establishing of a critical symmetry with an overall post-structural and phenomenological epistemological stance. Methodologically, the study is situated less in the realms of post-positivism and critical realism and more post-structural in its sustained reflection on the problem of representation of data and authority of voice. A reflexive methodology thus remains central to the research design. As Alvesson and Skölsberg suggest, critical realists hold a strong conviction regarding the real and the possibility of identifying it, but generally are less engaged with the detail of methodological matters and more with the philosophy of science (2009: 11, 41f).

To that end, narrative research is proposed as the most congruent form of qualitative method with a Foucauldian theoretical spine. Narrative analysis is often described as an indicated strategy for gaining access to different identities of individuals and their experiences (Larsson and Sjöblom, 2010), while others have suggested that personal narratives both in content and form are people’s identities (Lieblich et al., 1998: 7). It has also been described as a ‘voyage of discovery’ beyond traditional research paradigms, in which ‘the pursuit of interesting and interpretable content takes precedence over rigid adherence to prescribed rules of procedure’ (Josselson and Lieblich, 2003: 260). Additionally, issues of power, narratability, dialogism, subjectivity and agency feature prominently in the narrative research literature, which is built on various theoretical fault-lines (Squire et al., 2013). This layered and fragmented feature of narrative research allows the Foucauldian anti-methodology aspect of this project to join the pantheon of diverse approaches, making its own original contribution.

6 As this is a study of identity formation in the context of power, the gathering of stories and subsequent analysis is thus guided by the central questions:

 How may a Christian sense of identity be socially constructed, and what are the effects of apparatuses of power within church communities that shape that process?

 What are the responses of people to the ‘apparatuses’ of power? How are gender differences and sexual identity negotiated and maintained?

 What personal narratives do people tell about the change process, their new discursive self-concept and changing Christian beliefs?

The dialogical narrative approach of the study uses a complex four-tiered analysis of the interviews, demonstrating ethically transparent and reflexive new directions for qualitative research. These layers comprise a dialogical narrative analysis of identity plotlines, a Foucauldian genealogy, a refraction of the data through a Bakhtinian lens, and a reflexive consideration of the process of co-construction with the researcher. The aim in the analysis is to provide a rigorous inquiry process while also considering the data innovatively as a constellation or plurality of intersecting surfaces without privileging a single, one-dimensional perspective. Like cubism, when different images may be considered in a somewhat expressionistic manner, the layered analysis has the potential to offer a detailed construction of the complexity of the performed and self-constructed fundamentalist Christian identity while also detailing a genealogy of resistance.

An example borrowed from the cubist art world may helpfully illustrate this layering of alternative analyses. Picasso painted the infanta Margarita from Velazquez’s Las Meninas (see images 1 and 2 below) to reconstruct her perplexity in an expressionistic way (Konstantinidis, 2012). Perhaps in a somewhat similar vein, the different lenses offer a construction and re- construction of the perplexity of Christian identity within the process of resistance and transformation.

7 Image 1 Las Meninas by Diego Velasquez

Image 2 Las Meninas by Pablo Picasso2

2 Uploaded 4th November 2013 from: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/PabloPicasso_Meninas.jpg (This is considered ‘fair use’ for academic criticism and informational purposes at low resolution, without infringing copyright)

8 The insider/outsider continuum

My interest in this research project was ignited initially through the dilemma of managing my own transformative identity journey, particularly as it relates to my clinical work as a psychotherapist. Historically, I have been consulted by many people who have been labouring under the strictures of the Christian subculture and the negative demands it has been exerting upon their sense of self. Being a social worker informed by narrative therapy and the work of Michael White (1990, 2007), the contribution of Michel Foucault to the question of the Christian identity, how it is constructed and under what demands of authority and forms of power, became more and more compelling. To observe a parallel process in my own spiritual re-storying of identity created some ethical therapeutic challenges; the task was to help others negotiate their own preferred relationship with the fundamentalist community, while I was exiting myself (McSkimming, 2009).

My role as a fellow insider then outsider on the ‘insider/outsider’ continuum of CF affiliation will also form a major part of this analysis, as reflexivity becomes a central theme. Two significant areas will be examined. Firstly, an analysis of the dialogic process that occurs in regard to the researcher’s own story of disaffiliated Christian identity will note the potential to impede others by centring the researcher’s perspective. Secondly, as it is argued that identity is formed within relationships of power, a critical reflexivity over the researcher’s own possible participation in setting up another system of power within the actual research setting will be maintained throughout the project. Therefore this study works towards allowing the often unquestioned power which researchers have in research projects to be questioned and analysed (Pittaway and Bartolomei, 2013).

The structure

Chapter 1 defines and describes the historical emergence of CF as a modern social movement and provides background material and context to the story of Christian disaffiliation. The chapter addresses the denial and suspicion of ‘the other’ within CF, while appropriating modern methods of influence and power in changing ‘the universe of discourse’ and collective identity of its members (Snow and Machalek, 1984). The local context of Sydney, with its effects on women and those from the LGBT community, is also introduced.

Chapter 2 provides the comprehensive literature review of this thesis, and defines the key terms deconversion and disaffiliation. While there has been perhaps an over-focus into conversion and deconversion into New Religious Movements (Smith, 2008), the research into more mainstream Christianity is much less common, indicating the relevance of the current 9 study. Current research reflects mostly large scale survey quantitative methods (e.g. Roof, 1999, Uecker et al., 2007) and small scale qualitative studies that are primarily humanist in focus, with some arguing for a trauma or developmental-stages model of deconversion. Descriptive or explanatory accounts of disaffiliation dominate the literature, while studies that explore understandings of power and knowledge are largely absent. A notable exception is O’Leary’s Australian study, which provides an investigation into apostasy as a potential signifier of resistance to the shifting nature of modern society and post-apostatic re-formations of the self, such as the emergence of a postmodern apostate (1997). The current study extends her analysis through its consideration of the constitution of the subject within and beyond the power/knowledge nexus of the church community.

Chapter 3 provides the theoretical spine of the study: the post-1968 ouevre of Foucault with a particular emphasis on power/knowledge and how the self may be constituted within modern systems of power, such as CF. The background to documenting a specific genealogy of subjectification is explored. In considering the question of ethics, genealogy and problematisations, Foucault considered that ‘the ethico-political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger’ (1984b: 343). The main danger problematised in this study will be how discourses and apparatuses of power constitute Christian lives and selves, how these constituted selves then become self-constituted, and how counter-conduct may transform identity out of CF. Foucault describes a triangle of truth, power and self (Flynn, 1988), providing a useful structure to consider such a genealogy of identity formation and re- formation.

Chapter 4 theorises identity re-formation and repair as the emergence of resistance, refusal, even the turning back of a ‘gaze’ upon the eye of power itself. The post-panopticon literature, particularly the contribution of feminist scholars, offers commentary and extension on Foucault’s concepts of disciplinary power, and the performativity and inscription of heteronormative practices on ‘docile bodies’ (1991a). Additionally, the critique concerning Foucault’s undeveloped theory on resistance is explored, while offering a genealogy of resistance augmented by concepts from Deleuze (1988, 1992, 1995) and Bakhtin (1981a, 1986). Some hybridisation and merging of these theories lays the foundation for the forthcoming data analysis.

Chapter 5 outlines the detailed methodology of the study, including the four-tiered data analysis.

Chapters 6 and 7 document the plotlines and journeys of disaffiliation of the research participants. A typology of three unfinalised plotlines is suggested. 10 Chapter 8, 9 and 10 detail the Foucauldian genealogy of the subjectification and re-formation of the Christian subject from the research participants’ own narratives of identity change.

Chapter 11 provides the third tier of Bakhtinian analysis of the narratives, refracting the data through a new lens while continuing the post-structural and phenomenological focus. The how of the re-formation of the Christian self is examined through particular discursive features of speech, including double-voicing employed by the research participants.

Chapter 12 illustrates the dialogical principle of co-construction, as well as reflexively analysing the researcher’s own participation in the emerging identity stories. This level of detailed analysis, while spoken of in the literature (Ochs, 1997, Holstein and Gubrium, 2004, Gubrium, 2010) is less often explicitly undertaken. If I had ignored my participation in the co- construction of the participants’ identity stories as a person with insider-knowledge, a layer of identity change would have remained invisible in the study.

The Final Discussion and Conclusion chapter summarises and reflects on the findings of the study in the light of previous research. It is demonstrated that the research participants contest the forms of being that were invented for them, and creatively find ways to invent themselves differently, towards an alternative ethical substance. Freedom emerges as an experience no longer linked with explanations about nature, essence or a fixed self. It is also suggested that the study in its analytic layering of the reflexive awareness and interrogation of the inquirer herself offers an innovative contribution to narrative research.

Final considerations: the significance of the study

In keeping with the spirit of narrative analysis, Arthur Frank (2010) reminds us that we are studying how stories act and what stories do. He calls attention to considering what is at stake for whom, and how the telling of the story may raise or lower the stakes. Indeed, how may the story change people’s sense of what is possible and what is permitted? This research is informed by these questions in that for the research participants, telling the stories to me may well join them with others on a changing cultural continuum, both internally and externally. It may allow them to reflect on their losses, while also what may be preferred for them now in terms of changed ethical substance and modes of subjectification (Foucault, 1984b).

The concept of ‘freedom’, or even ‘Christian freedom’, as a potent part of changing one’s culture of subjectification is potentially rescued and transformed. Therefore the stakes may be considered high for the participants, their families, and the church organisations that have proposed the original conversion story of so-called Christian freedom and the inculcation that

11 follows. Does freedom become re-configured, at Nikolas Rose’s suggestion, as the capacity to judge, accept or transform the practices that subjectify you (1999)? It is asked whether there are ways in which those who disaffiliate from CF can become experts of themselves without submitting to a truth produced by authorities, calculating the costs of being what they have become, and so inventing ways of becoming other than what they are. Much may be considered at stake if the narratives documented are of emancipation, or alternatively, ongoing trauma, loss and pathology. Therefore in an under-researched field, this project seeks to offer and extend new ways of thinking about the person who at one point has ‘the mind of a believer’ and a lifestyle of committed adherence to his/her church, and then leaves. How do people express resistance, establish their own version of the story, fashion new forms of subjectivity, and embrace a changed sense of self?

Secondly, what is also at stake is a methodological and ethical culture of change within the field of qualitative research (QR) itself. If QR is to be trustworthy and rigorous, it must fulfil pertinent criteria of authenticity (Guba and Lincoln, 2005), however a study such as this may perhaps destabilise traditional objectivity and introduce a marked subjectivity. This is not seen as inherently problematic in this study, but an area to be reflexively and systematically analysed.

Finally, it is perhaps a truism that for any event there are as many accounts as there were original players, and that there is ultimately no such thing as narrative truth. It has even been noted that so-called ‘autobiographical laxity’ (Johnson, 1998) exists in deconversion narratives, when a concern exists that the targeted religious group be painted in the worst possible light. As philosopher Max Scheler says, one who leaves a faith community ‘spends his whole subsequent career taking revenge on his spiritual past’ (as cited in Mercer, 2009: x). This may be said to potentially undermine the narrative’s moorings in ‘real’ biographical history. As this study takes a more phenomenological position and that narrative constitutes reality, the position of the Personal Narratives Group is relevant to this thesis as a whole:

When talking about their lives, people lie sometimes, forget a lot, exaggerate, become confused, and get things wrong. Yet they are revealing truths. These truths don’t reveal the past ‘as it actually was’, aspiring to a standard of objectivity. They give us instead the truths of our experience…

We come to understand them only through interpretation, paying careful attention to the contexts that shape their creation and to the worldviews that inform them. Sometimes the truths we see in personal narratives jar us from our complacent security as interpreters ‘outside’ the story and make us aware that our own place in the world plays 12 a part in our interpretation and shapes the meanings we derive from them (1989, as cited in Riessman, 2002b: 235).

Conclusion

Becoming a different person, a different Christian, or a non-Christian, with a transformed sense of self is the over-arching story of this thesis. Despite the theoretical and methodological challenges involved, this research attempts to allow the research participants to become speaking subjects, claiming some authorship of the texts of their lives and even sifting through, while accepting and discarding, the discursive practices through which they have been constituted.

The forthcoming analysis illustrates how Christian subjects are subjected to tactics of power/knowledge and their bodies inscribed with Christian cultural notions of who they should be, while also aiming to discover if and how people discover new stories of themselves, even inverting and re-inventing old structures and old discourses (Davies, 2000: 100). A humanist or structuralist lens may invite a study that views the research participants as capable, resourceful people choosing from the repertoire of variable identity options to move within and outside the fundamentalist church structures. This thesis has a different focus, acknowledging and examining the difficulty of considering the research participants through that rather ambivalent lens of being affected by, but while also affecting, the power/knowledge assemblages. This project into the journey of Christian disaffiliation thus attempts to move beyond a humanist framework to a new consideration of the constitutive nature of discourse and disseminated power within CF churches, and the process of anti-pastoral revolt towards refusal and disidentification. There is no ‘going deeper’ in this study to find scientific, psychological or autobiographical truths about people who de-convert. However, by using different lenses to explore the data, each participant’s story may be understood from several socially situated perspectives, allowing an exploration of the identity revision of their universe of discourse.

13 Chapter 1

The historical emergence of Christian Fundamentalism and Christian Evangelicalism, and the cultural milieu of the research project

Introduction and definition of fundamentalism

The study of disaffiliation and deconversion from CF commences with a consideration of the emergence of modern fundamentalism itself. It is beyond the scope of this thesis to provide a complete history of CF over the last 2000 years, which has largely been provided by others (e.g. Antoun, 2001, Armstrong, 2001, Babinski, 2003, Almond et al., 2003, Mercer, 2009). To set the scene, the history of fundamentalism could be said to have its roots in the Roman Christians’ persecution and massacre of pagans and burning of pagan works of art and temples, including the Serapaeum in the library at Alexandria. There are many examples of this continuing bloody history, including the ‘final solution’ to religious diversity enacted in 1492, with the expulsion and ensuing Diaspora of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews and Muslims. The subsequent Inquisition and Holy Roman Empire of medieval Christendom was especially noted as an illustration of lethal violence in the history of Christianity (Almond et al., 2003). Indeed, it has been noted that for much of its two thousand year history, Christianity in the West ‘has operated as if it were the only game in town, or at least the only game that mattered’ (Brockman, 2011: 1).

This historical context introduces, but does not define or wholly reflect modern CF, which has arguably become an ambiguous, misleading and highly derogatory term (Aldridge, 2013: 131). The actual term ‘fundamentalism’ is said to have first seen the light of day in 1920 when the editor of a prominent Baptist paper, alarmed at what he saw as the havoc wrought by ‘rationalism’ and ‘worldliness’ in American Protestant churches, coined the term and defined fundamentalists as ‘those ready to do battle royal for the Fundamentals of Protestantism’ (Marsden, 1980: 159). However the word has long since escaped its Protestant roots, with Karen Armstrong claiming that one of the most startling developments of the late twentieth century has been the emergence within every major religious tradition of a ‘militant piety’ popularly known as fundamentalism (2001: ix). She suggests that such fundamentalism represents a kind of rebellion against the secular hegemony of the modern world; fundamentalists ‘want to drag religion from the sidelines, to which it has been relegated in a secular culture, and back to centre stage’ (in an interview with Wallis, 2002). Malise Ruthven, the Irish political scientist, similarly considers that ‘the F-word’ is a religious way of being by which beleaguered believers attempt to preserve and fortify their distinctive identity in the face 14 of modernity and increasing secularisation (2005: 8). Paul Maltby further comments that those who respect the critical agenda of postmodernism are in turn astonished by the dramatic resurgence of CF, which paradoxically may be considered a premodern current of thought (2013: 174).

However there are problems in applying the word ‘fundamentalism’ beyond its original historical use. Again, Armstrong comments that Jews and Muslims find it slightly offensive to have this Christian term foisted upon them, and are not so much concerned with doctrine which is an essentially Christian preoccupation (2001: xii, Wallis, 2002). Further, Gabriel Almond and his colleagues (2003: 9–16) draw upon the more than 75 case studies and comparative essays published in the ground-breaking five volume Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Science (Marty and Appleby, 1991, Marty and Appleby, 1995) in developing this theme. For example, scriptural inerrancy is not the defining mark of all such movements; fundamentalism and violent extremism have been used erroneously as synonyms; and the extravagant use of the term encourages non-specialists to make facile generalisations thus conflating vast differences between these movements. They therefore suggest that fundamentalism refers to a discernible pattern of religious militancy by which self-styled ‘true believers’ attempt to arrest the erosion of religious identity, fortify the borders of the religious community, and create viable alternatives to secular institutions and behaviours.

Martin Marty and Scott Appleby further explain that the fundamentalisms all follow a certain pattern (1991: 814–842). They are embattled forms of spirituality which have emerged as a response to a perceived crisis, seeing this not as a conventional political struggle, but a cosmic war between the forces of good and evil. Fundamentalists may withdraw from mainstream society to create a counter culture, yet they are not impractical dreamers. They have absorbed the practical rationalism of modernity and, under the guidance of charismatic leaders, are fighting back to re-sacralise an increasingly sceptical world. Ruthven helpfully concludes that although the term is not wholly satisfactory and that not all fundamentalist-like movements are identical, they do all exhibit what Wittgenstein (1958) referred to as ‘family resemblances’ (2005: 9).

In the consideration of the management of the identity of the contemporary Christian self, anthropologist Richard Antoun’s observations are quite salient. He names the religious orientation that views religion as relevant to all important domains of culture and society as ‘totalism’ coupled with the necessity of certainty as ‘scripturalism’ (2001: 2). Whole vocabularies of salvation and the purposeful, influential use of texts can therefore effectively

15 be used to shape beliefs and lives. Antoun considers this against the background of additional fundamentalist activism, and the process of selective and controlled acceptance of technological and social organisational innovations (selective modernisation). The use of mass media thus contributes to a process of ‘controlled acculturation’ (2001: 121) within the goals of fundamentalism.

While also acknowledging the evidence that fundamentalists have not been slow to adopt and adapt modern technologies to their advantage, anthropologist Lionel Caplan has explored the complex relation between fundamentalism and text. In asserting the divine inspiration of their texts, fundamentalists are inclined to proclaim certainties, to affirm universal, timeless moralities (1987: 21). He concludes therefore, in symmetry with this study, that fundamentalism must be seen in its discursive aspect as an attempt to establish what Foucault would refer to as its ‘regime of truth’ (1980e: 131). Fundamentalist truth is thus seen as unchanging, substantive, essentialist and thus legitimately constitutive of identity. Douglas Pratt (2010), a theological scholar, constructs a typology of CF to expose the effects of the ideological, or truth structure, more precisely. That is, he proposes the phases of CF as passive, to assertive, then impositional. Communitarian intent requires individual constraint—that is, the more hard-line the fundamentalism, the tighter this relation. This is the spectrum upon which the fundamentalist identity is structured, towards a demand for total commitment, which then affects every aspects of the believer’s life.

James Barr (1988), a liberal theologian, has summarised these themes as the two main attributes of Protestant fundamentalism in general: exclusivity and opposition. He also discusses the important features of CF, which lead to the definition of CF used in this study. Firstly, there is the central dogma of inerrancy rather than literalism of the Bible, with an attempt to iron out narrative inconsistencies to aspire to narrative coherence. Secondly, CF is salvationist and millennial in character, with salvation being seen as personal and individual. Thirdly, CF is ahistorical, in that in spite of the importance of narrative history in western European culture, the Bible is treated as timeless and out-of-time. The authority and legitimacy of its dogmas lie in their apparent creation ex nihilo. Fourthly, CF gives prominence to reason and rationality allowing it to be a ‘modern’ ideology, with an accommodation of modern science and de-emphasising all forms of emotionalism. I would argue that these four characteristics not only lead to a helpful definition of CF, but also to commence this study’s consideration of the technologies and apparatuses of power involved in shaping Christian identity.

16 This study therefore adopts Edward Babinski’s summary definition of CF as a belief in the fundamentals of the Christian faith; that is, the truthfulness of events recorded in the Bible including miracles and prophecies, morality prescribed in the Bible, Christian doctrines derived from the Bible and indeed scriptural inerrancy (2003: 21). In short, CF is understood as basically individualised, modernised and shaped by a particular authoritative discourse.

Focus on the Protestant Reformation tradition within CF, rather than Roman Catholicism, or cults and sects

Fundamentalist movements have historically emerged from the Abrahamic faiths (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and could also be said to include New Religious Movements (NRMs) and so-called ‘cults’. For the purposes of this research however, these will not be included for two main reasons. Firstly, the term cult has a popular usage as a derogatory label for alternative or deviant minority religious groups which are frequently accused of being authoritarian towards or manipulative of their followers (Healy, 2008, Olsen, 2006). Including cults in this study could thus been seen as introducing an analysis of ‘Christianised’ organisations that exist on the societal fringe, but lack social sanction. Secondly, cult members often pledge obedience to an individual rather than a religious tradition or organised religious body. Their devotion is frequently centred on a charismatic figure, who claims special (sometimes divine) status and therefore exempts him or herself from the ordinary constraints of religious law (Almond et al., 2003: 91).

CF within the Protestant Reformation tradition, rather than Roman Catholicism, is also the target social movement of this study. Philosopher Charles Taylor summarises the differences between the two groups and so illustrates the symmetry of the Reformation with the working definition of CF proposed within this study. The Reformers rejected priestly mediation to God in favour of the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, declared salvation to be by faith alone, while rejecting the special vocation to the monastic life and affirming the spiritual value of the lay life (1989: 217). He further comments that Calvinism is marked out by a ‘militant activism, a drive to reorganise the church and the world’ (1989: 227), based on personal discipline and commitment with an attendant stable social order. Along with its reaffirmation of ‘ordinary life’, he argues that such Protestantism therefore becomes one of the key shaping influences of the modern identity and modern culture. As such, it is a highly relevant movement to be studying within this current context as a system of modern power.

17 Christian Fundamentalism (CF) and Christian Evangelicalism (CE)

There is considerable debate in the literature about the difference between fundamentalism and evangelicalism. The historian George Marsden famously concludes that a fundamentalist is an evangelical ‘who is angry about something’ (1991: 1). In other words, fundamentalists are a sub-type of evangelicals and militancy is crucial to their outlook. He further remarks that a Christian fundamentalist has now become a particular type of ‘Protestant militant’, and that evangelicalism describes a much more diverse coalition (1991: 4). Sociologist Nancy Ammerman continues this theme, suggesting that ‘compromise and accommodation’ are among the most dreaded words in the fundamentalist vocabulary (1987: 4). Psychotherapists Ritter and O’Neill also suggest that the most important distinction between the two is what many perceive as an exceedingly ‘authoritarian approach’ to the exercise of religion observed in CF (1996: xiv).

While both groups may share the conservative theology described above, Marsden further comments on a so-called ‘renaissance’ in evangelical scholarship since the 1950s, seeing the ‘new evangelicals’ as needing to step up and meet the intellectual challenges of the modern age (1991: 149–151). Alternatively, Keith Mascord, an Australian ex-clergyman and theologian, considers that evangelicalism is essentially an unstable position, because while retaining a fundamentalist hermeneutic, it is variously committed to ‘scholarly excellence and to accepting adequately supported scholarly conclusions’ (2012: 146). Nevertheless, sociologist Sally Gallagher notes that in spite of their unique histories, doctrines, institutions and internal diversity, evangelical, fundamentalist and pentecostal labels do continue to be used interchangeably as equivalent descriptions of conservative Protestants who are uniformly anti-feminist, anti-abortion, anti-gay and (in the US context) anti-big-government (2003: 9). Conversely, David Bebbington and David Ceri Jones, writing recently about these movements in the United Kingdom, state that although there are substantial overlaps, evangelicalism and fundamentalism cannot be equated as one and the same phenomenon (2013: 12).

Nonetheless, in the two main studies of Christian disaffiliation in Australia and New Zealand, CF, CE and Pentecostalism3 are not distinguished, and are used interchangeably. Zina O’Leary

3 The Pentecostal movement within protestant Christianity places emphasis on the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit, especially the gift of tongues first seen at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. Pentecostalism is similar to the Charismatic movement, but developed earlier and separated from the mainstream church. Theologically, most Pentecostal denominations are aligned with evangelicalism in that they emphasise the Scriptures and the need for conversion to faith in Jesus. Most Pentecostals also adhere to the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. Pentecostals differ from most fundamentalists in their belief in the 18 (1997) makes the distinction between ‘Catholic and Protestant’ only, while Alan Jamieson uses the generic term ‘EPC’ (evangelical, pentecostal and charismatic) to refer to his sample (2002). Therefore, although there is some contention over labels and of course grey areas of overlap, this study will be using the term CF to incorporate both evangelical and fundamentalist churches.

The social scientist Robert Wuthnow also adds that, in terms of the American experience, the issue on which Christian leaders of all perspectives have been in most agreement is evangelism. Leaders seem united in the conviction ‘that the church’s main business was winning souls’ (1988: 140). He explores the history of the extraordinary expansion among evangelical organisations during the 1950s, while taking particular advantage of new opportunities for ministry for evangelism on college campuses. This appears to have provided something of a blueprint for the spread of evangelism on campuses in Australia, which started very strategically in Sydney in the late 1970s.

The Sydney Experience

This historical commitment to evangelism leads the discussion towards developing additional ideas about the local experience of the terms CF and CE. As this study has as its frame the formation of identity within a context of power, it is relevant to focus on the Sydney experience as a specific context of modern power. Not all participants in the study came from Sydney, but most did. While there are myriad churches and thus contexts of power whereby people may re-negotiate their Christian identity, Sydney Anglicanism is a case example where CF may be played out in a particular way with specific effects. Various debates among scholars indicate that the battle for ‘truth’ is alive and well in this city, and forms a cultural and ideological backdrop for many of the participants in the research, as well as myself as the researcher.4

It seems that the Sydney Anglicans are at pains not to be labelled with the ‘fundamentalist’ tag. The Archdeacon of St Andrews Cathedral in Sydney, Reverend Phillip Jensen, states that modern day operation and gifts of the Spirit. (http://www.theopedia.com/Pentecostalism accessed 27 October 2012). 4 From the time of the so-called ‘flogging parson’ Samuel Marsden’s arrival in the penal colony of NSW in 1874, preaching for conversion has dominated the evangelical mission in this city. Marsden’s sermons indicate that he addressed his hearers as men and women totally depraved. Interested readers are directed to: Kaye, B., Frame, T., Holden, C., & Treloar, G. (2002) Anglicanism in Australia: a history, Carlton South, Vic., Melbourne University Press. Particularly relevant is the essay: ‘Australian Anglican Theology’, by Bill Lawton (: 177-199). 19 fundamentalists, while sharing common tenets of faith with evangelicals, are ‘irrationalists’ and may act out their belief system without recognition of facts, or an appropriate connection with society (Jensen and Richards, 2011). As an aside, in terms of the use of modern media in the promotion of ‘acceptable’ biblical discourses, the series of interviews from which these comments come is an excellent example.5

According however to the scholar and theologian Kevin Giles, the cognate words ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘fundamentalism’ today have two meanings. Historically, they referred to the conservative Protestants in America as described above. He suggests that Sydney evangelicals are by and large not fundamentalists in this sense, but they are in the more modern definition. He states:

In the post 1970s period, the words ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘fundamentalism’ have come to refer to any ideology which has an absolutist hermeneutic: what I/we say/teach is ‘the truth’, or any religious person or movement that asserts, ‘what I/we say is what God says’. Religious fundamentalists in this contemporary sense believe that what they teach reflects exactly the mind of God. There is no gap between the holy text and what ‘I’ say the text says. This kind of fundamentalism reigns in Sydney, albeit in softer and harder forms, even if it is masked by subtle turns of phrase (2013: para. 7).

Historian Stuart Piggin, in his study of evangelicalism in Australia, also comments that in the twentieth century evangelicals have become far more concerned with correcting each other than those to whom they minister. He says that ‘supporters of the Word are so trigger-happy in their great commitment to defending the faith against a range of enemies (e.g. ritualism, feminism, humanism, secularism…) that they sometimes shoot their own allies… and even each other, on the suspicion that they are really wolves dressed in the finest merino’ (1996: 223–225). Mascord also writes that Sydney Anglicans are known to be ‘arrogant and abrasive’ (2012: 132), even considering St Matthias, the original church of Phillip Jensen, to be cult-like, suspicious, totally lacking in self-criticism, and coercive. Not only is the church described as paternalistic, but driven by fear that people will actually think for themselves. This seems to suggest that developments within evangelicalism in this city may well be moving at a great rate towards the authoritarianism, surveillance and militancy more commonly observed in CF.

5 Other examples include: ‘Ask Phillip: is the church a missionary organisation?’ http://vimeo.com/20721932; ‘Ask Phillip: does the church exist to evangelise?’ http://vimeo.com/20448478; ‘Ask Phillip: what does catholic mean?’ http://vimeo.com/19904501; ‘Ask Phillip: why do we gather as “church”?’ http://vimeo.com/19500939; ‘Peter Jensen: in praise of marriage’ http://vimeo.com/19825108 (all accessed 30 April 30 2013) 20 The journalist and academic Muriel Porter has written scathingly of the uncompromising fundamentalist position adopted by leaders of the Sydney diocese, its exclusion of women from ordination, and its marginalising of those not aligned with it on the basis of ‘gospel truth’ (2011). Her argument that fundamentalism is on the rise in the Sydney diocese (2006) has been strenuously opposed by evangelicals refuting her claims. For example, the current head of Sydney’s Moore Theological College, Mark Thompson, has commented that although her book ‘presented itself as a serious piece of scholarship, it was really just the latest salvo in a propaganda war…littered with factual error, half-truth and the attribution of false or hidden motives to those with whom she disagrees’ (2011: para. 5, 8).

This micro-cultural backdrop of CF within Sydney is further illustrated in press coverage of the proposed changes to the marriage vows within the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, in which women are being asked to honour and submit to their husbands (Burke, 2012). This announcement was followed by Caroline Spencer, a female deacon in the Diocese, saying that ‘while male headship might not be extended into the corporate workplace, it should be respected. Male headship is a part of God’s good ordering of all society—not just His Church (sic)’ (Humphries, 2012: para. 9). Not only did the then Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, support these views, but also stated in the press that ‘secular views of marriage are driven by a destructive individualism and libertarianism; a philosophy inconsistent with the reality of long term relationships’ (Jensen, 2012: para. 10).

Even more than this, women are discursively constructed as ‘equal but different’ in Sydney evangelical discourse. This is in fact the name of an evangelical group and website. The difference in identity construction and performance is described thus: ‘equal but different is a courageous organisation, because it declares what our world doesn’t want to hear—that men and women are equal but different. This declaration liberates men to be the men that God wants them to be, and women to be the women that God wants them to be—enabling relationships to grow in wonderful ways’ (Poulos and Poulos, 2012: para. 1). This patriarchal, heteronormative model (rather mischievously promoted as ‘complementarian rather than egalitarian’) has also been reinforced by the then Archbishop, who stated that same-sex marriage could open the way for other forms, including polygamous marriages or even marriage between immediate family members (McKenny, 2011). Both issues generated considerable publicity at the time in the online, social and print media about the silencing, controlling and exclusion of women and gays in church communities.

This brief discussion of media reports represents important background to the research as it reflects the cultural milieu which many participants in the research have imbibed, as well as

21 the context of my own developing activism and identity re-formation (detailed in Chapter 12). Indeed, in Chapter 5 it will be argued that post-structural narrative analysis is an appropriate and useful way to study disaffiliation from CF, as it specifically takes into account the social, political and cultural context within which narratives are told. It also allows for the analysis of the researcher’s role in data collection and analysis. Ann Griffin and Vanessa May make the point, relevant to the Sydney context, that socio-cultural frameworks employed by individuals ‘to make sense of their own lives are the result of social processes where different social groups try to make their interpretation of reality “stick”’ (emphasis added, , 2012: 444).

Growth of CF as a Social Movement

The question thus emerging from the scholarly interest in modern fundamentalism asks why there is a present worldwide resurgence of different fundamentalist movements, and most particularly for the purposes of this study, CF. It is obvious that the post-religious ecumenical Christianity that Dietrich Bonheoffer was said to be looking forward to—thoroughly de- mythologised, questioning, not a fixed dogma nor a concrete idea of the form of God—has not occurred within mainstream evangelicalism (Rundle, 2006, Bonhoeffer, 2013). The fundamentalist Christian revival has now spread beyond its particular social and cultural bonds in the US to burgeoning congregations in both Africa and Latin America (Lewis, 2004).

As has been suggested, fundamentalism is an essentially modern movement feeding on contemporary alienation or anomie by offering solutions to modern dilemmas of identity loss in times of rapid social change (Ruthven, 2005: 201–202). Scholars are now focusing on the analytical diversification of the term fundamentalism in relation to gender beyond the three Abrahamic religions to secular contexts. Again, fundamentalism is understood as a result of modernity, not as anti-modernist, being deeply imbricated with modern developments (Auga et al., 2013: 9). Rather intriguingly, Almond et al. also suggest that fundamentalism is the third rebuff that history has administered to ‘modernisation and secularisation’, or Enlightenment expectations, since the eighteenth century—the others being the totalitarian Bolshevism of the early twentieth century and the ethnonationalist/clerico-authoritarian movements of Fascism and Nazism (2003: 92). If indeed the historical context of late modernity is one of such contested collective meaning, Anthony Giddens suggests that people may adopt identities that preserve a sense of ontological security and minimise existential anxiety (1991).

Wuthnow (2005: 183–187) also suggests that Christian exclusivism is one kind of religious and spiritual response to the kinds of fear and uncertainty people feel when experiencing social and cultural changes. He points to the subtle encouragements of social circumstances as leading people into such exclusivism, including upbringing in homogeneous churches, socially 22 restricted networks, and particular styles of learning. Indeed, such learning requires not just trust in an authority figure but also the authoritative text of the Bible. He particularly emphasises that this is not to be confused with ‘brain-washing’, as exclusive Christians are usually eager to learn, although generally to find a single set of right answers as explained by teachers who are not guides, but voices of authority (2005: 169-170). Sociologist Gary Bouma develops this idea, stating that ‘fundamentalisms often emerge at times of religious renewal (and) are distinguished by higher degrees of tension with the wider world, absolute insistence that their narrow view of the world is the only correct one, (and) that correct belief is the only way to salvation’ (2006: 157–161). While withdrawal to maintain purity may have been a traditional response of fundamentalism, he notes that a big change in Australian society has been the emergence of political engagement by many conservative Christian groups from quiescent withdrawal to active attempts to shape their society. This is perhaps well illustrated by the comments in the press by prominent Sydney evangelicals referred to above.

General Social Movement Theory

The introduction of relevant concepts from social movement theory at this point may also thicken the description of the modern emergence of fundamentalism. The early social movement literature has been said to have an original focus on resources and organisations, while work within the ‘new’ social movement literature focuses on the role of identity and ideology (Lindsay, 2006: 61). This new emphasis is pertinent in a study such as this, with a focus on identity formation.

The Italian scholar Alberto Melucci has argued that today’s movements are said to be more concerned with ‘the ways in which complex societies generate information and communicate meanings to their members’ (1989: 5). He has written extensively of what he calls the ‘collective identity’—where actors construct a moveable definition of themselves and their social world and where they are concerned ‘with the orientations of their action as well as the field of opportunities and constraints in which their action takes place’ (1989: 34–35). The identity definitions they formulate are thus the result of negotiated interactions of relationships of influence, and partly, the result of emotional recognition. Melucci’s work has its distinctiveness in his term ‘nomads of the present’, which refers to collective actors self- consciously practising in the present the future social changes they seek, and his description of ‘invisible networks’ of small groups submerged in every day life. These networks are considered invisible laboratories where movements ‘question and challenge the dominant codes of everyday life’ (1989: 6), not unlike modern CF.

23 Although there seems no consensual definition of collective identity among other writers, David Snow and Doug McAdam comment that examination of most conceptualisations suggest that ‘its essence resides in a sense of one-ness or we-ness among those individuals who compose the collectivity’ (2000: 42). For example, sociologists Verta Taylor and Nancy Whittier define collective identity as ‘the shared definition of a group that derives from members’ common interest, and solidarity’ (1995: 172). Therefore, to understand collective identity, one must examine the interaction in social movement communities and, especially, ‘the social and political struggle that politicises identity’ (Klandermans and de Weerd, 2000: 69–70). Such a ‘we-ness’ in the context of the emerging political and social influence of CF reinforces the additional stake people may have in their immersion in the fundamentalist identity. As Phillip Hammack helpfully suggests, when identity is understood as culturally and historically contingent, we may query the social processes of reproduction ‘by identifying the meaning with which individuals internalise collective narratives’ (2008: 225). Jill Kiecolt has also commented that a recurring theme in research on social movements does seem to be the self-transformation that may occur through participation (2000: 110), with the specific task of all social movements being the incorporation of the movement’s collective identity into members’ self-definition. This concept of self-definition within the collective identity thus introduces the question of how such a task may be achieved, and within what contexts of power.

In answer to this question, sociologist Sheldon Stryker critiques collective identity as a concept that falls short of explaining the differential involvement of people in movement activities. That is, how are we to understand people being nominally or heavily involved? How do we understand differences in who stays, and who drops out of movements? He proposes introducing concepts that allow ‘seeing the human material of movements in variegated terms’, to recognise and accommodate variation in human beings (2000: 4). He thus introduces the use of identity theory from symbolic interactionism, assuming that humans are actors but there is the possibility of choice in human life. Meanings persons attribute to themselves (self- conceptions) are critical to interaction and action; and self-conceptions are shaped in interaction. That is, the society shapes the self, which shapes social behaviour (Stryker, 2000: 25–28). He theorises that commitment thus affects identity salience, which thus affects role choice, and that identity salience is defined as ‘the likelihood that an identity will come into play in a variety of situations as a function of its properties as a cognitive schema’ (2000: 28). This is important, because external identities, which may inhibit the joining of movements or affect one’s participation, can be considered on the identity salience hierarchy. Identities can be functionally independent of commitments affecting them, both interactional and affective, and may compete for expression affecting people’s participation in the movement. What seems 24 lacking however from Stryker’s analysis is the very consideration of relevant power structures and their effects upon so-called identity salience. The argument of this thesis is that identity choice within a social movement such as CF is not that straight forward. In other words, what systems of power may influence and shape commitment, which then affects identity salience, which then affects role choice? This question is as yet unanswered.

Power and Social Movement theory

Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells ably develops this theme, arguing that the social construction of identity always takes place in a context marked by power relationships. He proposes that ‘who constructs collective identity, and for what, largely determines the symbolic content of this identity, and its meaning for those identifying with it or placing themselves outside of it’ (2004: 7). He specifically attempts to re-construct the identity emerging from CF, citing some analysis provided by Michael Lienesch (1993). The concept of conversion as the personal experience of being born again and brought from sin into a state of everlasting salvation is the starting place for the whole reconstruction of the self. This is not just a private moment, but also a re-formation of the self in terms of social order and political purpose, the reconstruction of family and society. The fortress of Christian life is re- constructed by ‘asserting patriarchalism, that is, the sanctity of marriage…and above all, the authority of men over women’ (Castells, 2004: 25). Indeed, in this understanding of identity re-construction, ‘the most insidious and dangerous enemies are feminists and homosexuals because they are the ones undermining the family, the main source of social stability, Christian life and personal fulfilment’ (2004: 27). The power thus lies at least in part in particular discourses, which have to be maintained and protected as they reinforce the value-based identities that provide individuals with meaning, purpose and direction (Gecas, 2000: 98).

David Snow and Doug McAdam, who write in the area of conversion and deconversion, make an important statement significant to this thesis: ‘the link between a movement’s collective identity and the personal or individual identities of movement adherents has received almost no attention in the literature’ (2000: 62). They therefore attempt to answer pertinent questions such as: how does an individual come to acquire the shared feeling and cognitions of a collective identity, and how is this identity reconciled with other identities (2000: 42)? They propose the concepts of identity convergence and identity construction (including amplification, consolidation, extension and transformation) to address these problems. Intriguingly, they suggest that some types of identity work tend to dominate, or be more essential, for some types of movements than others. For example, for ‘greedy’ groups in terms of their membership demands and roles (like cultish religions), identity transformation and

25 extension (that is, construction not convergence) are particularly critical. CF may well be interrogated as to whether it could be defined as one of these ‘greedy’ groups requiring identity reconstruction rather than convergence.

The useful term ‘biographical reconstruction’ explains the identity transformation required when one is converted—that is, when the link between past and present is fractured, and a person now sees himself or herself as strikingly different than before (Snow and Machalek, 1984: 173, Snow and McAdam, 2000: 52). Changing identity through conversion is thus seen as a change in one’s ‘universe of discourse’, where each convert brings his or her own biography to the process, and this contribution is coloured by the group’s universe of discourse (Snow and Machalek, 1984: 176). I would suggest that this universe of discourse might also refer to the power of authoritative discourse as a mechanism to reinforce and ensure ongoing compliance. Foucault’s exposition on the shaping effects of discourse may also be isomorphic with this theoretical discussion, to be developed in Chapter 3. On a similar Foucauldian theme, American theologian David Brockman writes of the power and dominance of discourse within church contexts, arguing that the categories of ‘Christian’ and ‘non-Christian’ are purely discursively constructed, being actively created by Christian theological discourse (2011). Power is exercised through the basic boundary-drawing processes of the theologian (and the community) including some elements of theology, while purposively excluding others. The ‘religious other’ is thus theologically constructed by discourse, and then excluded.

Taking up this theme of power, I now turn back to Jill Kiecolt who considers how self-concept can change by participating in social movements. She suggests firstly that such change is rarely sudden and occurs gradually from interaction over time (2000: 117). This concurs with my reading of the deconversion literature, described in the following chapter. Secondly, she points out that social movements vary by how deliberately they try to change participants’ identities. Her model includes the process of internalisation, using the term ‘biased scanning’ to describe what participants do to reduce cognitive dissonance. This appears very similar to the self-surveillance and constitution of subjectivity associated with Foucault’s panopticism and the ‘normalising gaze’ (Foucault, 1991a: 176–179), which will be described in Chapter 3. She then suggests a model explaining how certain interactions may achieve changes in self- concept. There is narrative or storytelling about selves, specific texts, rituals as symbolic enactments of shared beliefs and values, and even confrontations with movement opponents. These components explicitly reflect certain group mechanisms of power and influence. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, she names specific movement characteristics that foster self-change as the clarity of the collective identity of the movement, and an emotion culture that specifies the emotions individuals should feel and express in given situations 26 (2000: 125). People may change their self-concept to stop feeling negative emotions, or to feel the positive emotions that accompany a more desirable self-concept. In other words, the more successful a movement’s emotion culture manages negative emotions and evokes positive ones, the more participants’ personal identities may change to become aligned with the movement’s collective identity, and thus the more salient that identity may be. This model invites reflection on the mechanisms from an identity point of view that may lead to people leaving the movement, and the potential ‘failure’ of the power mechanisms to keep them within, such as emotional incongruence and increasing negative emotion.

Joseph Davis adds texture to this argument through addressing the question of narrative within social movements. He argues that movements come to imagine and know themselves in the very stories that they tell about themselves; such stories then encode models of what are expected behaviours, ‘closing off alternative configurations and muting dissident voices’ (2002: 25). Movement-sanctioned narratives are therefore said to be subtle and effective instruments of control. Robert Benford additionally proposes, within his own model of intra- movement control, that a movement’s stories are inherently recursive. That is, while adherents ‘engage in efforts to control, sustain, and reproduce movement stories, they are in effect being controlled by the narratives’ (2002: 56–57). He almost seems to be describing Foucauldian technologies of power/knowledge (Foucault, 1980d) in his description of the techniques of controlling participants’ interpretative frames and their vocabularies of motives, feelings and affective displays—in a recursive circle of sustaining the movement’s narratives. He specifically refers to the controlling tactics of gossip, ridicule and ostracism (2002: 71). The analysis within this study will consider such a recursive process in the formation of Christian identity through an explicit Foucauldian exposition.

What may now be the summary and conclusion of this foray into the social movement literature? There is no doubt that personal identity is forged and formed alongside collective identity within CF, commencing with the seminal act of conversion and the quotidian acts of participation and commitment. Collective identity may well be incorporated into the self- identity by the transformation of the universe of discourse and the embracing of a new ideology, a new Biblification of life that provides meaning and purpose in what may at times feel like a meaningless universe. In addition, narrative, texts, rituals, biased scanning and emotional congruence are useful concepts to explain how identity change may be maintained and reinforced, again in a recursive manner. A newly constructed and extended identity, rather than a converged one, may well be the hallmark of a totalising, solipsistic social movement such as CF to which this research addresses itself. The intersections with Foucauldian thinking

27 around truth, power and the self are increasingly becoming apparent, and will be further delineated in Chapter 3.

Specific intersection of CF with LGBT community

Even a brief overview of the literature indicates an increasing focus on the intersection between CF, heteronormative discourse, gay sexuality and identity formation, particularly in the United States. At this point, in keeping with the above discussion of social movement theory and the cultural milieu of Sydney, a few salient points will be made.

Firstly, it was not so long ago that the psychology/pathology model was the primary frame through which LGBT6 sexual practice was understood, even by LGBT people themselves. After all, the diagnostic category ‘homosexuality’ was not erased from the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) until 1974, nor indeed decriminalised in NSW until 1984.7 The fundamentalist anti-gay/pro-family social movement continues to define homosexuality as a curable pathology, a deviant ‘lifestyle choice’, often the fault of a dysfunctional upbringing that must be overcome through prayer, counselling and sheer force of will (Aldridge, 2013: 177). American sociologist Tina Fetner examined a fundamentalist advertising campaign intended to be a major strategy in demonstrating that ‘ex-gays’ who converted were happier and more fulfilled than when they were ‘in the lifestyle’ (2005). Despite a vigorous reciprocal pro-gay ad campaign, and a major war of words in the press, both movements made little headway and found themselves very near where they started. In fact, the back and forth dialogue seemed to be effective merely in ‘providing those with already strong opinions on the matter with additional discursive tools’ (2005: 86). Perhaps the same may be concluded about the frequent skirmishes in the Australian press and online media, described above.

Secondly, the fundamentalist dogma that homosexuals are bad, diseased, perverted and sinful poses a particularly life-crushing experience of isolation, abuse and self-loathing, according to sociologist Bernadette Barton (2010). She has researched what she refers to as ‘compulsory Christianity’ in the Bible belt of the US, arguing that regional social mores and expressions of submission to Christian institutions function as a ‘Bible belt panopticon’, perpetuating both

6 LGBT is a commonly accepted initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender 7 Australian Bureau of Statistics, New South Wales Year Book 1998. Retrieved 21 May 2104 http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/[email protected]/94713ad445ff1425ca25682000192af2/a890e87a9ab97424ca2 569de0025c18b!OpenDocument 28 passive and active homophobia (2011).8 Certainly many researchers refer to the significant challenge to identity formation of gay people who attempt to participate in fundamentalist churches. Problems include significant stress, guilt and mental health difficulties (e.g. Meyers, 2010, Dahl, 2011). Such homophobia occurs in the context of the heterosexual couple being regarded as the pivot and frame of reference for the specification of other sexualities within the wider community, and then reinforced by authoritative discourse within CF.

Thirdly, the task of rebuilding a gay rather than an ‘ex-gay’9 identity can be arduous when the previous stories and social practices perpetuated by CF, and the affiliated ex-gay community, no longer make sense. An American study by S.J. Creek researching the identity journeys of those involved in ex-gay movements (which have promised that there can be ‘freedom’ from homosexuality) indicates that ex-gay individuals engage repeatedly in biographical- reconstruction and identity work (2011). The process is understood as recursive, interactional and facilitated in a social movement sense via the interactions with other participants, narratives, texts, rituals and of course ‘opponents’. The author concludes that narrative formula-stories are circulated in strategic ways and can become templates for how people define lived experiences. Creek helpfully draws attention to the problems experienced by gay- apostates trying to make sense of their stories once they leave ‘the movement’, when the ex- gay stockpile of stories simply ceases to make sense.

Australian researcher Lynne Hillier further concludes that most homosexual young people do eventually leave the church, ‘finding it almost impossible to incorporate their sexuality and their Christianity into one positive identity’ (2008: 80). She argues, in a similar vein to the argument of this thesis, that Foucault’s theory around ‘technologies of exclusion’ and dividing practices (Foucault, 1988a) may explain the alienated identity among gay church-going young people. Repetitive authoritative discourse (e.g. ‘Homosexuality is evil’/‘you are evil’) combined with the marginalised person accepting the discourse as ‘truth’ about him/herself

8 This socio-spatial location may also relate to certain areas of Sydney, including the Hills district and the North Shore, which are colloquially referred to as ‘the Bible belts of Sydney’. 9 The ‘ex-gay movement’ within CF consists of people and organisations that encourage people to refrain from entering or pursuing same-sex relationships, to eliminate homosexual desires, to develop heterosexual desires, or to enter into a heterosexual relationship. This movement relies on the involvement of individuals who formerly identified themselves to be gay, lesbian, or bisexual but no longer do; these individuals may either claim that they have eliminated their attraction to the same sex altogether or simply that they abstain from acting on such attraction (accessed 12 march 2014 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex-gay_movement). More information may be obtained at www.christianitytoday.com 29 (e.g. ‘I am evil’) creates internalised homophobia, and can result in poor mental health (Hillier et al., 2008: 82). Most gay Christians therefore have a tendency to deny their sexuality over long periods of time. She and other researchers also note in more recent research that:

…these young people were more likely than others to feel bad about their same sex attraction and less likely to feel good…[they] received less support from parents, siblings and teachers when they disclosed their sexuality and they were more likely to report self harm and suicidal thoughts (Hillier et al., 2010: ix).

Her findings are also reflected in two significant Australian autobiographies describing the exit journeys of two gay men, one a psychologist (Edser, 2012), the other an ex-pastor (Venn- Brown, 2004). Stuart Edser reviews the research into the damage done to young people by expressions of homophobia and exclusion, and concludes that ‘the more evangelically conservative you are, the more your cognitive dissonance as a result of other people’s attitudes will increase’ (2012: 204). That is, practising gay Christians must somehow navigate their way through the complex terrain of personal identity and collective identity and manage integration of the two: sexual (I am gay) and religious (I am Christian). Interestingly, Tova Halbertal and Irit Koren also note the challenge of such an identity synthesis in regard to Orthodox Jewish gay men and lesbian women (2006). They conclude that gay and religious identities achieve coherence through a process of dialogical negotiation, with both these aspects of identity being understood as valid. This current study attempts to inquire into this and other possibilities within the identity journeys of the research participants.

Finally, it is worth noting a significant recent event: the closure of Exodus International in the US in June 2013. Exodus International billed itself as the oldest and largest ex-gay ministry dealing with faith and homosexuality, operating since 1976. It shut down in the midst of the worldwide debate about gay marriage, with this online apology from its president Alan Chambers: ‘I am sorry for the pain and hurt that many of you have experienced. I am sorry some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual orientation that stigmatised parents’ (Trotta, 2013: para. 4). The implications of this statement by such a prominent ex-gay leader is being embraced on various websites that promote the compatibility and coherence of a gay and Christian identity,10 while the politics of control around gay sexuality continue to be vigorously debated. Significantly, for gay Christians in Sydney a similar message is not being broadcast. David Peterson, the head of

10 Examples include: http://gcnjustin.tumblr.com/about and www.gayambassador.com (both accessed 15 March 2014) 30 Sydney-based Liberty Christian Ministries (a support group for those ‘struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction’), recently commented: ‘Jesus speaks against every form of sexual relationship outside of heterosexual marriage, while pointing believers to the greater cause of being pure for God’ (Macintyre, 2014: 11).

Specific intersection of CF with gender

At this point, in keeping with the discussion about the micro-culture of power within the particular churches that the participants of this study have attended, the question of gender is introduced. The contribution of post-Foucauldian scholars in the matter of gender issues will be covered in detail in Chapter 4. In short, Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and academic, writes that, ‘you do not have to look very far in fundamentalist literature to find celebrations of motherhood and female domesticity’ (1994: 48), and as I have already suggested, heteronormative dominance. Christian writers such as James Dobson identify the enemy to ‘female sex-role identity’ as ‘radical feminists, the women’s movement and the media’ (1989, as cited in Balmer, 1994: 55). He seems to be accurately reflecting the core of Castells’ argument about power within CF, discussed above. What is of course striking in the American context is the exertion of influence by the New Christian Right (Beyer, 1994: 121-133) in the political arena, where Balmer notes that the sobriquet ‘anti-family’ is regularly attached to inimical policies and politicians (1994). This process is less overt in this city and country, but certainly not absent, as indicated by the comments from the Archbishop and others quoted above.

Anthropologist Karen McCarthy Brown postulates that the idealised image of the Christian woman, based on a Victorian cult of true womanhood, exhibits huge ambivalence. That is, ‘women can be idolised only when their sphere of activity is carefully contained and their power scrupulously monitored’ (1994: 181–188). In one moment she may be a goddess, in the next a ‘voracious polluting monster’—the designated ‘other’ defined by men and carrying the projections of all that is undesirable or threatening in human existence. Her theory on fundamentalist gender roles and keeping women under the control of ‘reasoning’ men, certainly echoes Jane Ussher’s post-structural perspective about women as the ‘monstrous feminine’, or the manifestation of misogynistic fantasies about the fecund, sexual woman (1989, 2006). Ruthven wonders why women would even sign up to CF, as it seems so inimical to their own interests. He concludes that again in a confusing world, sexual bipolarity may give some stability to gender roles, an authentication of motherhood, financial security, and even female networking and sisterly solidarity. Perhaps it is about empowerment, and even seeking freedom from a culture mired in hedonistic self-gratification and sexual profanity

31 (2005: 118)? The question this study asks is whether women in the study do find the freedom, support and community they may be seeking.

Conclusion

This chapter has provided some background into the history and influence of fundamentalism, most particularly CF. It has described CF as a thoroughly modern movement rather than an anachronistic irrelevant social relic. Some developments within the city of Sydney (where many of the research participants in this study live, or have lived) suggest that the discourses of local CF are at least partly based in the particularities of the history of this city, as well as in North American neo-conservatism. The differences between CF and CE have been discussed, and the conclusion reached is that these terms will be used interchangeably in this study.

Concepts from social movement theory relevant to a study into deconversion and disaffiliation have also been described, and their intersection with Foucauldian thinking highlighted. Some introductory comments on the particular influence of fundamentalist discourse on discursive identity formation in the context of LGBT Christians and women were provided. In short, CF may be understood as a totalising and highly influential social movement, thoroughly adept in the acculturation of its participant members through embracing and promoting a defensive collective identity, suspicious of ‘the other’ but also committed to mission and evangelism. It is apparent that a guarded, fortressed and self-perpetuating solipsism thus emerges. The next chapter will review the relevant literature regarding the journey of deconversion, disaffiliation and identity change.

32 Chapter 2

Literature Review: Contemporary research into Christian disaffiliation

Wherever I looked, the answer of faith seemed to be, This way or No way.

Eric Lax,

Faith, Interrupted

The previous chapter introduced the concept of CF and its emergence as a modern and influential social movement. This chapter details the research into disaffiliation from CF and situates the current study within that body of knowledge. The argument of the thesis is that this study contributes to the research literature quite uniquely by aiming to situate the journey of disaffiliation within a post-structural and relational framework of power, using the theory of Foucault and other post-Foucauldian scholars. The research, unlike previous qualitative research (QR) studies, aims to consider the individuals’ stories as responses to relationships of disseminated power and influence, and identity change within and beyond CF as discursively constructed. This chapter considers the previous research under the headings of memoir; quantitative studies from survey data; qualitative explanatory, humanistic studies; the concept of ‘believing without belonging’; studies including the context of the organisation; specific Australian research; and typology/religious-phases studies.

Memoir

The reading for this study commenced with memoir and autobiography, which resonated strongly with my own migration of identity journey on the ‘insider/outsider’ continuum. The proliferation of such memoirs and websites (e.g. http://new.exchristian.net) seems to speak of a voice that may have been silenced and wants to be heard, as well as join with others. Eric Chalfant, in analysing such deconversion narratives on the internet, argues that an atheist’s autobiographical account of his/her journey from religion to atheism has become one of the most important discursive methods by which atheists (online) form bonds of affiliation with a greater atheist community. Rather than expressing an anti-religious epistemology, individuals use various discursive practices to connect their subjectivities to a collective atheist identity and simultaneously distance their subjectivities from both religious and atheist ideology 33 (2011). The question may be asked whether the telling and re-telling of one’s deconversion story with others is thus instrumental in, and productive of, discursive identity change, as this study is investigating.

The personal stories that detail people’s exits from CF report some similar experiences, such as the slow pace of the journey and an emerging sense of relief and freedom (Hendricks, 1993, Babinski, 2003, Levin, 2007, Loftus, 2008, Barker and Dawkins, 2008, Lobdell, 2009, Lax, 2010, Carrier, 2011). Some apostates become researchers themselves, trying to make sense of the experience for faith and non-faith communities. For example, Ruth Tucker concludes that losing faith does not entail ‘real loss’ but relief and contentment (2002: 170–171). Scot McKnight and Hauna Ornery also comment that the entire process of leaving the faith is a ‘quest for personal autonomy, freedom and intellectual stability’, with independence as the constant theme (2008: 46).

A literary, reflective focus is provided by biographer John Barbour who recounts the stories of significant people who have de-converted, suggesting that deconversion ‘expresses modernity’s search for authenticity…a flight from authority, from inherited paradigms of thought, and from various forms of pressure to conform’ (1994: 210). In theorising a deconversion narrative as motivated by, and leading to, a reorientation in relation to the fundamental values a person trusts and seeks to live by, Barbour sets the scene for this current study. The analysis within this thesis also investigates deconversion not only as a journey of identity re-formation, but also perhaps as a creative act of resistance to conformity, in the context of power/knowledge.

Deconversion: under-researched, and mostly from survey data

It has been noted that the process by which the individual disaffiliates from CF has rarely been the subject of specific inquiry, particularly qualitative research (Brinkerhoff and Burke, 1980, Mosier III, 2002, Streib et al., 2009, Gooren, 2011). The process referred to as conversion has been described as one of the most extensively researched in the study of religion (Snow and Machalek, 1984, Lamb and Bryant, 1999), but by contrast the reciprocal process of disaffiliation has received considerably less attention. Sociologist Bradley Wright also observes that religious departures continue to be studied less than other religious transitions, even though an estimated one third or more of Americans drop out of religious participation at some time during their life (2011: 1). Tom Frame urges caution on drawing such firm conclusions from Australian census and survey records, but certainly points to the paucity of research into the loss of religiosity and church participation among Australians (2009: 100– 104). 34 Researchers Merlin Brinkerhoff and Kathryn Burke note that disaffiliation studies have focused primarily on societal trends toward irreligiosity or the general secularisation of society (1980: 42). Zina O’Leary, an Australian sociologist, comments that ‘apostasy as an object of sociological inquiry has traditionally been marginalised and under-theorised’ (2000: 17). Further, much of the existing quantitative research is based on large quantitative studies of census and national survey data (Glock and Stark, 1965, Roof, 1978, Altemeyer and Bruce, 1997, Roof, 1999, Uecker et al., 2007). Researchers have also used a huge variety of terms to describe the process including exiting, dropping out, disidentification, defection, apostasy, disaffiliation and disengagement (Bromley, 1988: 23), creating some confusion about appropriate terminology.

Many of the studies using survey data seek to examine the determinants or causes of disaffiliation from churches in the United States; that is, they ask why people may leave their mainstream churches, and why there is a decline in religiosity during early adulthood. For example, one study uses survey data and longitudinal studies to challenge conventional wisdom about the secularising effects of higher education (Uecker et al., 2007), while another shows that religious apostasy remains low when ‘good parent-child relationships’ exist between conservative Christian Baby Boomer parents and their Generation X children (Nooney, 2006). Further, a large study of 15,000 subjects from 32 western countries suggests that secularisation, liberal beliefs and the influence of parental and spousal religious characteristics are significant determinants of disaffiliation (Brañas-Garza et al., 2013). Other studies using existing demographic data include political attitudes, religious scepticism and life stressors as causes of disaffiliation (Vargas, 2012). A Dutch study also adds (from retrospective demographic data of its respondents) that a non-religious partner and the rationalisation/secularisation of society are mainly responsible for religious disaffiliation (Te Grotenhuis and Scheepers, 2001). On the other hand, a more recent quantitative study suggest that secularisation has little to do with declining church attendances in western countries (Franck and Iannaccone, 2013). In short, several factors are suggested as causes for disaffiliation, but these studies do not address the questions of this research.

Jill Mytton, an English psychologist, also states that ‘relatively little literature exists regarding people born into and raised in high demand groups and subsequently leaving’, and has completed a quantitative study of 295 participants in 1993 of people who have left the Exclusive Brethren (2008). However, her focus is on the psychological impact of leaving plus the pathology and post-trauma symptoms that often develop.

35 Qualitative Research (QR): primarily humanist, individualistic, psychological and explanatory

In terms of QR, most studies have a primarily individualistic, experiential, humanist focus. For example, psychologist Marlene Winnell states that the concept of ‘shattered faith syndrome’ has received very little attention in psychology (2007). However her research is ultimately a self-help book describing the ‘healing’ process required for the core damage for those in recovery after leaving the church, based on interviews with her clients. Similarly, Kathleen Ritter and Craig O’Neill (1996) report case histories of 24 people disillusioned with CF and authoritarian Catholicism. The premise of this study is that dilemmas and discouragement being faced by believers are part of the process of spiritual growth—a recurring theme for other researchers, referred to later in this chapter.

Interview-based academic qualitative studies are rare, however I have located four in the United States and one in Canada, undertaken by doctoral students. It can be noted that none of these studies provides a specific post-structural or constructionist analysis of identity formation and deconversion within a context of power. To summarise, Jimmy Louise Smull (2002) interviewed 10 women who had left CF, including herself as co-researcher, employing a ‘heuristic method’ to explore challenges to ‘personal mythology’. John Mosier III (2002) interviewed 10 former fundamentalists (also through a snowballing sampling technique) with conclusions reflecting on the complexity of the ‘emotional triggers’ that lead to deconversion as well as the ‘psychological symptoms’ that people experience. Marilyn McNaughton (2003), herself a Presbyterian minister, used psychoanalysis as the theoretical orientation to her study, interviewing respondents who had decided to leave Presbyterian churches after being long- time members. She concluded that the most significant contributor to disaffiliation is an interacting pattern of multiple losses, including disappointment with clergy. Karen Ross (2009) then interviewed nine former fundamentalists, aiming to generate an account of the ‘psychological experience of losing faith in God’, proposing that losing an attachment-bond to God, as well as a meaning system and social context, can prove traumatic. Her study provides suggestions for psychotherapy with ex-believers, drawn from a primarily structuralist framework.

Very recently, Lori Fazzino has interviewed 20 former evangelical Christians, using a phenomenonological-hermeneutical approach (2014). She also concludes that deconversion is eventually a liberating experience evoking feelings of freedom, relief and happiness. She then suggests that exit narratives may become a necessary cultural repertoire, encouraging people to challenge religious hegemony and find acceptance in a community of non-believers; the power

36 of hegemonic religious discourse along with the search for alternative identity validation is thus introduced. It would seem that Mosier’s conclusion remains relevant—that ‘a more in- depth understanding of the exact relationship between relinquishing ties to a religious orientation and the process of identity development would prove beneficial to the field of psychology’ (2002: 304). This suggests the appropriateness of this current study, as the discursive nature of identity change beyond CF remains under-researched.

Sociologist Phil Zuckerman has interviewed 87 previously religious people who no longer believe, as part of his continuing research into American secularism (2011). While this again provides much needed qualitative research into apostasy, his focus is largely a promotion of the preferable moral and ethical stance of irreligion, as practised in more secularised societies such as Scandinavia. This was also argued in his earlier work (2008). Ara Norenzayan, a social psychologist, also suggests that Scandinavian societies with atheist majorities are some of the most cooperative, peaceful, and prosperous in the world; they climbed religion’s ladder, and then apparently kicked it. He considers that their secular institutions have precipitated religion’s decline by usurping its community-building functions (2013). Again, neither researcher provides an analysis of the how of disaffiliation, nor a study of self-constituting identity practices within a particular context of power.

Bradley Wright, Dina Giovanelli and Emily Dolan (2011) interestingly used grounded theory in relation to the online narratives of 50 former Christians to further explore possible deconversion ‘explanations’. In keeping with some previous research (Altemeyer and Bruce, 1997), they noted that intellectual doubt (most particularly about the accuracy, offensiveness and believability of the Bible) emerged as significant. However most intriguing was the finding that 85% of their respondents named interactions with other Christians and disintegrated social bonds as highly significant in their deconversion. The absence of thoughtful answers to their doubts from their fellow Christians led to the respondents feeling trivialised and marginalised. It was not those outside the church that helped bring about their deconversion, but those inside. In other words, the push-factors from church interactions were more significant than the pull-factors from outsiders. David Bromley also makes the comment that ‘changes in expectation by the organisation of the individual or by the individual of the organisation are at the root of much disaffiliation’ (1991: 182).

These observations emerge as relevant to this thesis which explores identity change in relation to the practices of power exercised within CF. As Judith Butler suggests (using a post- structural lens to describe identity formation), it is the ‘discursive sites of injury’ in relation to a social context that actually become the site of some ‘radical reoccupation and resignification’

37 (1997: 104). This study ventures into the territory of such sites and investigates how the power of CF through its push-factors may contribute to identity storying, re-storying and ultimately de-storying.

‘Believing without belonging’

The findings of some studies also suggest that research respondents maintain their belief in God, somewhere and in some form. This illustrates the idea of ‘believing without belonging’ proposed by historian Grace Davie (2000: 3). For example, Janet Jacobs has conducted two significant QR studies into deconversion (1984, 1987), the second in which she interviewed 40 religious devotees (recruited through advertising and using an open-ended interview schedule) regarding their ‘voluntary defection’ from various religious movements, including NRMs. She concluded that deconversion is an evolutionary process that proceeds in stages of disillusionment from social to emotional defection, while participants do not necessarily lose their faith in God. This loss of communal identity, and not necessarily ‘religiosity’, is also referred to by Brinkerhoff and Burke (1980) and Bromley (1991), and represents a possible hypothesis to be investigated. That is, will this study also suggest the emergence of a continuing, albeit re-defined, belief away from church structures? Does faith need to be allied with the church structures of CF?

Frame continues the theme by using the grid of ‘believing, behaving and belonging’ (2009: 12) in his analysis of the loss of belief in the Australian context. He concludes that abandonment of faith is much more than an objection to specific articles of belief, and more likely to be concerned with the challenges associated with behaving and belonging—again referencing the push rather than pull factors involved in disaffiliation. Charles Taylor, in his epic work on secularisation, writes that the current age is ‘post-Durkheimian’ in that many people are engaged in assembling their own religious or spiritual ‘bricolage’ (2007: 514), while there is as yet unclear understanding about the ‘believing-without-belonging’ phenomenon. Migrations of faith and identity may well be found less toward polarities, and more in this middle ground. Again, it is suggested that this research may provide relevant elaboration on this question.

Consideration of context

Some existing studies introduce the question of context, and the effects of organisational structures on the members of the group. For example, Lynn Davidman and Arthur Greil argue in their QR study of Orthodox Jews that context shapes narrative identity change, helpfully describing the process of disaffiliation as a breakdown in encapsulation (2007). They suggest that the members of such encapsulated groups find it difficult to leave not only because of their 38 high levels of personal, social and material investment, but also because in the process of ‘biographical disruption’ they are lacking an ‘exit narrative’—a cultural script for leaving (2007: 201-4). Their former Haredim members do not progress from chaos to certainty, but rather ‘to a more ambiguous, self-constructed reality, their main identity task being biographical reinvention’. This study recruited a sample through advertising and snowballing, using semi-structured interviews and a narrative analysis. Methodologically, it demonstrated that narrative accounts can illuminate the influence of particular social practices upon identity change, and so parallels the focus of this study.

Bromley’s analysis of ‘contested exit’ from religious organisations in the context of differing degrees of organisational control is of particular note. He is one of the few researchers who focuses on how ‘the process of exit is significantly determined by the power and social location of the organisation from which exit occurs’ (Bromley, 1998a: 145). He concludes that ‘organisations accorded the greatest legitimacy and autonomy possess powerful resources through which to protect and defend the social niches they occupy’(1998a: 157), introducing the concept of power within the field of deconversion research. He also remarks with some prescience that, given the high level of control of such organisations, it can be hard for members and ex-members ‘to locate others who might collectively reinterpret private troubles as organisational problems and mount organised protest’ (1998b: 28). This current study also questions the ease of leaving and the existing opportunities to reflect on one’s experiences with others who are like-minded. Bromley additionally reinforces the significance of this current study when he concludes that an issue of considerable, but neglected, academic interest is the identity work of such individuals confronting organisational control mechanisms (1998b: 44).

Australian research

In terms of specific Australian research, only two deconversion research studies have been located. Incidentally, it can be noted that there has been considerably more interest in the phenomenon of so-called ‘brain-washing’ in NRMs and the attendant effects upon identity of such affiliation and disaffiliation (e.g. Healy, 2008, Coates, 2012).

Raoul Adam (2009) used primarily a religious-developmental phase and cognitive model in his study, which is less relevant to the current study. More significantly, Zina O’Leary used a Durkheimian and Foucauldian approach to apostate research, arguing that the construct of apostasy can ‘act as a vital signifier of the ever shifting relationship between the self, religiosity and social structures’ (2000: 17). She attempts to redress the rather bleak history of the sociology of religion’s isolation and lack of engagement with social theory by providing an investigation into apostasy as a potential signifier of resistance and post-apostatic re- 39 formations of the self (1997). She uses a typology of anomie and egoism within a Foucauldian framework of the ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault, 2003), and creates a new category of apostate: the postmodern apostate. The diverse range of post-apostatic identity options offered by postmodern western society is considered both increasingly available and collectively supported. She concludes that the postmodern world allows for a diverse range of possible beliefs that can be adopted without cognitive or emotional strain (1997: 259). It is anticipated that the argument of my thesis will amplify O’Leary’s work in further theorising about the nature of Christian identity formed within specific power relationships and communities, and the meaning of refusal, resistance, transformation and potentially emancipatory narratives.

Typologies and phases

Various conversion and ‘deconversion careers’, as well as ‘typologies of deconversion’ (Barbour, 1994, Bromley, 1997, Brinkerhoff and Burke, 1980, Jamieson, 2002, Streib et al., 2009) have also been proposed in the literature, with some incorporating James Fowler’s structural-developmental model of stages of faith (1981). Fowler’s model represents a progressive evolutionary trajectory toward the final stage of a ‘universalising faith’ where people become ‘incarnators and actualisers of the spirit of an inclusive and fulfilled human community’ (1981: 200). This study is not aligned with creating what may be described as a humanist-developmental typology or identity career. As will be explored in the subsequent three chapters, a post-structural lens is inimical to fixed social categories, or the classification of stories into redemption, growth or heroic narratives, for example. This study aims to analyse unfinalised, contextualised identity stories as created discursively.

Such examples of deconversion typologies include the work of American anthropologist Henri Gooren, who has conducted a large study (via document analysis of scholarly articles and internet stories) of self-narratives in conversion and deconversion. His research generates some theory around the idea of five different ‘conversion careers’ (2010). Similarly, John Brent, a professor of counselling, interviewed seven disaffected fundamentalists and considered there were ‘seven sequential and essential phases’ (1994: 208) among participants, proposing ‘humanistic-existential’ counselling as a response to this transition. Additionally, New Zealand pastor and sociologist Alan Jamieson described turning points as significant in the gradual exit journey, providing a typology of leavers which includes ‘reflective exiles, transitional explorers and integrated wayfinders’ (2002).

I would argue that such typologies may appear somewhat rigid and essentialising, and are not necessarily describing individual, shifting narratives but more the researcher’s particular segmentation and coding of the data. Nonetheless, Jamieson’s contribution to the literature is 40 significant to this current study in several ways. Firstly, he has described the process of ‘mutual withdrawal’ (2002: 41f), and the disconcerting finding that as someone starts to leave, so the organisation also withdraws. This acknowledges the context of how the Christian subject may be constituted and then re-constructed, as the process of change commences. This thesis will consider such mutual withdrawal from a post-structuralist rather than humanist stance, allowing a discussion of the constructed and positioned nature of identity within CF churches.

Secondly, Jamieson alludes to ‘marginal and liminal groups’ (2002: 158), which provide some structure and alternative options for support of disaffiliated members. This study may also signal the presence of such diverse spiritual groups. Finally, he has re-interviewed his research participants five years later, which appears to be the first such study of its kind. His finding is that there is no significant shift of faith over the five year period, and that if someone leaves a fundamentalist church, he/she is very unlikely to re-join another one (2006: 78–81). This would perhaps indicate the depth, breadth and reasonable stability of the re-formed identity over time, and raise questions about the sustained meaning of the refusal to participate again in such communities.

This finding leads to the most recent large-scale and comprehensive deconversion study conducted by German philosopher Heinz Streib and his colleagues (2009). Their study combines QR (100 interviewed subjects), quantitative techniques, and a cross-cultural comparison between Germany and the US. These researchers also provide a typology of four deconversion trajectories, including ‘pursuit of autonomy’ and ‘barred from paradise’, with a special focus on personality factors, motivation, attitudes, religious development and psychological well being. Their definition of deconversion, borrowed from Barbour (1994), is:

The change of a person’s religious orientation in a specific biographical time which involves re-writing one’s religious identity, revising one’s system of beliefs and world views, and restructuring one’s way of thinking, moral judgment and dealing with authority—with a special focus on the act of leaving the old and searching for something different (Streib et al., 2009: 22).

This definition is congruent with such a primarily humanist and psychological study, yet also provides a springboard for the definition of deconversion from CF I have employed in this thesis. It is noted that the word ‘apostasy’ derives from the Greek word meaning ‘defection or revolt’. While not all defectors renounce religion entirely (as in the dictionary meaning of apostasy), this Greek meaning is incorporated in my definition. That is, deconversion or disaffiliation is defined as ‘the re-formation of the Christian self through resistances and 41 refusal, as storied and narrated by the person herself or himself within and outside particular contexts and social practices of power and knowledge’.

Interestingly, Streib concludes that ‘it is not only the individual and the dynamics within his or her psychological resources, but the interaction with the religious environment which account more fully for the dynamics of deconversion’ (emphasis added, , 2009: 26). This is highly relevant, as even in his different study to this thesis, the context of the organisation as a system of modern disciplinary power is introduced and emphasised, setting the stage for the forthcoming analysis.

Conclusion

The previous chapter outlined the modern phenomenon of militant piety within fundamentalism, while this chapter provided an overview of relevant research in the area of disaffiliation from mainstream CF. It has been demonstrated that large-scale quantitative studies and smaller scale psychological, humanist, explanatory qualitative studies dominate a particularly under-researched field.

This current study amplifies and extends the available research by arguing for a post-structural methodological and philosophical framework to analyse the modern phenomenon of disaffiliation from CF. Identity transformation out of CF could be further understood through employing a constructionist and post-structural perspective, with a detailed application of a theory of modern power. The next two chapters provide such a theoretical background to the research providing an explication of the Foucauldian and post-Foucauldian spine, which situates this innovative piece of research uniquely within the deconversion and disaffiliation literature.

42 Chapter 3

Foucault and the Christian subject

Introduction

The previous chapter outlined the relevant contemporary research into deconversion and disaffiliation from fundamentalist churches. As was stated, large-scale quantitative studies and smaller scale psychological, explanatory qualitative research projects predominate in a largely understudied area. In particular, it has not been explored how the power of the Christian community may be a regime in which the self is modified or constructed by oneself, thus constituting the Christian subject. This project thus finds its significance and originality in aiming to situate the journey of disaffiliation within a relational framework of power, using elements of the theory of Foucault and other post-Foucauldian scholars.

This chapter provides the theoretical spine of the research project as it explores the relevant works of Foucault in the constitution and replication of the subject within a system of modern power, illuminating the strategic games occurring within CF. The theoretical background will be set against the background of social constructionism, followed by a discussion of Foucauldian genealogy, the Foucauldian triangle of truth, power and self (Flynn, 1988: 218– 220), and the significant role of pastoral power.

Background and aims

As explained in the Introduction, the theoretical resonance of this project may be social constructionist, but the analysis is more than a study of identity constructed within interactional narratives in a particular social context. The Foucauldian theory may even be said to act like deus ex machina—carrying and lifting the analysis to new territory, where Christian subjectification is understood as a product neither of the psyche nor of language, but as Nikolas Rose suggests, ‘of the heterogeneous assemblage of bodies, vocabularies, judgments, techniques, inscriptions and practices’ (1998: 182).

Kenneth Gergen, the American psychologist and prolific author within social constructionism, has struggled for many years against the dominant positivist orientation to be found within his discipline. He has argued that there is no Truth, only local truths (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009: 30), and that languages of the self may be malleable, the self a conversational achievement, and social life understood in terms of a continuous dynamic of positioning and being positioned to be a certain kind of person (Gergen, 2009a: 70). Identity within this frame

43 is understood beyond self-contained individualism or, as Clifford Geertz put it, beyond the ‘western conception of the person as a bounded unique, more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe’ (1979: 229). The radical feminist Jill Johnston (1973) claims provocatively that identity is ‘what you can say you are according to what they say you can be’ (as cited in Kitzinger, 1989: 82). In her understanding, identity is not a freely created product of introspection or reflections of the ‘inner self’, but is conceived within certain authoritative narratives and is profoundly political in its origins and implications.

While currently the overall picture of social constructionism is complex, varied and certainly fragmented, Swedish researchers Mats Alvesson and Kaj Sköldberg conclude that today’s use of the term has a shift of emphasis away from cognition towards language, and an increased interest in radicality and postmodernism (2009: 35). As Rom Harré has stated, ‘there are cognitive processes, but they are immanent in the discursive practices that are right in front of our noses’ (1992: 6). This emphasis on such discursive practices, the nonrepresentational theory of mind, and a relationally responsive understanding of identity may resonate with some Foucauldian concepts, but social constructionism is not understood as being within the same terrain as Foucault’s blistering critique of the socio-historical and socio-cultural regulation of people’s lives. It is to this theoretical analysis that the chapter now turns.

While Foucault did not classify himself within any school of thought, his broadly post- structuralist perspective invites us to turn our gaze differently on the social world, particularly the processes of our own subjectification (Davies, 2000: 10). To this end, the objectives in the theoretical analysis are twofold: to identify such structures that may be relevant in understanding the enmeshment of the religious subject (Carrette, 2000: 129), and to provide a background to genealogy and disciplinary power which will enhance an understanding of the ‘topography of subjectification’ (Rose, 1998: 33) within CF. This theoretical analysis will be mirrored in the subsequent data analysis within Part 2 of this thesis.

Barry Smart has described the thematic unity or continuity in Foucault’s work as ‘the analysis of particular modes of subjectification, of the forms of knowledge and relations of power through which human beings have been constituted as subjects’ (2004: 72). The study maintains this unity, while focusing on the post-1968 works and the explicit conception of subjectivity within power/knowledge relations. Such a choice is congruent with an emphasis on the identity formation and re-formation of the Christian subject within a regime of power, and the journey of resistance and change that follows. It is also noted that Foucault not infrequently stated that his ideas are neither a theory nor a methodology (e.g. Foucault, 2002a:

44 326), so it remains a challenge to propose a Foucauldian genealogy of CF and its constitution and re-constitution of the Christian self.

The overall aim of this thesis is to provide an original and new reading of the identity stories of ex-believers. The danger is to introduce some privilege of ‘truth’ when applying the Foucauldian perspective. Therefore my focus will be on a problematisation of the ‘government’ of CF and ‘identity’. That is, my starting point in the forthcoming data analysis is the identification and examination of people’s specific situations in which the activity of CF governing comes to be called into question (Dean, 2010: 38), through the process of disaffiliation. This analytics of the exercise of power will provide some framework and language to link the questions of CF’s power structures with questions of identity and the shaping and sculpting of the self. The analysis will make visible how Christian conceptions of the self are linked to the way they are governed, the ways in which they try to govern themselves and others, and the ways in which this may occur under forms of knowledge postulated as ‘truth’ by church authorities.

Foucauldian genealogy

Rather than reproducing the more traditional view of historical analysis, Foucault proposed the Nietszchean theme of genealogy, in that truth cannot be separated from the procedures of its production. Consequently, as Maria Tamboukou explains, his genealogy is concerned ‘with the processes, procedures and apparatuses by which truth and knowledge are produced, in what Foucault calls the discursive regime of the modern era’ (1999: 202). Foucauldian genealogy is said to stand in opposition to traditional historical analysis; its aim is ‘to record the singularity of events, to reveal beneath the constructed unity of things not a point of origin but dispersion, disparity, and difference, and the play of dominations…the domain of violence, subjugations and struggle’ (Smart, 2004: 59).

Therefore Foucault is oriented to discontinuities in how the subject may emerge in history rather than seeing history as a linear evolution. The present time is viewed as an episode, not unfolding as a meaningful development, but as a result of struggle and relations of force and domination. As Tamboukou suggests, his genealogy goes even further by ‘tracing possible ways of thinking differently, instead of accepting and legitimating what are already the “truths” of our world’ (1999: 203).

John Rajchman calls this Foucauldian project a ‘modern practical philosophy’, which does not attempt to determine what we should do on the basis of what we essentially are, but by analysing who we have been constituted to be, attempts to ask what we might become. Its 45 principle is said to be freedom, ‘but a freedom which does not follow from any postulation of our nature or essence’ (1986: 166–168). Indeed, he describes the Foucauldian genealogy as the story of the processes through which ‘desire was severed from its ancient interconnection with activities of pleasure, and associated instead with a truth one was obliged to find within oneself’ (1986: 174). Freedom is thus understood more as resistance to self-constituting practices, rather than a fixed or given state-of-being within a society.

Michael Mahon therefore concludes that it is precisely the work of the genealogist to consider our taken-for-granted self-understandings as having emerged from ‘quite pedestrian, concrete, practical and historical conditions’, but also, most importantly, to ask the question whether these self-understandings ‘promote or detract from the enhancement of life’ (1992: 13). Genealogy is thus about a ‘functional microanalysis of power relations’ (Tamboukou, 1999: 205), not grand narratives of mainstream history, nor deep psychological analyses looking for hidden meanings. In other words, genealogy is more concerned with the how, rather than why things happen. It is about describing, not explaining, the minutiae of everyday life (Middleton, 2003: 43).

Foucault’s essay Nietzsche, genealogy, history is perhaps the main source to which scholars turn in attempting to unravel the question of how to undertake and construct a genealogy. In this essay, he states that genealogy ‘is gray, meticulous and patiently documentary’, depending on a ‘vast accumulation of source material’ (1984a: 76). He does not however indicate precisely how to consider the documents under scrutiny. Tamboukou considers that Foucault’s own cornucopia of documents leaves future genealogists with an important legacy—that it is possible to invent new sources and not be limited to traditional documentation (1999: 208). This may well include the approach considered in this study—using narrative accounts elicited through an interview process. Consistent with a focus on fine detail, research interviews can also access what Foucault calls ‘subjugated knowledges’ or ‘low ranking knowledges’, which may have been disguised and disqualified on the knowledge hierarchy (1980f: 81–82).

While acknowledging Foucault’s anti-methodology and anti-foundationalism (Brown, 2003: 71), some additional comments may be made. Genealogy is also understood as the analysis of descent and emergence (Foucault, 1984a). That is, descent is not about going back in time, nor does it resemble evolution, or map the destiny of a people. It is about assisting Foucault’s project of ‘de-centring the subject’ (Mahon, 1992: 110), and so discovering that truth does not lie at the root of what we know and what we are, but strangely in the exteriority of accidents of history. In other words, it is about the inscription of history on the body, and analysing how the body may be ‘a battlefield of power relations and antagonistic discourses’ (Tamboukou and

46 Ball, 2003: 6). In this study, it is about the body as it is affected and inscribed in the ecology of CF.

Secondly, emergence is understood as the ‘moment of arising’ (Foucault, 1984a: 83); a particular historical moment in an understanding of history as non-linear. It is about analysing the entry of forces that erupts, rather than an analysis of psychological motives and historical causes. Its focus is the scrutiny of the complex and multiple processes that surround the emergence of the event (Tamboukou, 2003: 200); in this case, the event may be the emergence of the forces of CF into people’s lives.

The three axes of truth, power and self are primary in this consideration of conducting a genealogy of identity formation and re-formation within the context of disaffiliation from CF and will be considered below. However the so-called dispositif requires some immediate clarification.

The dispositif

When locating a dispositif, or social apparatus, in order to undertake a genealogy, Foucault suggests the starting point as focusing on a particular problem (in this case, identity change) and then to try and see it in its historical dimension, through formulating the network of relations between the practices and the problem (Tamboukou, 1999: 213). It becomes ‘a grid of intelligibility’ where relationships of power, knowledges and discourses intersect and make connections (Tamboukou, 2013: 96). For example, Foucault’s dispositif in much of his works focused on the connections of the heterogeneous assembly of discursive and non-discursive practices on ‘sexuality’.

This study aims to situate the problem of Christian identity change within a particular system of relations, bearing in mind that the dispositif is ‘essentially of a strategic nature…always inscribed in a play of power, but it is also always linked to certain coordinates of knowledge’ (Foucault, 1980a: 196). What may be of particular interest is a focus on narrative modalities in the construction of the dispositif, the tracing and emergence of narrative practices of self- formation in relation to what the subject has previously been compelled to regard as ‘truth’ (Tamboukou, 2013: 96). In other words, a dispositif may be constructed within the power/knowledge nexus of CF described in the narrative accounts of identity change provided by research participants.

Additionally, Gilles Deleuze, who formed a significant philosophical friendship with Foucault, refers to the dispositif as a ‘tangle’ and a ‘multilinear ensemble’ (1992: 159–164). Firstly, there

47 are ‘curves of visibility and curves of enunciation…machines which make one see and speak’—for example the panopticon, described below. Secondly, his cartography includes lines of force and lines of subjectification, all of which can cross over and intersect. Most significantly, he considers it necessary to distinguish between ‘what we are (what we are already no longer) and what we are in the process of becoming: the historical part and the current part’ (1992: 164). As we untangle the lines of subjectification of the past, present and near future, it seems we are also in the process of conducting a genealogy using a dispositif.

As Rose further explains in his genealogy of modern psychological practices, a genealogy of subjectification considers the human being as a target of multiplicity of forces, the interiority experienced as a kind of discontinuous infolding of exteriority. The infolding would be ‘anything that can acquire authority: injunctions, advice, techniques, habits of thought and emotion [and] an array of routines and norms’ (1998: 37). A genealogy of subjectification therefore takes an individualised, interiorised, totalised and psychologised understanding of what it is to be human, or indeed a fundamentalist Christian, as the site of an historical problem, not the telling of an historical narrative (1998: 23).

In short, genealogy has been described as an emerging research tradition still ‘in the process of discovering itself or making itself up. It has a certain elusiveness and impenetrability’ (Tamboukou and Ball, 2003: 21). This poses certain challenges for the researcher who wants to present ‘findings’, while allowing that multiple approaches, analyses and dispositifs are all possible. Indeed, as Joan Scott argues, even documenting people’s self-described ‘experiences’ must be called into question, as ‘what counts as experience is neither self-evident nor straightforward’, but discursively and politically constructed (1991: 797). In considering such questions of ethics, genealogy and problematisations, Foucault considered that ‘the ethico- political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger’ (Foucault, 1984b: 343). The main danger problematised in this study will therefore be how truth discourses and apparatuses of power affect how people make sense of their Christian lives and selves, and how they then become the vehicles of such power, using such discourses and apparatuses to speak to others of their Christian lives and selves. Identity change may then be, as has been suggested, an attempt to become ‘other’ than who they are already. Such resistance may be about disowning the ways in which they are spoken, even about disidentification from certain social practices and ways of being (Tamboukou and Ball, 2003: 9).

The triangle of truth, power and self in genealogy

Foucault spoke of three possible domains of genealogy: 48 First, an historical ontology of ourselves in relation to truth through which we constitute ourselves as subjects of knowledge; second, an historical ontology of ourselves in relation to a field of power through which we constitute ourselves as subjects acting on others; third, an historical ontology in relation to ethics through which we constitute ourselves as moral agents (1984b: 351).

The triangle of the three genealogical axes, truth, power and self, is introduced and illustrated in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Foucauldian Triangle (developed for this study from Flynn, 1988)

Truth

While acknowledging the potential to over-segment Foucauldian concepts, a beginning will be made in exploring the first axis: truth. In any society, Foucault states that:

There are manifold relations of power which permeate, characterise and constitute the social body, and these relations of power cannot themselves be established, consolidated nor implemented without the production, accumulation, circulation and functioning of a discourse (1980f: 93).

Herein lies the nexus between power and knowledge, that ‘we are subjected to the production of truth through power and we cannot exercise power except through the production of truth’ (1980f: 93). Power is thus said to never cease in ‘its interrogation, inquisition and registration of truth’, while ‘truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it (Foucault, 1980e: 133). Foucault considered his aim to be writing a political history of the production of ‘truth’, as society ‘produces and circulates discourse having truth as its

49 function, passing itself off as such and this attaining specific powers’(1988c: 112). It is therefore understood that in discourse, power and knowledge are joined together (1978a: 100).

Foucault may use the term discourse frequently, but Sara Mills suggests it is one of the most contradictory. While she states that discourse may be understood ‘as a regulated set of statements which combine with others in predictable ways’ (2003: 53–54), the important point is that in each society discourses exist because of complex practices which keep some in circulation and not others. This does not mean discourse is understood as a binary concept comprising accepted and excluded discourse. The world of fundamentalist discourse, for example, may be conceived of as a ‘multiplicity of discursive elements that come into play in various strategies…things said and those concealed, the enunciations required and those forbidden’ (Foucault, 1978a: 100). This world includes the variations associated with who is speaking, what is he saying and repeating, and what is his (most specifically his) position of power in the society/church. Foucault thus describes his purpose as being to focus on the positivity and productivity of such discourses, their conditions of existence, and the systems which may regulate and allow their emergence, functioning and transformation (1978b: 23).

Each society is thus said to have its own regime of truth, the types of discourses which it accepts and makes function as true, mechanisms which distinguish between true and false, techniques which might be recognised as valuable in acquiring such truth, and status given to some who are specifically charged with saying what counts as true (Foucault, 1980e: 131). The regulation of discourse within CF is under investigation, as it is understood that ‘the production of discourse is at once controlled, selected, organised and redistributed by a certain number of procedures whose role is to ward off its powers and dangers, to gain mastery over its chance events, to evade its ponderous, formidable materiality’ (Foucault, 1981: 52). The control of discourse is therefore not a neutral endeavour within CF, but ‘the thing for which and by which there is struggle, discourse is the power which is to be seized’ (emphasis added, Foucault, 1981: 53).

Moreover, there exists a ‘gradation of discourses’, with some that are said indefinitely, thus always remaining said, and even said again and again (Foucault, 1981: 57). That is, discourse is not analysed as a system of language, but as ‘the law of existence of statements, that which rendered them possible…the conditions of their singular emergence’ (Foucault, 1978b: 14), with attendant rules for each different society. For example, this research attempts to investigate various questions around the use of fundamentalist church discourses. What are the limits and forms of the sayable? Which utterances are put into circulation, and which are suppressed? Which discourses of previous eras are imported, reconstituted and repeated?

50 Which individuals and groups have access to, and the authority to repeat, particular discourses? In other words, the analysis of the discourses within the church community is not about the mind which engendered it, but ‘the practical domain in which it is deployed’ (1978b: 15), and how it creates and shapes the Christian subject.

Truth, confession and obedience within Christianity

Before moving on to an explication of Foucault’s conception of power, it may be asked at this point: how does Foucault specifically deal with issues of truth and discourse in his writings about Christianity? The scholar Jeremy Carrette offers considerable weight to the growing body of literature within religious studies, which is using Foucauldian ideas to explore religious and theological themes, from what may be called the ‘fragments’ of documentation of the potential completed work—the fourth volume of The History of Sexuality.11

When Foucault died in 1984, he had been speaking of ‘the Christian book’ (Carrette, 1999: 43) however the terms of his will have unfortunately prevented its complete publication. Delivered at the Collège de France in 1980, the lectures entitled ‘On the Government of the Living’ seem to comprise some missing pieces in the Foucauldian puzzle (Landry, 2009). Carrette considers the division between silence and speech as forming the lynchpin in his reading of Foucault, which reveals the watershed between the two aspects of his religious critique: ‘spiritual corporality’ and ‘political spirituality’ (Carrette, 2000: 4). The former is associated with the religious sub-texts of his early work, while the latter shifts the emphasis to a political concern, where religion is no longer allowed to exist in a neutral space, but now silences and controls through the mechanism of pastoral authority. The concept of ‘pastoral power’ will be considered below, but firstly the question of silence and confession in the light of the above discussion of discourse and truth is relevant.

Foucault first introduced the idea of Christianity as ‘confessional’ in The History Of Sexuality (Volume 1), concluding that ‘the confession became one of the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth’ (1978a: 59 ). He considers it has become a ‘ritual of discourse…that unfolds within a power relationship, for one does not confess without the presence (or virtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but the authority

11 It should be noted at this point that this thesis is dealing with CF as defined in Chapter 2, and recognises that Foucault’s Roman Catholicism is quite socio-culturally different to this definition. His understanding therefore of the current practice of CF is obviously limited and partial. I would argue that he proposes a fictive and critical effect from his writing, rather than suggesting a knowledge of the being, or exiting, of actual lived CF. 51 who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it…’(1978a: 61). In modern discourse, the notion of confession has been said to be organised in such a way that ‘it becomes impossible for an individual to believe that she has developed a “healthy” identity without acknowledging troubling hidden secrets about the self’ (Parker, 1989: 61). One is liberated by producing deep-felt ‘real’ needs that conform to prevailing cultural norms; the more you confess to become ‘liberated’, paradoxically the more bound one becomes within the strictures of the prevailing cultural norms. Confession invites and requires obedience.

Foucault consistently interprets Christianity as a confessional religion in his later works, which contributes to the political ordering and shaping of the Christian subject. Jean-Michel Landry argues that in the final lectures Foucault establishes a genealogy of confession which is in fact a genealogy of obedience: ‘the movement through which the subject discovers and reveals what he is constitutes one of the principle sources of his obedience’ (2009: 112-114). Foucault also states that:

Christianity imposes very strict obligations of truth, dogma and canon, more so than do the pagan religions. The duty to accept a set of obligations, to hold certain books as permanent truth, to accept authoritarian decisions in matters of truth, not only to believe certain things, but to show that one believes…are all characteristic of Christianity (2003: 161–162).

While Foucault acknowledges that there are differences within the Catholic and Reformed traditions, both are said to feature an ensemble of ‘truth obligations’ dealing with ‘faith, books and dogma’. But there are more ‘truth obligations’ implicated in the creation of the religious subject, and these are the ones dealing with ‘truth, heart and soul’ (2003: 162). Therefore these particular truth obligations become enmeshed with speaking, confessing and obeying.

From the days of Christian penance to the present day, Foucault names sex as a ‘privileged theme of confession’ in this context, because ‘it is in the confession that truth and sex are joined, through the obligatory and exhaustive expression of an individual secret’ (Foucault, 1978a: 61). The question of fabricating and controlling sexuality within CF, through confession and other technologies, is considered a little later.

Confession, as a way of discovering and deciphering the truth about the self, can be characterised by two discourses. Firstly, Foucault describes exomologesis, or the emphatic affirmation of the truth of one’s faith (which is not yet a verbal confession but related to penitence (Landry, 2009: 118)) from Christians in the first centuries. Secondly, he describes exagoreusis from the fourth century monastic life (as described by the monk John Cassian)

52 with an emphasis more on thought than action (Foucault, 2003). This second ‘technology of the self’ marks the beginning of ‘the Christian hermeneutics of the self with its deciphering of inner thoughts’ (Foucault, 2003: 165), and the implication that there is something hidden in ourselves which requires constant verbalisation and self-renunciation. The monastic subject is compelled to confess his thoughts to a director to whom he owes unconditional obedience and so confession and obedience become a single requirement. The Christian subject can only produce the truth about himself if he so submits himself and renounces his will. Therefore behind the ‘reflexive acts of truth’ and the ‘tell me who you are’ of confession, lies the political technology of obedience (Landry, 2009: 120–122).

Thus Foucault, without writing a specific and explicit archaeology of the Christian church (Carrette, 2000: 31), definitely identifies Christianity as a fundamental regime of power, operating alongside and within other regimes of power. This is how the church community may enact ‘government’ in the Foucauldian sense: through the contact point where individuals being driven by others are tied to the way they conduct themselves. Governing the Christian community is therefore not forcing them to do ‘what the governor wants’ but maintained through a ‘versatile equilibrium, with complementarity and conflicts between techniques which assure coercion and processes through which the self is constructed or modified by oneself’ (Foucault, 1999a: 162). In short, the techniques of the self are thus oriented towards the discovery and the formulation of the truth concerning oneself—examination of conscience and confession being fundamental to Christian regimes of power. As Lois McNay helpfully summarises: ‘the confessing subject is both the instrument and effect of domination’ (1992: 87).

An important point made here by Carrette is that while Foucault’s work predominantly sees silence as a characteristic of the oppressed and excluded (particularly in his work on madness and the prisons), there is a great difference between ‘being silent and being silenced’ (2000: 33). There may exist the excluding or including powers of speech within Christianity, as well as the power that demands confession and telling—but may there also be power within silence? I would argue that the concept of Christian confession itself is not fully defined or unravelled by Foucault, perhaps only within the time period described by John Cassian (c.365- c.435), and definitely not to the current day and its modern equivalents. Nonetheless, Foucault does have a bigger vision for his interest in Christian confession, stating:

I have tried to explain why I was interested in the practice of self-examination and confession. These two practices seem to me to be good witnesses for a major problem,

53 which is the genealogy of the modern self. This genealogy has been my obsession for years… (Foucault, 1999a: 169 n. 126)

Foucault thus recognises the processes of subjectification at the heart of Christianity through a strategic alliance of power, discourse and truth (Carrette, 2000: 40). However his ‘religious question’ lacks the detail of moving beyond confessional monastic life to a thorough consideration of religious ideas, theology, doctrine and practice in the modern era while also not providing a consideration of the politics of silence. This study will go some way to extend these ideas and offer additional weight to the idea of a ‘political spirituality’ (1991b: 82), which can potentially be resisted, and politically re-fashioned.

Truth, the first axis of the Foucauldian triangle, has now been considered. This leads to a discussion of Foucault’s conception of power.

Power

The key concepts to be discussed along this axis are: power and subjectivity, the dispersal of power, the apparatuses of power (including panopticism and normalisation), and pastoral power within the frame of Christian identity projects.

Power is not viewed simply as constraining and repressing, but is understood first and foremost as ‘the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organisation’ (Foucault, 1978a: 92). Power is thus understood as being everywhere, even ‘co-extensive with the social body’, not as a binary structure with ‘dominators’ on one side and ‘dominated’ on the other, but rather ‘a multi form production of relations of domination which are partially susceptible of integration into overall strategies’ (Foucault, 1980c: 142). In sum:

Power is employed and exercised through a net-like organisation. And not only do individuals circulate between its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power. They are not only its inert or consenting target; they are always also the elements of its articulation. In other words, individuals are the vehicles of power, not its point of application (1980f: 98).

What is clear therefore is that Foucault sees power not as inherently evil, but better understood strategically (1988a: 18). Deleuze comments further by stating that ‘power has no essence; it is simply operational. It is not an attribute but a relation’ (1988: 27). It may be asked then how power is produced, what strategic games and apparatuses of power are employed, and in what form may these be found in CF. In Discipline and Punish, Foucault wanted to show that from 54 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries onwards, there existed what he called a new ‘economy of power…which allowed the effects of power to circulate in a manner at once continuous, uninterrupted, adapted and “individualised” throughout the entire social body’ (1980e: 119). As he quite reasonably suggests, ‘if power were never anything but repressive, if it never did anything but to say no, do you really think one would be brought to obey it?’ (Foucault, 1980e: 119). He continues: ‘we must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it “excludes”, it “represses”, it “censors”…In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truth’ (1991a: 194).

He thus critiques dated notions of sovereignty and centralised power, and makes way for his description of power as productive within a range of different institutions that perpetuate common disciplinary practices such as internalising self-regulation, or the disciplining of the self by the self. The images that stand out as most relevant to this discussion of CF are ‘panopticism’ (including normalising judgment) and the ‘carceral archipelago’.

Firstly, Foucault considers Jeremy Bentham’s architectural figure of the panopticon (a circular building with a central observation tower) as an ideal mechanism of power, described by Deleuze as the ‘prison apparatus as an optical machine, used for seeing without being seen’ (1992: 160). The principle is that the individual is subjected to a field of visibility, and as a result of this knowledge, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power. The person inscribes in him/herself the power relation in which s/he simultaneously plays both roles—s/he becomes the principle of his/her own subjection (Foucault, 1991a: 202–203). Within evangelical communities, I have previously suggested that this apparatus of power could be termed ‘the Christian normalising gaze’ (McSkimming, 2009), which demonstrates the threefold functions of panopticism—supervision, control and correction (Foucault, 2002b: 70). This all-seeing eye of power potentially leads to the rise of the ‘Christian norm’ where people maintain surveillance over their own lives and the source of power is not visible. Hence modern systems of power, like CF, actually recruit persons into collaborating in the subjugation of their own lives; people become willing participants in the policing of their own lives inviting a constructed and continually monitored internalised identity. This study inquires how this Christian gaze may affect people’s sense of who they are and should be.

Finally, Foucault describes the ‘carceral archipelago’ (the prison as a series of islands) transporting prison techniques to the entire social body, such that ‘judges of normality are everywhere…and each individual, wherever he may find himself, subjects it to his body, his gestures, his behaviour, his aptitudes, his achievements’ (Foucault, 1991a: 304–305). Within such a ‘universal reign of the normative’, the creation of ‘docile and useful bodies’ is the result

55 within the carceral city (1991a: 305). A docile body is one that may be ‘subjected, used, transformed and improved’ through such technologies of power as the panoptic disciplinary gaze (1991a: 136). Within the society of CF, the concept of the subtly coerced docile body with a fabricated requisite ‘sexuality’ now requires some consideration.

Sexuality

In The Use of Pleasure, Foucault states that he is undertaking a genealogy or field of investigation of the ‘history of desiring man’, asking why sexual conduct may be such ‘an object of moral solicitude’ (1990b: 6, 10). The very creation of the term ‘sexuality’, as opposed to sex, is understood as an apparatus of power, with the construction of sexuality said to be along three axes: knowledges about sexual behaviour, systems of power which regulate the practices of sexual acts, and the forms within which individuals are able and obliged to recognise themselves as subjects of this sexuality (Foucault, 1990b: 4).

The problematisation of sexual behaviour thus forms yet another chapter of that general history of the ‘techniques of the self’, again indicating the manner in which one ‘ought to form oneself as an ethical subject acting in reference to the prescriptive elements that make up the code’ (Foucault, 1990b: 26). The techniques of normalising and promoting heteronormative sexual behaviour in fundamentalist churches could be considered not only as a potent site of self-subjugation, but also potentially of resistance and a re-forming of the Christian self. The political significance of the problem of sex in the CF church may well be due to the fact that ‘sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population’ (Foucault, 1980e: 125). Therefore as sexual behaviour is regulated, so the group is contained and bodies are rendered compliant, malleable and docile. Such sexual containment within the castle, with specific repercussions for dissidence and unauthorised exits, will become a focus of the forthcoming analysis.

Pastoral Power

Before introducing the final axis of the self and subjectification, the concept of pastoral power (Foucault, 1988b: 67f) will be explored given its relevance to the topography of subjectification. In Foucault’s study of early Christianity, he considered the evolution of pastorship again in relation to the technology of power. Firstly, the shepherd is to assume responsibility for the eternal destiny of each and every sheep, while the sheep, or individual, remains in a submissive, dependent relation with the shepherd. Obedience is thus seen as a virtue in itself, which in turn requires an individualising, special type of knowledge between the pastor and each of the sheep. Indeed, the pastor must know what is going on in the soul of 56 each one, requiring such techniques as self examination, confession (as described above), guidance and obedience.

Foucault considers the aim of these techniques is to create a kind of ‘everyday death’ (1988b: 70) which points to life in another world, and with such mortification becoming a constitutive part of the Christian identity. As discussed above, within Christianity each person ‘has the duty to explore who he (sic) is, what is happening within himself, the faults he may have committed, the temptations to which he is exposed… [and is] obliged to tell these things to other people’ (Foucault, 1999b: 182). I would argue that it is possible to move beyond public penitence at liturgical ceremonies and regular monastic confessions (which were central to Foucault’s analysis) and consider the modern forms of the ‘shepherd-flock game’ (Foucault, 1988b: 71) observed in CF. Such modern equivalents of early monastic confessional practices could include the Bible study home-groups of CF, and the explicit and implicit invitations to make personal disclosures and adjust behaviour according to the demands of the small group within the larger group. This is yet to be explored.

Foucault adds that the ‘shepherd-flock game’ has been nicely combined with the ‘city-citizen game’ in what we may now call modern states (1988b: 71). The Australian sociologist Mitchell Dean suggests that this particular constitution of subjectivity makes it a prelude to Foucault’s writings on governmentality, and that many forms of expertise in the twenty-first century, such as those that involve the ‘psy’ disciplines (e.g. psychology and social work) also seek a knowledge of the individual and his/her inner existence, and that the individual should practise various forms of self-renunciation (2010: 92). Rose also considers that Christianity was crucial in the development of the modern western self, as self-inspection came to replace the confessional (1990: 218–220). The self as sinner and judge therefore features not only in the pastorate, but becomes the foundation of modern democracy. External constraints translated to internal constraints means the formation of subjects who are prepared to ‘take responsibility for their actions and for whom the ethic of discipline was part of their very mental fabric’ (1990: 223). These ideas thus intersect with the truth game of confession and obedience described above.

While modern governmentalities may have inherited such processes of dissecting the self, servitude, and a relation to truth within the self, Carrette more recently argues that Foucault’s understanding of the relationship between power and resistance may be found within his writings on the Christian pastorate (2013). That is, he refers to ‘the correlation between conduct and counter-conduct’ or ‘revolts of conduct’ (Foucault, 2009: 196) developed early in Christianity—for example, in the life and work of Martin Luther and the Methodist breakaway

57 movements in the latter half of the eighteenth century. It may be asked whether such revolts have the potential to continue the disruption of pastoral technology in the present day. Foucault suggests conflicts of conduct will occur at the borders of the political institution, and may challenge the whole pastoral practice of salvation. He thus writes in relation to counter- conduct: ‘we do not wish to obey these people…we do not want this truth…we do not want to be held in this system of observation and endless examination that continually judges us, tells us what we are in the core of ourselves’ (2009: 201). He considers that such counter-conduct historically has also included the religious practices of mysticism and asceticism, which both have the potential to ‘redistribute, reverse, nullify, and partially or totally discredit pastoral power in the systems of salvation, obedience and truth’ (2009: 204). I will return to this intriguing suggestion about the potential for alternative religious counter-conduct and political spirituality in the following chapter.

In short, I would consider that Foucault hardly holds a benign or sanguine view of Christian pastoral power, but that his work could point to how the shepherd-flock game, with attendant counter-conduct, may be played out in modern CF. Theological scholar Elizabeth Castelli, for example, suggests that early Christianity may be thought of as an ‘emerging regime of truth…along with practices of policing bodies and ordering populations…through discourse of self identical truths… and authoritative discourse’ (1991: 49). The repeated discourse of the privileged pastoral speaker thus emerges as a point worth re-emphasising, along with the call to sameness through the promotion of a particular understanding of ‘truth’ and the potentially ‘cloned’ Christian self-monitored identity. Following Castelli, I would therefore suggest that reinscribing differences cannot occur without ‘an adequate analysis of structures of domination and relationships of power, and their connections to the ongoing shapings of identity’ (1991: 135), which is indeed the very backbone of this study.

Self

Subjectivity for Foucault is demonstrably not found in the tradition of Descartes that describes self-founded subjects activating individual potential through self-reflective insight. The final axis of self sees Foucault drawing the string tighter between productive net-like power and subjectivity in the production of the discursive, self-modifying subject. What emerges is the recognition of an interiorised subjection, with the potential for resistance.

To further explain the question of subjectivity, Deleuze introduces the idea of the ‘four foldings’ in his development of Foucault’s theme of the inside being merely the fold of the outside (1988: 97–107). He saw that the folding of the exteriority does have the possibility of establishing a subjectivity, which while derived from power and knowledge, is not dependent 58 upon it (1988: 101). There is the fold of the material part of ourselves—our body and its pleasures. There is the fold of the relation between forces, or apparatuses of power. There is the fold of knowledge or the constitution of ‘truth’ in relation to ourselves. Finally, there is the fold of the outside itself—the ultimate fold, including the subject’s hopes for immortality, eternity, salvation, freedom, death or detachment.

It is through these folds that Deleuze ponders the question of resistance, which will be discussed in the following chapter. There never ‘remains’ anything of a subject, since s/he may be constantly a new creation depending on the folding—which may in fact bend each power. He wonders if modern subjectivity may rediscover the body and its pleasures, for example, or if the struggle for subjectivity presents itself therefore ‘as the right to difference, variation and metamorphosis’ (1988: 106). A criticism of Foucault has been, and still is, that ‘his representation of society as a network of omnipresent relations of subjugating power seemed to preclude the possibility of meaningful individual freedom’ (Gordon, 1991: 4). Deleuze therefore offers compelling expansive concepts around the questions of change, resistance and potential transformation.

This becomes relevant as I turn to Foucault’s final two years of lectures, to which Foucault gave the title ‘the government of one’s self and others’. The consideration of government as the shaping of human conduct and acting on the governed ‘as a locus of action and freedom’ may well entail the possibility that ‘the governed are to some extent capable of thinking and acting otherwise’ (Dean, 2010: 23), providing some additional theorisation around resistance. In his genealogy of the modern subject and consideration of the hermeneutics of the self, Foucault thus moves beyond pure disciplinary power to the interplay between ‘technologies of individual domination’ and ‘technologies of the self’ (Foucault, 2003: 147). He names the foundational technologies within Christian practices as producing this interiorisation or subjectification of the self.

The first technology from Christianity is the constitution of the self as a hermeneutical reality—that there is truth in the subject and that true discourses can be articulated concerning it (Foucault, 1999a). As philosopher James Bernauer observes, the deciphering of one’s soul is an important dimension of the subjectivity that related self-to-self, the Christian self being ‘an obscure text demanding permanent interpretation through ever more sophisticated practices of attentiveness, decipherment and verbalisation’ (2004: 80). Secondly, and somewhat paradoxically, Foucault considers that the revelation of the truth about oneself cannot be dissociated from the obligation to renounce oneself. That is, the purpose of the Christian hermeneutic of the self is to foster a renunciation of the self who has been objectified. All truth

59 claimed about that self is indeed tied to the sacrifice of that same self (Bernauer, 2004: 81). In other words, truth, sacrifice and self-renunciation always remain deeply and closely connected. While the martyrdom of the early church is not the contemporary manifestation of such self- sacrifice and self-renunciation, this research investigates whether there may well be modern equivalents within CF. These may include the decipherment and subsequent sacrifice of sexual expression, or the normalisation and renouncement of individual choices around, for example, career and relationships.

The salient point is that in these later writings, Foucault summarises his life work of creating a history of the practices of self-formation of the subject, but also extends the analysis. He describes a crisis of the subject, rather than a crisis of subjectification, as he turns his thinking to the manner in which an individual may form himself (sic) as ‘the ethical subject’ (1990a: 95). An art of existence is considered that which:

…revolves around the question of the self, of its dependence and independence, of its universal form and of the connection it can and should establish with others, of the procedures by which it exerts its control over itself, and of the way in which it can establish a complete supremacy over itself (1990a: 238–239).

He therefore wonders whether everyone’s life could become a ‘work of art’ and considers ethics as the kind of relationship one has with oneself, the determining factor in ‘how the individual is supposed to constitute himself as a moral subject of his own actions’ (1984b: 350–352). This is the ethical substance relevant for ethical judgment. He considers that in moving from the classical age, Christianity not only has a different ethical substance, namely eradicating the flesh and desire, but also a different mode of subjection, being divine law. The telos, or purpose, also changes towards immortality and purity. As stated, such a Christian self requires constant examination and renunciation.

My question at this point concerns how those exiting CF may reconstitute themselves as ethical subjects beyond the previous Christian hermeneutics of the self. As Graham Burchell states, when we change our relation to government, we are also required to change our relation to ourselves, to change our ‘subjective self identity’ (1991: 146). It is then that we realise how a political power has impinged upon our individual lives, that we really feel it. It is a question of this research to consider the changed relationship of the individual to the government of CF in re-forming the self with a possible new ethical substance.

This is also important in considering the notion of apparently ‘liberating’ our sexuality. Foucault sees the problem as ‘to try and decide the practices of freedom through which we

60 could determine what is sexual pleasure and what are our erotic, passionate, relationships with others’ (Foucault, 1988a: 3–4). It is therefore about the ethical practice of liberty, a deliberate practice of liberty, which has the care of the self as its imperative. Maybe the problem of the self is not to discover or change the self, but to change those technologies that propose a knowable and fixed truth or hermeneutic of the self (Foucault, 1999a). The examination of the ethical practice of sexual liberty post-exit as a re-formation of the self thus becomes a focal point within this research and will emerge within the data analysis.

Finally, it is worth noting that Foucault’s final lectures comprise an extensive genealogy of parrhēsia, or the practices of truth-telling, throughout Classical history. He describes this notion of free-spokenness, or ‘telling all’, as moving beyond political practice towards the sphere of personal ethics and the formation of the moral subject, where the speaker takes some kind of risk in speaking his (sic) opinion and his thoughts (2011a: 8). This risk concerns the relationship with the person to whom he is speaking, as considerable courage is required when speaking the truth confronts the risk of offending and provoking the other person even to violence (2011a: 11). Thus parrhēsia is not a skill, but a ‘way of being which is akin to a virtue’ (2011a: 14). Additionally, Foucault sees mysticism as an enduring counter-conduct within parrhēsia, offering some weight to the development of an alternative political spirituality mentioned earlier.

And it seems to me that the long and difficult persistence of mysticism…is nothing other than the survival of the parrhesiastic pole of confidence in God, which, not without difficulty, has subsisted in the margins against the great enterprise of anti- parrhesiastic suspicion that man is called upon to manifest and practice with regard to himself and others, through obedience to God, and in fear and trembling before this same God (2011b: 337).

How parrhēsia becomes significant in the re-formation of the self among those who leave CF remains an intriguing question, and potentially a frame to understand such practices as mysticism and the anti-confessional care of the self.

Conclusion

This chapter has provided an overview of Foucault’s post-1968 oeuvre relevant to the argument of this thesis, including a discussion of Foucauldian genealogy and a theoretical analysis of the triangle of truth, power and self. It has also provided the theoretical foundation of a genealogy of identity change within CF, which will find its counterpart within the later

61 data analysis chapters. The dispositif within and beyond CF is the grid of the interacting power/knowledge assemblages and forces on the self-construction of identity.

The discussion opened the door to Foucault’s reflections on anti-pastoral resistance and revolt within the context of disaffiliation from CF. His naming of political spirituality suggests alternative, parrhesiastic practices involved in the self-fashioning of a new spirituality. His life work perhaps finds its heart in his description of the self as ‘a work of art’, and the possibility of the re-forming of an alternative ethical substance. The discussion now turns to the post- panopticon literature and the further development of conceptual thinking around resistance, counter-conduct, refusal and potential freedom.

62 Chapter 4

The post-panopticon literature: resistance and freedom

Introduction

The previous chapter outlined the Foucauldian theoretical framework of this project, placing it beyond social constructionism and within post-structuralism. A theoretical genealogy of subjectification within CF was commenced, which will be layered further through this research project. Many post-Foucauldian scholars, in a chronological sense, have embraced the Foucauldian triangle of truth, power and self in various attempts to make sense of social worlds worthy of investigation. This chapter will now expand on what is considered the most relevant theorising to the topic of Christian subjectification. The discussion will be followed by a critique of Foucault’s constructs of resistance and freedom, again introducing ideas from the post-panopticon literature, which will strengthen the theoretical spine of this project within the forthcoming data analysis.

Post-Foucauldian scholarship and governmentality

It was Foucault’s contemporaries in France who created the groundswell for other thinkers around the loss of freedom and the western democratic normalising project reproducing the social order. The sociologist Robert Castel introduced the concept of the psychiatric society and ‘psychiatric imperialism…as an irresistible tide’ (1982: 255), while Jacques Donzelot, a historian and sociologist, famously wrote of the family as ‘queen and prisoner’(1979: 7). He regarded the procedures that transformed the family as foundational to the well-policed character of modern societies.

The contribution of Nikolas Rose and his writings on the connections between subjectivity and networks of power would seem to draw some inspiration not only from Foucault, but also these French academics. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Rose has a specific interest in the ‘therapeutic culture of the self’, with what he describes as the emergence in the second half of the twentieth century of ‘the invention of the desiring, relating, actualising self’ (1990: xii– xiii). How one lives the good or moral life has been transposed from the ethical to the psychological register; the management of the contemporary self now requires the modern organisation to manage subjectivity and create expertise in the field. While Rose and Castel, among others, may write of the ‘psy’ disciplines as being key to this process, it is suggested that church communities as contemporary governments also require a network of experts and ‘engineers of the soul’ (Rose, 1990: 3). Not only may there be pastors and Bible study leaders, 63 but perhaps Christian counsellors and other leaders who can be counted on to reproduce power/knowledge discourses.

This system of power depends on two key technologies of subjectivity. Firstly, we need to recognise ourselves as ideally a certain type of person, thus ‘unease is generated by the normative judgment of what we are and could become’ and we are incited to overcome this discrepancy by following our chosen experts in the management of the self (Rose, 1990: 11). The second foundational technology of power in this context is the use of an authoritative discourse—specifically, the Christian Bible. The normative and privileged status of the New Testament as one of the master discourses of western culture may be said to have not occurred by accident, or within an ideological free market. Castelli suggests that the literature of the New Testament ‘is steeped in the discourse and ideology of power’, producing an elision of rhetorical and truth discourse (2004: 19–21). I would suggest that such scriptural authority, which invokes ‘God’s word’ in the application of a particularly narrow interpretation, thus creates the discourse of knowledge/power in parallel with the self-improvement project.

The argument of this thesis thus reflects similar contemporary studies of the analytics of governmentality. Governing as described here is not attempting to unify all under a general theory of government, but to contribute by drawing attention to the heterogeneity of authorities that have sought to govern conduct, of which the churches of CF represent just one. Further, Mitchell Dean suggests four dimensions of the study of governmentality (2010: 33f), which may be suggested as congruent with this research project. Firstly, ‘the fields of visibilities’ to be governed is characterised by, for example, Christian panopticism and the gaze. Secondly ‘the technologies of government’ to act upon human capacities includes distinct Christianised vocabularies, distinct types of authority, forms of judgment, ways of teaching ‘truth’ and inscription techniques (discussed below). Thirdly, ‘the types of practical rationality’ or know- how employed in practices of governing include strategic use of ‘sacred’ texts and explicit programs offered for training in various aspects of Christian life, most often evangelism. Finally, the characteristic ways of ‘forming identities’, both collective and individual, in order to attain the transformation of the subject into a confessing/renouncing subject, happen by eliciting various identifications particularly through small group participation and explicit disciplinary practices.

Post-Foucauldian feminist scholarship

Keeping the focus on governmentality invites a further consideration of Foucault’s bringing together of the body and sexuality. Carrette suggests that after Foucault, ‘religion and theology are seen as inseparable from questions about the body and sexuality’ (2000: 146). Religious 64 discourses are perennially concerned with what individuals are doing with their bodies in private, and seek ongoing disclosure about it. The contribution of feminist post-structuralist thinkers has been considerable in this regard, particularly in formulating a critique of Foucault and expanding this discussion into some alternative theorising about the body as a site of power, resistance and transformation.

Feminist scholars Irene Diamond and Lee Quinby describe the convergences of feminism and Foucault as fourfold (1988: x–xiii). Both identify the body as the site of power, or ‘locus of domination through which docility is accomplished and subjectivity constituted’; both attempt to de-throne assumptions around a universal selfhood and an attendant unitary morality; both are concerned with resisting the seduction of a totalising theory and an historical search for ‘origins’ and moving towards genealogy with its caution and reflexivity; both contribute to a contemporary understanding of ethics and freedom beyond appeals to human nature or human essence. While this thesis would acknowledge that such convergences have led to fertile explorations in the feminist and critical theory literature, there are also clear divergences and differences to be considered. For example, in the creation of Christian ‘docile bodies’ (Foucault, 1991a) as described in the previous chapter, it seems apparent that men and women have very different experiences, and this has been under-explored by Foucault.

According to the biographer John Barbour, the reasons why both men and women lose religious faith are often closely related to gender identity, suggesting that ‘so deeply formative of personal identity are conceptions of one’s gender and religious convictions, that a radical change in either requires significant change in the other’ (1994: 186). In his discussion of four deconversion autobiographies of women, he notes that each author rejects a religious tradition partly because of ‘its normative image of women, or its actual treatment of women’ (1994: 200). One further memoir by the feminist philosopher Mary Daly goes further insisting that ‘oppressive tendencies are not aberrations but the very stuff of Christianity, since its symbols are inherently oppressive’ (1992: 135), suggesting that misogyny is enshrined within its patriarchy.

Perhaps most significantly for the purposes of this study, philosopher Sandra Bartky points out that while Foucault’s accounts of disciplinary practices that produce the docile bodies of modernity may be a genuine tour de force, he treats the body as if it were one, as if the bodily experiences of men and women were the same, sharing a similar relationship to the institutions of modern life (1988: 63). Particular disciplinary practices directed against women’s bodies related to dieting, appearance and the propagation of anorexic practices have been comprehensively discussed in the literature (e.g. Bordo, 1993, Bartky, 1988, Orbach, 2009).

65 However this thesis aims to address how post-Foucauldian scholarship illuminates the apparatuses of power involved in modern church life such as Christian panopticism, the privilege of the male speaker of ‘truth’, and the maintenance of heterosexual dominance by external and internal monitoring. How are some Christian women turned into the docile companions of men, and men only? It is useful to think about these ideas under the metaphors of performativity and inscription.

Performativity and inscription

Judith Butler has proposed the influential concept of ‘performativity’ in her analysis of gender identity, arguing that gender is a performance, discursively constituted, something one does rather than one is. She writes: ‘what we take to be an internal essence of gender is manufactured through a sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylisation of the body’ (1999: xv). Jane Ussher then paraphrases her thus: ‘those who fail to “do” gender correctly may be punished by cultures and laws which have a vested interest in maintaining a stable distinction between men and women, and in positioning idealised constructions of woman and man as natural and incontestable’ (2006: 3). Within CF, the cultural ‘punishments’ for subverting gender requirements, the God-given naturalness of heteronormative practice, and phallocentric discourse may therefore reflect specific patriarchal vested interests.

Butler then asks how non-normative sexual practices may call into question the stability of gender as a category of analysis, arguing that under conditions of normative heterosexuality, policing gender is sometimes used as a way of securing heterosexuality (1999: xii). In fundamentalist churches, one may query how often the performance of gender norms is policed precisely in the service of shoring up heterosexual hegemony. For example, women may be explicitly excluded from speaking in church, the public realm, while apparently exercising influence in the private sphere of the heterosexual household. Kathleen Jones argues persuasively that such a dominant discourse of the exclusion of female voices from public authority is constructed on the basis of a conceptual myopia that normalises authority as a disciplinary, commanding gaze (1988: 120). This discourse then secures its authority by setting itself up in opposition to emotive connectedness or compassion, ensuring that authority is rule-governed and ‘rational’, excluding so-called ‘female’ speech. Women may thus perform gender by obeying explicit rules, subscribing to a particular notion of authority, and perhaps most importantly, internalising that the rules are God-given and God-inspired, requiring self-monitoring and self-surveillance.

Inscription devices as technologies of subjectification are also pertinent. These include texts, rituals, habits, discourse—any cultural technology that serves as a way of ‘encoding, 66 stabilising and enjoining being human’ that goes beyond the envelope of the person and may inscribe and perpetuate gender (Rose, 1998: 181). Elizabeth Grosz argues that bodies are ‘not only inscribed, marked, engraved, by social pressures external to them but are the products, the direct effects, of the very social constitution of nature itself’ (1994: x). She argues that cultural inscriptions thus ‘quite literally constitute bodies and help to produce them as such’ (1994: x). Misogynist thought (frequently justified scripturally within CF) maintains women’s secondary social position by containing them within bodies that are, as Grosz suggests, represented and then constructed as ‘frail, imperfect, unruly and unreliable, subject to various intrusions which are not under conscious control’ (1994: 13). As mentioned in Chapter 3, the construction of the evangelical woman as ‘equal but different’ in Sydney churches is a good example of this, maintaining gender specificity through inscription and performance.

In other words, women’s corporeal specificity is a hermeneutical reality, a truth able to be ascertained by Scripture as interpreted by ‘experts’, and used to explain and justify the unequal social positions women hold. As Foucault explains, ‘genealogy, as an analysis of descent, is thus situated within the articulation of the body and history. Its task is to expose a body totally imprinted by history and the processes of history’s destruction of the body’ (Foucault, 1984a: 83). The body is the target and instrument of power, with power and knowledge thus being ‘mutually conditioning’. As Grosz further argues, knowledge (in this case specialised God- knowledge) is ‘one of the conduits by which power is able to seize hold of bodies, to entwine itself into desires and practices’ (1994: 148). It is not just about social interaction or ideology, or even coercive practices—although there may be punishments for those resistant to rules. It is the strategic dispositif again constituting the female Christian subject as a docile, obedient body who will confess and renounce herself in regard to her subjectivity and sexuality. So the heterosexual, monogamous couple with the husband in a position of ‘headship’ remains front- and-centre of these church communities, discursively created and enmeshed by normative discourses and the governmentality exercised through internalised power/knowledge relations.

Further commentary is offered by psychologist Wendy Hollway who employs discourse in a Foucauldian sense to theorise about the practices and meanings which reproduce gendered subjectivity, or gender identity (1994). She delineates three discourses: the male sex-drive discourse, the have/hold discourse, and the permissive discourse. The ‘primitive necessity’ of male sexuality can co-exist with the Christian ideals of monogamy, partnership and family life with shared assumptions about sexuality being linked to reproductivity, heterosexuality and women as the object of men’s natural sexual urges. This is a good example of a power/knowledge relation, in that the knowledge produced by these discourses confers power on men, which in a circular way motivates them recurrently to take up that position. Hence, if 67 the woman embraces her ‘complementary positioning’ (not having access to an alternative discourse and practice), and/or her investment in being so positioned is paramount, then the discourse will be reproduced, and of course the requisite respective gender subjectivities (1994: 232–251).

In summary, the governmentality of CF may be further understood as comprising key technologies of subjectivity. There are normative judgments of who we are and who we should be entwined with authoritative Biblical discourse as propagated by accredited experts. These judgments are layered on gender specificity for Christian women being bodily performed, inscribed and self-reproduced. The theoretical discussion now inevitably moves towards the possibility of resistance, refusal, repudiation and counter-conduct.

Resistance, counter-conduct and counterstories

Foucault may have famously articulated that ‘there are no relations of power without resistances’ (1980c: 142), but there is a critique of Foucault within the literature related to his unrelenting descriptions of power where there appears no exit, almost approaching a ‘totalisation’ (Scheurich and McKenzie, 2008: 338). His lack seems to be in not providing a well-formulated theory of emancipation or resistance from the oppression he so thoroughly describes. Indeed, Jon Simon suggests that critics regard Foucault as ‘a prophet of entrapment who decries “power” yet sees it as ubiquitous and ineluctable’ (2013: 301).

Charles Taylor describes Foucault’s analysis of power as partly an ‘unmasking’, but wonders if there truly exists an escape from power into freedom, as such Foucauldian systems are co- extensive with human society hence we can theoretically only step from one to another (1986: 69–70). He disputes the relativism of Foucault’s Nietzschean model of truth, yet acknowledges the reasonableness of Foucault’s suspicion of global, totalitarian theories. I would agree with Taylor when he questions how possible or admirable it may be to step so completely outside the identities developed within western civilization, and that there is some incoherence in Foucault’s notion that power lacks a centre, so cannot be possessed and exercised by specific individuals or groups.

In their study of everyday resistances to power, Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey (2003: 1336f) helpfully argue that resistance and hegemony are relational, and that resistance entails a consciousness of being less powerful within a relationship of power. Resistance thus requires a consciousness of opportunity—an opening in a situation which one might turn to one’s advantage. Resistance thus represents a consciousness of both constraint and autonomy, power and possibility—while also making claims about justice and fairness. In this context, 68 philosopher Nancy Hartsock also considers that Foucault has made it very difficult to actually locate domination, including domination in gender relations (1990: 169). She comments that Foucault speaks of resistance rather than transformation (1990: 167), while McNay states that he lacks a rounded theory of agency and autonomy (1992: 3). In addition, as stated above, Grosz writes of his implicit assumptions of only writing of the ‘male body’ and his openness about women’s exclusion from his ethics or ‘techniques of the self’ primarily formulated in The Use of Pleasure (1994: 157f). In other words, while Foucault has painted a picture of disseminated and net-like power, it is also possible to hold in tension the concept that some groups have more power than others in certain contexts, including within fundamentalist churches.

As mentioned in the previous chapter, Carrette continues the critique by referring to Foucault’s under-development of the theory around the politics of silence, and the interrelationship between speech and silence as two forms of strategic power within religious discourse (2000: 32–37). He also critiques his lack of consideration of the discourse of theological belief and the link of such ideas to the control of the body (2000: 112–118). Therefore it may be asked whether internal protest, silence and alternative theological discourse (particularly concerning the body) emerge in this research as potential sites of strategic resistance for those enmeshed subjects who choose to embrace them.

Further, Carrette more recently (2013) emphasises Foucault’s fascination with religion as a cultural phenomenon—an historical reality, rather than religion as ‘faith’. Foucault described resistance, or dissidence, in this context as counter-conduct (2009). While the elements of counter-conduct are not fully theorised, Carrette argues that as Foucault discussed mysticism in medieval Christianity, he brought the interplay of authority and experience into focus. That is, ‘the force of resistance emerges through a validation of inner experience that overcomes the external demand for submission’ (2013: 378-9). This extraordinary idea (introduced at the end of the previous chapter as the survival of the parrhesiastic pole of confidence in God) may also apply to such elements as: the self-mastery required in asceticism, certain resistant communities, counter-readings of Scripture against pastoral authority, and even alternative eschatological beliefs. These all provide new hermeneutical possibilities to validate personal experience over authority. The mystical most particularly offers a reversal of the gaze from being seen, to seeing. It is even a move to self-seeing, as it questions authority and truth through the privileging of experience over specific teaching and church hierarchy. As Foucault states, ‘it has a completely different game of visibility’ (2009: 212). Such an idea of the reversal of the Christian normalising gaze towards self-seeing through privileging one’s own

69 experience, as well as embarking on dissident counter-conduct, will be considered in the forthcoming data analysis.

While naming the emergence of counter-conduct which privileges experience over authority, the concept of counterstories may also be introduced. Philosopher Hilde Lindemann Nelson argues that counterstories are stories of strong moral self-definition and self-expression, but they may also act as stories of repair and restitution (1996: 98), particularly in regard to master narratives generated by forces circulating within systems of oppression. If agency constricted in this way is to be freed, ‘the master narratives’ morally degrading representations must be resisted’ (2001: 150). She argues that ‘the author of a counterstory redescribes a dominant story, repudiates it for her or himself, and sets a new course that commits her or him to certain values for the future’ (1996: 98). Indeed, she is one of the few scholars who describe in some detail the how of resistance and counterstories, by considering the process of ongoing engagement with the master narratives they resist in gaining some purchase on the identity- constituting story that needs to be resisted. By becoming aware of the complex strategies of master narratives, counterstories may start small, like a seed in the crack of a footpath, ‘but they are capable of displacing surprising chunks of concrete as they grow’ (2001: 169). She echoes the Foucauldian concept of the registration and institutionalisation of truth (Foucault, 1980f) when she refers to such strategies of master narratives as ‘epistemic rigging’. That is, they assimilate resistance by wrapping a narrative tendril around people or facts that call the master narrative into question. In short, rather than absorb resistance, oppressive master narratives work to keep it from arising in the first place (Lindemann Nelson, 2001: 162).

To more fully develop such vocabulary around resistances, I refer to Bronwyn Davies’ helpful and perhaps less binary appreciation of a Foucauldian post-structuralist approach (incidentally not named as such by Foucault himself). She points out that such an approach provides conceptual possibilities that enable us to turn our gaze differently on our various social worlds and to turn our analytic gaze on the ongoing processes of our own subjectification. This means that although a woman in a particular church (for example) may well be ‘subjected, fragmented, in process [and] her body inscribed with cultural notions of what she should be’, she can ‘reinscribe, discover new storylines, invert, invent [and] break the bounds of old structures and old discourses’ (2000: 10, 47). Philosopher Paul Patton similarly explains that for Foucault the object of resistance is not the rejection of power as such, but the explicit criticism of certain ways of being governed (2009: 584). Alain Beaulieu also suggests it is about enacting a non-disciplinary and non-normalising control of the self. The care of the self allows the encouraging of great diversity in the absence of norms imposed from outside, while also transgressing pre-established norms (2006: 29–31). Foucault’s hope seemed to be not the 70 dissolution of games of power and games of truth but ‘to give one’s self the rules of law, the techniques of management, and also the ethics, the ethos, the practice of self, which would allow these games of power to be played with a minimum of domination’ (1988a: 18). That is, a diversity of resistant practices, including ethical self-government and self-seeing, emerge as possible options for an alternative re-fashioned political spirituality.

Jon Simon also more recently reconsiders Foucault’s conception of resistance, concluding that it is the most viable way under contemporary conditions to practice freedom (2013: 303). The exercise of freedom is seen as most possible when we loosen the tight stranglehold of the triadic relation of truth, power and self within which we are subjected, and are engaged in more ethical self-subjugation. He argues that while Foucault has been found wanting on normative grounds by political theorists, he is not in fact neutral towards power itself, evaluating modes of power relations according to their openness to agonism and practices of liberty (2013: 313-5). Foucault in fact clearly stated that it is inconceivable to speak of a society without restriction, however the question to be asked when considering the practices of freedom is whether these restrictions are ‘within the reach of those affected by them so that they at least have the possibility of altering them’ (1997: 148).

In other words, while Foucault may have intellectually nailed down the processes of subjectification and self-modification in his work, he perhaps left a comprehensive ‘genealogy of resistance’ (Gardiner, 1992: 162) to others who resonate with his oeuvre. Resistance in this study may represent a refusal to accept the heterogeneous processes of Christian normalisation, performance and inscription of gender roles, and the resurrection of subjugated knowledges and discourses. My research position thus resonates with that of Butler questioning whether the actual constitution of the (Christian) subject may lead to some active re-working of subjectivity. As she writes:

To claim that the subject is constituted is not to claim that it is determined; on the contrary, the constituted character of the subject is the very precondition of its agency. For what is it that enables a purposive and significant reconfiguration of cultural and political relations, if not a relation that can be turned against itself, reworked and resisted? (1995: 46)

She then provocatively asks: ‘how are we to understand not merely the disciplinary production of the subject, but [also] the disciplinary cultivation of ‘an attachment to subjection’ (1997: 102)? She thus suggests that the adult subject may well desire the conditions of his/her own subordination or subjection to actually persist as oneself, so dependent on a form of power one becomes for one’s very formation (1997: 9). Indeed, the suggestion is made in describing 71 identity formation that the ‘discursive site of injury’ actually becomes the site of some ‘radical reoccupation and resignification’ (1997: 104). That is, in the self-colonising trajectory of CF, identity may be constituted and re-constituted at turning points, often during the most injurious situations. However, responding with agency is not about an individual standing outside the social structures and processes, nor understood as freedom from such a discursive constitution of the self. It is about the capacity to recognise that constitution, then to subvert the discourses, even forge something new from injury through the invention of new words and concepts. Agency is thus fragmented, transitory, and able to be spoken into existence at any one moment, as occupying one discourse implies the non-occupation of another (Davies, 2000: 67– 68). Hilde Lindemann adds that identity may be understood as two interweaving strands of ‘the given’ and ‘the chosen’; among other things the given may be the identities others impose upon us, while the chosen may reflect our capacity to repudiate or endorse the many considerations that affect how we live and think (2014: 210).

McNay also sees promise in Foucault’s idea of self-fashioning through the technologies of the self. While Foucault may have been reluctant to establish normative guidelines or collective aims for the practices of the self, there is the chance for the constitution of oneself, and re- constitution of oneself, as an aesthetic re-invention (1992: 8). She emphasises the distinction between uncovering a true or essentialised self, and the re-invention of the self (1992: 89). Just as discourse transmits, produces and reinforces power, it also ‘undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it’ (Foucault, 1978a: 101). So in weaving questions of truth and discourse, the potential for resistance and re-invention for those who are entwined again emerges.

Finally, according to sociologist Vikki Bell, a strong theme in the post-panopticon literature is the emphasis on ‘the use of embodied performance to explore a tension between the one who appears and the one who performs’ (2006: 216). In other words, differently disciplined bodies can co-exist, move through different institutions, and operate in different capacities. In short, it may also be that through performing alternative selves and managing ‘double-lives’, other stories of resistance and change emerge. This concept also recurs in the analysis phase of the project. The discussion now leads into the profound and different contributions of Gilles Deleuze and Mikhail Bakhtin in amplifying, extending and storying the language of change and resistance.

Gilles Deleuze

Deleuze writes that when people are fascinated by Foucault, ‘it’s because they’re doing something with him, in their own work, in their own independent lives. It’s not just a question 72 of intellectual understanding or agreement, but of intensity, resonance, musical harmony’(1995: 86). Perhaps this reflects his and my own intrigue with the Foucauldian oeuvre.

He comments on Foucault’s different ways of existing not as a subject, but as a work of art, in the following way. ‘He’s talking about inventing ways of existing, through optional rules, that can both resist power and elude knowledge, even if knowledge tries to penetrate them and power to appropriate them’ (Deleuze, 1995: 92). As mentioned in the previous chapter, as Deleuze read The Use of Pleasure, he spoke about lines of subjectification being created by folding into oneself the forces, moments and knowledge that are outside of oneself. As Patton helpfully suggests, it is Deleuze’s ‘creative misinterpretation’ of Foucault that goes beyond his indirect questioning of ways of being, to the acquisition of the more ‘positive meaning of a becoming’ (2012: 73).

Deleuze writes that ‘states of things are neither unities or totalities but multiplicities’, and to extract concepts corresponding to a multiplicity is to trace the lines of which it is made up, to determine the nature of these lines, to see how they become entangled, connect, bifurcate…’ (2002: vii–viii). He thus proposes that our lines are crisscrossed by multiple lines of subjectification, that lines represent our geography, our cartography (Deleuze, 1995: 33). This does not mean that we can freely choose lifestyles at a buffet according to our taste, but that power and force constrain choices and that ‘people’s lives are specifically located in the intersection of lines, some that are culturally given and some that are constituted through their own response to what is given’ (Winslade, 1999: 335–336). What seems compelling here is the idea that ‘to leave, to escape is to trace a line’ (Deleuze and Parnet, 2002: 36f), not in the sense of a clean break, or a run-away-from-it-all metaphor, but to consider the flight as being like a journey. Flights are directions rather than destinations, such that bottlenecks are in the middle, one begins again through the middle, and what is interesting is in the middle. We may be ‘pinned up against the wall of our dominant significations…sunk in the hole of our subjectivity’, but the ‘becoming’ is possible. In other words, the flight is not imaginary but into art—‘to flee is to produce the real, to create life, to find a weapon’ (2002: 45-9). To be clear, Deleuze further emphasises the creative and artistic side of flight and resistance in the following statement:

73 There is no diagram that does not include, besides the points that it connects up, certain relative free or unbound points, points of creativity, change and resistance, and it is perhaps with these that we ought to begin to understand the whole picture (emphasis added, Deleuze, 1988: 44).

Deleuze also stretches vocabulary and words further with his ‘rhizomatic’ rather than ‘arborescent’ styles of thinking, in which there would not be a fixed centre or order, so much as a multiplicity of expanding and overlapping connections (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 3– 26). The rhizome is a botanical metaphor, where there is growth but not a beginning or end, being always in the middle (1987: 25). It is thus a nomadic not chronological metaphor, which resists a fixed definition.

Foucault may have described power arrangements as normalising and disciplining, while Deleuze the cartographer then comments that they ‘encode and reterritorialise’; flight lines may then become ‘shooting points of deterritorialisation’ (2006: 126–127). That is, life creates by forming connections or territorialisations, which are accompanied by processes of coding, de-coding and re-coding, which guide the investment of energy (Holland, 2013: 7); however the power of deterritorialisation always co-exists. The psychotherapist John Winslade adds that ‘lines of flight are shifts in the trajectory of a narrative that escape a line of force or power’ (1999: 337). He introduces the idea that changing one’s narrative may represent a line of flight and deterritorialising beyond certain disciplinary powers. The question of narrative will be explored more fully in the following chapter.

Defining these concepts further however is both elusive and complex. Music, for example, is described as a deterritorialising of the voice (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 302). Eugene Holland takes up the theme, as it were, suggesting that while jazz musicians may engage in relative deterritorialisation through improvisation, free jazz may be an instance of absolute deterritorialisation, operating at the extreme without chord charts—a creative line of flight (2013: 9). He further notes that the ethical imperative then is to open ourselves up to experimentation with lines of becoming that may become fibres, or ‘strings of borderlines’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 249), so that we may hold the thread of a tune, improvise and mesh with the world in different ways (Holland, 2013: 106).

Claire Colebrook cautions that reading Deleuze is not like adding one proposition to another, but keeping a sense of the whole. We are not trying to tidy up ideas, but to transform life and even complicate our ideas (2002b: xix). Lines of flight and true becomings are not to become more ‘human’ or ‘moral’ and do not have an end outside themselves with a pre-given purpose or goal (Colebrook, 2002a: 145). New ways of acting, doing, valuing, perceiving and 74 becoming are creatively explored by Deleuze, and this may be relevant in considering the narratives of those whose flight lines take them away from CF, to perhaps a free jazz line of flight. This is not however to suggest any reductionism or simplicity in applying Deleuzian philosophy within this study, but more a braiding together of theoretical ideas of transformation which will become relevant during the data analysis phase of the project.

Mikhail Bakhtin

The writings of the literary theorist Mikhail Bakhtin from the 1930s (and his students Valentin Volosinov and Pavel Medvedev) have been increasingly read alongside contemporary post- structural theory and offer texture to a potential genealogy of resistance within CF. Bakhtin writes that conventional psychological thinking supports the idea of the self-contained monologic individual: ‘hermetic and self sufficient whole, one whose elements constitute a closed system presuming nothing beyond themselves, no other utterances’ (1981b: 273). He introduces and illustrates the self as dialogic and relational.

Michael Holquist reminds us in his introduction to The Dialogic Imagination that a highly distinctive concept of language lies at the heart of everything Bakhtin wrote (1981b). Language exists on that border-zone or boundary between human consciousnesses, between a self and another. Thus the constitution of the self is related to the meeting of two consciousnesses (Morris, 1994b: 5), and without that, the self is potentially invisible, incomprehensible and unusable. As Bakhtin wrote: ‘to be means to communicate dialogically. When dialogue ends, everything ends…A single voice ends nothing and resolves nothing. Two voices is the minimum for life, the minimum for existence’ (1984: 252). This border-zone of continuous social interaction also takes account of the context, the social and political arena of different utterances. As Volosinov also wrote: ‘words are always filled with content and meaning drawn from behaviour or ideology… any true understanding is dialogic in nature’ (1994b: 33, 35), and ‘every utterance is the product of the interaction between speakers and the product of the broader social context of the whole complex social situation in which the utterance occurs’ (1994a: 41).

Thus it can be understood that the trope ‘heteroglossia’ lies at the centre of much of Bakhtin’s work (along with dialogism). All utterances are heteroglot, being a function of context (a matrix of forces including social, historical, physiological conditions) over text (Holquist, 1981a). Heteroglossia is thus more than equal interacting voices—it is about ‘the clash of antagonistic social forces’ (Morris, 1994a: 249). Michael Gardiner posits that the natural environment of the utterance is a ‘dialogised heteroglossia’, meaning that a specific ideological value and content may be imparted to it (1992: 34). Therefore within heteroglossia, 75 ‘authoritative discourse’ exists as privileged language, which approaches us from without. ‘Internally persuasive discourse’ on the other hand is more akin to a possible re-telling of a text or an idea in one’s own words (Holquist, 1981a: 424). As forces both centripetal and centrifugal (centralising and decentralising) act on us in language and culture (Bakhtin, 1981b), so disruption and revision become potent possibilities. Internally persuasive discourse can perhaps become ‘an artistic object of representation’ (Gardiner, 1992: 40), while folk culture (rather than authoritative discourse) becomes a deconstructive element, holding promise of change, renewal and even freedom.

Bakhtin further states that an ‘independent, responsible and active discourse is the fundamental indicator of an ethical, legal and political human being’ (1981b: 349–350), suggesting that this is achieved through a consciousness that starts to relativise the ‘authoritative or sacred word’ (Bakhtin, 1986: 133) against other voices within heteroglossia. Through double-voicing, the absolute bonding of authoritative ideology to inner speech is destroyed, with laughter and parody becoming powerful forces for freedom (Morris, 1994b: 16). Further, as Gardiner points out, the dialogic word is not a passive vehicle of neutral description or information, because as it is designed to provoke a response as a battle arena between two voices, it is charged with polemic, parody and evaluation (1992: 29).

Therefore, when diverse voices interact, we may struggle to assimilate the authoritative, or ‘given’, discourse with the internally persuasive discourse (Bakhtin, 1981b: 342f, Freedman and Ball, 2004). In that ‘zone of contact’, a person may be retelling a text in his or her own words, away from earlier persuasive words that have ceased to be meaningful. However, unlike authoritative discourse, internally persuasive discourse is subject to change and interacts with other ideologies. That is, ‘a variety of alien discourses enter into the struggle for influence within an individual’s consciousness (just as they struggle with one another in the surrounding social reality)’ (Bakhtin, 1981b: 348).

While it is acknowledged that all our utterances may thus be populated and colonised by the intentions of others, this research may illuminate that zone of contact experienced when people sift through and discard previously authoritative voices and revive internally persuasive discourse. Further, the spectre and feast of ‘carnival’ with its blasphemy, profanation of the sacred, lampooning and mocking of religious ritual (Bakhtin, 1984: 129–130) represents a powerful disruption to the authoritative discourse. Indeed, while Bakhtin may have been writing within the context of Soviet official authoritarianism (he was for a time incarcerated in a gulag), he was not just writing of specific political oppression and hegemony. He wrote of medieval folk humour, that ‘laughter overcomes fear, for it knows no inhibitions, no

76 limitations. Its idiom is never used by violence and authority… it resisted praise, flattery, hypocrisy. This laughing truth, expressed in curses and abusive words, degraded power’ (Bakhtin, 1968: 90–93). The ‘authoritative or sacred word’ on the other hand, is ‘inert’, freezing and retarding thought because it is removed from dialogue and ‘demands reverent repetition and not further development, corrections and additions’ (Bakhtin, 1986: 133). Mimicry, irony, parody and clowning are thus carnivalesque, and so centrifugal and dispersing of power, and may be understood to provide further conceptual ballast to the proposed genealogy of resistance.

Resistance in the Bakhtinian tradition is thus not amorphous, abstract and faceless, but unpredictable, open and heterodox in nature. It is reflexive and of course dialogical, subverting the monologic discourse. Dialogism is always predicated on the idea of the social, and the provocative assumption that ‘all meaning is achieved by struggle’ (Holquist, 1990: 39). As Bakhtin wrote just a few years before his death in 1975:

At any moment in the development of the dialogue there are immense, boundless masses of forgotten contextual meanings, but at certain moments of the dialogue’s subsequent development along the way they are recalled and invigorated in renewed form (in a new context). Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming festival (1986: 170).

To sum up, Deleuze may speak of lines of light and deterritorialisation, but Bakhtin suggests that ‘ideological becoming…is the process of selectively assimilating the words of others’ (1981b: 341). Gardiner thus concludes that while Deleuze and Foucault understand the subject as an ‘infinitely malleable and contingent constellation of forces’, Bakhtin and his circle subscribed to a subject more ‘historically-mutable, a socially-embedded complex of qualities, capacities and powers’ (1992: 74–75). While these thinkers are clearly intellectually distinctive, this analysis has attempted to bridge the divide through coupling and layering diverse ideas in the consideration of the nature of power and the multiplicity of possible resistances.

Freedom

But where does freedom fit in, and how may people express agency within systems of power? Can freedom be re-conceptualised or considered in the light of conversion and perhaps initial attraction to the discourse of ‘Christian freedom’? After all, the promotion of such Christian freedom is a central plank of prescribed evangelical discourse. People come to Christianity with the promise of freedom from sin and God’s eternal judgment, as well as a freedom to be 77 God’s child. There is said to be grace not punishment, and acceptance from God and the church community.

Firstly, to reiterate, Foucault’s power that applies itself to everyday life ‘categorises the individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to this own identity, imposes a law of truth on him that he must recognise and others have to recognise in him’ (2002a: 331). Such an exercise of power is considered ‘a conduct of conducts’ (2002: 341), a management of possibilities, a structuring of the possible field of action of others, and less of a confrontation between adversaries. This is how Foucault introduces the idea of freedom. In this game of government, freedom is the condition for the exercise of power. Because without the possibility of ‘recalcitrance’, power would be reduced to physical domination (Foucault, 2002a: 342). That is, no one is in actual chains in the modern systems of power that Foucault critiqued, or for that matter, mainstream evangelicalism.

As Rose comments, ‘to govern humans is not to crush their capacity to act, but to acknowledge it and to utilise it for one’s own objectives’(1999: 4). He thus considers freedom in a way not dissimilar to Judith Butler, in that governmentality is understood as neither a concept nor a theory, but a perspective. Freedom is thus the exercise of detachment from culturally given codes in order to practise a life of constant moral experimentation. It is about the capacity to judge, accept or transform the practices that may subjectify us, to become experts of ourselves, but ‘without requiring submission…to a truth produced by authorities’ (1999: 97). It is to invent ways of becoming other than what we are.

As suggested in Chapter 1, perhaps this is part of what people hope for in pursuing Christian freedom within the social movement of CF—to become other than who they are, and to find a community that teaches and promotes the promised acceptance and grace in a confusing, alienating modern world. Polish sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman, argues that, in the face of the time, effort and consuming activity of putting together, dismantling and rearranging a requisite self-identity, people look to fantasy groups and community where they may dissolve their personal fears in the might of numbers, imagining a cosy shelter of security and confidence (2001). The problem is that identity sought in such groups must belie its origin—that is, a globalised power network collaborating with the atomisation and privatisation of the struggles of life. Hence people find only a surrogate of community in their new identity quest for the imagined safe haven no longer available in an individualised, globalising world. The paradox is that identity, as a project, thus ‘sprouts on the graveyard of communities, but flourishes thanks to its promise to resurrect the dead’ (Bauman, 2001: 151).

78 This concept is intriguing as one returns to the idea of Christian freedom and people searching for legitimate alternatives for living their lives through joining a church community. As the socially-constructed identity in modernity is challenged, they perhaps seek the stable essentialised identity promised through the Biblical narrative and community, and requisite immersion in the assemblages of Christian freedom. This analysis asks whether people find that one system of subjectification is merely replaced by another potentially more potent form, or perhaps layered upon existing cultural modes of subjectification. The potency of control lies in any organisation’s ability not to crush subjectivity, but to align it with its own political and institutional goals along with the individual’s happiness and fulfilment. Therefore, in the spirit of Rose (1990: 257–258), it is suggested that the project of Christian freedom within CF communities may be found in the social practices that promote the obligation to be free. That is, church members are obliged to fulfil their roles as active communicants, enthusiastic evangelists, heterosexual partners and obedient participants to realise their own potential, wisdom and acceptability to themselves and their Creator. Again, the question is ultimately whether what is uncovered is yet another identity project that systematically recasts and reshapes their lives. Perhaps new ways of constituting the self are proposed and promised, but individualisation is perpetuated, with the promise (but not delivered for many) of the resurrected community.

Nonetheless, the possibility of agency may be restored—not as freedom from the discursive constitution of the Christian self but perhaps in the capacity to recognise that constitution and to resist, subvert, and challenge the discourses through which one is being constituted. As Foucault states, providing a foundation for others in re-imagining freedom:

There are times in life when the question of knowing if one can think differently than one thinks, and perceive differently than one sees, is absolutely necessary if one is to go on looking and reflecting at all (emphasis added, Foucault, 1990b: 8).

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the post-panopticon literature and provided some expansion and critique of Foucault’s triangle of truth, power and self, and his thinking around governmentality, resistance and freedom. Rose in particular further develops the concept of subjectification and therapeutic remodelling, providing scaffolding for theorising about Christian subjectification. Other feminist scholars expand ideas of performance and inscription in the creation of the gendered docile body, which is particularly relevant in the disciplinary control of heteronormative and patriarchal discourse found within CF. Foucault’s later writings on subjectivity provide the foundation for further storying of ideas of resistance and freedom. 79 Foucault allows for the reinvention of the self, not through self-discovery, but through refusal of what we have become. Deleuze proposes lines of flight, folding and deterritorialising in the process of transformation, while Bauman and Rose both wonder about the modern identity project of re-fashioning the self, with speculations around the potential for freedom. Bakhtin’s commitment to dialogism and ideological becoming within heteroglossia allows a perhaps more pragmatic and useable frame for a genealogy of resistance.

In short, Foucault might have promoted new forms of subjectivity while not developing a fully complete theory of resistance. Those post-structuralist scholars inspired by his work (excluding Bakhtin who obviously preceded him) develop in more depth the possibilities of such transformative techniques of the self. This chapter has brought together, braided and layered these diverse theoretical ideas and traditions to texture the concepts of counter- conduct, resistance and freedom. This theory will be re-introduced and applied in the analysis chapters of Part Two, which examine the identity narratives of those who have disaffiliated from CF. The next chapter will now describe the methods and inquiry process of the study as a dialogical narrative analysis magnified by a Foucauldian genealogy.

80 Chapter 5

Methodology

What’s your story? It’s all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them.

Rebecca Solnit,

The Faraway Nearby

Introduction

This chapter will outline the methodological framework of the study, including the data collection and data design, ethical issues, methodological dilemmas, and how reliability and validity were addressed. An overall qualitative research (QR) approach is proposed using a layered dialogic narrative analysis (DNA), alongside a Foucauldian genealogy which illustrates the subjectification and constitution of the Christian self, and the potential for reconstitution of the self with a different ‘ethical substance’ (Foucault, 1990b: 26). This methodology will be fully explained as congruent with, and emerging from, the theoretical discussion provided in the previous two chapters.

A four-pronged analysis is used, allowing a presentation of identity plotlines, a Foucauldian genealogy, a Bakhtinian lens, and a reflexive consideration of the process of co-construction with the researcher. Even more than a methodological bricolage, the layered analysis is considered through the artistic metaphor of Cubism when a painting is refracted through multiple lenses. This artistic ‘metasynthesis’ (Kinn et al., 2013) reflects the researcher’s absorption in the material as well as a creative contribution to contemporary post-structural research methods within a broader set of critical and social constructionist traditions.

The research questions below are therefore related to the social construction and storying of the Christian identity within a specific power/knowledge culture, its re-storying and de- storying.

 How may a Christian sense of identity be socially constructed, and what are the effects of apparatuses of power within church communities that shape that process?

81  What are the responses of people to the ‘apparatuses’ of power? How are gender differences negotiated and maintained?  What personal narratives do people tell about the change process, their new discursive self-concept and changing beliefs? How is the previous ‘Christian identity’ understood and de-storied?

Why narrative: philosophical background

The past 20 years has seen a rapid increase in the study of narrative across all the social sciences (Murray, 2000) with one of the foremost scholars in this arena being the psychologist Jerome Bruner, with the publication of Acts of Meaning (1990). He wrote that ‘the self is probably the most impressive work of art we ever produce, surely the most intricate’, and that ‘self making is a narrative art’ being our ‘principal means for establishing our uniqueness’ (2002: 15, 65–66). On first reading, it would appear that a narrative frame reinstates the social constructionism and humanism that were sidestepped for the Foucauldian theoretical analysis, and is contradictory to what has been outlined in the previous two chapters.

Before further describing the narrative analysis used in this study, it is important to explain why a narrative approach was considered most appropriate to study deconversion stories. Three particular features of narrative research were considered significant. Firstly, the very incoherence and diversity within the field provides a broad palette upon which to paint a constellation of analysis rather than more highly contested methods such as discourse analysis, or more rule-based grounded theory (Squire et al., 2013: 1). As Eliot Mishler comments: ‘depending on one’s temperament, the current state of near anarchy in the field might be cause for despair or exultation, for shaking one’s head or clapping one’s hands’ (1995: 88). There is in fact no single set of rules or a canon governing the process of narrative analysis (Minichiello et al., 2008: 276, Riessman, 2008: 53, Holstein and Gubrium, 2012, Squire et al., 2013). As Jens Brockmeier further suggests, the analytical practices of narrative researchers are interlaced with other cultural activities and traditions, and there are no pure forms of narrative practice—just ‘a spectrum of divergent and even contradictory approaches’ (2013: 262). For this project, it is the exultant rather than despondent reaction that emerges in relation to such conceptual diversity, as alternative approaches to narrative research may be welcomed into the pantheon, not discarded for breaking the rules.

Secondly, as Corinne Squire, Molly Andrews and Maria Tamboukou suggest, the study of narrative allows the investigation into ‘not just how stories are structured and the ways in which they work, but also who produces them and by what means; the mechanisms by which they are consumed and how narratives are silenced, contested or accepted’ (2013: 2). They 82 also suggest that contemporary narrative research has a tendency to treat narratives as modes of resistance to existing structures of power, while Tamboukou specifically favours a Foucauldian genealogy in her narrative research projects (2013). Narrative work thus helps us make sense of ourselves and our lives when we construct stories against the social grain or the usual emplotments, generally with the consciousness of being a member of an ‘outgroup’(Andrews, 2004). Sociologist Catherine Reissman also states that ‘narrative analysis takes as its object of investigation the story itself’ and ‘gives prominence to human agency and imagination, (therefore) it is well suited to studies of subjectivity and identity’ (1993: 1, 5). Her definition appears more humanist than post-structural, however she has also written of the assembly and disassembly of identities in postmodern times, and how larger social structures insinuate their way into identity, constructing selves which are performed in an interview context (2008: 116). Contested stories, subjectivity, construction and performance of identity are all understood as central to narrative inquiry, suggesting this is a congruent methodology for this study of the governmentality of CF.

Social scientists D. Jean Clandinin and Jerry Rosiek additionally suggest that post- structuralism has often been considered the natural home for narrative inquiry, as ‘it raises fundamental and highly technical questions about the ways we represent the world and makes compelling arguments for encouraging epistemic and methodological diversity in the social sciences’ (2007: 52). However they also argue that it is not that straightforward, suggesting that philosophically, narrative researchers ‘traverse borderlands’ between critical theory, post- positivism and post-structuralism. The study of deconversion narratives specifically in relation to CF, including the narratives of subjectification and resistance, would appear to fit with this ‘borderland’ approach and will be explained further in this chapter.

Thirdly, David Yamane has also suggested that the narrative approach is suitable specifically for studying conversion experiences, as we do not study the phenomenology of the experience but how it is made meaningful (2000: 173). The reasonable extension towards deconversion experiences thus lends weight to the relevance of the narrative approach. Such deconversion experiences (and subsequent storying and de-storying) are understood as having significant meaning to individuals, leading to a form of biographical reconstruction (Snow and Machalek, 1984: 173–176), or a re-narrativisation of one’s life. Changing identity through conversion (or deconversion) is considered a change in one’s universe of discourse, where each convert brings his or her own biography to the process and this contribution is coloured by the group’s universe of discourse. Each participant will thus describe the changing of his/her universe as an identity journey, particularly where a significant dispersal of power within the group has been experienced. A narrative approach thus allows this project to make selective 83 representations of stories, exploring how the legitimating function of authoritative religious discourses may in fact be resisted and subverted by such counter-narratives reflecting excluded perspectives (Mishler, 1995: 114).

In summary, in considering the most appropriate process of inquiry for this study and addressing the question of linking theory and method (Bryman, 2008: 6, Minichiello et al., 2008: 3), the main considerations have been the constructed nature of identity within a system of power, the centrality of stories in the shaping of the Christian identity, and establishing congruence with an overall post-structural epistemological stance.

Defining narrative

In the last three decades, the narrative turn has generated considerable scholarly debate in social research and other related disciplinary fields (Squire et al., 2013: 1). For example, Donald Polkinghorne, a counselling and research psychologist, argues that ‘narrative is a scheme by means of which humans give meaning to their experiences of temporality and personal actions. Narrative meaning functions to give form to the understanding of purpose to life and to join everyday actions and events into episodic units… it is the primary scheme by means of which human existence is rendered meaningful’ (1988: 11). The linguist Charlotte Linde suggests that narrative may well be among the most important social resources for creating and maintaining personal identity (1993: 98). The sociologist Susan Chase argues that ‘when someone tells a story, he or she shapes, constructs, and performs the self, experience and reality’ (2008: 65). In other words, the story may well be one’s identity—‘a story created, told, revised and retold throughout life is how we know and discover ourselves and reveal ourselves to others’ (Lieblich et al., 1998: 7). Hilde Lindemann additionally suggests that as identities are narrative constructions, and narratives are selective in what they depict, personhood becomes a kind of theatrical performance. A holding on or letting go of others’ identities thus becomes integral to the process of how identity-work is done (2014: 99). The holding on or letting go of narrative constructions of identity in a dance of power and resistance with others well describes this project.

A wide-ranging, yet loosely coordinated movement in the social sciences, the narrative study of lives, has thus emerged as ‘an interdisciplinary effort to write, interpret, and disseminate people’s life stories…(using) inductive and hermeneutical methods to examine in depth small samples of life stories collected from clearly defined socio-demographic and cultural groups’ (McAdams, 2001: 114). The narrative understanding of identity thus undermines fixed notions of the self, and allows the study of people’s stories within context and social practice, along with the possibility of reworking or rewriting storylines. 84 The question of defining ‘narrative’ and ‘narrative theory’ amidst the current diversity of working definitions is somewhat vexed—as in a sense narrative and storytelling are everywhere—but as Riessman points out, ‘not everything is narrative’ (2008: 4). While definitions range between disciplines, the late Phillida Salmon put it well by drawing attention to meaning: ‘a fundamental criterion of narrative is surely contingency. Whatever the content, stories demand the consequential linking of events or ideas. Narrative shaping entails imposing a meaningful pattern on what would otherwise be random and disconnected’ (Salmon and Riessman, 2013: 197). What makes otherwise diverse texts ‘narrative’, is therefore sequence and consequence. As Riessman further explains, ‘stories are selected, organised, connected and evaluated as meaningful for a particular audience’ (2004: 705). This also echoes Julia Kristeva’s post-structural term ‘intertextuality’ (1980), in that texts frame texts, being instrumental not only in the construction of other texts but in the construction of meaning and experiences. As this study proposes, identities can be storied and re-storied, assembled and disassembled, accepted and contested (Holstein and Gubrium, 2000) and indeed performed for audiences using other voices, texts and stories. Following philosopher Paul Ricoeur, narrative and temporality are also considered as closely related (1981: 165). The past is relevant and is connected to the present, hence this study favours the use of Ricoeur’s word ‘emplotment’ for the first layer of analysis, as the interconnection of events and apparent permanence in time, but with ‘diversity, variability, discontinuity and instability’ (1992: 140).

The argument of this thesis is therefore that a narrative-based methodology may illustrate that the research participants carry with them a wide range of ‘self-stories’, and that these stories ‘are nested in larger and overlapping stories, creating ultimately a kind of anthology of the self’ (McAdams, 2001: 117). The approach therefore incorporates the idea of a ‘nesting’ of stories as constructed and self-constructed within CF (with its own stories and discourses), plus a consideration of how stories negotiated with me as the interviewer are also shaping of people’s selves. The research participants are not understood or described as essentialised autonomous selves, but shaped by their own, and others’ diverse stories, within the context of communities of power and discourse, including the interview context.

A Qualitative Research philosophy

The study proposed is thus qualitative in nature, and attempts to synthesise different, yet parallel, theoretical traditions. Firstly, it adopts a partial phenomenological philosophical position, in that the individuals’ construction of their own ‘life-world’ is maintained. The concept of intentionality is integral, meaning that in any attempt to understand why people do things, the meaning they give to their actions is central (Liamputtong and Ezzy, 2005: 18). The

85 aim is to study the underlying and textured meanings of important human experiences, and engage in methods and processes aimed at such a discovery (Moustakas, 1990: 15). Following Squire therefore, this study is an example of experience-centred narrative research, resting on ‘a phenomenological assumption that experience can, through stories, become part of consciousness’ (2013: 48).

In parallel, yet not contradicting or competing with this perspective, this study takes seriously the postmodern and critical theory paradigm of debating the nature of subjectivity and experience (Scott, 1991), which suggests a transactional and subjectivist epistemology, as well as a dialogic methodology (Guba and Lincoln, 1998: 206). That is, the constitution of the subject in context is central to this study, and traditional assumptions about the nature of people’s ‘reality’, or simple thematic summaries, will not suffice. The perspective of this project is to recognise that all ‘truth’ statements benefit some people and disadvantage others, and to make explicit how apparatuses of power/knowledge are used in the shaping of people’s lives.

At this point, I will suggest some working definitions for these widely used terms. Post- positivism critiques the positivist epistemological position that advocates the application of the natural sciences to the study of social reality and beyond (Guba and Lincoln, 1998, Sarantakos, 2005, Bryman, 2008). Rather than aim for explanation, post-positivism aims for prediction and control, with hypotheses that are probable facts or laws. The voice of the ‘disinterested’ researcher is not an integral part of the inquiry. Post-structuralism, on the other hand, is a provocative way of thinking that illuminates ways of accounting for the human subject in ways not pre-supposing a prior human essence or a ‘scientific’ external reality called ‘nature’. Indeed ‘the subject is regarded as a product of differential functions of language under definite discursive modes of constitution’ (Harrington, 2005: 213). Clandinin and Rosiek propose that the pure post-structuralist ‘sees no escape from the discursive processes and no way to finally anchor even scholarly representations in an extradiscursive reality’ (2007: 65). Sociologists Pamela Fisher and Dawn Freshwater further comment that studies based on post-structural analyses are sometimes interpreted as useful in analysing the vested interests of power, but less helpful in pointing to emancipatory narratives (2014: 199). The analysis undertaken within this project perhaps counters these arguments by demonstrating that scholarly research can maintain a post-structuralist spine without claiming ‘purity’; the study remains situated in that borderland of narrative inquiry with its attention to individual experience and story-making as a source of identity, but also with a post-structuralist emphasis on micro-social discursive formation as a unit of analysis. Furthermore, it will be demonstrated that emancipatory

86 narratives are well illustrated through the counter-discursive strategies of the research participants as they describe their textured self-anthologies.

While not reiterating the previous overview of post-panopticon feminist thought, this project also has a feminist slant. The reflexive nature of the research encounter is acknowledged, underlining the significance of the researcher as an inseparable component of the research process (Liamputtong and Ezzy, 2005: 21). This acknowledges Dorothy Smith’s point that traditional positivist sociological methods objectify social processes, treating women as passive rather than actively constituting their social world, and to ‘enlarge our understanding as women of how things come about for us as they do, we need a method beginning from where women are as subjects’ (1988: 153). The feminist perspective has thus influenced my role as interviewer, not as distant, detached or emotionally neutral, but in Raquel Bergen’s words (1993, as cited in Liamputtong and Ezzy, 2005: 23), through forming non-exploitative relationships and providing active support to research participants.

Smith goes further however in her proposal of designing a sociology ‘for a knower situated in the everyday/everynight world of her actual lived experience’(1999: 45), suggesting that even ‘working collaboratively with subjects on the production of the interpretation of their talk does not as such exorcize the presence and power of the founding conventions of the discourse’(1999: 64). Such written and interpretative conventions are acknowledged, in tandem with the frequently authoritative monologic voice of the writer/researcher. As an ethical response to this dilemma, this study follows Smith’s encouragement to explore the society (in this case, CF) under consideration ‘from within people’s experience of it, rather than objectifying or explaining their behaviour’, investigating how that particular ‘society organises and shapes the everyday world of experience’ (1999: 74). Notably, my analysis will therefore explore how gendered differences and heteronormative power differentials are maintained as a specific focus within the interviews—focusing on stories of lived and contextualised experience of the construction and deconstruction of the gendered Christian identity.

QR is said to have as its primary research concern an understanding of human behaviour from the informant’s perspective, assuming a dynamic and negotiated reality (Minichiello et al., 2008: 9). It is acknowledged that the primary humanist focus of traditional QR so described may seem incongruent at times with the borderland approach I have suggested, however the difference is held in tension at this point, and is perhaps better understood historically. That is, QR has been seen as a part of a major shift affecting the social and psychological sciences, which according to Peter Emerson and Stephen Frosh, ‘has contributed to the erosion of the

87 hegemony of traditional empirical science in determining what counts as knowledge’ (2004: 5). This has included advocacy of more constructionist rather than representational paradigms for understanding language, because as experience is constantly produced in language, research becomes more concerned with gathering and analysing of discursive forms, talk and text. In studies of identity of continuity and change, I would question therefore whether positivist-evidence-based research may have reached its historical zenith. The post-structural borderland approach of this study aims to maintain this historical shift, keeping the focus on power and governmentality, not exercised from the top down as a matter of repression and ideology, but as Deleuze states, on the practical interplay of forces at the level of life itself and with life as its object (1988: 98).

The narrative interviews

Central to a narrative design is to invite participants to have their own voice and story. This seems long overdue, considering much of the existing apostasy research is based on survey data, rather than in-depth interviews. This study thus uses interviews rather than ethnographic methods, as the topic of interest does not centre on specific settings. The interviews however, while allowing the privileging of participants’ words and voices, will not be seen as windows into their ‘inner lives’ or even a portal to the mind of the storyteller. As Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln point out, ‘subjects or individuals are seldom able to give full explanations of their actions or intentions; all they can offer are accounts, or stories, about what they did and why’ (1998: 12). However, even beyond such essentialism, the interviews in this study are executed and interpreted as dialogical in the sense defined by Bakhtin and Volosinov. In essence, ‘meanings belong to a word in its position between speakers; that is, meaning is realised only in the process of active, responsive understanding’. Indeed meaning is like ‘an electric spark that occurs only when two different terminals are hooked together’ (Volosinov, 1994b: 35). As Arthur Frank points out, in keeping with the Bakhtinian approach, no story or speaker should ever be ‘finalised’ (2010: 16), or a final word foreclose what a person may become—life is poised on the threshold, for ‘self consciousness cannot be finalised from within’ (Bakhtin, 1994: 96). This position assumes that participants are more than the analysis of their narratives, that they are telling stories to a researcher to help make sense of their experiences over the course of time, and that such analysis will not exhaust or limit possibilities for the onward development of their lives (Grant et al., 2012).

Therefore, while the research interviews do not represent some ‘truth’ or finalised reality in the world, neither are they meaningless beyond the study context in which they occur. As psychologist Ruthellen Josselson points out, narrative research may explore the nuances and

88 interrelationships among aspects of experience that a reader might apply to better understand and interpret other related situations (2011: 239). That is, while this analysis is not focused on looking for the ‘facts’, it is looking to develop a coherent analysis of identity formation within a context of power. Therefore, in the interests of being anti-dualistic in matters of truth-telling, I propose following Jody Miller and Barry Glassner, that such dialogic interviews have ‘the capacity to be interactional contexts within which social worlds come to be better understood’ (2004: 135), through analysing how and where the stories are produced, and how authoritative narratives are revised and re-storied.

In short, meaning is understood as a dialogic process (which also may be analysed beyond the original context of creation), and interviewers (myself included) are ‘deeply and unavoidably implicated in creating meanings that ostensibly reside within respondents’ (Holstein and Gubrium, 2004: 114). This refutes the dominant positivist orientation in psychology and the human sciences from the Enlightenment (Mishler, 1986, Mishler, 1995), and potentially the production of ‘objective truth’ in the interview. Interviews being active, but only partial, meaning-making occasions means that interview data are unavoidably collaborative and involve power relations. The methodology of this study acknowledges and interprets this process.

The active interviewer and co-construction of meaning

Therefore in keeping with the post-structural epistemology of the study, which according to Andrea Fontana works towards ambiguity and contextuality of meaning and attention to stories in constant flux rather than paradigmatic wholes (2001: 162), the traditional relationship between interviewer and interviewee is no longer seen as ‘natural’. That is, the study has an explicit focus in how I have developed my own voice as I have co-constructed others’ voices and stories. Being an active interviewer illustrates that the concept of ‘bias’ may be cast in a new light, as all participants in the interview are involved in ‘meaning construction, not contamination’ (Holstein and Gubrium, 2004: 157). There may at times be the ‘authoritative’ voice of the researcher as narrator, described by Chase (2008: 74f), but there is also my supportive voice, or interactive voice (displaying inter-subjectivity), and this influence is made visible as a part of the dialogic analysis.

Principally, I have written with the authoritative sociological and psychological voice which highlights Dorothy Smith’s point that the protagonist of the story often ends up being the researcher producing a research product (1999: 64). However, I have also aimed to maintain ‘narrative responsibility and respect’ (Czarniawska-Joerges, 2004: 60), through the use of various precautions. These include transparency around my participation, attending to diversity 89 in the stories told and dominant and marginal readings of participants’ stories, and the provision of detailed segments from transcripts so other researchers can see for themselves the content and context (Riessman, 2008: 191–193). The privileging of such research processes allows for a more open interpretation of the data, as well as addressing reflexively the key post-structural concerns of the representation and presentation of data (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009: 199).

In short, it was therefore not assumed that a neutral stance was desirable or possible as a post- structuralist qualitative researcher, when the goal was to maintain an explicitness and reflexivity about the researcher’s voice and participation. This will be more fully explored in the fourth tier of analysis provided in Chapter 12.

The use of Dialogic Narrative Analysis (DNA)

As noted above, compared with the elaborate theorisation of narrative, the corpus dealing with the practical task of interpreting narratives has remained notably undersized (Spector-Mersel, 2010: 172). The literature is vast in terms of possible options for analysis (e.g. Gergen and Gergen, 1984, Langellier, 1989, Mishler, 1995, Lieblich et al., 1998, Liamputtong and Ezzy, 1999, Riessman, 2008, Spector-Mersel, 2010, Andrews et al., 2013), however this study represents a composite, somewhat Cubist approach. That is, the data will be considered as a plurality of intersecting surfaces without privileging a single, unitary perspective. As Josselson suggests, narrative research may eschew methodological orthodoxy in order to capture the lived experience of people and their own meaning making (2011: 225). The following sequence of four analytic steps is proposed as part of a DNA, with a major commitment to emphasise dialogue over monologue, and social practices over language.

Plotlines

Firstly, Reissman’s dialogic/performance analysis (2008: 105f) will be used, to avoid any possibility of a reductionist technique in which ‘lengthy accounts of lives are abstracted from their contexts of production’ (Riessman and Quinney, 2005: 398). I was less persuaded by the Labovian model and traditional structural analysis (Labov and Waletsky, 1967) because, as Langellier remarks (1989: 247), it leaves out context and audience. The microanalysis of syntactic and prosodic features of talk (Riessman, 2004: 707) also suggests a different emphasis than this study proposes.

Simply put, the DNA interrogates ‘who’ an utterance may be directed to, ‘when and ‘why’, and shifts the interest to storytelling as a process of co-construction, where teller and listener

90 create meaning collaboratively, as described above. As stories are said to only live to be told to others (McAdams, 2001: 118), the theory around form and meaning emerging between people is kept centre-stage. The researcher notes the positioning of the self of the research participant enacted in an immediate discursive context (the evolving interview), and analyses this from detailed transcriptions (Riessman, 2001: 702). The commitment of such an analysis is to recognise that any individual voice is always a dialogue between voices (Frank, 2012: 34), even those voices and persons not physically present.

This approach also has a focus on a dialogical analysis within and across participants’ narratives, in an holistic rather than categorical sense. That is, rather than sections or single words being collected and separated, the disaffiliation stories are taken of each participant as a whole and sections of the text are interpreted in the context of other parts of the narrative (Lieblich et al., 1998: 12). Therefore, plotlines as journeys of changing Christian identity will be documented, as the narrators emplot the events in their lives in meaningful ways. A typology of identity stories within the context of the power of the CF community will be proposed and described in Chapters 6 and 7. The documenting of the participants’ stories however will not reflect previous studies in deconversion where categories were more fixed, demarcated and rigid. The typology presented, in keeping with a post-structural analysis, will represent some ‘nesting’ of unfinalised stories of self-constituted identity.

The Foucauldian Genealogy

The second stage of the analysis involves the description of a Foucauldian genealogy of identity change and subjectification in relation to the research data. Herein lies a further methodological problem that requires some clarification. Studies with a post-structural perspective (including those undertaking Foucauldian genealogy) tend to favour focusing on the secondary analysis of existing data, or on historical analysis (Liamputtong and Ezzy, 2005: 27). To be analysing the transcripts of spoken narratives (which have already been analysed in the first analytic layer in an alternative manner) using a Foucauldian lens is therefore unusual. Moreover, there is a tension between the ontological, epistemological and methodological paradigm of post-positivist, constructivist DNA, and the anti-methodology of a Foucauldian genealogy.

Rabinow and Rose’s introduction to what they call Foucault’s ‘practice of criticism’ (2003: xv) is relevant at this point:

Thus, the practice of criticism which we might learn from Foucault would not be a methodology. It would be a movement of thought that invents, makes use of, and 91 modifies conceptual tools as they are set into a relation with specific practices and problems that they themselves help to form in new ways.

Therefore rather than applying a genealogy as a specific, traditional methodological tool to the raw data, it will be more a movement of thought, or as Tamboukou suggests, ‘a map charting genealogical trails’ with the genealogist following but also bending these lines and indeed adding her own (2013: 89). More specifically, a genealogical analysis of narratives inquires into which kinds of practices, linked to which contexts, determine the discursive production of the narratives being investigated. What is therefore at stake is ‘the way power intervenes in creating conditions of possibility for specific narratives to emerge as dominant and for others to be marginalised’ (2013: 90). Tamboukou also helpfully identifies narratives as carrying out a twofold function: first, as technologies of power and second, as technologies of the self, or active practices of self-formation. Indeed she offers the term technologies of resistance to describe people fashioning new forms of subjectivity (2013: 93–94), suggesting that the researcher as genealogist is tracing the emergence and development of narrative practices of self-formation. The genealogy will comprise the major part of the data analysis in this study and will be augmented by contributions from the post-Foucauldian literature.

Personal narrative as political praxis is also well understood in the narrative literature. For example, Kristin Langellier has theorised around questions of power, knowledge, ideology and identity, which concern ‘deep structure and meaning rather than surface structure and meaning’ (1989: 266f). That is, this type of Foucauldian genealogy potentially allows a consideration of disaffiliation narratives and their participation within discursive fields (including local hegemonic narratives), as people’s experiences are organised and meaning is constructed. In short, these personal narratives may be considered by their political function in producing a certain way of seeing the world over others, allowing an analysis of whether their telling legitimates dominant meanings or even resists and transforms dominant meanings, thus claiming alternative identities.

The nuanced ‘how’ and Bakhtin

It is noted that the theoretical backdrop of Bakhtin in this realm of resistance narratives is not contradictory, but potentially illuminative of how resistance may occur, the ‘ideological becoming’, associated with situating oneself in relation to other voices and words in the social world (Bakhtin, 1981b: 341). While analysing performed and positioned identity, the Bakhtinian concept of ‘double-voicing’ (Wortham, 2001: 40) will be used, as people speak with different voices to establish socially relevant positions for their narrated characters. As

92 mentioned above, the dialogic word is always addressed to someone (in this case the researcher) and is accompanied by the keen anticipation of the other’s voice.

As every text is polyphonic/multivoiced, every utterance carries the trace of other utterances, so the researcher can interrogate particular words, listen to voices of minor characters and identify hidden discourses speakers may take for granted (Riessman, 2008: 107). This helpful concept allows for considering how participants appropriate and ventriloquate others’ voices using double-voicing to adopt more preferred social positioning of themselves, and comes from Bakhtin’s exploration of how characters in novels (particularly of Dostoyevsky) position themselves with respect to others who have spoken about the same objects (1981b, 1984). What may be noteworthy is how the participants position themselves with respect to salient voices, identifying with some and distancing from others, in the performance of preferred identities. Establishing a coherent narrative for themselves will be considered as emerging from what Michele Koven refers to as a ‘multi-voiced orchestration of different here-and-now, there-and-then, self-and-other roles’ (2012: 153). The participants’ self-presentation will thus be analysed, noting such linguistic features as the use of direct (or reported) speech and positioning, satire and parody, and laughter events. In this context what Josselson terms ‘dialogic moments’ (1995: 37) are of particular note. These are catalytic turning points, or identity turns where the self may be most clearly in dialogue with itself. Such key moments of identity revision will be carefully noted and discussed, focusing again not on what the language means, but what the language does.

Co-construction of meaning and performed identity

The final tier of analysis is the specific co-construction of meaning with myself as the researcher. It is understood that how the participants tell their stories is how they perform preferred identities. Following Mishler (1986), particular questions will be considered: how do the interviewer’s questions, assessments, silences and responses enter into a story’s production? How do the stories told in these particular interviews differ from those told in other contexts, such as naturally occurring conversations?

In his work on illness narratives, Frank speaks of story telling as a balance between opportunity and risk, as a Foucauldian dialogue invites complex questions about how stories are produced and reproduced by power (1998: 330). I have argued that we live our stories whether we want to or not, while Frank urges a consideration of the awareness of the stories we are living and what others we want to avoid living, as the core of any personal ethics. This tier of analysis within the research therefore follows Frank in having an explicit concern with

93 not inadvertently creating a panopticon of exhortation to tell stories as yet another form of social fabrication or administration in a benign guise.

To be clear, a critical reflexivity is maintained over my own possible participation in setting up another system of power within the actual research setting, even inadvertently setting up a traditional clinical setting where the participants are invited to see ‘catharsis as leading to healing’ or ‘let’s tell the truth to a therapist’, for example. A Foucauldian awareness sensitises the researcher to how readily the structures of power ‘utilise “therapeutic” and “liberating” speech as a ruse to control the subject through that subject’s own voice’ (Frank, 1998: 333), even convincing them of the selves they want to be in order to be ‘true’ to themselves. This awareness also extends to how certain conversations outside the research space may affect people’s future ability to tell their own unhindered stories and experiences. It is considered whether the telling of one’s story to the researcher may find the space between opportunity and risk to provide ‘care of the self’, rather than reproduce broader normalising power relations. The issue I will thus address is how I worked to prevent the interview context becoming another ‘truth game’, another confessional, and another place of potential subjectification. The potential involvement of other voices, including my own, in a multi-voiced world is a central plank of reflexive awareness.

In summary, the tension between a post-structural, constructivist and anti-humanist theoretical perspective and methodology is inherent in the four-pronged analysis. The interview data will be analysed firstly dialogically, then this analysis will be magnified in detail through an explication of a more anti-methodological Foucauldian problematisation. This interactional account of Christian self-construction through narrative will thus provide a coherent layering of social constructionism, contemporary feminist theory, and Foucauldian ‘anti-theory’, offering what Butler calls a ‘performative’ account of the self (1999). The self within and outside CF emerges and is constructed through positioning and counter-positioning with others, as an open ended and often heterogeneous construction (Wortham, 2001: 12).

Research design

Participants, recruitment and sampling

The study is a QR design of in-depth interviews with twenty participants who have disaffiliated from CF. Overall, an interactive cyclical model of data collection and data analysis was used, allowing the collection of new data to fill in gaps or test new hypotheses that emerged during analysis (Miles and Huberman, 1984: 49). The final number of subjects

94 was thus related to ‘saturation’, indicating the stage in the research at which little new relevant data was emerging (Sarantakos, 2005: 349).

Participants were recruited by a standard qualitative snowball non-random sampling method (Bryman, 2008: 184–185) employing arms-length recruitment. The project therefore used a series of ‘gate-keepers’ (ten in all), including professional colleagues, church representatives and ministers of religion from less orthodox churches, to advertise the study. I wrote personal emails to some gate-keepers12 outlining the nature of the research, while asking their permission to attend their more diverse and inclusive churches in order to recruit. I was warmly received on each occasion, and was invited to speak briefly at three meetings. I also handed out leaflets outlining the nature of the research.13 Potential participants talked to me informally after the meeting, or contacted me directly by phone or email to express interest in the study. Exclusion or inclusion in the study was based on the person’s fit with the sampling criteria, described below. Discussion occurred with potential participants to establish their interest in the project, that they satisfied the relevant criteria, and to explain the Participant Information and Statement of Consent (PISC) Form.14

Each person’s decision to participate in the research was entirely voluntary, and based on sufficient information and adequate understanding of both the proposed research and the implications of participation in it, as provided in the PISC form. They were also offered the choice of whether to receive a summary report of the findings at the conclusion of the project. No inducements were offered. With a snowball sampling method, it was always possible that people known to the researcher (or known of) may respond as potential participants. Those people with whom I have a current personal or professional relationship, or any current or past relationship of dependency including students or therapy clients, were excluded from the sample. In the unlikely event that participants required professional support or counselling as a result of participating in the research, they were advised they could be referred to an appropriate local counselling service.

The question of sampling criteria requires some explanation. In previous QR of disaffiliated individuals and groups, different researchers have applied quite stringent criteria for participants. For example, Mosier III (2002) only included participants with a minimum of a four year undergraduate degree, as well as a pre-requisite that participants had grown up in the church and been raised in an evangelical Christian household. O’Leary (1997) and Fazzino

12 See Appendix A for a sample copy of the letter/email sent to various church leaders and pastors 13 See Appendix B & C for the brochures used to advertise the project, both for church and non-church goers 14 See Appendix D for the PISC form 95 (2014) also only recruited those who had been raised in Christian homes. This study aimed for some flexibility in this regard, with a mix of ages and sexes in the sample plus a variety of exit-times from CF to allow for diversity and comparison of stories.

The first criterion applied was that all participants needed to have been at one point actively involved in a CF-based church, which was defined as regular attendance, involvement in small group ministry over at least a 5 year period and previous belief and adherence to the theological teachings. While five years may seem an arbitrary time limit, it seemed a bare minimum time frame to set as previous studies indicates that changes in identity both into and out of the church community is a long process (e.g. Lynch, 2003). The second criterion applied was that the participants needed to have now left CF completely—either to a non- fundamentalist church, or to no church attendance at all. The leaving date was set at post-1990, as it was recognised that comparing churches from previous eras was potentially problematic, in that such congregations were affected by vastly different social contexts. The relevant history of CF, particularly within the Sydney diocese from the early 1980s to the present day, has been described in Chapter 1. All participants in the study exited after 1999, except for three who exited in the early 1990s.

Johnson (2001) additionally suggests that the best informants are those who have been thoroughly acculturated in the community, have recent membership participation, have some provisional interest in assisting the interviewer, and have adequate time and resources to take part in the interviews. These criteria were thus also taken into account in establishing the selection criteria. Furthermore, to safeguard against interviewing people from one network which might mean they all have similar experiences, multiple starting points (Seale, 2012) were used to access more than one network. Rather than seeking out people who may have seemed ‘average’, I attempted to use my own knowledge of church networks and congregations to find people with widely varying experiences and characteristics. While of course this is not a ‘representative’ sample, I wanted to aim for some ‘representativeness’ by including, if possible, extremes in the population. That is, I sought to locate older people as well as younger, gay men as well as gay women, a variety of denominations and exit times, those who grew up in Christian families and those who did not. Indeed, I searched interstate and several of my participants were not living in Sydney.

During the recruitment and sampling process, an iterative reflexive stance was maintained as I became increasingly aware that certain groups of people were difficult to reach. That is, gay men who had completely left the church were extremely difficult to locate. This stance additionally added to my understanding of what I am trying to research (Byrne, 2012), in that

96 the negative effects of cultivating a gay identity within the fundamentalist community were highlighted from the outset.

Recording and transcription

In terms of recording, all interviews were digitally taped as an MP3 file and fully transcribed, an essential aspect of DNA (Riessman, 2002b). Participants were asked if they wished to choose their own pseudonym, which they did on almost all occasions. I personally transcribed all the transcripts, which ensured my ongoing connection to the data. These were sent to the participants within two weeks of their interview to ensure that not only engagement was maintained, but also to invite their reflections as close as possible to the actual interview event.

In addition, a preliminary ‘interpretation’ of his/her journey, or plotline, was offered to each participant. An invitation was extended to make further comment on this. This not only allowed each participant to review his/her interview for possible errors, but also to allow him/her to more fully participate in the analysis part of the research process. This was an important structure in making my voice and participation (and possible biases) explicit and able to be refuted, but also in maintaining the full hermeneutic circle—from the raw data to abstracted data, and then to the proposal of new theory. The question of the researcher’s voice at times being a narrator while other times being inter-subjective was thus specifically addressed with the participants, in a further attempt to maintain interpretive responsibility (Squire, 2013: 58).

After the participants checked their transcripts (only two did not provide any further comment), all identifying information was removed. To be specific, all proper nouns were replaced by common nouns and all participants were given a pseudonym. Some racial identities and highly distinctive identifying information were changed to preserve anonymity. The transcripts were then imported as source documents to the hyperRESEARCH software program. No coding was done in the first instance, as I aimed to interview approximately 10 people first, and then read and re-read the raw transcripts before interviewing others to not only check my interviewing style, but also to gain a thorough immersion in the data.

Following Gibbs (2004), it seems important to distinguish those aspects of computer-assisted qualitative data analysis strategies (CAQDAS) that are concerned with the organisation and management of the research and those that are concerned with interpretation. Being a Mac rather than a PC user, I employed the program hyperRESEARCH in preference to nVivo, in order to manage the transcripts, particularly in the preliminary analysis. My coding used terms such as identity statements, identity positioning, turning points, resistance stories and power 97 stories to promote my reading of the transcripts in developing a post-structural analysis. The coding was not done to achieve comparisons or matrix searches, but to support a narrative interpretation of the texts. While it is noted that there may be a similarity with grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) at this point, the study maintained case-centred commitment, analysing the extended accounts and preserving sequences rather than over-fragmenting the data (Riessman and Quinney, 2005: 395, Riessman, 2008: 74). In fact, I found I was constantly returning to the hard copies and re-reading them in their entirety to maintain such a commitment.

Interview design and process

‘Bracketing’ the researcher’s story

How my own story was known, understood and then de-centred rather than taking centre-stage was considered throughout the interview process. The actual similar experiences of the researcher and member status of the group under study are no longer stigmatised among social scientists, and there are today many researchers ‘who use their investigations and interviews to explore phenomena about which they have prior…knowledge’ (Johnson, 2001: 107). Therefore as a veteran of CF, I also possess certain ‘insider knowledges’, a term borrowed from the clinical field of narrative therapy (Madigan, 2011: 92) which allows increased empathy and comprehension. This term is also reminiscent of Becker’s work on ‘insiders and outsiders’ within symbolic-interactionist influenced QR (1963).

However my exit status to non-church-attendance could be potentially problematic, as each participant had a different exit journey and a variety of emotional responses regarding the process. The core issues here were firstly to be aware of the dialogic process that may occur in regard to my own story of disaffiliated Christian identity, but also not to impede others by centring my particular perspective and continually changing story. In other words, the effects of the researcher’s disclosure or non-disclosure on a participant’s comfort and confidence in telling his/her story as s/he wants to, was a major consideration. Too much disclosure may have set the agenda for others, too little may have created confusion and doubt. As Ann Phoenix suggests, following Wetherell (1998), the interview context can set up a ‘troubled subject position’ if a narrator is being asked to tell her story without knowing the position of the interviewer, as perhaps a sympathetic ally or potentially threatening adversary (2013: 80). This is particularly true in this study, when the power context of CF is being considered in parallel with the potential power context of the interview itself.

98 During the pilot exercise for the study, I noticed myself being overly empathic and moving towards over-disclosure and over-identification. The decision thus taken was to provide a small story at the beginning of each interview (if asked) and any further ‘storying’ or elaborating from myself was taken after each interview was complete, and the digital recorder was switched off. This is further discussed and reviewed in Chapter 12, when the process of story co-construction is systematically analysed. My 30-year clinical background as a social worker and psychotherapist also proved to have both strengths and weaknesses. While able to engage easily and closely with participants, and to engender trust and elicit rich data, I also noticed the tension between the researcher and counsellor roles. To counter this, I engaged purposively in eliciting stories and narratives while restraining a therapeutic problem-solving approach.

Type of interview

A semi-structured interview schedule was used,15 while not all questions were asked or answered. Some participants spoke easily, requiring fewer probes than others to solicit their stories. A summary was provided at the commencement of each interview outlining the topics that would be covered, as per the interview schedule. Three interviews were conducted via Skype, due to the geographical distance of the participants. The methodological issue noted here is that the Skype interviews were conducted in the evening and were less formal in a sense as participants were ‘alone’ behind their computer screens. Two participants drank alcohol during the interview. I did not note that this adversely affected their participation, or that our connection was any less potent than those I met with face to face. If anything, the cyberspace between us seemed to embolden these participants to ask me more personal questions about my disaffiliation journey.

The first question in every interview was: ‘how did you first become involved in the church? What was your conversion story?’ This oriented the participants to the process as chronological, that a journey was to be discussed, and allowed some early engagement with the researcher, as the question was quite simple to answer. The questions then followed the chronological progression of their church involvement and how they experienced the influence of the church community both explicitly and implicitly. Questions were asked about how they experienced a Christian identity, inviting reflection on the concept of ‘who are you now, in relation to who you were then’. The experience of leaving was then explored, focusing on specific turning points and catalysts as significant narrative moves. Finally, how people see themselves now, their changing sense of self, and whether they still call themselves a Christian

15 See Appendix E for full copy of the interview schedule 99 was asked. The last question put to all participants was: ‘do you have any advice for a mental health professional assisting someone in this journey?’ The questions therefore all had an overall focus of change, sequence and continuity.

Reliability and validity

Firstly, in matters of validity, triangulation of methods may show support for a finding by indicating independent measures of it agree with it, or at least do not contradict it (Miles and Huberman, 1984: 234). However multiple methods cannot simply aggregate data in order to arrive at an overall ‘truth’ (Silverman, 2010: 134). Therefore, multiple methods were not employed in this study for so-called truth purposes. As has been argued, narrativisation is about point of view, and the project is about the phenomenological/post-structural understanding of identity. The design based on narrative interviewing is thus simple in its execution, without attempting to research ‘the whole picture’. In following a methodical path, documenting claims, and practising reflexivity, the case for validity is strengthened in the study. Checking the strength of the data and ensuring that all decision-making procedures are fully documented also contributes to reliability (Minichiello et al., 2008: 183). However, in matters of ‘reliability and validity’, Amia Lieblich and her colleagues consider that such criteria are practically impossible to maintain in narrative research, ‘which asserts that narrative materials like reality itself can be read, understood and analysed in extremely diverse ways’ (Lieblich et al., 1998: 171). Therefore this study will be upholding less these traditional QR concepts, and more the guidelines used to frame narrative QR. That is, in applying Mishler’s criteria for evaluating narrative research, trustworthiness and authenticity (1990, as cited in Lieblich et al., 1998: 172), the ‘truth-value’ of the research is less emphasised.

Some specific criteria are used to assess the trustworthiness of this research project. One criterion involves the credibility of portrayals of constructed realities, when the constructions are plausible to those who constructed them—the participants themselves (Kincheloe and McLaren, 1998: 288). Hence, correspondence being consistently maintained with participants who checked and commented on transcripts, altering or expanding the texts, increased credibility and ensured that the assembled texts expressed the actual meaning experienced by participants (Polkinghorne, 2007: 480). As Christine Bold fairly concludes, ‘involvement of participants in developing the final narrative does serve to demonstrate that the process has been transparent and it provides a level of trustworthiness for the data’ (2012: 123).

A second criterion suggested is anticipatory accommodation (Kincheloe and McLaren, 1998: 288). This refers to researchers, through their knowledge of a variety of comparable contexts, learning similarities and differences and so are able to compare contexts. This is demonstrated 100 by the study’s analysis of power and subjectification in church communities, which has a strong theoretical and historical background in its application to many other contexts of governmentality (e.g. Rose, 1998, Dean, 2010).

Additional suggestions are made by Riessman to address trustworthiness rather than truth. Her categories of coherence, persuasion, correspondence and presentation (Riessman, 2008) are thus prioritised in the study. Coherence of themes are maintained through the repeated use of chunks of interview text, convergence and divergence in stories being consistently considered, with the data being presented in ways that demonstrate its genuineness and plausibility. Egon Guba and Yvonna Lincoln (2005: 207) also suggest various criteria of authenticity to further augment the trustworthiness and rigour of constructivist or phenomenonological inquiry, including ontological, educative, catalytic and tactical authenticity. The data analysis in this study particularly works to privilege ontological authenticity, or an increased awareness in people of their understanding of their social milieu. The catalytic and educative functions also exist in helping them appreciate the perspectives of other members of fundamentalist churches through sharing the research findings with them, as well as inviting them to continue their transformative identity journeys and possibly join with like-minded others. This creation of the capacity in research participants for positive social change again destabilises objectivity and introduces subjectivity, but Guba and Lincoln do not see this as inherently problematic. Objectivity, they say somewhat provocatively, is but a chimera, ‘a mythological creature that never existed, save in the imaginations of those who believe that knowing can be separated from the knower’ (2005: 208-209). Indeed they consider that validity may well be considered as an ethical relationship, tied up with both what we know and also our relationships with our research participants As has been explained throughout this chapter, this has been a major priority of this project, including treating people’s stories fairly and with balance.

To return to Polkinghorne, it is worth noting that he proposes that validating knowledge claims is essentially an ‘argumentative practice’ (2007: 476–477), and researchers need to be able to ‘anticipate and respond to questions readers may have about the acceptability of their claims’. To this end, and also following Chaïm Perelman (1982), I will aim to lead readers through a progression of evidence and explanations of the adequacy of the interpretations provided, while presenting the thought processes that informed the interpretation of the storied texts. Polkinghorne also suggests working towards ensuring people’s actual experience is expressed in their story. Therefore, I will work toward encouraging figurative expressions, maintaining a high degree of non-judgmental, focused listening and attend to the unexpected and unusual participant response (2007). As has been explained, a complex tiered analysis of the data will

101 provide further reflexive awareness and an unsparing examination of the researcher’s role in story co-construction, all contributing to the trustworthiness and authenticity of the study.

Ethical considerations

As a feminist and post-structuralist researcher, ethical conduct within QR is clearly more important than merely following guidelines provided by a university ethics committee. It involves a careful consideration of how the data is collected, analysed, reduced and presented. As Josselson and Lieblich state, ‘ethical issues are embedded in every aspect of a narrative study’, particularly in relation to what participation in a study is likely to mean in the lives of the participants (2003: 267). To that end, the research relationships need to be explicitly non- exploitative, with a commitment to action and change (Ezzy, 2002: 51), while assisting participants (and readers) in the further understanding of, and resistance to, the perceived negative effects of CF. Such ethical research is integrally linked to a commitment to political action and participant inclusion, with the findings not written simply for the researcher’s benefit, but explicitly for the benefit of the participants. Lincoln’s political model for rigour and ethics (1995) further encompasses the acknowledgment of positionality, giving voice to marginalised groups, critical subjectivity, and reflexive self-awareness. These elements have been considered in the design of the project, but will be further demonstrated through the course of the analytic process.

On the macro-level, the study received full ethical clearance from the University of New South Wales (UNSW). In addressing safety issues, the venue for the interviews was discussed with the participants, and we met at mutually agreed locations. I had access to a professional office space when that was appropriate and/or convenient. During the research, transcripts were stored in a locked cabinet, with the information links to identify the participants stored and locked away separately. At the conclusion of the research, the transcripts will be stored in the secure storage facility of the School of Social Sciences at the UNSW16 for a further seven years and will then be destroyed. All data stored on computer during the research analysis stage was password-protected and will be removed from the computer at the conclusion of the study.

Finally, there is a small chance that a person can be identified when in-depth interviews are part of a methodology, when the area of inquiry is specialised, and when each story has a level of uniqueness about it. To prevent any possibility of a participant being identified, certain

16 At the time of writing, this was Room G24 Morven Brown at UNSW 102 safeguards were put in place. As mentioned, de-identification has been used, while I have also been judicious in the provision of demographic data.

Limitations

While the methodology is complex and reflexive, there are some limitations to the research. Firstly, those participants who contacted me wanted to be involved and were universally keen to tell their story about their experiences of being shaped by CF. This of course means that there are many people who didn’t contact me, who may consider their exit journey from CF as having a minimal influence on their lives, or in fact have largely moved to significantly different ground in their identity development. Throwing the net wider to locate those who would not want to be interviewed, but may complete a brief survey, would indicate how relevant this exit journey is to a wider variety of possible participants, and indeed the larger research area of Christian disaffiliation. Following the lead of Alan Jamieson and interviewing the existing participants some years later (2006) could also contribute valuable data to the theory around the reasonably stable identity of the post-apostate.

Secondly, as a small non-random sample has been utilised, the intent has not been to generate generalisable conclusions, but stories within a specific context of power. This study will provide a report on the plotlines of the participants, dense and textured as they may be, but not develop a general theory of Christian power. Nonetheless, it will be shown that there are potent forms of constructed and re-constructed Christian identities, which emerge from participation in fundamentalist churches.

Thirdly, a further limitation may have been the lack of racial diversity, particularly the lack of indigenous people, in my sample. While recruiting at one church, an indigenous man asked me: ‘what is in this research for Aboriginal people?’ I was not able to provide him with a satisfactory answer about the specific benefits available to his people from this research. He did not contact me as a potential participant. Further, one participant only in the study was from a non-Anglo background. Indeed the participants were all white Australian, primarily from middle class backgrounds, mostly with tertiary qualifications (although three participants did not have an undergraduate degree). Further studies may determine whether people from a wider range of backgrounds, including different social class and race, report similar stories.

Conclusion

The combination of phenomenological, feminist and post-structuralist theoretical approaches has been described in this chapter with an accompanying discussion of the research design,

103 ethical stance and trustworthiness of the project. The methodology moves from describing the big picture of QR, to a DNA of storied identities, to a proposed genealogy of the identity change of the Christian subject within and beyond CF.

Clearly, a comprehensive research study needs to offer more than the telling of diverse stories and anecdotes. The complex and original four-tiered data analysis described aims to provide such an extensive analysis, with a focus on the stories of identity and the politics involved in the changing of selfhood beyond CF. Part Two and seven chapters of such data analysis now follow, incorporating this inquiry process with the theoretical spine.

104 Part Two

Chapter 6

Data Analysis and Storying

Plotlines: 1

Introduction to the Four-Tiered Analysis

In this and the following six chapters, a layered sequence of four steps employing an overall dialogical narrative analysis (DNA) will be used to consider the research data. This method of analysis allows four opportunities to analyse the stories of the research participants providing a comprehensive layering of the journeys of identity formation and re-formation of the Christian identity within fundamentalist communities, usually associated with a specific church or church denominations. In order to maintain the narrative focus, the objective will be to remain person-centred with extended accounts of each journey, rather than use a category-based approach (Riessman and Quinney, 2005: 395).

In this and the following chapter, the data will be considered as a series of identity stories or plotlines related to identity formation. In other words, in what kind of a story, or stories, does each narrator place herself or himself? (Silverman, 2011: 82). That is, in relation to their specific church context, how do they story and then re-story who they were and who they now are? This is understood not in the sense of a portal into their essentialised selves, but as subjective unfinalised accounts told ‘at an historical moment with its circulating discourses and power relations’ (Riessman, 2008: 8) to me as the interviewer. The story of themselves, or narrative selfhood, is set against the background of the stories that the (church) culture makes available to them (Frank, 2010: 199), which ultimately shifts for them throughout time.

Turning points

In short, these twenty participants story, re-story then de-story their Christian selves at strategic turning points in their lives—at sites of injury, distress and significant challenge in relation to their church communities. Their comments about these transitions will be incorporated and woven into the layers of subsequent analysis. The areas most commonly cited as turning points (or often named as ‘nails in the coffin’) were specifically related to the individual’s experience of the organisation:

105  coming out either as LGBT and/or just being more open about sexual practice and expressing difference (seven people)  the experience of depression understood retrospectively as contextual to being within the church community (six people)  the subjective experience of feeling controlled and/or ostracised (six people)  the failure of leaders towards self, and/or family members ostracised (four people)  a desire for a different experience of church (two people)

Other turning points named happened outside the church yet still represented a challenge to a previous sureness of belief and social practice:

 travel and exposure to new ideas (four people)  new intimate relationships formed outside the church (four people)  death of close friend or family member (three people)

The layers of analysis

Firstly, three general (yet fluid) plotlines of identity re-formation are proposed to commence the illustration of identity re-formation and re-signification. These plotlines are based on specific comments made by participants about their identity changes in answer to my direct question: ‘who are you now compared with the who you were then?’ Other direct statements about their evolving sense of self are also included in this analysis. The plotlines identified are:

 The immersion within CF with certainty, towards rejection of CF, towards an ‘emancipated’ sense of self  The double-life and fragmented-self story, towards integration  The mind-of-the-believer story, towards cognitive dissonance, to Spinozan ‘anti- scripturalism’

Secondly, as has been described in the previous chapter, the Foucauldian lens will then provide a theoretical analysis of the participants’ experiences of knowledge/power, Christian subjectivity, and potential sites of resistance and counter-conduct. The understanding of power within CF as lacking a centre, and being essentially productive rather than repressive, provides the spine. Moreover, these stories in line with Foucauldian genealogy, may be shown to constitute an ‘insurrection of knowledges’ (Foucault, 1980f: 84)—subjugated and disqualified for a time, but accessed in the re-formation of a disaffiliated identity.

106 Thirdly, the interviews will be examined in terms of ‘how’ the stories are told, rather than ‘what’ is told, to further deepen the layering of the analysis of identity change. Using a Bakhtinian lens, specific discursive strategies will be analysed to illustrate the participants’ positioning of their identity. Specifically, a detailed consideration of ‘ventriloquation’, ‘double-voicing’ and times of laughter will be included.

Finally, how the stories are shaped in the interactional context of the interview-space with the interviewer will be discussed. This analysis covers the participants’ assumptions of shared knowledge and experiences with me on the insider/outsider continuum, including their positioning in relation to my story. There is also some imaginative speculation of myself as a counselling therapist, and a consideration of how this context could have become yet another experience of disciplinary power through enforcing a confessional process.

Sample Overview

An overview of the sample is provided with six graphs. These tabulations are simple counting techniques and are based on the participants’ own categories, and are therefore not antithetical to a qualitative, post-structural study. As David Silverman suggests, they offer the reader a useful means to survey the whole corpus of data and may be a factor in providing some validity to a study (2011: 378f).

In terms of gender, eleven females were interviewed and eight males. One participant identified as transgendered. Nine participants identified as gay, while eleven identified as heterosexual. Eleven participants grew up in households they themselves described as ‘Christian evangelical’ or ‘Christian fundamentalist’17, while the group was divided evenly between those who still identify as a Christian (with some qualifications) and those who do not. Most participants interviewed were aged between 30 and 39, and most participants had exited between six and ten years ago.

17 The denominations described included Presbyterian, Uniting, Anglican, Baptist, Open Brethren and Assemblies of God. These are not assigned to individual participants to preserve anonymity. 107 Sex Sex Orientation

Transgender Transgender

Male Hetero

Female Gay

0 5 10 15 0 5 10 15

Figure 2 Figure 3

Raised in Evangelical Christian Identifies as Christian Family

No No

Yes Yes

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 0 5 10 15

Figure 4 Figure 5

Age Distribution Years Since Exit

Over 70 More than 20 60-69 16-20 50-59 11-15 40-49 6-10 30-39 3-5 Less than 30 2 or less

0 2 4 6 8 10 0 2 4 6 8 10

Figure 6 Figure 7

In terms of further diversity, there is one married couple in the sample, and three sets of two friends (the second friend was referred by the first). As mentioned in the previous chapter, locating gay men who had completely left the church was very difficult. One gatekeeper and one participant both suggested the reason might be that many gay men who had been in the church died of AIDS or suicide in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The suggestion was also made that it was not possible for gay men to stay in the evangelical church, and these days they either do not join at all, or move quickly to more tolerant gay-friendly congregations. On the contrary, gay women were not hard to locate. Of the six gay women in the study, two were 108 completely disaffiliated, while four were attending gay-friendly, non-fundamentalist church communities.

The stories of disaffiliation

As described in Chapter 2, there have been proposed in the literature various conversion and deconversion ‘careers’, typologies of deconversion and developmental models, which describe stages of faith. The following categories illustrate identity plotlines (with attendant turning points) that represent responses to the organisations and religious environments from which people have disaffiliated. It is not proposed to provide a similar typology to those already discussed in the literature, but to demonstrate that these stories may indicate the emergence of various power regimes and how they have shaped and normalised ways of practising an ‘acceptable’ Christian identity. There is overlap between all plotlines, as the argument of this study is that identity stories cannot be finalised and narrowed down to discrete categories. A typology may be considered even dangerous in a DNA, akin to a Foucauldian truth game which may finalise, classify and institutionalise identity (Frank, 2012: 49). Therefore, the stories are context specific and represent the participants’ co-construction with myself, their own ‘becomings’, rather than stand-alone statements of fact. This research is committed to not foreclosing people’s identities, as the ‘horizon of possibilities and the unanticipated should remain open’ within a narrative analysis (Fisher and Freshwater, 2014: 204). Nonetheless, these categories represent some beginning frame in which to consider the participants’ journeys from conversion to disaffiliation, and indeed to introduce the participants to the reader.

It is suggested that the five analysis chapters be read while referring to the synopses of the participants, including their ages, exit times and brief biographies, which are provided at Appendix F. Transcription conventions follow a more ‘Bakhtinian style’, and are outlined at Appendix G.

Plotline 1: The immersion within CF with certainty, towards rejection of CF, towards an ‘emancipated’ sense of self

Sadie, Barbara, Louise, Tom, Charlie, Lucy, Belinda, Ollie

The first plotline identified relates to a journey of immersion in CF with attendant sureness about one’s self and the world, to subversive and overt protest and re-positioning, to a place with some uncertainty and an alternative sense of Christian self. These participants all still called themselves Christian, but have re-defined that term to frame their own experience. The 109 re-storying process has led to quite individual re-definitions of what the word now means to them. Not all were attending church, and some had adopted multi-faith diverse positions of belief. These participants all described the initial existence of a sure and unquestioned identity based on an acceptance of what the Bible says about oneself in the world. They described being very serious about their faith, with a Christian identity governed by ‘certainty’ and ‘taking the Bible literally’. This ‘Christian self’ was related to seeking acceptability through the depth of involvement within the church community, and compliance with explicit and implicit rules. They then spoke of their changed identity in words such as freedom, growing up, strength, emancipation, confidence, increased self-worth, and peace. The re-forming of a new ‘ethical substance’ and alternative spiritual journey will be described more fully in Chapter 10, when applying the Foucauldian lens.

Firstly, Barbara, converted as a young person, uses her introductory remarks to express the predominance of Bible teaching and the silencing within the group culture, which enhanced compliance with the Bible discourse.

Josie: What happened if you just disagreed? Do you recall?

Barbara: No, I don’t. Although I’ve always had fairly robust discussions with people. And (pausing) no, I don’t think I can remember. I think disagreement was accepted—I don’t think people were rejected because they believed the wrong things. But I think a lot of people wouldn’t have said if they didn’t believe, because the culture of the group was so strong—to go along with what ever the Bible was teaching. That was the main thrust of it. That people would listen, and if they didn’t go along with it, I’m sure they wouldn’t have said.

Barbara’s journey included coming out as a lesbian woman and a slow graduated movement away from certainty to a more ‘liberal’ Christian approach. She considers herself now to be a different person, able to help others realise they do not have to submit to the rules and regulations of the evangelical position.

Josie: Can I ask you this, and you have sort of answered already, but I’ll ask you to reflect about it. I wonder what you’ve noticed about yourself, your life, your relationships, since leaving that church you grew up in, that more evangelical, more conservative Church? How do you think you may be a different person?

Barbara: Well, I think as I’ve identified problems that I’ve had with that evangelical position, I’ve recognised that most people I know feel the same, that they just don’t

110 know how to articulate it…and being in the [new] church—where you can say things that would have once been thought heretical and half the people in the congregation come to life—is a liberating thing because you realise you’re giving other people permission to think and to be different. And I think that’s an exciting thing, to unlock other people’s potential for imagination and creativity and not feeling that church is where you have to do as you’re told.

She considers her that her new self does not need to know all the answers, while using the word ‘freeing’ in relation to her own sense of breaking out of boundaries, and setting a different example for her children to follow. Again, she is invested in making a difference to others’ lives by her own changes, and particularly in resisting the notion that there is only one way of seeing things.

Josie: I’m wondering how you may describe the who you are now, compared to the who you were then?

Barbara: Well I think that (pausing) hmm—sense of self—(talking to herself). I think I’m more confident than I used to be, and I think it’s okay to make mistakes. (pausing) And it’s okay to say, ‘look, I don’t know any of the answers’. But I once would have…

Barbara still calls herself a Christian, but in some opposition to the evangelical position, and notes that others would not call her a Christian. She now attends a non-fundamentalist congregation. The word ‘Christian’ begins to emerge as a disputed term among the participants, with multiple claims to ownership. However the freedom and ‘authority’ to re- define this key word of subjectification in one’s own terms introduces a key identity story.

Josie: Can I ask you whether you would still call yourself by that name ‘Christian’?

Barbara: (pausing) I think I would. In the Interfaith group I do. I represent the Christian faith, and she represents the Buddhist, and she represents the Sikh etc. But in the Anglican Church as a whole in Sydney, I would not be regarded as Christian. Now your question is, do I think I’m a Christian? Yes I do, but I’m not a Christian who— well, the word Christian comes from the word Christ. And I think that most of the teaching about Christ is a myth. I believe in Jesus, and what Jesus taught. And I think that the world according to Jesus would be a wonderful place. So that’s the kind of world I would like to see my grandchildren grow up in.

111 Belinda, who grew up in an evangelical Christian family, considered that she ‘had a faith very much based on the faith of her parents’. She considered that the sureness of her early Christian self was also based on being on the ‘winning side’, which she experienced as profoundly shaping of herself. This was both in terms of validation by important people in the church, but also being part of a group that seemed to ‘have it all’.

Josie: Do you think that the evangelical church shapes people’s sense of who they are, because you’re saying you feel a completely different person? How do you think it may shape people?

Belinda: I definitely think that you get the feeling that you’re on the winning team— you’re in the right ballpark. The other Anglicans are liberal and wishy-washy. You’ve got good music, better music than anybody else (laughing). You’ve got good systems, intellectual people everywhere, good sermons that seem meaty and strong.

Josie: ‘We’ve got it all’, kind of thing?

Belinda: Yeah. We know, we evangelical Christians know, that we don’t have the emotional side down pat. And there’s a little personality hole there. Which the church tries to fill but can’t very well, I don’t think. But it’s got everything else. You can be popular and confident.

Belinda has struggled with her new self because of the high cost associated with separating herself from her family’s beliefs. This has created some fear for her in pursuing independent thought, related to ‘falling away’ and going to hell. Nonetheless, she embraces her new less- than-sure thinking, as it helps her relate to more people and find a more ‘robust faith’.

Belinda: I’ve come to realise that some of these new thoughts might be good things. It might be good for me to think independently, to challenge these ideas and come up with a faith that is more robust. Perhaps with less definitive edges, so I am able to relate to more people. And is truer in some ways, because we don’t know everything.

In fact, she uses the words ‘basking in new-found freedom’ in relation to the experience provided by her new congregation, compared to the male-dominated approach of her former fundamentalist church.

Belinda: I thought I would be grieving a lot losing my former church and friends, and putting up with a lot, but I found myself sort of basking in this new-found freedom, that no one’s going to tell me what I have to think. I suddenly realised that people had

112 been doing that a lot, and I hadn’t noticed very much. I hadn’t really been aware how prescriptive the sermons were, how much they locked out anybody else’s involvement in the service, how much they were men speaking.

Josie: It’s interesting that you anticipated grieving, but instead you were basking? That surprised you?

Belinda: Yes, it did. It was great! (laughing) People from my old church were saying, ‘how are you going?’ and I was, ‘really good! really good!’ (laughing)

She stated that she now experiences herself as a different person, particularly in relation to not treating people as ‘in-or-out’. She drew a diagram for me like a road with a bottleneck in it marked ‘confusion’, with ‘old paradigm’ on one side and ‘new paradigm’ on the other. This seemed to represent her changes as an ongoing journey, and she said that ‘changing your way’ could happen several times.

Josie: Let me just ask you about being in the new situation—how you think you are now as a person? Is the who you are now different from the who you were then?

Belinda: Yes. I feel like a completely different person. Because I can’t operate the same way. I can’t treat people the same way, as in-or-out. Which I think is a good thing. I haven’t probably changed many of my views on what I think is a pretty good idea, and what I think is stupid. So I still say, ‘oh, that’s stupid’. I’m not sort of, ‘yeah, anything goes’. But I’ve changed my attitude to how I interact with other people. I want to react to them differently. And I feel like I’m very, very distant from traditional Christianity.

In describing his identity journey and shaping of his Christian self, Charlie introduces the words ‘groupthink’, ‘immersion’, and ‘social control’—both overt and covert.

Charlie: It was almost like, ‘let’s keep you so immersed in all these different programs, that you don’t have time to think for yourself’. And you’re constantly bombarded with all these different messages that are referenced back to Scripture, so they appear to be sanctioned by God himself. And the peer group is also influenced by this, so you are in this group who all think the same. It’s like ‘groupthink’. So if someone begins to step out of line, think different, say something different, the person up the front doesn’t necessarily have to call them out. Because there is a control group that will say, ‘hey, we don’t really like where you’re going there, we’re worried about you’… 113 Josie: So when you think about this community, how do you think it influenced your thinking and your behaviour?

Charlie: Wow. That’s a really big question. It had a profound influence on my thinking and behaviour—(pausing) umm, I guess they’re probably connected, but in terms of behaviour, there was an underlying sense of social control. So there were certain things that were acceptable and certain other things that were unacceptable. And you figured out pretty quickly what they were. So the acceptable things were things like reading the Bible, praying, talking in spiritual tones, kind of doing quirky slightly rebellious youth activities. The things that weren’t okay were socialising with people who weren’t Christians, drinking, being materialistic.

Josie: So, these things that you had to figure out—was that kind of overt or covert?

Charlie: It was both actually. So there was a public call to be a part of the community and to make a commitment that you were going to live a certain way, that you were going to embrace certain values, and that you were leaving behind other values and were going to make yourself accountable.

He also describes the immersed identity story of Christian shame and comparison with others, promoted through restrictive and corrective practices.

Josie: Let me ask you this—in terms of the Christian identity when you were in this community, as opposed to how you might understand it now, your Christian sense of self or personhood—how was that being shaped?

Charlie: Oh, it was hugely negative. It was about trying to attain an unrealistic standard. It was highly fuelled by shame and comparison. And for me personally it was incredibly unhealthy. And debilitating. That is how I would describe the Christian identity that was thrown on me. It was restrictive, legislative. It was all about what was wrong, and very remedial and kind of corrective. Suspicious of anything that was positive, joyful, spontaneous or outside of that realm. Yeah. And I would never have described it that way at the time.

Charlie now defines himself as distinctly different from the fundamentalist community. In this quote, he implies an aversion to what he sees as the hypocrisy of pretending to care within evangelical groups, which may well relate to his sense of abandonment and lack of care by the fundamentalist group at various turning points in his life. For example, earlier in the interview

114 he considered that the poor advice given to him by a youth leader about university preferences (in the apparent promotion of ‘Christian ministry’) had changed the trajectory of his life.

Josie: Just in terms of since you’ve left, what have you noticed about yourself, your life?

Charlie: Yeah, that’s a good question (pausing)—

Josie: How you may be different or not I guess?

Charlie: I’m very reluctant to do anything that’s controlling with people. I guess I try and challenge people’s assumptions. I really have an in-built aversion to anything that looks like a social group where people are going to talk, turn up, go through a structured Christian ritual, vomit up about their lives and then go home, and then pretend that they care about each other.

Charlie describes his exit like the Exodus, the Biblical metaphor of the Jews escaping slavery in Egypt and finding their promised land. While he describes the Exodus as ‘liberating’ there was also ‘a loss of dream and loss of community’. At another point, he also refers to his exit as a ‘detox’. He further reflects that while he once enjoyed both the certainty and the experience of somehow ‘being better than others’, similarly to Belinda, he now aspires towards more ‘healthy relationships’.

Josie: How would you describe the who you are now, compared to the who you were then?

Charlie: The who I was then was very much a function of the community I was in. And I defined myself as being part of that kind of tribe. And I loved the fact that I was in, I loved the fact that there were rules, I loved the fact that it gave me a sense of certainty. I guess it fuelled a little bit of, like, youthful arrogance and idealism mixed together, you know? Like the idealism of: ‘yeah, we’re going to change the world’— and the arrogance of: ‘we’re better than all the other people’.

Charlie deliberately says that he is not a Christian but a ‘follower of Jesus’. Nonetheless, he does describe an adherence to a re-defined sense of being a Christian, as the other participants have described, and attends a non-evangelical church, which has helped him restore some of his hopes about a potential caring community. He is crystal clear when he articulates how the word ‘Christian’ has become disassociated from what he believes Jesus’ values to be, and why

115 he will not now use it. This comment continues to reflect the participants’ desire to reclaim or discard the word ‘Christian’ in their identity journey.

Josie: When you said before that you would call yourself a follower of Jesus, but not a Christian, what did you mean by that?

Charlie: (pausing) I think I mean that most of the time when I hear the word ‘Christian’, and look at what’s associated with it, I’m ashamed of it and I don’t want to be associated with it (lowers voice). And I think it doesn’t represent the person I understand Christ to be, what his values are and what he’s on about.

Josie: So, socially or culturally that word ‘Christian’, it conjures up for you your past experience?

Charlie: Yeah, and also present frustrations, I guess. I’d rather not be associated with that particular brand, I guess. You know, you look at the Qantas brand that has dived because of its stupid decisions. I think it’s the same for Christians.

Ollie, who grew up attending church, describes her early evangelical Christian immersion as being tempered by her awareness of her gay sexuality. She knew that being a lesbian was forbidden in her church community.

Ollie: Yeah, but they had a really beautiful organ, a wonderful choir, you know, all the tradition.

Josie: So you liked the tradition?

Ollie: Yeah—

Josie: —but you didn’t like—

Ollie: —the message.

Josie: Right. So what was the message?

Ollie: ‘Repent and be saved or you’ll go to hell, and, you know, if you’re a lesbian, you’re dead anyway’.

Josie: Okay. Explicit or implicit?

Ollie: Oh, terribly explicit, yeah.

116 Ollie then speaks on four occasions of a self that is now not dependent on others’ approval or opinions, and a confidence in her own self-worth. She speaks of not caring what others think when reflecting on how ‘liberating’ her spiritual journey has been. Again, she defines her Christian self in direct opposition to ‘Sydney evangelicals’, without being constrained by their views and structures.

Ollie: I think Sydney evangelicals are extremely harsh, narrow people who feel they’ve got to project a certain almost austere nothingness—if that makes sense.

Josie: How do you think this might be sort of be maintained?

Ollie: It’s maintained because of the structures. It’s maintained particularly in Sydney because the [named leaders] have sewn up every powerful position in the diocese. They’ve got the legitimate authority and power.

Josie: So it’s about power?

Ollie: Well, it’s about the misuse of power. You know, they’re misogynists as well.

Josie: How do you think your own sense of self may have changed over the years to where you’re up to now, just going on from what you’re saying?

Ollie: I think I’ve become confident enough not to care what they think.

Josie: ‘They’ being?

Ollie: Anybody. Not just the church. Anybody. (laughing) They can take it or leave it—I don’t really care.

Sadie, who grew up in a fundamentalist family and church community, casts her new story in the light of being a different woman emerging from several patriarchal systems of power, including her marriage. She describes a ‘growing up’ process, in relation to these different systems.

Sadie: I think I have wondered, whether in some ways, I was sort of really growing up. And as I grew up, I started to really see things. Because of the repressive way I had been brought up as a child, and as an adolescent. And then I had had a very controlling dominant husband. And I think I had lived very much under his influence. It was like the ‘me’ that was independent starting to emerge, but emerged very late.

Josie: Late, chronologically? 117 Sadie: Yes, in my 40s I think. And I left my marriage in my 50s.

Josie: That’s an interesting word, ‘growing up’—perhaps in reference to questions of identity. Is that something you’ve thought about a bit?

Sadie: (quietly, lowers voice) Yes I think I have…

Josie: …You know, as the years go on, do you notice different aspects about yourself emerging?

Sadie: Oh, I feel again my life has changed so dramatically, that sometimes it’s a bit hard to differentiate between whether the changes that have happened are as much due to that, as being on my own—leaving a marriage. And so I feel much stronger, I am much more independent, I can run my life, I tackle things, I’m braver than I was. I am absolutely glad of the transformation within me. But it’s not all about faith.

Josie: Yes, I hear that. It’s not all about the exit from the church. Lots of other things are involved. So, your experience, albeit tied in with other things, what would be some of the words that you would use to describe it?

Sadie: Well, there’s been a huge freedom. That would be the dominant word. But lots of sadness too.

She also re-defines the evangelical definition of Christian in that she considers herself now ‘a follower of Christ’s life’, rejecting almost all previous theological adherence and belief. She no longer attends church.

Sadie: And I think I have always been connected with living in a caring way towards other people, and what I think has—I don’t know if I’m jumping ahead here—is that I think I really uphold Christian principles in terms of the life of Christ. Which is grounded in the care of others, and loving.

Josie: Do you call yourself a Christian now?

Sadie: In those terms I would. And I can say quite honestly that I am a follower of Christ’s life.

Josie: In that kind of born-again way that you’ve described?

Sadie: No, I do not believe that.

118 Josie: People who are in, and people who are out? Heaven and hell?

Sadie: No.

Josie: Those ideas gone?

Sadie: Gone. Practically everything has gone I would say.

Louise, who was converted as a teenager and described being very caught up in various ‘roles’ in her life, considers there were just glimpses of the ‘real Louise’ over the years. She suggests, when offering advice for a therapist helping someone like herself, that ‘you have to follow an inner light’ and that people ‘can hide what they really think and feel’. This new sense of self seems to be based on not only finding ‘strength in the inner soul’, but also on finding a place of ‘reasonableness’. Louise thus introduces the concept of another story of the self, lying in parallel with the Christian evangelical self, which the next chapter describes in detail. Her alternative self was committed to an ethic of justice—but she was yet to find the words.

Louise: And so I guess there’s always been a streak—I believed it all sincerely—but there’s also always been quite a streak of realism in me I think. In choosing, like, not kissing your boyfriend good night until you’ve preached the gospel to someone? That was unrealistic. High-church, low-church? That became unrealistic to me.

Josie: You’ve always been saying, ‘what could we reasonably say as Christians’?

Louise: Yes, yes. It never crossed my mind to think that a homosexual was somehow bad. I met a lesbian lady for the first time going over on the boat to England. I was then 26. And I hadn’t even known, didn’t know—I was gobsmacked! (laughing) But it never occurred to me that she was wrong—that she should be corrected, or tried to be changed. It was like, ‘oh, this is interesting’.

Josie: Sounds like you’ve had some kind of alternative story about yourself underneath?

Louise: Well, I think probably that’s true. Probably that’s true. The things I wouldn’t accept. I think my interest in justice was there, but not put into words for a long time.

119 Lucy grew up in a Christian family, but also spent some years in a Christian-based ‘cult’18 before returning to mainstream evangelicalism. Her story is one of moving away from an immersed rules-based identity cultivated in her previous churches, to what she describes as ‘freedom’ in her new church community, which is not based on doing anything in particular. She also embraces a re-defined Christian identity, with a new theology, based on grace not control, which she says offers her peace.

Lucy: In fact, I don’t agree with a lot of this black-and-white theology that I’ve experienced. And if you’re going to hold onto grace, then you’ve got to hold onto it with both hands.

Josie: Do you think you have a new theology?

Lucy: Yes I do. I think my theology is changed, and I never thought it would ever be able to do that.

Josie: That’s kind of surprised you?

Lucy: Completely. And the peace. For the first time in my life, I experienced peace. I’ve never had peace. As a young kid, never had peace. Was always anxious about pleasing God, you know. My whole life—trying to please God, please God.

Josie: How would you characterise your new theology?

Lucy: Grace. But not grace and licence to sin—but a grace with choice. I can choose what I do with that.

Tom’s story from conversion in High School to theological training, to a celebrated career as a church leader, is one of being immersed in CF then moving towards ‘freedom in life’, rather than ‘freedom in faith’. As an older man, he is surprised and delighted by the connection and continuity he now feels with his younger adolescent self, through the ‘growing up’ process. The continuity seems to extend to the full circle of death, and the appropriate destruction of the body, not the discourse pertaining to the fear of death and hell. That is, he may have thought he was immersed, but as he exits he is reassured that his younger self was more like the person he is now. He uses the term ‘a sense of being and becoming’ in relation to this almost coming full circle.

18 As described in chapter 2, cult has a popular usage as a derogatory label for alternative or deviant minority religious groups, which are frequently accused of being authoritarian towards or manipulative of their followers. 120 Josie: What about in terms of who you are now, as opposed to the Tom you were?

Tom: …there is freedom in life, I don’t know if there is freedom in faith. I don’t think about my faith any more.

Josie: More freedom in yourself?

Tom: (nodding) It’s very interesting, when I stopped believing in the resurrection—I understand why Christians teach the resurrection of the body, I understand it as an ethical issue, because it’s about the importance of the body, and in that sense ‘I believe it’, if I can use that phrase—but when I gave up expecting that this (pointing to his own body) would rise, I found it releasing. I thought there was something unbelievably beautiful about belonging to the universe.

Josie: I wonder if that surprised you?

Tom: (smiling) Yes!

Josie: Particularly with all those years of teaching the fear associated with death?

Tom: Yes, yes. And I feel very comfortable about that. You know, I have to think about it at my age, I’m going to die—not that far away…There’s no fear for me, there’s a sense of something incredibly appropriate about, ‘you’ve come from everything, and you return to everything’.

Josie: I wonder when you think about your younger self, what you may have said about such a thing?

Tom: It’s funny isn’t it? I do think about this. When I think back over things I’ve said, things I’ve taught—I think I’ve always avoided these issues. Because I don’t think I ever really believed them.

Josie: This is very interesting, this is the continuity. Does it help, to think that there was this part of you, this—

Tom: (emphatically) Yes. I think it is wonderful…and if you’re with me, that’s just me picking up Sartre and Heidegger and Foucault and Derrida from my childhood. And running with it now into adulthood, because that’s all I’m doing now. I’m helping people to come to grips with a sense of being and becoming. And they understand that, because that’s what we’re all doing.

121 This sense of a continuous self is also expressed in his continuity as a Christian, understood as an inherited tradition from following Jesus, a great teacher. He also expresses a multi-faith position, and realises this would have him defined as a ‘non-Christian’ by others, in a similar vein to Barbara. The word again has important significance for how it is understood personally, or attributed by others who are more ‘in than out’. Again, it may be a contested term, but is reclaimed by Tom as an alternative identity statement.

Josie: This word ‘Christian’: would you define yourself as Christian?

Tom: Yes, yes I would. I know that others don’t. But I still call myself a Christian.

Josie: And how do you define yourself as a Christian?

Tom: I (pausing) admire the teaching and compassion of Jesus. I think it was unique in the way that he addressed people and situations. I don’t feel any necessity to believe and follow everything he said. Because I think some of it is purely linked to the times. Umm, he offered a radical way of understanding life that wasn’t locked in to the limitations of morality, so in that sense I regard him as a significant teacher. I read Buddha, I read Islam…whatever interests me, and you pick up great sayings from them. Well, there are two things to say. One, there is a continuity in Jesus. But I think probably more important than that, that is the world I have been brought up in.

Conclusion

In summary, this group of participants described a fully-immersed, certain, rules-based identity which migrated towards decreasing immersion and alternative identity stories of growth and maturity. They have all ‘personalised’ their definition of being a Christian, and do not want to be associated with the brand ‘Christian’ as defined in their previous evangelical churches. They have used various words to describe their journeys of change including freedom, growing up, not dependent on others’ opinions, and commitment to independent thought.

They have puzzled over, rejected, and moved away from the previous system that defines and demarcates insiders and outsiders, winners and losers. They may still call themselves Christian, but are aware that many others in their previous churches would not. The ‘bubble’ created by CF invites a constraining, narrowing, and truncating sense of self, largely defined by a particular view of Scripture as replicated by the self within the complicit community—a form of narrow Biblification. The repeated experience of such textual un-freedoms enacted within a docile community emerges as a discursive site of injury, but also resistance. The next

122 chapter now introduces the second identity plotline of the double-life, and the third plotline of cognitive dissonance towards ‘anti-scripturalism’.

123 Chapter 7

Data Analysis and Storying

Plotlines: 2 and 3

This chapter continues the description of the three plotlines identified as illustrating the identity journeys of the twenty participants in this research study. The previous chapter described the migration from immersion and certainty, to exit, freedom, self-worth and growing up, as described by eight participants. This chapter details firstly the explicit double- life and fragmented-self plotline, moving to integration, as described by nine participants. It then outlines the journey of intellectual and cognitive certainty, to doubt, then a complete loss of faith, described by three participants.

While four of the participants in the last chapter described some presence of an alternative self to the Christian self (namely Belinda, Ollie, Tom and Louise), the participants described below explicitly and in a detailed way document the presence of a ‘double’ or ‘parallel-life’—the co- existence of two selves with a sense of fragmentation, leading to some varying degrees of integration over time. Words used to describe the re-formed sense of identity include self- acceptance and acceptance of others, ‘in process’, embracing non-judgmentalism, growing up, and a more solid sense of an internal self. It should be noted that this double-life has mostly been associated with an emerging gay sexual orientation (Ollie, Martin, JoJo, Sue, Max, Ruth), and a transgendered identity (David). The experience of a sexual identity or the expression of sexual behaviour not congruent with the heteronormative practices of CF is an emerging theme, which will recur through the layers of analysis.

Plotline 2a: The double-life, towards a re-defined sense of Christian self

Martin, David, Ruth

These three participants describe leading a conflicted double-life, with their former identity dominated by shame, stigma and a sense of sin and guilt, which has had serious effects on their lives and relationships. Their stories of re-formed identity include descriptions of faith becoming something ‘empowering’, rather than condemning. They also speak of the movement toward self-acceptance and acceptance of others, with an identity ‘in process’ and blurred, while embracing non-judgmentalism and less black and white thinking. Like previous participants, they too have re-defined their Christian selves in accord with their own preferred

124 identity story while disaffiliating from CF, and have joined more diverse Christian communities. Martin and Ruth are gay, while David identifies as transgendered.

Firstly, Martin was refused communion at his evangelical church and walked out that very moment. He succinctly describes his identity conflict as related to the double-life he was leading through the 1980s and 1990s, when many gay men were dying of AIDS-related illnesses. In this sense, his double-life was experienced within a particular social context.

Martin: Yes. I think that the conflict was, that I hadn’t recognised, was that the reason I was leaving the churches was because my theology had changed. I’ve always been quite confident. When I came out, I came out because I remember waking up one morning and I was just fed up living two lives. Everybody has their own journey, and their own time, but I just got fed up with the lies of the double-life. It’s not that I was living a deviant double-life; I was just tired of having to constantly remember, you know, what I wasn’t doing.

Josie: Do you mean particularly the double-life in terms of the church?

Martin: Yes, but also with my family and friends. You know, I had two lives. I tell people these stories—in the 80s and the early 90s, we would go to funerals, (lowers voice) we went to a lot of funerals. Many times that was the first time you found out the surname of your friend. Because in those days, we never introduced ourselves by our full name…

He then describes the influence of CF as compounding his problems about coming out and moving beyond the double-life, by giving him a great sense of ‘crisis’. He concludes that most gay men will leave the church, as the identity construction of themselves as sinful and bad may prove overwhelming.

Josie: Let me ask you this. How do you think the conservative evangelical church might shape and influence yours, and others’, identity?

Martin: Umm, I think for people of my age, it shaped our identity because it gave us a great sense of crisis. It compounded our problems about our coming out. Because we weren’t just coming out socially, we were coming out spiritually. And often, when your family wasn’t religious, their issues of complaint were social issues of complaint. Their understanding of a gay person was generally the gay hairdresser your mother went to, that she thought was funny, but never wanted in the family. That’s what my mum and dad said to me: ‘you’ll be a point of ridicule, gay men are effeminate and 125 ridiculed’. Then having to come out with your faith and their evangelical sense of ‘how dirty I am for what I am doing and what I am’. And that’s compounded by their evangelical notion of sin and forgiveness. So, there is the old saying: ‘a gay evangelical says how sinful he is far more times than is required, just to make sure it’s said’. Often when I’m speaking with gay people who have come from, or who are within, evangelical, Catholic and Anglican churches, it’s an issue of their sinfulness that they can’t seem to get away from.

Ultimately Martin describes moving to a place where his faith is relevant to him, particularly in the context of self-acceptance and self-confidence, and not being dependent on others’ approval. Most significant in this was the nursing of his partner, Frank, through his illness and death, and the lack of support and understanding he experienced. He realised that he was on his own, but that his faith and life were his own, and not controlled by other people.

Martin: My father said to me the day my partner Frank died, ‘well, now your friend’s gone, that’s very sad but you’ve got to get on with your life now’. And I was just so angry at that. I understood his lack of understanding. But that set in train the realisation that I’m on my own. You’ve got to do this yourself. I gained a sense of self-confidence about myself, about who I was, what my faith meant to me. If others chose to have a different opinion, that was their loss, not mine. My faith was an empowering thing. I was confident in what I was looking for, because my faith had remained faithful. No—my faith had not remained faithful, my faith had remained relevant to me.

David describes his identity as transgendered, with ‘a girl part and a boy part’. He had experienced several occasions of Christian counselling for what the Christian agency told him was a ‘mental health disease’. He describes the ‘dichotomy’ in his life going on for more than 20 years, leading to depression and suicidal thinking. Eventually, David found acceptance within an inclusive non-evangelical church, which reflected his understanding of God’s unending love. He now experiences acceptance of himself in his girl state and boy state, without pressure to do or be different than he chooses. David describes a new sense of self that is ‘in process’, and less rigid, controlled and certain.

David: Previously I think I had a very organised sense of self, very controlled. Now I think it’s very blurred and very grey and very unclear, and I like it! I like that I’m working it out, because I’m 60 and I should have it altogether, and I’m glad I don’t. Because I’m still in process. I’m exploring cosmetic surgery, and, like, I’m on

126 hormones now. I’m just doing all this new shit. I just think I’m working out who I am. And if you read that spiritual diary I sent you before having this moment here—

Josie: Yeah, I did—

David: What occurred to me reading it after I’d written it was that I’m still very conscious of God and his love, and my family. But I really don’t give a shit about church any more.

Josie: I get it.

David: Yeah? Church is kind of like an organised, conservative establishment that wants to control you. I get that there is some good things in church. We’ve had some good things out of church.

Josie: I hear you—

David: But the church I’m in now is the closest thing I’ve ever been to what it ought to be.

He still calls himself a Christian, but again, hates the baggage and connotations of the term in the light of his previous church experiences and what it implies about one’s attitude to gay people. He considers that his theology hasn’t changed, but how that plays out in his life is different, leading to a less dogmatic and more laid-back sense of Christian identity.

Josie: Tell me, would you still call yourself a Christian?

David: Heck yeah, but I hate the word. There’s all the baggage that comes with that. Like church. I’ve said this for years. I just hate all the baggage that comes with that…I think people think as soon as you say the word Christian, you’re a frigging Nazi. You want to go out there and murder all the gays. But I’ve got so many gay friends now— it’s ridiculous! (laughing)

Ruth is somewhat different in that the influence of her fundamentalist family and its intersection with her emerging gay sexuality is the pivotal point, and she finds herself continuing to live the double-life with her parents and grandparents. Of all the participants, she described the most ongoing inner conflict in regard to her double-life. The implicit rule has been ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’, which she describes in the following way.

127 Josie: It’s interesting to hear of the influence of your parents. And has remained quite strong from what you’re saying.

Ruth: Yeah, I still go to church with my parents when I’m with them. Because I love them, and I want to respect them. I’d rather go to church with them—(doesn’t finish sentence)

Josie: Would it be hard to tell them, not that I’m saying you should, about your sexuality, being a gay woman?

Ruth: Yeah. It would be very hard. But I’m not so worried about my parents as I am about my grandparents. It seems to me that my parents have years to get over it, but my grandparents—I don’t know—they’ve only got 10 years left, maybe 20. It’s just that my family has got such high expectations of me, and I really struggle with that.

Josie: How does that fit with the double-life you’ve described having lived? How do these expectations fit with that?

Ruth: Not lived; living.

Ruth found the questions about the changes to her sense of self quite difficult to answer, pointing to some changes in her thinking. This seemed to reflect her ongoing ‘tornness’ between loyalty to her parents and the legacy of their beliefs, and her new experience of herself within an inclusive diverse church, and a new sexual relationship. While reflecting on her changes, she is keen to exempt her mother from any negative descriptor associated with fundamentalist churches. She mentions her mother in a positive way ten times during the interview, however her mother would also apparently find it very difficult to accept Ruth’s sexuality. At the same time, Ruth states her own biggest changes are becoming non- judgmental and ‘accepting of anybody’. Ruth’s plotline seems to reflect the ongoing tension between a new story of herself and her parents’ expectations of her, emerging in the expression of a double-life.

Josie: I’m wondering how you now experience your Christian identity and how it may be different from how you experienced it before.

Ruth: I think (long pause), to be honest with you, I have changed. I know I have changed in how I perceive the world. I just (long pause) am more wise in the way I look at the world, and I can see the problem in saying any negative connotation to someone…and I think judgment is a very big thing. I was very judgmental of people.

128 And I think going to Africa changed me as well. You can see how petty things are. You come back to this life and you really can see how petty things are. There is a lot of pettiness in these fundamentalist churches because they don’t have a lot else to talk about, or do. And I don’t think my mum is at all petty. And there are a lot of people who aren’t. But I do think there is a lot of pettiness and infighting and bickering.

Plotline 2b: The double-life towards no Christian identity

JoJo, Sue, Wendy, James, Rachel, Max

JoJo, Sue and Max speak specifically of the double-life in relation to their gay sexual identity, in a similar vein to Martin, Ruth and David. The equation of their sinfulness and completely unacceptable sexual orientation was strongly expressed. On the other hand, Wendy, James and Rachel also speak of living a double-life, not in relation to hiding their sexual orientation, but in connection with the hiding or repression of their heterosexual expression outside of marriage, and their adolescent/subversive behaviour outside church.

All these participants have totally left the Christian church. Identity stories of the new sense of self include moving away from self-abandonment towards self-embracing, alternative moral positioning, growing up, forming a stronger internal self, self-acceptance, calmness, confidence and becoming authentic.

JoJo introduces the term ‘internalised homophobia’ to describe the inculcated self-hate experienced by gay members of the church. She summarises for others the experience of gay people within the church when she spoke of her identity at that time being validated by the ‘internalised homophobia,’ which gave her the mistaken sense of congruence she was hoping for. She explains it this way:

Josie: What justifies the internal homophobia?

JoJo: (lowers voice) The system where the small group inculcates the patriarchal view and the heterosexual view, and the normality of that, and the requirement of that to be successful in that cultural group—then that reinforces internal homophobia.

She described her coming out as a way of acknowledging her right to love, and a desire to stop the continuation of the micro-injury of the continuing double-life. She then described her changing identity as moving through depression, away from self-abandonment, to being free, and re-connecting with herself. Her comments on depression here also reflect the stories of Lucy, Sue, Charlie, Max and James who all mentioned a period of depression. This was 129 experienced at a transition or turning point of change while within CF, and was not experienced again post-exit.

JoJo: And another thing I also want to say. I think it’s important to say that I did have a significant depression during my adolescence and in my early 20s. The last time I experienced any depression was when I got some therapy about coming out, and subsequently leaving the church once and for all. I’ve had no depression ever since. This was the last time ever—after all that grappling—it was like being free, like reconnecting with my identity. I’d stopped abandoning myself.

She definitely does not call herself a Christian, and in fact describes a sense of ongoing shame, as a type of identity legacy of the years spent in the evangelical church. She admits she does not like to speak about this time in her life, as she sees herself as a mindful and strong-minded person who subscribed to a power system she now finds abhorrent. This feels like a sense of failure in her intellect. These comments were made in the context that it is only ‘safe’ to talk to me, because I am in a similar situation, and perhaps now also not under the gaze. The shame of imbibing, embracing and perpetuating the discourses of CF as ‘truth’ has become anathema to her new selfhood with its revised ethical and intellectual frame.

JoJo: You know, I’ve grappled over the years with having shame about that, rather than shame about my sexuality. Shame about having been there, in that system.

Josie: The shaming came from someone?

JoJo: No, I feel ashamed of my intellect that I could have subscribed to that degree of control in a system. And I was talking to my partner about it last week, and she said, ‘it’s not about your intellect you idiot; (laughing) you know you were hiding’. I was like, ‘I know, but I don’t talk about it’… I still have an incredible shame about that I think, and people I know now have no idea about this history.

The double-life and ‘burying’ was most relevant in Sue’s life in relation to her friend Rick, a gay friend in the church, who died of AIDS. Her awareness of her own complicity in creating his double-life was a turning point in terms of her identity change from self-blame and dependence, through depression, towards freedom.

Sue: And I was involved in the church to such an extent that the Minister would ask me to, you know, deliver a sermon from time to time at the evening service, and sometimes at the morning service. That was the level of my engagement. And at one time, I remember being up there, and Rick came to hear me speak. And I said, ‘Rick, 130 I’m going to say something in this that won’t be very, you know, good for you. I’m going to say something about homosexuality’. And he just said, ‘no that’s okay, you just go ahead and do it’. And I went ahead, and talked about homosexuality being wrong, and whatever it was, while Rick sat there in the congregation and listened to all that claptrap. He was there to support me in my preaching, even while I was preaching against him. But his death was the real changer for me.

She spoke of Christian teaching and the Christian community inviting and creating the double- life for Rick, and for herself, although it took some time for her to ‘come out’ and reach some convergence within her own preferred sense of self.

Sue: Yes, it was always—it was patronising I think.

Josie: Rick experienced that, do you think?

Sue: I think Rick experienced that, I have to say, from me. And that really hurt too. He was struggling with dying of AIDS within a Christian community and he had to put up with all our religious claptrap. As if trying to just cope with dying weren’t enough for one person to deal with.

Josie: I guess because when you were trying to help him you were standing on very different ground, kind of thinking what ever he was doing was somehow wrong?

Sue: Yes, yes. And then lots of things started to come under scrutiny. I really loved Rick, and I knew he was a sincere person. He was doing the best he could. But then he was living a double-life, because of us, and because of what we were professing.

Josie: So the church community invited Rick into a double-life?

Sue: Yes, yes.

Josie: And that upset and angered you?

Sue: Yes. And also, it angered me for myself because (pausing) it stopped me—now, I’m aware of what I’m saying—because you know, what was it about me that wasn’t brave enough to push beyond that and to say, ‘look, despite that, why don’t I just go and find out if I’m gay or not’?

Sue considers her sense of self now to be based on being grown-up rather than dependent, making her own decisions without reference to God, being less reliant on what people think of

131 her, and feeling good about who she is. Nonetheless, she speaks of the difficulty of entering the lesbian world late in life, and finding it difficult to find a place there.

Sue: Yeah. That’s what I miss. You know, a God in heaven who is constantly looking out for you, who is constantly working in your life to intervene. That’s part of growing up as well. You’ve got to make your own choices. You’ve got to take your own— there are the out-workings of those choices.

Josie: Decision-making is different?

Sue: And you’ve got to take the consequences. And you can’t sort of blame God for everything. So I’m really glad. My world has grown. My world has opened up significantly. The people who I mix with has opened up significantly. And my world is much, much richer.

Josie: How do you think, and this is a hard question, you’ve changed? The who you were then, and the who you are now?

Sue: I think I’m not as dependent on what other people think of me. I think I was very dependent on other people approving of me. On other people’s opinion of who I was, and me conforming to that.

Josie: That fitting in thing?

Sue: Yes, the fitting in. I think now my sense of myself is more internal. It doesn’t feel absolutely solid at times, but other times it does. I feel very good about being who I am. I still find—one of the difficult things for me is—I still haven’t been able to find a place in the lesbian world.

She speaks of wondering whether she believes in God, but definitely not defining her identity in those terms. She speaks of a ‘new dawning’ in her life, with gratitude, hope and freedom as sustaining her on the difficult journey of disaffiliation and personal re-storying.

Sue: One of the things that I always held with me was Jung. He said, ‘in the second half of life, we deal with all those things that we didn’t deal with in the first half’. That kept me going. And I thought, ‘okay I’ll hang onto that, I believe him, I’ll hang on to that’. And that this period, as traumatic as it may be, does actually point to a new dawning. I remember a counselling friend of mine saying, ‘look, it doesn’t feel like it now, but there’ll be one day and you’ll be out the other end and you’ll be grateful for

132 this’. And I thought, ‘no, there’s no way I’ll be grateful’. And I really am—I really am incredibly grateful.

Max felt his Christian conversion released him in some way from his homosexuality, which was not only a criminal offence at the time, but also considered a mental illness. After his conversion, he went through exorcisms and an ex-gay program, which used re-programming and aversive techniques to help him overcome his ‘unwelcome same-sex attraction’ and live a holy life. He describes how his fragmented-self developed as a result of this process.

Josie: At this time, can you reflect on questions of your sense of self? How you think these communities might have been shaping how you saw yourself, how you experienced yourself?

Max: Well, there were two identities I had. Like many gay men, we have a fragmentation of self. So it isn’t just the church. The church is very influential, but we’ve already had that from the society. You know, in high school I knew I could not tell a soul, because two guys had suicided in my school; they had been harassed so much, you know. And I saw the treatment a very feminine guy in the school got. So that was already there. And that was then reinforced. Of course from society: ‘you’re a criminal, you’re mentally ill’, and then the church is telling me: ‘this is a demonic spirit’.

Josie: So you’re a criminal, you’re mentally ill, and you have a demonic spirit?

Max: ‘And evil, and perverted, and against God’s law’. So that was really strongly reinforced just by my surroundings.

Josie: So this fragmented identity or divided self—

Max: Yes, the fragmentation of self means for me, and for many gay men, that the gay is the dark self. And so you will allow the dark self to do things that the other self, the Christian public self, would never, ever do.

He married, yet continued to have encounters with men and dealt with these ‘binges’, as he called them, by fighting them and never letting himself enjoy sex. He considered this an insidious form of denial of his identity.

Josie: So how were you managing this?

133 Max: Interesting—(laughing) it was very interesting. The way that I managed it was: ‘as long as I’m fighting this, God can bless me’. Even though I was falling, before I didn’t want to fall. Afterwards I regretted it. And I would pray and ask for forgiveness. I would never actually allow myself to enjoy the act. ‘This is not something you get pleasure from, this is an abomination. This is horrific. This is turning your back on God. This is from the devil’. All that sort of stuff. It was evil, it was perverted, it was an abomination. That’s how I managed that, keeping it in that context, and seeing myself like any Christian who’s a human being managing sin. I mean, ‘we all have our battles, mine is homosexuality, but eventually this will not be a part of my life. I’ve got a sexual context’.

It’s not like for a heterosexual man who says, ‘well, I’m tempted to have sex with another woman’. This is like—I’ve got two separate things for me. ‘This is what God wants for me. I can have sex within that context. And this is what God doesn’t want, so if I just keep fighting this, eventually’—

Josie: So, making this comparison with a heterosexual man being tempted to have sex with another woman, this is a kind of a flawed comparison, isn’t it?

Max: Guys like myself—which I would have classed as an ex-gay—we live in the most insidious form of denial. We will not face the reality that our orientation is not changing. And we will excuse it, we will reframe it, we will do everything to never take on the identity.

In terms of a process, he described eventually moving to ‘reluctant acceptance’ of his gay sexuality, or a ‘Christian with a homosexual problem’. However, this became a further untenable identity position, so that that he moved to completely shut down his Christian belief system and walked away. However, he described the ‘cognitive dissonance’ and a fear of hell so great when he left, that he contemplated suicide.

Max: I planned to commit suicide at 50, because my belief system at that point said ‘you’re probably going to go to hell for this’. I couldn’t integrate my sexuality and my Christian faith. These two things are opposite. And I’ve gone over to the dark side now, so I don’t know if there is a heaven or a hell but I’ll probably go to hell because I’ve accepted my, I’ve given into—it wasn’t so much accepted—I’ve given into, my homosexuality.

134 In his continuing journey, he then spoke of a time when he had ‘a profound sense that I knew everything was ok and that God loves me’. While he says he is not a Christian now, he does believe in a God, and prefers to ‘live in the mystery and the I-don’t-knows’. Max has now moved away from shame and a fragmented self to what he calls being ‘authentic’.

Josie: How would you kind of describe the who you are now, compared to the who you were then? What words come to mind?

Max: Oh, integrated, whole, resolved, complete (laughing). Yeah, they’re the words that I would use to describe me. Authentic! Authentic is a word that I love. I would say that today I have integrity. I mean—I’m living in complete harmony with my values today…What I know now is that integrity is one of my top values. And here I lived for 25 years out of integrity, because I could not be myself. I was two people. And so now I can live as an openly gay man, and I can say that I am a gay man of faith, which I feel I am. It’s a mystery, but it’s still a faith. It’s re-defined.

Wendy reflects that while the church community on the one hand helped her self-esteem, it also invited a sense of badness and shame by its black and white theology about homosexuality and sex before marriage. The teaching around sex was hugely (a word she used often) influential for Wendy, and led to the development of her ‘two lives’, and an overarching identity of shame and guilt.

Wendy: I guess I almost had two lives in a sense. I had my weekend life, I had my friends, and it was hard as well because my best friends all went to church except for a couple. And my closest friend—we would go out partying, and you’d be drinking and smoking, and come back to youth group and not really ever talk about it. Well, you wouldn’t dob yourself in, and you wouldn’t really discuss it. It was kind of ‘you don’t need to know this stuff about me’, but then you are really separating yourself…and I really struggled with it, because then you think you’re bad. ‘I’m a bad Christian, which means I’m a bad person’…

Josie: How did it affect you, that kind of double-life?

Wendy: I don’t think it’s a good thing. And I think I really put huge amounts of guilt and shame on my behaviour, and really struggled with that—‘I’m a good person or I’m a bad person, and this is what a bad person is’. Especially when I look back now, a lot of what I was doing was really minimal standard adolescent behaviour. Nothing I think was ‘bad’.

135 Wendy’s difficulties reached a crisis when she was required to undertake compulsory ‘counselling’ with her youth pastor over a period of a year in relation to her non-Christian boyfriend, with whom the church assumed she was having sex. Wendy surprised herself during the telling of this story to me when she openly wept, thinking she had already ‘processed this’. Clearly, the ‘counselling’ that ultimately led to her decision not to give up her boyfriend, but her leadership and involvement in the church, was still extremely painful. Eventually she left church altogether, and now does not call herself a Christian, but one who still believes in God. She says her spiritual identity has ‘always been there, it just kind of slides in and out’. She also doesn’t wish to lose her retrospective valuing of her church involvement with the subsequent experience of anger, confusion and loss. She has worked toward some re- integration of the two lives, a word I offered to her and she accepted.

Josie: How do you think you may have re-defined yourself? When you said you had to re-define yourself—I know it’s a hard question—but how do you think you have? What have you done in relation to yourself, or thought, in relation to yourself?

Wendy: Lots of self-reflection, and lots of self-care…a lot of reflection I guess, and thinking, ‘oh, I can still see those bits of me when I was 14, and they’re still here, but a lot of it just got coated in religion. If you can just pull those bits of religion off it, the little undercurrents of me are still there’.

Josie: That’s interesting. Is that a kind of pulling-together of those parts of you from back then?

Wendy: Yeah.

Josie: Like a re-integration? Would you have a better word than that, or a better way of putting it?

Wendy: No, I think that’s a good way of putting it. I think it’s still ongoing. I don’t think I’ve finished.

James, after his conversion as a young man, described his initial Christian identity story as based on ‘self-limiting behaviour’, while maintaining something of an outsider’s perspective. He considers that specific rules around sexual practice outside of marriage led to an experience of being ‘at war with himself’ and the development of an ‘assumed’ Christian self. The double-life involved the formation of an alternative self, along with a sense of inner conflict.

136 Josie: If you can, think back to the who you were then, how you related to yourself? How being a Christian may have the affected your sense of self?

James: Yeah, okay. I think I always felt I was somewhat at war with myself.

Josie: At war with yourself?

James: Well, you know, like, ‘I’m really interested in discovering my sexuality, but sexuality is bad, don’t do that’. And over the years, I had Christian girlfriends, and sexuality became more and more of an issue because we were starting to do sexual type things outside of the marriage context. So therefore there’s that whole tension of ‘aah, sex is great, and oh crap, sex is bad’. And that—this isn’t really answering the identity question any more—that caused big issues in several relationships, and I had to give up someone who for a very long time was the best girlfriend I’d ever had, because I was too sexually excited…yeah, I have always had a bawdier sense of humour than the church would like. I’ve always been more open and tolerant of alternative lifestyle groups than the church would appreciate.

Josie: Are you perhaps describing an alternative sense of self to the Christian self?

James: Yes, absolutely. I was always conscious that there’s the person I needed to be around Christian people, and encouraged myself in my private thoughts to be more the person I would just automatically and naturally be.

James has now completely left the church, has ‘never looked back’, and does not call himself a Christian, ascribing more to ‘the American liberalism mindset’. In terms of identity changes, he says he has thrown off ‘the assumed self’, or ‘Bible goggles’, to endorse his own calmer, confident way of viewing the world. He notes that he had always been aware of his own way of viewing the world but the Bible goggles had got in the way of that.

Josie: I guess my question then is, when you think of the who you are now compared with the who you were then, how do you think you may have changed?

James: Almost instantly. I was much calmer within myself, much more confident within myself. I didn’t have to be always sitting on my own shoulder saying, ‘is this the right thing to do? Are you doing the right thing? Ssh! What are people going to think?’ So all of a sudden just much more confident, much more calm. And able to approach life with my own set of eyes, rather than trying to put Bible goggles on.

Josie: Bible goggles? 137 James: Yeah I just made that up.

Josie: It’s interesting. When you say your own set of eyes, does that mean you were trying to think about your own way of viewing the world, your own values?

James: I think I’d always been aware of how I view the world. But then I’d always had to temper that with the Bible goggles…actually I don’t care if there is a God. There may be, that’s nice—he can sit up there in the heavens. Just leave me alone. I don’t care.

The final participant who specifically spoke of living a double-life was Rachel, who enjoyed being ‘naughty’ at the same time as being a Christian. She described becoming adept at hiding her ‘naughty’ behaviour, until eventually the double-life she inhabited became ‘a more authentic life’. She resents the legacy of the badness and guilt associated with the Christian self, and considers that now she wants to be more vulnerable and open in relationships. She references here the ongoing effects of the abuse of power within her church group, a concept to be considered in more detail in the next chapter.

Josie: So how would you describe the who you are now, compared to the who you were then?

Rachel: That’s tricky, because it was adolescence as well—I’m going to be so different. I think probably more authentic and more comfortable. I think the Christianity stuff made me feel like I was bad, so I was always trying to pretend. And I wasn’t bad. I wasn’t bad. I was just like a teenager being normal, you know. And I think that was really hard. I think adolescence is hard enough trying to figure out who you are, but I was also trying to fit within this framework and always being told that what I was wasn’t okay. And what my friends were wasn’t okay. And that’s really hard. Especially when God’s saying it, you know. Because I started to see our minister as God. If God thinks I’m not okay, then I must be really bad. That’s a pretty hard one to live with.

Josie: So, the person you are now, what were you saying? Authentic, comfortable—

Rachel: Trying to be. Really just trying to be more comfortable in myself, if that makes sense. And trying to be okay with being vulnerable.

Josie: Do you think vulnerability, or openness to people, was affected by this experience?

138 Rachel: (sighing) It’s hard to say, because I think I am pretty open. But I find that very hard with people in positions of authority. I think this is part of the power stuff. Whereas if it is like somebody I meet—I can talk to everyone in the street, and I’m quite happy to talk about all sorts of things—but as soon as there is a power difference, and I think that they could judge me, I feel really protective.

She also described an ongoing shame and embarrassment associated with ever becoming involved in CF at all. This is a similar experience described above by JoJo, and may indicate an ongoing legacy, or residue identity story within their own identity anthology. That is, remembering being persuaded by and immersed in CF may invite a retrospective experience of shame and foolishness.

After the interview, Rachel wrote to me about her further reflections on the double-life as an important protective factor in her life enabling her to explore alternative identity conclusions. The parallel life assisted her to enact an ongoing resistance to the identity project of forging an ‘acceptable’ Christian identity in the context of the evangelical community.

Rachel: I guess one thing that I’ve reflected on is about the parallel life. I think what could easily be read into that is that my experiences were having me seeking out ‘bad’ things e.g. the perception people use drugs because they feel bad. I guess I want to clarify that this was not true to my experience. I believe that this alternative exploration actually was quite protective as it gave me an alternative reference point. I remember at one point our youth minister talking about how the show Friends was a demonstration of why living in sin was so destructive; that their relationships were all over the place etc. I think if I didn’t have this alternative reference point in which to compare and see the spectrum of different ways of living life I could have taken his views on more at face value? Possibly not, but I do feel my alternative exploration as a protective force.

Plotline 3: The ‘mind of the believer’, to cognitive dissonance, to ‘anti- scripturalism’, with no Christian identity

Michael, Rob and Arthur

The final three participants describe a journey of intellectual and cognitive certainty, to doubt, then a complete loss of faith. Their journey is somewhat Spinozan and ‘anti-scriptural’ in that they embrace rationalism and naturalism, with a denial of the afterlife, the divine authorship of the Bible and any act of divine creation (Spinoza, 2007: xvii, Della Rocca, 2008: 21)

139 Baruch Spinoza was excommunicated for his profound challenging of Jewish fundamentalism and its power structures, which were designed to maintain a sense of civic tranquillity in Holland among the Jews during a particularly hostile and dangerous historical epoch. He articulated in his Theological and Political Treatise that the Bible is to be treated as any other natural object and interpreted as any other text (Della Rocca, 2008: 31), virtually reinventing Bible exegesis. His anti-scripturalism then merged with his attack on ecclesiastical authority and what soon came to be called ‘priestcraft’ in early Enlightenment circles. The high-minded visions of great founders of religion (such as Jesus) were seen as in no way corresponding to the doctrines and pretensions of priests and rabbis building and exploiting socially and politically powerful organisations (Spinoza, 2007; xvii). In many ways, Spinoza was the archetype apostate, rejecting the truth discourses of Scripture and the power structures that flowed from such ‘regimes of truth’.

These participants describe their Christian identities, not unlike other participants, as being initially shaped by the discourses of selectively interpreted theology, the identity requirements of the tight group of which they were a part, and the sufficiency and certainty of such a perpetuated worldview. The emerging identity stories have some similarity in the cases of Michael and Rob, who use such words as liberating, exciting, unlocking creative energy, becoming more realistic, self-aware and less selfish. Arthur’s story on the other hand of the loss of his affiliated identity, which ends in confusion, longing and regret, is distinctly different.

Michael considers that the biggest influences on his identity formation as a Christian were his family upbringing as well as the groups in which he was immersed. However, he describes always having doubts about aspects of faith being ‘born with a natural scepticism or a curiosity about things’. His doubts were initially allayed by his trust and relationship with church leaders, enabling ‘a young person like me to get through things by sweeping them under the rug’. His identity was therefore invested in maintaining ‘the mind of a believer’.

Josie: Do you remember your response at the time for dealing with these different opinions?

Michael: Well, having the mind of a believer, you naturally—I think your brain is a little bit more conditioned to preserving that belief. And I think that in an evangelical setting, there is a fairly big importance placed on maintaining a core set of beliefs. And anyone who is genuinely a part of that feels the same way. I definitely would have seen it as important at the time, just because of the importance that was placed on maintaining that interpretation of the Bible. Yeah, I had a very different thought 140 process back then, and it was usually to do with maintaining what the church’s core set of beliefs were around that topic.

Josie: So if you had those thought processes as a believer of maintaining the core beliefs, how do you think this may have affected how you were as a person? I guess it’s that question again about sense of self and identity.

Michael: I think probably the priority for me at the time was fitting into that group, more so than being a particular unique person. I think my sense of self at the time was to be seen as a good Christian. I believed the correct things, and certainly when I started to lead youth group, I was definitely seen by the younger ones as a trustworthy leader. That was probably the way I saw myself at the time, to develop that image, and not stray from that.

Michael described ‘just a belief fading away’ and ‘a lot of things unravelling at one time’. He said that evangelicals may understand apostasy as ‘joining the evil side’, but he was now leading a similar life to before, just not going to church. Further, he reached the point of a somewhat comfortable and liberating experience of agnosticism.

Michael: I started to look into other belief systems. I decided that I would start from a clean slate and I investigated all of the major religions, and a lot of the minor sects of the major religions. I eventually came to the point where I didn’t think that I would ever find something that convinced me. I remember realising that agnosticism was probably my permanent thing and in some ways that was disappointing, because it’s an unsatisfying position.

Josie: Because it’s a not-knowing position?

Michael: A not-knowing position, but at the same time it was incredibly liberating because I wasn’t trying to maintain something that I knew had flaws. It’s very comfortable being able to make decisions where you’re not invested in a side before you start looking at it.

Michael described his new sense of self with words like liberating, exciting, unlocking creative energy and re-discovering his own uniqueness, which had been eclipsed in the Christian community. He laughed when I said, ‘this has clearly not been a terrible time’ for him.

Josie: Back to that sense of identity again, the who you were then, and who you are now, what would you say about that?

141 Michael: Well, who I was then was, I think, being centred around a wise Christian leader and obviously that was gone…It was a period when everyday or at least every week, I’d suddenly realise I had come across some aspect of life, and realised, ‘oh, that’s right, I’m not a Christian any more. And how do I feel about this now?’

Josie: Like discovery?

Michael: Yes very much so…you’ve asked me about my sense of self. I’m not sure I’ve really answered that very well. Once I had got back to what I was going to do with my life, probably the first thing that I did was pick up old hobbies and things that I always would have pursued if I hadn’t been distracted by church. I was always a keen guitarist when I was in high school. So when I got a job, I went and bought a new guitar and started a band, and really threw myself into that. I had a lot of spare time, because I had a very hectic schedule as a Christian.

Josie: It takes up a lot of time?

Michael: Yeah, it does. I was left with all that spare time which I kind of threw into other things. Losing faith unlocked a lot of creativity in me I think…

Josie: What do you think about that, that creative energy being locked away while you were part of that Christian community?

Michael: Yes, I think there are very creative people in churches, and there’s some wonderful art and poetry and things like that, but I think it tends to always by default have a Christian slant, and it kind of robs it of the uniqueness of that person…

Michael concluded by saying that he ‘finds life much more rich and interesting without religion’, and that ‘you retain more of yourself than you realise’ or fear you may lose, on the basis of church teaching around the downward spiral of apostasy.

Rob described his identity as bound up with the Christian group, because ‘you have this common bond with people that you’re going to spend eternity with, it’s just what you do’. However Rob’s doubts about creation and evolution led to his eventual conclusion: ‘I can’t call myself anything but a materialist any more. I have to accept that this is a material world. There is no real evidence of anything spiritual in existence’. Nonetheless, it was a risky business for Rob to be taking this path, as he was married with a family at this stage—all heavily involved in the church. He describes the process of telling his wife, then choosing a differentiated approach, rather than aiming for sameness in their outlooks.

142 Rob: …and for me to give away something that was so central in our lives together as a family, in the stuff we did at home and the fact that we all went to church together, that was hard for them. And I think it is still hard, but I think somehow my wife’s getting used to the idea (laughing).

Josie: How hard was it for you?

Rob: Well, I didn’t really know how to tell her. I was putting off telling her all the time. I just thought—it drifted and drifted and drifted until at one point, she sort of said, ‘well it sounds like you don’t sort of believe any more’. And I had to say, ‘well, yeah’. And she was pretty upset understandably. It’s like I decided to go to hell basically. In her mind. And in her mind that is probably still the case. But she’s adapting to it and she’s not trying to convince me. We have occasional discussions. Earlier on, I was much more, I guess, maybe not angry, but assertive, aggressive in the way I would try and convince her that she was wrong (laughing) but I’ve realised that, ‘no, I don’t actually want to do that’.

Despite the losses and challenges for Rob, including the realisation that life is finite, he is not disappointed but appreciative of his new perspective. However he does make the point that the journey towards being more rational and analysing his ideas better, may not be totally to do with becoming a non-Christian.

Rob: I think I cherish life more now, because I understand what it’s actually about. It is amazing that we are alive, not because God made us, but because the universe has been around for 13.7 billion years, life on this Earth has been around for two and a half billion years, humans have been around for a couple of hundred thousand years. And I just happen to be living now. It’s a little blip in time, and our little planet earth is so, so tiny compared to the solar system, let alone the universe. And now to identify that I am here in this time and space, that’s amazing. I should enjoy it for what really is, and not have these fascinations with things that aren’t really true…

Josie: So how do you think you might be a different person as a result of this process?

Rob: It’s a bit hard for me to say, but I think I’m more rational. I think I’ve learned to analyse myself better. I think—I mean it’s part of this journey, and it may not necessarily be because I’ve gone from being Christian to non-Christian.

143 Like Michael, he hasn’t experienced himself becoming a more immoral person, but a more realistic, reflective, evaluative and less defensive person. In fact, he also considers himself less selfish and materialistic, and more environmentally aware.

Josie: You were saying before you think you may have become a more reflective person, was that the word you used, more reflective?

Rob: Yes, I think so. I think I would tend to evaluate things better—evaluate claims from other people about myself, about my family. And I think it’s kind of rubbing off on my family a bit.

Josie: Kind of rubbing off, in a good way?

Rob: Yeah, yeah. In a good way, in a good way…I used to be quite defensive. When I made a mistake, I used to blame someone else or get angry or whatever. But now I’m much more ‘yeah, I made a mistake, I’m sorry, will you forgive me’. My kids are slowly learning that as well, which is great to see…I guess I anticipated becoming more selfish, but I don’t know whether I have. I’m wanting to do stuff in my own time more. I think I’ve actually become less materialistic, despite being a ‘materialist’ (laughing).

Arthur, like Michael and Rob, experienced a complete immersion in his evangelical community and used the Bible as his authority for life. The badness/guilt story was also central for him in terms of his fundamentalist Christian identity.

Arthur: I saw Christianity as my worldview that completely shaped the way that I think about everything, including myself. So I was very happy identifying as a Christian, and happy with that worldview. And having been very influenced by the Phillip Jensen19 side of things—I was very much like, ‘the Bible is my authority for how I work out what to do’…I was always someone who felt guilt very strongly. I was

19 referred to in Chapter 1; currently the Dean of St Andrews Cathedral in Sydney and associated with a particular conservative interpretation of Scripture. Jensen has spoken publicly against secularism, intellectual relativism and same-sex relationships. He is also an opponent of the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate within the Anglican Church of Australia (see MAZZOCCHI, J. (2003) 'Dean attacks theistic relativism', ABC PM radio podcast, accessed 7 June 2014, . ; plus see his own talks, available on phillipjensen.com)

144 very interested in knowing what was the right thing and what was the wrong thing to do, so it was always important to me that I was doing the right thing. How I felt about myself was based on whether I’d done the right thing or not, whether I felt good or bad about myself, whether I gave into temptation or not, that sort of thing.

It was while he was studying theology that he encountered doubt for the first time, and described being torn between a Christian worldview and a naturalist, atheist worldview. In a sense, Arthur did experience a type of cognitive double-life for a few years of his life, however unlike the other participants, he didn’t feel distressed about it until the atheist worldview become dominant. This is not to say that other participants did not feel some distress at the adoption of an alternative sense of identity as has been described, but Arthur’s distress has remained with a profound sense of loss of his previous affiliated identity.

Arthur: While it was happening, and both worldviews were equal in my head, it was fine. It was just interesting (laughing)…but there came a point when I switched over, and I guess the naturalist view—I don’t really know what to call it, because I don’t identify with anything in particular, so I call it naturalism, basically atheism—there came a point where I kind of switched, and: ‘this is what I think until further notice’. So now I’m not a Christian with doubts, I’m more like an atheist interested in Christianity.

Josie: Do you remember this as a particular point in time? Or was it more gradual?

Arthur: Yes, there was a sort of gradual process—but there was also a point where I remember just one weekend when I finally got to the point where I realised, ‘oh, I don’t think Christianity is true and that’s a problem because my whole life is oriented around this’. And that’s the point where it got very distressing…For the next few weeks, I don’t really remember how long, at least for the first two to three weeks, I got really depressed and yeah, I just couldn’t talk to people. They sort of noticed something was wrong, but they didn’t know what it was. So, yeah, once that point arrived, it became very distressing, and began a process of sort of, ‘how do I tell people about this?’…I really liked being part of that community, and all my friends were Christians basically. I’d had very few friends over the years who weren’t Christian of some kind. And yeah, I just really liked being—I felt—I guess that’s where a lot of my identity was. So it almost seemed unfair that I had sort of kicked myself out of that because it’s like not my fault that I don’t believe it. Why can’t I be part of that?

145 Josie: So there was a part of you that wanted to continue to participate in that?

Arthur: Yeah, a big part of me really wanted it to still be true. Yeah, because a part of me thinks it would be better if that were true, that would make for a happier universe and a happier life if there was a God, if we did survive death, all those sorts of things.

Arthur describes his distress at being put in the ‘outsider-camp’, as he knows what it’s like to think: ‘these are the Christians, these are not the Christians’. The experience of becoming a type of pariah in the community that he enjoyed so much has contributed to a sense of profound grief in his life about who he is, apart from just ‘being human’.

Josie: So this kind of insider/outsider identity that you’re describing—I wonder how you’re experiencing this transition? That is, how do you think it was for you the previous insider-Christian identity, and now the outsider-identity that you’re now describing?

Arthur: Yes, identity is something I really struggle with. Just in my general personality I think I struggle with it. But especially now that I don’t feel affiliated with anything, that’s kind of weird. And when I first stopped believing I was interested to find whether there was some other community I could be a part of, but I never really found anything. And I never really found anyone like me. I’ve talked to a lot of people who—probably not as many as you have doing the study—people who have stopped believing. They’re all sort of different to me, it’s not the same…yeah but it’s kind of strange not feeling like I’m part of anything, besides being human. Which would be okay I guess if everyone else was just human, but they’re not, they’re all something.

After the interview, he wrote me this note which indicated his ongoing sense of distress and loneliness, in his loss of the affiliated identity that was so certain about the world and its meaning. His difference to the other participants may be related to his comparative recent exit in 2009, the chasm he is feeling between himself and his family, and the lack of engagement with alternative communities.

Actually maybe one thing I should add. I kept expecting that if I talked to people higher and higher up in evangelical land that eventually I would get answers to my questions—someone must have thought it through and still believe. But I found that even the smartest people I found hadn’t thought it through to my satisfaction and that was scary in itself. So I despaired of finding the answers.

146 In summary, three participants moved from the ‘mind of a believer’ identity to a complete loss of that evangelical descriptor. One participant does not speak of this transition with words of rebuilding or preferred change, but ongoing loss and despair.

Conclusion

This chapter has outlined the co-constructed plotlines of the double-life, with some participants re-defining their Christian identity, and others losing it completely. The double- life is most frequently associated with an underground gay sexual identity, however others spoke of the Christian identity as something assumed and put on while another part of the self co-existed. These participants all moved towards some integration, and a further embracing of the more subterranean self. One participant described this latter self as a protective factor while she lived under CF.

This chapter has also described the plotline of those participants who have moved from immersion, to cognitive dissonance (a term used by the participants themselves), to a somewhat Spinozan embracing of naturalism and rationalism. For Spinoza and these three male participants (and of course to some extent the other participants also), it is freedom of thought that principally seems to guard individual liberty.

The plotlines described in this chapter and the previous chapter illustrate the journeys of change and identity re-negotiation undertaken by the twenty participants in this study. It is noted that most participants describe their journey as leading to a sense of freedom and growth, and thus open up space for an alternative engagement with and care of the self. This preliminary narrative analysis also illustrates some of the turning points of resistance to the dictates of the church community, and the dialogic moments of identity revision when refusing the narrow Biblification of their lives. A reversal of the gaze is occurring toward seeing rather than being seen by the subjectifying practices and identity projects dictated by church communities within CF. The following chapter now turns the Foucauldian lens on the transcripts to further layer the genealogy of identity change and resistance.

147 Chapter 8

A Genealogy of Identity

Foucauldian Lens: The Context of Truth

The previous two chapters provided the first tier of analysis: a dialogical narrative analysis of the plotlines of changed identity beyond CF, as co-constructed with the interviewer. The second tier of analysis, provided in this and the following two chapters, lies in parallel to these plotlines, using the same interviews but refracting them through a Foucauldian lens in the form of a genealogy. As stated in chapter 3, Foucault’s revisioning of Nietzsche in his description of genealogy provides some methodological pointers (1984a, Foucault, 1984b), but certainly not a methodological blueprint. A Foucauldian genealogy cannot therefore be defined or framed as a closed method for research.

Nonetheless, the analysis in these three chapters aims to map trails of the discursive and non- discursive ways the Christian subject emerges in history and therefore the subjectivities shaped by the fundamentalist community (Tamboukou, 1999: 201–202). Recognising the uncharted territory involved, I proceed cautiously to consider the participants’ narratives in this way, while maintaining the Nietzschean theme that truth cannot be separated from the procedures of its production. This genealogy thus considers how the Christian subject learns the truth about and within him/herself, and engages in a process of self-modification and self-construction.

Therefore the analysis sets out to trace and explore the current episode, the current history of struggle and relations of force and domination described by the research participants, as they story their disaffiliation journeys. It raises questions about how people are constituted as Christian subjects, while asking how they might define and relate to themselves differently. It is suggested that Christian subjects may experience not only their thought worlds reconstructed by ‘truth’, but also their subjective experience of themselves, secret hopes, and ways of managing emotions, as being shaped and re-shaped within the church community (Rose, 1990: 3). The three axes of genealogy—truth, power and self—will provide some structure to the genealogy, while certain questions also inform the process including, what is happening now to the participant talking? What is this present history s/he is describing? How has s/he become who s/he is and what are the possibilities of becoming ‘other’? (Tamboukou, 1999: 215).

In other words, these chapters are not about the why, but the how, of identity formation, with the re-fashioning and re-formation of the self within the context of CF understood as a potential exercise of resistance, counter-conduct, counterstory and freedom. The following 148 genealogy thus fulfils the intention of this thesis to illustrate the stories of disaffiliation beyond CF in a post-structuralist manner, with the problematisation of identity change constructed within the dispositif of the power/knowledge nexus of CF, as described in the narrative accounts of the participants.

Tamboukou suggests that ‘a genealogy should start with a major interrogation of what has been accepted as the ‘truth’, any truth concerning the ways individuals understand themselves as subjects of this world’ (1999: 214). The truth axis will thus be the starting point in this analysis of the participants’ narratives, describing the promotion of ‘correct thinking’, the consequences of ‘independent thinking’, and truth-telling within pastoral relationships. Truth discourses are thus entwined with specific technologies of the self.

Correct thinking versus independent thinking, and disciplinary practices

The question to be considered is how, and what, discourses impact on the participants’ lives. What discourses are circulated and what are suppressed, and what is considered the ‘truth’, which must be held onto at all costs? Firstly, as described in Chapter 1 and 4, the authoritative text of the Bible scaffolds and underpins the Christian community. For the participants in the study, it is all about the Bible: its sufficiency, authority and inerrancy. As Alan Aldridge comments, within CF certain Bible statements are used as shibboleths, or tests, to distinguish between the true believers and the nominal Christians, or liberals (2013: 132). This is how the boundaries of the community on the insider/outsider continuum are defined.

Michael explains that while the Bible is the centrepiece, it is not necessarily approached with an open attitude. He suggests that the Bible is used in such a way to select certain discourses to bolster particular ideas and positions.

Michael: With evangelicals, the Bible is at the centre of everything, so wherever there is any discussion to be had, it’s always, ‘let’s dig up all the Bible passages that are related to this, and come up with a position on it’. Some of the passages in the New Testament about women not speaking in church, and things like that, they’re fairly black-and-white. I don’t see evangelicals ever changing. I mean, if you look at churches that now have female ministers, they’re churches that have what evangelicals call ‘a low view of Scripture’, where the teaching is less Bible-oriented. I think with a Scripture that was written thousands of years ago, while ever you hold it as the centrepiece, then I think there are certain things that will never change.

149 Sadie also indicates that in terms of gender differences, a particular theological argument was taught with an authoritative view of Scripture. What was taught was what was believed. No other type of thinking was countenanced.

Sadie: …and then there would be organised meetings where you would be taught about everything. And so you went to those.

Josie: By other people?

Sadie: By other men. And then you had the evening meeting which was all about evangelising, and getting people born again so they could be part of the kingdom. And that went on relentlessly…it was totally explicit. No doubt about it, because they had a theological argument. The man is the head, because Christ is the head of the church, the man is the head of the woman, and so on and so on…I would say on the whole that it was quite simple: ‘this is what we were taught, this is what I believed’. I was not exposed to any other thinking. Because we weren’t allowed to go to any other thinking.

What seems significant is that the participants do not refer to the authoritative discourse of the Bible as something that they could consider critically, or in any other way than that prescribed by the group. While evangelicalism has historically been considered the intellectual extension of fundamentalism, the participants’ opportunities to engage with the Bible in any intellectually open way seemed severely curtailed. There are various teachings and interpretations of a truth discourse in circulation, and others that are suppressed.

Rachel describes experiencing ‘alarm bells’ now if anything seems too ‘evangelical’, such as the campaign in 2012 to arrest Joseph Kony20. She fears the implicit exhortation that you can’t question or examine what is being said.

Rachel: I have this really strong alarm bell from anything that seems evangelical. So you know that Kony stuff? That made me feel sick. And I didn’t even watch the video. I was just like, ‘something about this is really wrong’.

Josie: That’s kind of interesting, because the Kony stuff is quite different—what is it about the Kony stuff that unsettled you?

20 See http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-08/who-is-joseph-kony/3877490 for more information about the Joseph Kony campaign (accessed 16 March 2014) 150 Rachel: It’s hard to say. I think it was something about the (sighing)—it was so big, and ‘get on board’—the evangelical type style maybe. And the fact that nobody was questioning anything. There was no pulling it apart, looking at it with any sort of clarity, or something like that…if you’re not allowed to question, then there’s something wrong. Because it’s like, ‘why not? Why can’t we question this? Why can’t we explore this?’

Belinda spoke of her fear about approaching the Bible differently, as it was such ‘a big thing’ to do. Nonetheless, this dangerous ‘research’ frames part of her journey out of evangelicalism to a new experience of herself.

Belinda: Yes, and partly I’m still frightened of doing it. So I haven’t done it much. It’s such a big thing. Someone could say, ‘do you think the Bible is true or not?’ And that’s a massive discussion, but I’d have to say now: ‘no’ (laughing). It all stems back to my understanding of the assumptions that I had about the Bible. I wrote them all down, and I thought, ‘what are my assumptions?’ Infallible, inerrant, God’s word, all inspired by the holy spirit, nothing else outside of that is inspired by the holy spirit particularly, or maybe a little bit. So all of these assumptions I had, and I went through them one by one. And I had to disregard lots of them, because of what I found in Scripture itself. I thought, ‘I’m being inconsistent here’. So research. Yeah.

The problems associated with an alternative engagement with the Bible as a set of discourses, or indeed any independent thinking, thus came down to the serious issue of ‘who’s in, and who’s out’, and how that is defined. The stakes are high when one’s belongingness to the ‘in- group’ on the insider/outsider continuum is under serious threat. Arthur describes his frustration and despair, as he couldn’t locate anyone who would think differently, or support him in his search to not just look for the ‘right’ answer. He notices there are pockets of open- mindedness, but overall there is a quest for sameness and ‘groupthink’, to which Charlie has also referred. He queries the ‘evangelicalism-equals-right’ equation.

Arthur: What frustrated me a lot was that a lot of people didn’t seem to think about what they were saying when they were at church and at Bible study or whatever. They were interested in knowing what was the ‘right’ answer—‘what should I say if I’m asked this question?’ but not interested in ‘is that right, is that true?’…I think it’s an in-group/out-group sort of thing, so you have to—because in the evangelical scene, it’s not enough to be Christian, you have to be evangelical. Other kinds of Christians might call themselves Christians, but they’re not ‘real’ Christians, they’re just other people who are deluded and need to understand the evangelical way about the Bible. 151 There was always a sense of ridicule about other groups, so the Catholics were definitely out (laughing), Baptists were a bit iffy. So I guess there was a sense that everyone wanted to be in the ‘in-group’. They’ve decided to come to this church and they like it, and this group doesn’t like those groups, so ‘I don’t want to be a Catholic or a charismatic or whatever—I want to know what does our group think because that’s the right thing’…Overall, the feeling was that you have to work out what’s the evangelical answer because the evangelical position is the correct understanding of God and the Bible. And we all want to understand God and the Bible correctly, so ‘what do we as evangelicals believe about this topic and that topic’.

The problem of independent thinking is further amplified by Charlie, who says it is like ‘being a part of an occupational, health and safety community’. This indicates that all members of the church community are constantly on the lookout for those who think differently as a potential danger. The apparatus of the panopticon, or the Christian gaze, is thus introduced, and will be re-introduced by other participants in this analysis. Charlie’s conclusion is that the search for, and rooting out of, independent thinking is related to the church’s fear of the ‘sham’ of the organisation being exposed and people leaving it as a result.

Charlie: …always hushed tones—‘don’t you think? Isn’t there a danger of? Shouldn’t we be worried about?’

Josie: What is this phrase, ‘isn’t there a danger of?’

Charlie: Well, it was something that I became quite used to hearing. It was kind of like being part of an OH & S community. You know—you’re constantly looking for the danger, looking for the hole, looking for the problem.

Josie: And what was the hole?

Charlie: I think it’s a loss of control. You know, people thinking for themselves. People thinking outside the box.

Josie: And the danger was?

Charlie: Of this whole sham being exposed. People leaving. Yeah, at the end of the day, that’s probably where it ends up.

This question of minimising independent thinking to keep people in and make sure the truth boundaries of the evangelical community are policed seems to represent a particular technology of the self: the promotion of compliance and sameness through fostering mistrust 152 of outsiders and alternative thinking. How some participants describe the in/out question further amplifies this point. James specifically talks about the exclusion he experienced after he expressed a desire for independent thought. He refers to the insider’s discomfort with outsider thinking, and deals with it by pretending to be interested but basically withdrawing. Again the promotion of certain truths and values is not authoritarian, but subtle and similar to Charlie’s description of the OH & S community.

James: A couple of people from that church did catch up with me for lunch or dinner and say, ‘do you want to tell me about your difficulties?’ And I’d say, ‘I’m not confident—I’m not happy about the way I perceive the intellectual integrity of the church. I’m going to take some time out’. Inevitably those conversations would finish with, ‘we should catch up sometime’. And I’m sure you know what, ‘we should catch up sometime’ means?

Josie: What does it mean?

James: Well actually, as it turns out, it means—‘we will never speak to you again’ (wry laugh).

Josie: So ‘we should catch up sometime’ was code for ‘goodbye and good night’, kind of thing?

James: Yeah…well, I thought I’d give them the benefit of the doubt. You know, Christians and lying: not supposed to happen.

Josie: So what do you think that is about, you know—that you leave, and people do not catch up with you?

James: I think that particular church was a very inward-looking church, and didn’t do particularly well in embracing outside ideas or people with different motivations. If they were heading in the same direction, the motivation could be different. But I know I’ve done it myself. You start to get a little bit wary of spending a lot of time with people outside the church. There was never a ‘no, don’t spend time with people outside the church’—it was just, you know—‘what ideas, what values are you picking up along the way in hanging out with outsiders?’

Michael goes further when he says that those with alternative views were labelled as having ‘strange beliefs’ (unauthorised discourse), and were openly rebutted and excluded. He raises the interesting question of evangelicals’ oft-stated public stance that only ‘matters of

153 salvation’, or ‘the fundamentals’, will be corrected. In reality, he spoke of many discourses being censored and regulated in a quite heavy-handed manner—particularly those challenging heteronormative sexual practice.

Michael: In the evangelical church, while they often claim to only maintain a firm stance on ‘matters of salvation’, in reality I didn’t see a whole lot of variety even when it came to minor aspects of the faith. I remember people who had come along to church at various stages having a few—I guess they were called ‘strange beliefs’— people who would suddenly talk about homosexuality being okay, and them not lasting particularly long in the group.

Josie: What did happen to people like that? What would happen if you started voicing different beliefs like that?

Michael: I think that they were quite openly rebutted.

Ruth on the other hand tells the story of a woman who comes to her new church with quite independent thinking, and describes her own shock that this woman was accepted, not ‘corrected’, and allowed to be a part of the group. This was clearly a departure from her former experience of the consequences of independent thinking in her fundamentalist community. She also expresses her protest at the censorship around talking about sex in her church. The specific discourse of prescribed sexuality will be considered later.

Ruth: When I first went to [my new church] I remember, you know—I struggle with not being judgmental sometimes still—and there was this girl in the group and they were talking about Jesus. And she said, ‘I really struggle with the fact that Jesus is a man’. And I was like—it really blew the socks off me—and she said, ‘I just can’t think of him as a man’. And that made me like, ‘what?’ But because she’s been abused— mistreated and whatever by men—she has to think of Jesus as a person, not as a gender. That kind of thing is really (pausing) challenging. But that’s what I love about [the new church]. Nobody said, ‘oh you’re wrong’. Everyone said, ‘that’s really interesting, and we love you anyway, and whatever gets you through it’.

Josie: So that’s the difference between [your new church], and the other church?

Ruth: They would be just like, ‘OUT!’ Well, a woman wouldn’t be allowed to talk anyway, but if you came into the church thing, they’d say, ‘we’ll pray for you, you’re wrong’…It would be very much, ‘this is what the Bible says, he’s a man’. They

154 wouldn’t deal with the fact that she’d been abused, because how do you deal with that when you’re in a church that won’t talk about sex?

In short, wariness of outsiders and their unauthorised ideas keeps people within the flock. But what happens when people start to express doubts, query this narrow Biblification of their lives, or choose to engage differently with church-sanctioned discourses? This is when participants describe various mechanisms of net-like power coming into place. Most significantly, these were: active silencing and ostracising; fear generated regarding possible apostasy; a perpetuation of circular arguments; and varieties of controlling pastoral relationships with church leaders.

Silencing

JoJo, Sadie, Belinda, Sue and Louise spoke of silencing both as an implicit and explicit technology of power, particularly in terms of women’s participation, which will be considered further in the following chapter. As Carrette has pointed out, Foucault sees the church as part of a network of institutions and social forces, which seeks to control speech and silence in the creation of Christian ‘truth’ (2000: 32). Such coercive practices contribute to Foucault’s idea of a ‘political spirituality’ (1991b) within Christianity, and are described by the participants below. Authoritative discourses are thus combined with Christian subjectivity and the self- monitoring identity project.

Louise comments that certain people use Bible verses (selective discourse) to fortify their power ‘because they convince themselves they are good and right’, while she remains apparently excluded from that exclusive group. She relates a story about a group she still meets up with, and how the silencing happens.

Louise: Well, I meet up with a group of people—three of whom come from my fellowship days. And where any attempt to have a discussion about these issues is silenced instantly.

Josie: This is now?

Louise: This is now.

Josie: …And when you say things are silenced, what happens?

155 Louise: Oh, I say something about [a certain prominent person], and someone says (putting her hand in the air, in a pushing away motion)—‘say nothing, say nothing, I love him dearly’.

Josie: Is this explicit, or implicit?

Louise: Those were the words.

Josie: I see.

Louise: ‘We can’t have this conversation. I love him dearly’. That’s very effective control.

Sue also said that ‘they pummel you with stuff from the Bible—there were few people you could have sort of fearless conversations with’. She continues that there were explicit ostracising practices if there was any protest, or expressions of doubt or uncertainty. She alludes to her practice of internal protest as an expression of her ‘double-life’, described in the previous chapter. The opportunities for re-constituting the self, which are made possible by the stirrings of such internal protest, are developed in chapter 9.

Sue: There is no room for protest. There is no room for protest. It’s really based on compliance.

Josie: And yet—you are describing moments of protest, or at least querying, questioning?

Sue: Hmm. Questioning. Yep.

Josie: A part of you was saying ‘what?’ Even early on—

Sue: —when things were not quite right. When there wasn’t something quite right about it.

Josie: But little room for external protest?

Sue: No.

Josie: Because what happens?

Sue: Well, you get ostracised in one way, or the other.

156 Finally, Sadie at the end of her interview sighed as she concluded: ‘back then you were silent, and now you are too’. She was noticing and reflecting on the legacy in her life of the practice of silencing that the group culture of CF had determinedly maintained, which regretfully was still present.

Fear generated about apostasy

In addition to silencing, Michael, Sadie, Rob and Belinda spoke of their doubts being met by comments designed to specifically engender fear and uncertainty. The ultimate fear generated of course relates to their damnation to hell. Michael described being upset and shocked by his family and friends interpreting his fading belief as leading to a likely plunge into scandalous behaviour. Rob describes an attempt to generate apostasy-fear in him by a fellow church member who said that he ‘would be a worse and worse person without God in his life’. Sadie summarises this lingering fear that somehow she is ‘lost’ and going to hell as a result of her new sense of self and re-formed non-evangelical identity.

Sadie: I do know that, I am aware of this thought—the fear, the fear of being lost. It’s something that I know about. And I sometimes wonder when I’m dying, what will it be like when I’m there? Will I be afraid, that I’m going to be lost? Or will I be okay about dying in the current position I now hold? And look back over my life and say, ‘I’ve lived actively, I’ve lived with courage, I haven’t hidden away when the hard things came up, I’ve tried to step forward and live in the integrity of that’. And, umm, that’s what I would like to think—that I’d be holding on to that at that moment in time.

Josie: I imagine you’ve had in your life many sermons about ‘good people don’t go to heaven’, maybe more than you’ve had hot dinners—are you wondering whether this stuff may—

Sadie: —bite me? I hope not. It certainly doesn’t have any sting at the moment.

Circular arguments

Michael, Rob and Arthur, the participants with the plotline of cognitive dissonance leading to Spinozan anti-scripturalism, all spoke of how circular arguments are designed to keep people in—like a centripetal, centralising force. JoJo also laughingly alludes to the notion when she says: ‘the system makes sense within itself, until you’re out of it, and then you say to yourself, “how does that work? That’s funky!”’

157 The concept of a centripetal force in language, a homogenising and hierarchising influence, borrows from Bakhtin (1981b: 272–273, 425). Centrifugal, or decrowning and dispersing forces, using the figures of the clown, mimic or rogue may in fact suggest alternative discourses and resistances to the authoritative. This will be re-visited in Chapter 11. However the centripetal argument here is that if there is anything contradictory or hard to understand, it is ‘your problem, not God’s problem’. More than that, the amount of time and effort invested in church activities also acts centripetally, keeping people protecting their long-term investment of such time and effort. Rob explains:

Rob: I don’t think Christians ever really consider that Christianity couldn't be true. I mean—that’s a doubt. How can you doubt God?

Josie: Why would they not allow themselves to doubt?

Rob: Because that’s a sin, I would say. ‘To doubt God is to sin. How can you doubt God’s goodness?’ All through church and all through the songs, it’s about the certainty of who God is and what he’s done.

Josie: But isn’t that a bit circular?

Rob: It is! That’s the whole problem! (laughing) That’s exactly what it is.

Josie: So if you doubt it’s a sin—

Rob: —and therefore you can’t doubt, therefore God must be who you think he is.

Josie: Do you think the community per se is involved in some ways in maintaining this?… I guess I’m talking about what keeps people in, and what may have taken you out? What do you think keeps people in?

Rob: Well, it’s the going along with what you did yesterday—it’s the inertia of life. It’s the belonging. It’s especially the belonging—being in a group that has this virtuous eternal hope. How can you beat that? There’s the weekly meetings that gather people together, there’s the yearly weekend away where people get even more time to spend together, there’s the contributing of themselves to be involved in the church service by praying or leading the songs or whatever. By buying into something, by putting more of yourself into something, you’re investing yourself in it and therefore it’s that much harder to say, ‘no I don’t believe that any more’. That doesn’t even occur to anyone, sure.

158 Arthur also describes this centripetal force in relation to the circular argument applied to the effectiveness of prayer, and his own counterstory.

Arthur: There was one night when I just had terrible pain in my back, the most pain that I had ever felt, sort of thing. And I thought, ‘well, I could pray about this and ask that it be taken away, but that actually doesn’t make any sense, because why would God answer that prayer? He may, and he may not’. I started thinking about the fact that there is no real way to tell whether God is there or not, because there’s always these tidy answers to explain why there is no evidence. So you can pray about something, and maybe it will happen, and maybe it won’t—maybe God said yes, maybe God said no. I thought, ‘fine, but that’s not helping me decide whether there is a God or not’…It really got me on that track of thinking, ‘okay, what is it actually about my life that indicates to me that there is a God? Is there anything that has ever happened to me that would be evidence of there being a God?’ And I couldn’t think of anything at all. Anything that could be attributed to God could be explained in another way.

Relationship to leaders, pastoral power and deciphering the truth about oneself

As discussed in Chapter 3, the historical rise of the disciplines has created a new form of micro-power, in which subjected and docile bodies may be produced (Foucault, 1991a: 138). The question I have raised is whether the study participants have any experience with such technicians of discipline, or ‘engineers of the human soul’ (Rose, 1990: 3), particularly within pastoral relationships of spiritual guidance between an authority figure and the members of the flock. To recap from Chapter 3, self-disclosure, self-inspection, exemplarity, discipleship and confession are technologies of discovering and deciphering the truth about the self, and exist within such pastoral relationships (Rose, 1998: 26).

Belinda, David, Michael, Max, Rachel and Wendy told specific stories about their close relationships with church leaders. Max and David spoke of being censored and excluded from leadership on the basis of their sexual identity. Their experience of power related to their expression and enactment of a non-privileged stigmatised discourse, which was ultimately excluded quite brutally. Belinda’s story of finding her identity tied up with being the first ‘go- to-person’ for the leaders is revised as she re-casts her sense of self. Initially, she equated her self-esteem with being liked and accepted by certain godly people: the shepherds of the flock.

Belinda: Yes. I realised a couple of things. That I really liked being close to the leadership of the church. I am like their number-two-layperson, or their maybe 159 number-one-layperson. I’m the person they came to, because I was single for a long time as well and so you’ve got some time…[there is a] huge amount of self-esteem I realised at one point, which is being attached to being an important person in the church, or a creative person. So I was always aware of it, but it was only when it was taken away—there was an incident that happened, and when that was sort of taken away, I thought, ‘wow—how much self-esteem I had based on being liked by the leadership’. I’ve always been liked, because I’m also a useful person, but if that’s not there or that sense of being held in high esteem is threatened I found myself going, ‘wow—how much did I put onto that feeling of being liked by these godly people?’

She then becomes aware that she was pushing through a layer of government in her old church, and was being silenced and stymied from developing her own projects. She starts to realise that in her new church where she can speak aloud and proceed more easily with other projects, that she is in fact more empowered. Her experience of leadership is thus different and suggests a counterstory beyond the linking of obedience, compliance and acceptance.

Belinda: …I think the more disempowered laypeople are, the less they do. Suddenly, they won’t even fill in a roster roll. They say, ‘yeah, I could do that once a month’, then they end up doing the barest minimum. Because they’re not really entrusted with speaking, saying anything, or running an activity.

Josie: So the church where you are now—the laypeople are more empowered?

Belinda: Yes, I think so. Yes, very much so. If I were to say, ‘I want to do this thing’, I would get up at church and talk about it, and wouldn’t necessarily have to run it past too many people, if it’s obviously a good idea.

Josie: Right. Whereas before, you would have to go through—what, layers of government?

Belinda: Yes. Layers of government! And not be done in the end, because ‘that’s not the main project we’re going to do, we’ve got a bigger project in a couple of years time’. And I would go, ‘what about this year? What about this year?’ (laughing) It would just really frustrate me—that you couldn’t move faster.

Josie: So, it’s about having influence too? You know, kind of experiencing yourself as influential? Empowered?

160 Belinda: I think empowered is a good word. [It’s like] when you allow somebody to speak…

Michael expressed the thoughts of others when he commented that the desire for independent thinking is solved by deferring to leaders who are seen to be more wise and knowledgeable than yourself. This again explains how the questions regarding authoritative discourse are swept under the rug and the Christian subject kept malleable and inside the group. The shepherd knows best.

Michael: Yeah, definitely. I think I would have looked up to those in a high position…I remember having a lot of questions all the way through, but I think the way I was always able to put them aside was not so much the arguments that were presented, but the people who presented them. I think if there is somebody you look up to as being more wise than you, and the fact that they still believe, well you think ‘if this person is able to continue believing then my concern is probably not insurmountable. There’s probably somebody out there who does know the answer’.

Wendy’s story of the leader who required her to attend a year of ‘counselling’ was based again on a requirement for self-disclosure and obedience, based on submission to someone wiser and more steeped in expert Christian knowledge than herself. She was also compelled to model her life on his and even saw him as a father figure. She describes losing the self-knowledge that she could walk away from the ‘counselling’ process, but eventually realised he held what she wanted: her leadership position within the youth group. The ‘counselling’ was about exerting a particular pastoral power over her, indeed the carrot-and-stick approach. Her confession invited and required her obedience, and was fortified with the discourse of prescribed heterosexual expression. Control and surveillance were thus maintained within that church community.

Wendy: He was very black-and-white, and it’s ‘my way, this is the way of the church, I grew up like this—not drinking, not smoking, not having sex, and look how godly I am now’. So in order to be like him, and when you’re little, you aspire to it.

Josie: Kind of like a modelling thing, on his life?

Wendy: Yeah, and really ingrained in that sense. To me, in my eyes, he was God. So everything that he represented or thought about, you know, ‘he is godly and he is holy’. So then, when it did fall apart, I remember spending a lot of time having to pull that apart, and realise that all my beliefs in God and what I feel in my heart is not

161 about him…

Josie: …[there was] a part of you continuing for a year, caught up in that process?

Wendy: Not even really realising, I didn’t have to do that at all. There was no, ‘oh, I could just walk away’. Like, it was so, ‘I have to do this, and I have to go to these things, and accept these things’.

Josie: I guess what you’ve been describing, you know, the nature of your relationship, and his role, and how he figured in your life, and your role in the community—it sounds as though it was hard for you to think that you could do otherwise?

Wendy: Yeah, and he was a father figure really. I mean—I was still so young, I just wanted to please him in one aspect, so you wanted to do this because you want to stay as a leader and you want to be the good girl, I guess (laughing).

Charlie and Max then spoke of public confession used by a centralised pastoral authority, which led to shaming and excluding practices. The following chapter will detail and differentiate participants’ experiences of more circulated and diverse authorities (e.g. in small groups) rather than with those who are formally accorded authority (e.g. clergy). What emerges is that power is exercised in both a centralised and decentralised way.

Max was required to publicly confess to and repent of his homosexuality, considering it an extremely traumatising and humiliating experience. He comments that he confessed willingly, without coercion, as it was his own internalised ‘belief system’ he was violating. He was self- governing, self-deciphering and self-monitoring within a community that demanded he tell the ‘truth’ about himself.

Max: …then I thought, ‘oh my god, I’ve been deceived by the devil’.

Josie: Oh, okay, so you spiritualised it?

Max: Totally. ‘The devil has won—he has destroyed a ministry. My lover was the temptation. I followed that path and what have I lost? The ministry. The devil must be clapping his hands right now. This man of God has fallen, the marriage has gone’— you know, all this stuff.

Josie: Were people saying this to you as well? Or was this more your own interpretation?

162 Max: That was already there—for me anyway in my belief system. It had been mentioned to me when I did this confession to the senior clergy. But I already had that subconsciously anyway. They were just reinforcing what I already believed.

Charlie spoke about a girl he knew who had to publicly confess to having sex and then getting pregnant. He concluded that this was about management and control, to circumvent a ‘public relations disaster’ in the youth group. He comments that she wasn’t forced to confess in an overtly coercive sense, but like Max, she was requested to confess as a service to the community. He also notes that others of higher status were able to escape such public discipline, but her confession was meant to have a deterrent effect. The horror of it for Charlie is that no one demurred, as everyone apparently thought it was a good idea. This again illustrates Foucauldian political spirituality: ‘groupthink’ combined with coercive silencing practices.

Charlie: There was a girl who—quite a good friend of mine—and she got pregnant, and she had to—she didn’t have to—but she got told that, ‘it would be a really great thing for the community if she stood up and spoke to everyone about what had happened, and told everyone what had happened’. It’s (shaking his head) —I’m smiling, and it’s a really inappropriate response, because it was such a horrible thing to do. But that was the thing that everyone thought should happen, you know?

Josie: Are you kind of smiling then in disbelief or shock?

Charlie: Yeah, yeah. I don’t even know why I’m smiling because it was really horrible.

Josie: And she did it?

Charlie: Yeah, she did it and it was awful. And she was made to be a complete scapegoat. Yet there were other people in the community who held positions of leadership and if they had a one-night stand and someone found out about it, they would get asked to do the washing up for a month or something…but (pausing) it was perfectly logical, because it was like a PR disaster for the youth group (laughing). I guess that’s the thinking—that it has to be managed and controlled.

Josie: And you control it by a public confession?

Charlie: I guess so. Yeah, I guess you let everyone know that if you have sex, you might get pregnant, and you’ll have to get up here and do this yourself.

163 Josie: So, is that a kind of public humiliation?

Charlie: Oh yes, absolutely.

Conclusion

This chapter has outlined various strategies and tactics of subjectification the participants have described in relation to the discourses of truth: the privileging of a certain Biblical discourse that inhibits independent thinking, the controlling of dissent, and the requirement to self- decipher and ‘tell the truth’ of oneself within centralised pastoral relationships. Dissent is particularly regulated through active silencing, fear of apostasy, circular arguments, and the confessional/dependent nature of such pastoral relationships.

The disciplinary production of the Christian subject therefore occurs within a community that creates its own regime of truth, and the disciplinary cultivation of ‘an attachment to subjection’ (Butler, 1997: 102). The participants have thus described submitting to, internalising, and promoting certain privileged discourses about the Biblification of their thinking, living and sexual practices that actually intensified their own subordination or subjection. In the discursive construction of the Christian self, this chapter has commenced the genealogy by considering questions posed by Rose: who speaks, according to what criteria of truth, supported by what habits, routines, authorised in what ways, and under what forms of persuasion, sanction, lies and cruelty? (1998: 178). Into this heterogeneous assemblage, I introduce in the next chapter the related network of disseminated power in the constitution of the Christian subject.

164 Chapter 9

A Genealogy of Identity

Foucauldian Lens: The Context of Power

The previous chapter commenced the analysis of the participants’ interviews as a genealogy of subjectification and identity formation within and beyond CF. The first axis of the Foucauldian triangle described was ‘truth’. This analysis included the participants’ descriptions of the effects of the promotion of specific fundamentalist discourse, the sanctions applied to independent thinking, and the requirement for confession to recognised authority/shepherd-like figures within the church.

This chapter focuses on disseminated power, which is recounted by the participants as circulating in a net-like fashion through the churches of CF. Power is described as operating through various networks, including the panoptic Christian normalising gaze with its strategic corrections applied for breaches of compliance, and the circulation of heteronormative and patriarchal discourse to control sexual activity. The productive ‘apparatus of sexuality’ becomes part of the wider economy and cluster of power relations within CF, with a dominant strategic function of creating a positive economy of the body and pleasure, shaping sexual response and behaviour (Foucault, 1980a, Foucault, 1990b). As power and knowledge are understood as inextricably linked, it will be illustrated that Christian subjectivity is achieved through this heterogeneous assemblage of productive power. What is of particular interest is how the participants may then exercise non-disciplinary control of their lives as they move beyond ‘the swarming’ of such disciplinary mechanisms (Foucault, 1991a: 211). This will be developed in Chapter 10.

Panopticism, the Christian normalising gaze and interiorisation

As explained in Chapter 3, the panoptic or self-inspecting gaze reflects a ‘superb formula’ of continuously exercised power at minimal cost. The panoptic gaze is applied such that each individual ‘under its weight will end by interiorising to the point that he is his (sic) own overseer, each individual thus exercising this surveillance over, and against, himself’ (Foucault, 1980b: 155). I have named this the Christian normalising gaze, suggesting that the participants describe six tiers in its operation of continuous surveillance, control and correction.

165 Internalised surveillance

Firstly, Charlie, David, James, Max, JoJo and Sue explicitly referred to a form of internalised, manipulative surveillance promoting the development of an acceptable evangelical Christian identity. They spoke of a certain type of monitoring, or normalising gaze emanating from ‘the tower’, the functioning of which also relied on a network of relations from top to bottom. The judges of normality (or acceptable Christian identity) were described as being present everywhere in such a ‘carceral archipelago’ (Foucault, 1991a: 304).

JoJo used the actual word ‘panopticism’ without prompting to describe how she saw power exercised within her evangelical community. She also adds that people (women) don’t revolt if you have them subscribing willingly to their own oppression through an interiorised, unquestionable view of Scripture.

JoJo: Well, its like the Foucauldian panopticon, isn’t? I mean that’s essentially what it is. That’s how I understand power in that system. The surveillance is set up in the households, in the small groups, in the large groups. If someone is worried about you, they will bring you into question—you’re put under the pump, you are required to toe the party line…So in summary, the sexism I see existent in that system is the convenient use of scripture to oppress women and to have them subscribe willingly to that oppression. You don’t need to fight a revolution if no one revolts!

Charlie also described the creation of external and internal monitoring in his life. He indicated that it was deliberately created by some people, and then replicated by others through a form of modelling. This also re-visits comments made in the previous chapter about the power exercised by trusted leaders within the shepherd-flock game. As church leaders exercised the practice of being ‘really committed’ (never fully defined and so always to be aspired to), so this was modelled as the preferred way of being.

Charlie: You actually internally—I felt internally there was a standard. I knew when I was meeting it and I felt that participating in all those different programs was a particularly helpful way to feel I was meeting it.

Josie: So did you know what the standard was?

Charlie: Umm, not really. It was kind of vague actually. Again, it’s cloaked in spiritual language so it takes on that form of: ‘there’s people who are out, there’s people who are kind of in but not really that committed to being in, and there’s people who are really committed and devoted’. So you kind of want to move that way. You’re 166 probably never going to be really committed, but at least you don’t want to be one of those people who is just turning up, and is half-hearted in the community.

Josie: So that’s part of that internal monitoring?

Charlie: Yeah, but external as well. That was, whether intentional or not, the message that came through from the front, through all the different activities of the group.

James calls it ‘self-limiting behaviour’, pointing out again that the pressure was not overtly coercive, but subtle and ‘encouraging’. Incidentally, sarcasm and mockery are plainly evident as he explains the promotion of ‘good Christian thinking’.

James: You know, I did notice that I self-limited quite a bit. I’d been in lots of money and disposable income, so obviously you’re supposed to tithe a certain amount of your income. Sorry—‘encouraged’ to tithe a certain amount of your income. But even then, big extravagant expenses like travel, you know, ‘why are you travelling overseas? You could be directing that money to missionaries or something’. So there was a lot of that kind of oh—

Josie: I see. What would you call it?

James: I have always mentally referred to that as self-limiting behaviour. It wasn’t an overt pressure from the church. It was just, you know, ‘I should be careful in the way I use my money, how will that be seen by the church?’

Josie: So the self-limiting behaviour—how do you think that kind of way of being developed in a church context?

James: So, you know, you’d get missionaries coming along and talking about their experiences. You’d get speakers at conferences who would hold up this particular model of behaviour, some story like—hang on. This is getting overt! You’d hear examples of ‘good Christian thinking’, not necessarily morality, but ‘good Christian behaviour’.

Small group surveillance and inculcation

The concept of pastoral power was illustrated in the last chapter in the context of confession (and subsequent humiliation) to a senior church leader or committee. However if power is also disseminated, it may be asked whether confession and the shepherd-flock game have been delegated and spread through the small group structures within the churches of CF. In this 167 vein, Charlie, Belinda, Wendy, James, JoJo, Michael and Sue describe a system of enforced small group attendance in which Christian norms, values and privileged discourse were reinforced. It should be noted that the requirement to confess and be open and accountable was mostly not explicitly stated in these groups—but again, implicitly required. The participants seemed to experience the groups as places where ‘groupthink’ was reinforced and counter- conduct controlled. As Charlie concludes and resists: ‘I used to call it “attack of the clones”— so they were replicating themselves in people. They were replicating the ability to think like they thought, but not to think any other way. I really resisted that. The stubbornness in me resisted that.’

Michael also refers to the many available groups (including his family) of which people are members. These together all reinforced acceptable Christian values.

Michael: I think the biggest influence is due to the fact that the people you associate with are in…you tend to act the way that group acts and have the same values. I guess there is formal teaching—sermons. I remember listening to them. I wasn’t someone who fell asleep during the service. I was interested in what was being said…I think just that feeling like you belong to that group has a big effect. I had plenty of friends in high school outside of the church, but I don’t think they played a big part in forming my values as much as the church did…and I think that, I don’t know, when you’re growing up and your parents are sort of teaching you what they believe, and what you should believe, it affects your views on most of what you believe. When things come up, like the purpose of life, as well as the obvious issues like abortion and homosexuality—all those things viewed from the church tend to be different to everyone else. I was definitely influenced in a lot of different areas by the church.

Belinda also considers that the Bible studies were forced, full of rules, with a lot of ‘shoulds’ and injunctions to think in a prescribed way.

Belinda: And also the Bible studies were forced at the old church. You know, ‘we’re all getting together, we are all very similar, everyone thinks the same thing’. You read a passage and you analyse it, and you come up with a couple of things to do at the end of it. It’s very forced. And, you know, ‘you should do Bible study every week, you should be in a ministry, you should be on a roster, and you should listen the rest of the time’.

Sue said that in some groups, ‘you couldn’t get past first base without a Bible quote coming back at you’, and that ‘they were about promoting a veneer of respectability rather than

168 encouraging people to be real’. For Sue, because the groups were about pretending ‘to be good’, that definitely included being straight, while also losing your sense of humour.

Sue: It was very serious—it was always very serious. You know, I missed the sense of humour. One of the good things about going to my friend’s place, we mocked various things about the church. And we had a bit of a laugh about it. There was irreverence, and I really think that irreverence is a very healthy part of faith. It’s a really healthy part of faith. The Church’s teachings, for example, ‘take on the mind of Christ. Love as Jesus loves you’ etc.—all of that stuff forces people to hide their worst or embarrassing personality traits, their failings behind a veneer of respectability and goodness…There’s a pressure to always be good and not deviant in any way…I think I’ve always wanted to be good, but when you’re good, you’re not real about the not so good parts of the personality. You know, you’re not sure that people will like you if you present stuff that isn’t good—like being a lesbian.

Wendy reflects the majority view among participants that the group is specifically about power and control, and minimising dissent. More than that, it supports a significant technology of power—the control of people’s sexual behaviour.

Wendy: [The group is] meant to build friendships, and connect with each other, and share things. My church was also very much that philosophy of, ‘you surround yourself with people who are like-minded, and you surround yourself with other Christians’, and they were quite negative about just hanging out with people who don’t go to church. Whereas I’ve always done that my whole life, and especially at that time all my other friends and family—none of them went there.

Josie: What do you think that’s all about? Surround yourself with like-minded people?

Wendy: I think to be honest—it’s almost a power and control thing in their eyes. I think they think you are going to have an easier time being part of the church if no one else is questioning. It’s almost a bit cultish, I think.

Josie: So once you’re surrounded by like-minded people, you’re less likely to—

Wendy: —question what they say. It’s easier, I don’t know. I guess if you’re all just going to Bible study and praying together, and not going to a party and drinking, or going on dates, it’s easier not to have sex!

169 Group attendance then represents committed church participation and a way of being a ‘proper Christian’. This mechanism of constant immersion and surveillance ensures conformity and obedience to the authoritative discourse. Again, it is seen that the individual, whom power has constituted, becomes at the same time its vehicle through propagating and reinforcing right thinking (Foucault, 1980f: 98).

Christian counselling and godly gossip

Thirdly, Wendy, David, Rachel, Max, Lucy and JoJo described the corrective aspect of ‘counselling’, as part of the inspecting and internalising gaze. Wendy’s experience of counselling in regard to her perceived unacceptable sexual activity has already been described. David’s long history with Christian counselling to address his transgendered identity also represents an influential technology of power, which was sustained brutally and compulsorily. Ultimately, David’s shift to accept himself unchanged proved the counselling hollow, and allowed him an opportunity to revise its efficacy.

David: So I would go every week to a group where I would scream for an hour and a half, or two hours, to get out the pain of my father and his abuse and all that sort of stuff. To try to fix the transgendered side of me…mind you, I had this amazing capacity to run this youth program. I was so functional as a person, but so struggling intimately and personally. That was under all this.

Josie: How effective was the therapy?

David: It helped me understand why I was like I was—which is my dad and his abuse, and my mother and her care. I guess I connected with my mother so much that I wanted to be like my mother. That’s the story I joined. Looking back on it, maybe I was just born this way. Now I’m thinking—maybe it’s just genetics, because I’m nearly 60 and I’m still as transgendered as ever.

Lucy was also told explicitly by a Christian counsellor that she would ‘never find peace until she did away with her homosexual lifestyle’. JoJo and Rachel describe another less formal mechanism of ‘counselling’ applied when a Christian steps out of line and receives a visit to correct her wrong thinking or behaviour. JoJo concludes that enough moments of thinking alternatively and privately (the double-life) lead to such a personal incongruence, that people eventually leave the system.

Josie: What happens when you start questioning comments in Bible study or—

170 JoJo: You just get the party line.

Josie: What if you’re persistent with your questioning?

JoJo: (laughing) You’ll attract negative attention! You’ll get a visit from a staff member, and you’ll be counselled…So if I say, ‘blah’ and someone says, ‘no’, then that is the answer—then you have to think it. And if you don’t think it—

Josie: What are your options?

JoJo: You don’t have any. Your options are to say, ‘this is stupid. This sucks. I can’t be here’.

Josie: An option is to think it inside?

JoJo: Yes—to think it privately. I think there’s the stage when enough of those moments occur when someone says, ‘I can no longer [continue]’. The congruence is so disrupted.

In Rachel’s case, there were special letters sent to her and her friends if they were somehow ‘bad’, which acted as a form of informal counselling.

Rachel: We used to get told we were such special beautiful girls in God’s eyes, and you know stuff like that all the time.

Josie: Like praise?

Rachel: Yeah, and contingent praise. So—‘if you’re good like I want you to be, then you get praise and you get special conversations. If you’re bad, then you get other conversations, and you get letters’.

Josie: You get letters? Were the letters like counselling? Probably not in a formal sense—

Rachel: Not in a formal sense, but definitely. All the time.

Both Louise and JoJo also refer to ‘gossip’ as having particular negative effects upon their lives. Louise spoke of negative ‘official views’ circulated about her ministry in a church, which was basically gossip given credence by a so-called respectable person who penned it. She said it was basically a ‘put-down’, and further moved her life away from the evangelical mainstream. JoJo sarcastically talks of ‘godly gossip’ or ‘concerned gossip’ spoken about her

171 after she left the church. She implies it is yet another centripetal force, not explicitly coercive, that keeps people in and ensures conformity. However for her and Louise it represented another turning point with an opposing centrifugal force: exposure and rebuttal.

Josie: So there wasn’t contact from people after you left? Like a gaping hole—

JoJo: (sarcastically) But I’m told from time to time that people are praying for me.

Josie: Oh, were you told that?

JoJo: I’ve been told that by people with whom I had some level of contact. Because I’m so evil, they had to pray for me. And another quote came to me was, ‘I’ve been hearing dreadful things about you’.

Josie: So, gossip?

JoJo: A lot of gossip…Godly gossip? (laughing) Concerned gossip.

‘Cultic’ rules

Fourthly, although mainstream CF has not been considered in this research a ‘cult’, several participants (Louise, Lucy, Max, Ollie, Sadie, Tom and Wendy) used that exact word to describe their experience. These participants seem to be referring to something more extreme, authoritarian and corrective in terms of monitoring and managing their behaviour, which works alongside the interiorisation associated with panopticism.

For example, Max described the ex-gay program he was required to attend as ‘cultish and abusive’. He wasn’t made to go, but put himself in it willingly as his internalised belief system at that time could not countenance a gay identity.

Max: Oh, I just couldn’t serve God with ‘this’—

Josie: So you were just trying to cut it out of you?

Max: Yes—‘I have to get rid of this, so I can live a holy life, so that I serve God. This is wrong, this is wrong’. So, I was in this for six months. It was actually very cultish and abusive. They used to use humiliation—

Josie: They used kind of aversive techniques?

172 Max: Yes, and re-programming. So I had to listen to Bible tapes—I had to renew my mind with God’s word, and all this sort of stuff.

Tom defines his previous church as a cult, or a type of ‘abusive family’, with specific rules and regulations. Upon questioning from me, he considered that the cult of CF has a particular ‘ideology of power’ at its centre, with a perception and theology of God as a power figure. He seems to be referring to a particular ‘regime of truth’, as described in the previous chapter, in which certain theological discourse is used to include and exclude certain people and sexual practices.

Tom: I realised what I belonged to all these years was a cult. And that was the word that was dominant in my thinking—‘this is a cult’.

Josie: How would you define a cult?

Tom: As a family with closely defined rules and regulations, which determines— which can include and exclude…

Josie: And so—what is interesting is—in a cult there is generally perhaps one charismatic leader for example, and once that leader goes, it can fold. For example, ‘The Children of God’. But I guess what interests me is that in the organisation you’re describing, there is generally not just one leader.

Tom: It’s based on an ideology, and it’s an ideology of power. And the power-person is less important than the concept of power, because power is written at the centre of the institution.

Josie: Right.

Tom: It’s only about that. Every moral judgment it makes is based upon the principle of power, and every theological statement it makes is based upon the power of God— that is, God as a power figure. And all liturgy is about the application of power to people’s practice.

Ollie protests that the church should never be a cult, and articulates her deep suspicion of the associated fervour. Here she speaks of her concern about the excessive zeal in evangelicalism, which may even have a consumerist, or product focus, which she concludes is ultimately shallow and inconsequential in positively changing people’s lives.

173 Ollie: I don’t think that I’m particularly swayed by fervour or zeal, because that usually comes to nothing.

Josie: Do you think there are dangers in fervour or zeal?

Ollie: Oh, absolutely. I mean—it’s not a cult. There is a danger in becoming zealous to the point where (pausing) you exist for a product, not an outcome.

Josie: How may that occur?

Ollie: The product is ‘saving souls’, but the outcome is ‘truly saving souls’.

Josie: Okay. So, don’t get caught up in the product of ‘saving souls’. What is more important is this ‘truly saving souls’?

Ollie: Which is genuine. It’s the real deal. Not: ‘repent, sign on the card, and three verses of “Just as I am”’.

Conditional acceptance, pleasing others, and tiers of ‘acceptable Christian’

Fifthly, David, Charlie, JoJo, James, Michael, Rachel, Rob, Sadie, Sue and Tom spoke of conditional acceptance in the church community and a tiered system of acquiring greater acceptability. That is, certain ways of being a Christian were promoted explicitly and implicitly, while alternative counterstories were discouraged and punished, and led to ostracism. As mentioned in the previous chapter, acceptability needs to be aligned with certain authoritative discourse, but also specific compliant behaviour. Power and truth remain inextricably linked.

David’s ongoing requirement to ‘get counselling’ to change his transgendered identity is an obvious example. Here he laments that church was not the loving, accepting place he had always hoped for. He concludes that the life of pleasing others is particularly detrimental to people in the LGBT community, and ultimately that such a church community is ignorant and abusive.

David: Yeah, ‘you can fix this, you just need to see someone’. Like, I am fucking 58, for God’s sake. You can have more therapy and fix this? They had no idea what I’ve been through. It’s so fucking—sorry. I’m getting angry.

174 Josie: Is it something about how the Christian identity, the Christian sense of self and acceptable self, is being propagated? You know, I guess there’s acceptable, and there’s not acceptable.

David: What a lot of shit. Jesus wasn’t like that. He went to the people on the street, in the gutter. And he just wrapped his arms around them, and loved them. And I’m thinking, ‘why the fuck can’t church be like that?’…I’m pissed off that I’ve spent 30 years of my life—I wish I knew at the age of 20 what I know now—because I spent 30 years of my life pleasing people I don’t like, to be the person they want me to be. Why couldn’t I have known the stuff I know now at the age of 20? Why can’t that be possible? Why did I have to go through 30 years of hell to get to where I am now? That’s so unfair.

Josie: I wonder too about other transgendered people, or people in the LGBT community, you know, what does that mean for them? Those who are in church communities?

David: It’s hard enough without being in a church community. I think church communities just make it worse. You’re in this environment of ignorance and negativity. Why the hell would somebody who is trying to work out something as sensitive as gender find that as the context to do it? It’s just so ignorant and so abusive. And it’s meant to be the love of God. That? That sucks.

Rachel’s comments well illustrate her experience of the subtle process of being specially chosen, of being considered a favourite, and hoping for the praise and rewards that went along with that status.

Rachel: As well, there was a heap of leaders that were adults that were really important to me in that world, and there was some that got kicked off. They weren’t allowed to come back any more. And now I think about it, it’s like, ‘of course they were, because they were like me’. And so then they were kind of—that was the ostracism again—like, ‘they’re the bad ones, and you’re the special ones’. There was lots of kind of, ‘you’re special’.

Josie: This ostracism, the insiders and the outsiders, was quite prominent?

Rachel: Yes, but I wasn’t so aware of that then, all the time. It was quite subtle as well. Sometimes you got specially chosen for something, and that was like amazing, so it was such an ego thing, so that kind of kept you in there too. 175 Exclusion, strategic power and other consequences for ‘difference’

Finally, when self-modification and self-inspection failed to constitute the self acceptably or obediently, the consequences for participants have been very harsh. Part of the strategic game of CF is not to dominate people by rule but to govern ‘free’ individuals so that they enact their ‘Christian freedom’ appropriately. Problems arise when the re-modelling project based on a hope and promise of re-casting their identity within a supportive community comes unstuck in what seems to be merely a ‘surrogate of community’—that is, one form of subjectification replaced for another (Bauman, 2001: 151). As mentioned in Chapter 4, people may join the church searching for ‘freedom’, and uncover yet another identity project in the Foucauldian sense to systematically re-cast and re-shape their lives. While this is not a study in conversion, many participants (Louise, Martin, Rachel, Rob, Sue, Barbara, David, Wendy) spoke of joining the church community not because they were born into it, but with a deliberate choice, hope and expectation of belonging to a certain type of caring organisation that offered a ‘safe place’ (for example, see David’s comments above).

Louise, Lucy, Max, Rachel, Sadie, Sue, Tom and Wendy all spoke of their deliberate exclusion from the community for either being gay, not going to church regularly, and even for being an apparent corrupting influence on others. They recounted their shock, humiliation and rage in the face of these expressions of church disciplinary power. It seems to be as Lindemann suggests, that when those in a stigmatised group express themselves, their defective identity- constituting stories purport to justify the group’s ill treatment and so uphold what becomes the oppressive social order (2014: 115). Louise tells a particularly poignant story about being on the outer of a church community, and the consequences of striking up a conversation with the pastor’s young granddaughter. As a result of the pastor’s response, she felt that she was now regarded as an untrustworthy, perhaps immoral, person.

Louise: He would bring his granddaughter to work, and once I was having a friendly chat outside his room to her—who is a little seven-year old and this world is going on around her—and the pastor heard it, bolted up the stairs like lightning, ushered her into the study, and I thought, ‘what does he think of me? What does he think of me? Does he think I’m going to lure her into—what?’ I was shocked—I really was shocked.

Josie: Lure her into what—wrong thinking?

Louise: Or something. Like, it was such a protective instinct. I was just trying to say hello to a little girl who is sitting here in an office, with a pencil and paper! Like, she’s seven years old! 176 Josie: How did you feel?

Louise: I felt shocked at what he did, and totally un-trusted.

In a similar vein, Lucy is told at Bible Study that she can’t lead the group as she is openly living in a gay relationship. She protests that her honesty and integrity are not respected, and that her only option now is to be silent.

Lucy: They had all these people in the group, and they said, ‘look we don’t want to be leaders who do all the teaching. We want to open it up, and have other people lead’. So, I was sitting in the group. They knew I was gay, in a relationship. And I had led Bible studies for years and years and years. It was quite natural, and I loved preparing Bible studies. I loved that. And they were saying, ‘who wants to do this week?’ And no one was saying anything. And I said, ‘look, I’m very happy to, if you want me to’.

Josie: Right, what happened?

Lucy: They went, ‘okay, okay’. Then I had a call from a friend, just saying, ‘do you want to have coffee’, and I didn’t think anything of it. I’m stupid! And she said, ‘look, umm, the leaders took it to the female worker and the senior pastor, and they said it would be un-Biblical for you to lead the group. Because you’re living in a homosexual relationship’. I just burst into tears. And I was sitting there thinking, ‘I now have to sit through a coffee with you, after this very awkward conversation, and we’re not such good friends’.

Josie: After being told about your—what’s the word—unacceptability?

Lucy: Yeah, yeah. And I then went away, and I was furious. I was thinking, ‘I’ve always been up front, and if you’re going to open up a group to everybody leading, then just because I’m open about where I am at—the person next to me could be into porn and all sorts of things, but not talking about that. But they’re quite able to lead the group’. And it wasn’t a formal leadership position, which I get that they would never put me into. So I was really frustrated, because I’m thinking, ‘God has gifted me in certain ways and I have to sit here and I can never do any service. I just have to sit on a pew and listen’.

Lucy’s family then reinforced her unacceptability by telling her that she was going to hell, and so was no longer allowed to spend time with her nieces and nephews. Her influence was again seen as corrupting—‘not that I’d make them gay necessarily, but perhaps I’d say, “it’s okay”’.

177 Sadie tells a significant story of not receiving referrals for her business anymore, when previously she had received strong recommendations and support from the church community. She concludes that she is afraid and indignant that men in positions of authority may have put her on some ‘black list’, and as a result she may in fact lose her business. It is described as the ‘same old stuff’ for her, related to her fear of not being accepted and then marginalised. She refuses to participate in the enactment of such disciplinary power—a turning point for her at a site of discursive injury.

Sadie: I used to get a lot of church referrals. And a huge number of my customers were Christians. And over the years, that has diminished. Until now, I am not getting referrals from the church. And my business is shrinking. And I had a talk the other day with Julie [a female friend], who is big in the church. And she knew. Well, we had a little conversation. I tried to put it out. I said to her that I don’t get the referrals from the church any more. I may have to, you know, think about shutting my business down. You know the Christians have been the mainstay of my business. And I said, ‘I was once rung up by a Minister, and he said he wanted to talk to me and we had a great conversation. And at the end of the conversation he said to me, ‘before I go, what church do you go to?’ And I said, ‘I don’t go to church’’. And that was the end. And my friend said to me, ‘that’s another way of saying, what do you believe?’ And I said, ‘no, I don’t think he wants to know’. And she said, ‘oh no, that’s a sort of a shorthand—they’re hopeless, they’re frightened of a woman’. And I had such a reaction to that comment. They are not frightened of a woman. Pompous arrogant, we- know-everything men! They are not frightened. And she said, ‘you need to bring them back, and talk to them and tell them’.

Josie: Tell them what?

Sadie: ‘Tell them what you do believe. And they will refer to you then’. And I said, ‘I don’t think so, Julie’.

Josie: You don’t think so that: ‘they will refer to you if you told them what you believe, or you don’t think so that: ‘I’m not going to ring up and tell them what I believe’?

Sadie: Both (long pause).

Josie: You’re describing some refusal to participate in that exchange?

178 Sadie: I won’t. I won’t. And I won’t because I’m indignant—but I’m also afraid. It’s the same old stuff.

JoJo states deliberately that in her view the church community is like a 12-step recovery program. That is, they don’t want you back unless you absolutely adhere to the prescribed rules.

JoJo: I think you’ve got to think about it as an addiction. At least, you’ve got to think of the church as a 12-step recovery program. Their interest is in keeping you in. Once you leave, you’re unsafe and they don’t want you back until you toe the party line.

Josie: It’s a community—

JoJo: —where the norms are prescribed, and any lack of adherence to the norms will be punished. Absolutely.

Charlie and Ollie have also spoken explicitly of the strategic social control they have experienced and observed in the evangelical church. Ollie speaks with frank disdain in this excerpt, commenting on how a certain progressive women’s group she was involved in was deliberately infiltrated by conservative women to change the nature of the group. In fact, this strategic use of power to deliberately control women leads her to conclude that the Sydney church is basically like a venereal disease lesion: ‘a shanker’. Her comments conclude this consideration of the panoptic gaze of CF.

Ollie: I think Sydney evangelicals are extremely harsh, narrow people who feel they’ve got to project a certain almost austere nothingness. If that makes sense.

Josie: How do you think this might be sort of maintained?

Ollie: It’s maintained because of the structures. It's maintained particularly in Sydney because the [a certain named group] have sewn up every powerful position in the diocese. They’ve got the legitimate authority and power.

Josie: So it’s about power?

Ollie: Well, it’s about the misuse of power. You know, they’re misogynists as well…It was really sad, because for a while there some of the [named conservative] women got involved in it, and really debased it.

179 Josie: It’s interesting that those women who may have felt so differently got involved in your organisation. Do you think there was something going on there?

Ollie: I think it was espionage. No, not that. Subversion.

Josie: Infiltration?

Ollie: Oh, absolutely. And I think the people within were genuinely tired when that happened…well, it was very strategic. But at the end of the day, it came to nothing. Their infiltration came to nothing. Sydney is a ‘shanker’ really…it’s the last outpost of abuse of women in the church. I mean, they’ve changed the marriage vows in the last few months, and you’ve got to submit now to your husband. So it’s hardly rocket science really.

Power, sexuality, and heteronormative discourse and practice

Beyond panopticism, the participants spoke most frequently about the issue of gender and homophobic discourse and practice. Even when not specifically asked, every participant expressed a view on the control of gender roles and sexuality within the church community. As discussed in Chapter 3, the construction of sexuality may occur on three fronts: knowledges about sexual behaviour, systems of power which regulate the practices of sexual acts, and ‘the form within which individuals are able, are obliged, to recognise themselves as subjects of this sexuality’ (Foucault, 1990b: 4). These assemblages inform this analysis of the participants’ narratives.

In addition, it may be asked why this technology of power generates such frequent and heated commentary from the research participants. As Foucault writes, ‘sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population’ (Foucault, 1980e: 125), which makes it a potent method of regulating the external and internal boundaries of the group. Heat and conflict seem to result when the net-like operation, which previously invited self-monitoring and self-moulding, begins to generate refusal, revolt and a reversal of the gaze. The emergence of such counterstories thwarting cognitive deference may in fact lead to relying on one’s own moral judgments (Lindemann Nelson, 1996) and the emergence of alternative moral positioning.

Patriarchy and Sexism: the internalised acceptable man and woman

Firstly, both male and female participants (Arthur, Barbara, Belinda, Charlie, James, JoJo, Louise, Max, Michael, Ollie, Ruth, Sadie, Sue and Wendy) spoke about the shaping effects of 180 patriarchal discourse and practice upon their lives and sexual practices. An accepted and acceptable discourse of Christian womanhood (specifically no sex before marriage, no homosexuality, the permanent subordination to men in leadership including husbands) was actively taught, and then promoted through the apparatus of panoptic internalising. Several participants spoke of the lack of protest by women themselves to enforced rules about male and female roles, reiterating JoJo’s earlier observation of the panoptic effects of the Christian gaze: ‘you don’t need to fight a revolution if no one revolts.’ The willing adherence to and promotion of a particular version of male/female Christian identity, with attendant specified roles of men and women, is the story recounted by these participants.

As Arthur explains, ‘it was not a big issue’ in groups he was part of, particularly for men for whom it ‘wasn’t a problem’. For women, they either disagreed ‘respectfully’ or else were at risk of being regarded ‘with suspicion’. The requirement of women to practise submission in order to find acceptability is thus congruent with the ‘conditional acceptance’ continuum referred to above.

Arthur: It was definitely a topic that came up a lot, particularly the idea of women preaching to men. And it was—there was some diversity in that, but by and large, it was accepted that women should only preach to women…

Josie: Have you kind of shifted in that?

Arthur: Yeah. I don’t think that there is any difference between men and women basically. I just think that whole thing is a ridiculous construct, arguing about something completely pointless.

Josie: How do you think men and women were affected in the community to practise their identity, perhaps differently?

Arthur: I think there was often pressure to be ‘the right kind of woman’—(pausing)— to be someone who was happy with the situation where men have the authority, and if you were someone who had a problem with that, you’d be looked at with suspicion…I guess there would be some girls who didn’t agree with it, but were respectful of it either to the point of completely going along with it, or disagreeing but in a respectful way. Though to girls who would know that this is completely ridiculous, but they wouldn’t last long in the community (laughing).

Josie: What would happen to them?

181 Arthur: Oh, they just self-select themselves out. They don’t want to be in a group where they feel oppressed in their views.

Josie: Sure. Were there men as well who might take alternative positions?

Arthur: Yeah, there were probably men who weren’t sure what to think. I guess the fact is that it’s just not a problem for them, so they don’t have to do anything differently.

Michael also mentions this issue as something that did not affect him too much, but also that the girls he knew at the time did not seem too concerned either. Men apparently accepted their ‘authority’ in a rather sanguine manner, internalising the patriarchal discourse available from within, and perhaps also, outside the church. It seems that patriarchal privilege conferred by God is rarely protested.

Belinda speaks with some surprise at an incident in her former church when the women leaders seemed unwilling to protest a change in male leadership, which successfully disenfranchised them. Not only did the women not protest, but also Belinda was surprised and disappointed in her own lack of fight at the time. This turning point led her towards becoming more valuing of women’s roles in the church, and fortified her desire to not be constantly told what to do by men.

Belinda: There was a staff facilitator who came in. There was a man promoted below the women, who was less experienced. And now he’s the new leader. Yet he leapfrogged two women who had twenty years experience each.

Josie: And you had an opinion on that?

Belinda: I did. (laughing) I still do! And whether these two women are the right people for the job, they should at least be considered for the job seriously, regardless of the fact that they are women.

Josie: But automatically they weren’t considered?

Belinda: That’s right. Regardless of what some views would be held in the church— there would be a lot of very modern women, and modern men—but they were not prepared to distance themselves from evangelical Sydney in that instance. But I should have pushed for it. I can’t believe I didn’t push for it…but the women, the female ministers, didn’t want to fight either. They wanted to not—they accepted this is how the [named denomination] church is…I would be fighting a fight for someone who 182 doesn’t want to fight. I found myself frustrated thinking, ‘it does matter. And why aren’t we women important enough to run a church? How did that happen? How did I not see it before?’

Josie: So had you been aware before of gender differences, and how they might have been promoted or maintained?

Belinda: Well, through both of those experiences, I realised that men talking to me and me sitting there listening is a huge part of the church experience. When I left [this church], I became really annoyed at having to sit down and listen to men. I thought, ‘no more. No more men telling me what to do for forty minutes!’ (laughing) That’s why I like [my new church]—because I don’t feel like they’re telling me what to do. And I don’t feel like they’re doing it for too long, and taking up other elements of the service and other people’s chance to express themselves. And other people can preach. Women can preach. Yeah, so I thought, ‘no one is telling me—I’m not listening to any more men…’

James again speaks with some irony when he admits there were ‘some things to be grateful for’ in his now historic Christian involvement—one of these being that he had to ‘step up’ to fulfil the ‘male leadership role model’. He saw this a positive identity challenge, but indicates it was all about perception, rather than genuine change, making a further wry observation about how the community shapes acceptable roles for its male and female members.

James: A lot of my motivation for being a better Christian than I probably ever would be, was my need to be perceived as a suitable male role model. Somebody who exhibits the behaviour of good Christian husband material.

Josie: What’s that?

James: You know, relatively biblically knowledgeable. Relatively sin free. Sorry— perceived as relatively sin free.

Josie: Observed to be so? Is this part of the male leadership theme?

James: Yes, this is definitely part of the male leadership thing. The male is supposed to be the head of the family. The male is supposed to be strong and confident in making his decisions in a biblical way, all that sort of stuff.

Josie: How did that affect you?

183 James: You know, actually probably in a positive way. If I didn’t have to aspire to this Christian version of male leadership, I’d be really happy just being a kind of ordinary Australian kind of slobbish guy (laughing).

Max speaks of his horror in how he formerly treated his wife, expecting her to be submissive. As he says, it was all about a certain internalised view of theology and specific discourse around maintaining ‘God’s plan’.

Max: She was an amazing support. She was a submissive wife. And when she stepped out of line, I would remind her what the Bible said: ‘submit to your husband’.

Josie: Did you do that?

Max: Yes, at times I did.

Josie: What do you think about that now?

Max: Oh, it’s horrendous. Horrendous! (laughing) But that was the teaching. God has this line of authority. God, husbands, wives, children. This is the chain of command. If you step out of the command, then you step out of God’s protection.

Josie: Was the teaching reinforced in the church community?

Max: Yes. ‘This is the way we all are. This is God’s plan. If we follow God’s plan, God’s pattern, we have blessing. And the world has its own standards and that’s where the problems are in the world, because they are rejecting God’s order’.

Barbara is concerned that these rigid views of women’s roles will become entrenched, even though she thinks that laypeople ‘put up with it’ rather than believe it. She is referring to the dissemination of particular discourses in her denomination through the appointment of certain people to leadership who all share the same views. This parallels Ollie’s comments concerning the strategic use of power in shoring up the leadership roles with like-minded men and women.

Barbara: I mean, women who are going to [named theological college] now often won’t speak in public if there are men there. Because they’ve been told that, ‘man is the head of the house’—or whatever he’s head of. And they go and work in churches that agree with their take on it, and so we’ll get entrenched.

Josie: What do you mean, entrenched?

Barbara: Well, they go to churches where the leaders—I don’t think the laypeople 184 actually go along with that. But they put up with it. And the leaders take that stand— that the leaders have to be men, and the women who go there agree with them. So, people don’t get a chance to see another way or another model.

Ollie further points out that there may be lip service paid to women’s diverse roles in the evangelical church, but the reality is that they are still only given menial jobs to perform.

Ollie: I think one of the reasons I moved away from that church was because the whole thing was sort of suffocating…the most exciting thing we ever got to do was clean the brass, or do the flowers.

Sue says she just couldn’t be the kind of woman who was idealised in the church, having too much aggression and volition.

Sue: I found it difficult to be the woman that they idealised in the Church—the good, homey kind. You know, who was more passive. And I knew I wasn’t passive. I just had too much, you know, it felt like aggression. I felt I had too much aggression. Maybe it was just too much of volition or passion to be a ‘decent type of godly woman’. I don’t know.

Rachel speaks of how adolescent sexual behaviour was controlled, presumably to ensure the adult virginal woman prior to marriage.

Rachel: When I got a bit older, there were these really full on messages about, you know—if you have sex, you’re bad. There were all these really full-on rules. We’d have these people come from America to talk to us—these people would come and talk about how we should wear a bell in case things got too intimate with—

Josie: A what?

Rachel: A bell! To remind us that God isn’t—like, if you were pashing your boyfriend, the bell would ring, and then you could remember that God isn’t liking what you’re doing, or something (laughing). That kind of stuff.

In summary, a woman who is not sexually active except within heterosexual marriage, who is somewhat passive, and who accepts the permanent subordination of women was thus spoken about as representing the acceptable female Christian identity. However an additional specific discourse (accompanied by attendant panoptic practices) that affects Christian evangelical women is that they may only marry other evangelical Christian men. This has effectively meant the church is disproportionately full of single Christian women in their 30s and 40s who 185 have little chance of a partnership.21 Belinda makes specific reference to this, protesting strongly that this teaching, based on spurious theology in her view, causes unnecessary suffering to women, and erases their hope of ever having sex and children. The choice to marry a non-Christian (an outsider) represents a serious breach of church discipline; these women are thus denied the opportunity, like gay people, to ever experience sex or sexual pleasure. Celibacy is their only option outside the prescribed heterosexual model. Belinda subversively encourages them in a different direction.

Belinda: My lovely Christian girlfriends—many of them haven’t found anybody and they’re past their breeding age! So it’s awful. And I talk to them—the ones that are young enough—and say, ‘if you find a nice man, who’s really good, a good man, and who is compatible with your faith, you know, then you can go for him’ (laughing).

Josie: So he may not share exactly the same faith—

Belinda: But he respects yours. And understands why you have that faith.

Josie: Do they listen to that view?

Belinda: Not yet! (laughing) Because they think, ‘that would be compromising’.

To conclude, Sadie refers to an enduring footprint in her and perhaps other women’s lives of the persistence of such unwelcome patriarchal practices.

Sadie: [Now] I find it hard to stand and actually articulate what things I don’t believe, and why I don’t believe them. I’m easily intimidated by a male who would argue against me on the matter. I can be very much affected by a dominant male.

Heteronormative discourse and gay sexuality

The participants’ stories of gender roles moved easily to related stories of how CF promotes knowledge and regulation of other sexual expression. Again, some forms are allowed, and individuals are obliged to self-decipher, self-disclose, and see themselves as subject to the

21 Throughout the modern world, more women than men go to church; see WALTER, T. (1990) Why are most churchgoers women? A literature review. Vox Evangelica, 73–90. According to the 2006 National Church Life Survey, around 19% of Australians attend church at least monthly with the young and men being under-represented: only 39% of attendees are male. http://www.wikigender.org/index.php/Gender_difference_in_Church_Attendance (accessed 18 February 2013) 186 prescribed forms. The two gay men (Max and Martin) and six gay women (Ollie, Barbara, Lucy, JoJo, Sue and Ruth) in the study had their own stories to tell, however the other participants who identified as heterosexual made many similar comments. The participants concluded that fundamentalist churches have no available theological or church-sanctioned relationship for anyone who is LGBT, other than celibacy. Sadie summarised this position as she spoke about her experience of gender issues within CF.

Sadie: As I proceeded with them, I started to see some of the same issues around women, and also around the gender issues of homosexuality.

Josie: What were those gender issues about homosexuality?

Sadie: Well, but there was something wrong with you, and that you had to somehow or other be cured from this ‘condition’ and then you could be freed to, well—to be a heterosexual, and to have a relationship, to marry, and ‘get back on track’.

Martin spoke about a church he attended in which the comment was made that gay people did not exist within their denomination, or contract HIV, as such people went to other less acceptable churches, like the Roman Catholic church. The denial of people even being gay, making them invisible and so marginalising them even further, indicates an additional way of controlling sexual behaviour and identity. He also made several references to explicitly condemnatory, homophobic conversations he has had, which he has tried on the whole to treat in a light-hearted manner. The nail in the coffin for him as far as the evangelical church was concerned was the rejection he received from his old church school for being gay.

Martin: And when I broke up with my partner four years ago, and I got quite low and depressed about it, one of them turned around and said, ‘what do you expect, living in a sinful relationship?’ And I said ‘it’s not a sinful relationship!’ And he said, ‘of course it is’. And, you know, we’d be having dinner together at a restaurant. And I’d say, ‘how then can you sit here with me?’ And he’d say, ‘well, Jesus sat with sinners’. And I was just—well, I love that (laughing)—‘okay I’m a sinner’…and (pausing) I was asked to go—the nail in the coffin was—I was asked to go and speak at [my old school] as an old boy, on careers. Anyway I went and saw the headmaster…I was a bit pissed off because I wasn’t even offered a cup of tea. You’re sort of treated like you’re back at school. Anyway, I gave him my resume and he said, ‘yes, we’re very impressed with you, we’d love you to speak’. And I said, ‘I just want you to know, because I do not want it to come out later on, I’m gay’. And he looked at me and said ‘oh, really?’ And I said, ‘I just don’t want it coming out—someone saying, “you’ve

187 got a gay person speaking”—I want you to know, I’m very happy with my sexuality, and my faith’…and he said, ‘thankyou very much’, continued the conversation and sort of ended it. And then said, ‘look, I’ll be in touch to work out a time’, and I never heard from him. So I waited for about eight weeks, and I wrote back to him, and I never got a reply. So I just thought, ‘f-you’. So that was the nail in coffin. And they still send letters to me asking for money!

Max summarises the explicit messages he received about his gay identity while in the church in the following letter he wrote me after the interview. This again reflects the dominant message of internalised homophobia.

Summary: my SELF has been through the wringer, many, many times. Come out at the end clean, bright, sparkly, with a few wrinkles and a couple of tears, but they give the garment character. This was my [former] belief about the real me, the gay men. Do not admit to yourself or the world who you are, in terms of your sexual orientation. Hide it, kill it, eradicate it, heal it, deliver it, break it, magic it away, deny it, marry it to a woman, heterosexually sexualise it away, therapy it, counsel it, but whatever you do, don’t stand up one day and say, ‘I am gay’. Because when you do, on that day, you will have finally given in to it and it will surely kill you. You will die a slow, horrible and painful death, a death of friendships, of acceptance, of spirituality and ultimately you gamble with your eternal future.

Ollie tells a similar story about a particular church experience in which she was asked to pray against gay people adopting children. She starts by talking about the non-judgmental, honest, inclusive and accepting experience she has in her new church. She ends with a significant protest against homophobia.

Ollie: It’s very multicultural, it’s very open, it’s very intellectually stimulating and challenging, and it’s honest.

Josie: Is this what you most appreciate?

Ollie: Umm, I think I appreciate the fact that you can be who you are. And that level of honesty is hard to come by.

Josie: How is that different from your experience of more evangelical churches?

Ollie: (pausing) It’s inclusive. That’s the biggest difference. There is judgment that comes with being a Sydney evangelical. And the harshness. And almost their bitter

188 moroseness with being a Christian. There’s nothing jubilant about it at all.

Josie: What do you mean by bitter moroseness?

Ollie: …Well, one Sunday night [after moving house] I thought, ‘I think I’ll see if I can find a church to go to. I found out that there was a 5 o’clock service at [the local church]. So I went down there, and there were about two-dozen people. That was all right. And we all sat around the sanctuary at little tables, drinking tea, and being awfully nice to each other while the service was happening. And it was so right-wing evangelical, and it was at the time when the gay adoption laws were going through the New South Wales Parliament. And some little arsehole got up and prayed that God would strike the legislation down. At that point I got up and said, ‘excuse me, I’m gay, and I find this offensive, and I’m leaving’.

Lucy comments that she has only ever experienced acceptance as a gay woman if she is ‘struggling with it’, as Max has also described. If she accepts it, she could be completely ostracised. Lucy, like Ollie, takes a strong position of refusal on this technology of power, which works towards normalising heteronormative hegemony.

Lucy: And they had one sermon about how if your brother’s in sin, then you should not associate with them, you should not eat with them. And I heard this sermon, just going, ‘wow, this sounds like my cult. I heard these same sermons back there. Here I am, hearing them in the [named denomination] church. And my best friend was in the congregation, and I was thinking, ‘she could very well do this’. And I said to her afterwards—

Josie: —not associate with you?

Lucy: Yes. And she goes, ‘no, because you struggle with it. You’re in a place of struggle. If you had resolved that, then maybe it would be a different story’.

Josie: What’s the difference between struggling with it, and accepting it?

Lucy: Yeah, but that’s the way she justified it in her mind she so she could still hang out with me.

Josie: What do you think about that?

Lucy: I don’t agree with that now. I just think that’s a (lowers voice) load of bollocks.

189 Barbara makes it her business, in a similar way to Max, to educate gay Christians that it is ok to be gay and that it is not the path to spiritual destruction. She has also found honesty, care and acceptance within her new church community.

Josie: What do you think about the way same-sex relationships are taught about and the way same-sex couples are treated in the church now?

Barbara: Oh, within the [named denomination], it’s awful, just awful. So mostly they don’t stay there. But we’ve got a lovely couple of fellows in our church…and they’ve had to come and work in Sydney, because they come from fairly fundamentalist Christian families who couldn’t cope with their being together. So they come and live in Sydney. But they didn’t know that there were books written that said, ‘what you’re doing is okay, and God loves you’, so I lend them books to read. In fact, one of them said he was a Buddhist, but he put himself on all the rosters, you know. So he gives out the books at the door, because he said, ‘the people here are like my family’.

Conclusion

This chapter has detailed the participants’ experiences of the application of strategic, disciplinary power through the panoptic Christian normalising gaze and its six layers of influence: internalised surveillance, small group immersion and surveillance, Christian counselling, cultic rules, tiers of acceptability and strategic exclusion. Through such networks of power, the Christian subject learns the truth about and within him/herself, not always explicitly, but as Rose provocatively suggests, through brutal commands, dispassionate statements and seductive and comforting whispers (1998: 40).

The Foucauldian lens was then focused on the constitution of acceptable sexuality and prescribed gender roles, with the promotion and maintenance of heteronormative discourse. The shaping and regulation of people’s sexual acts and sexual identity is no neutral endeavour, described poignantly by those directly affected. There is no space for alternative sexual expression or pleasure, other than what is normalised and performed in perpetuating the economy of power relations within heterosexual dominance (Butler, 1999). Some describe willingly participating in the subjugation of their own and other’s lives, often for many years, before adopting preferred counter-narratives and behaviour.

The aim has been to document how the Christian subject is constituted, to illuminate the play of forces and manoeuvres, and to demonstrate the processes of surveillance and interiorisation through the intersection of power/knowledge. This genealogy is demonstrating the constitution

190 of the Christian subject within an historical timeframe, not as something transcendental but as a social production. If effective power is about gaining access to people’s bodies, their acts, attitudes and modes of everyday behaviour (Foucault, 1980e: 125), then modern-day CF appears to have achieved it. The following chapter turns to the final axis of the Foucauldian triangle—self and subjectivity, and considers further opportunities for resistance, counter- conduct, anti-pastoral revolt and alternative exercises in freedom.

191 Chapter 10

A Genealogy of Identity

Foucauldian Lens: The Context of the Self

I’ve got no head for heights

but plenty of stomach

for trouble…

I want you, trouble,

on the rocks.

Dorothy Porter,

Trouble

The previous two chapters considered the interview data along the axes of truth and power, building a genealogy of Christian identity and subjectification. The focus has been on how Christian subjects within CF are formed within the context of truth, power and also the shepherd-flock game of pastoral power. As discussed in Chapter 4, Foucault attempted in the final years of his life to reposition subjectivity as the overall objective of his work, redefining power as beyond purely disciplinary, to the exercise of forms of governmentality (Patton, 2009: 588). The analysis within this chapter observes the Foucauldian tradition by focusing on the participants’ government of their own selves, and the opportunities to recast that self- government apart from evangelical norms and the Biblification of thoughts and behaviours.

The focus is thus on the third axis, the self, providing an opportunity to consider the stories of the participants as potential technologies of resistance as they fashion new forms of subjectivity (Tamboukou, 2013: 107). In this vein, I ask the question: do people speak of a new ethical frame of living, both those inside and outside of church communities? A significant anti-pastoral revolt has already been emerging in the analysis within the previous four chapters, through counterstories of identity change following disaffiliation. In people’s refusal of the fundamentalist identity, this genealogy is exploring whether alternative ethical substance and modes of subjectification, asceticism and telos (Foucault, 1984b) may be 192 uncovered. That is, as psychotherapist Michael White asks, what is the ethical substance considered of primary relevance to ethical judgment for the person? What provides the aesthetic mode through which people recognise their obligations in regard to their ethical substances? What is the goal or end point that one seeks to arrive at in one’s identity project (2004: 187–193)? These questions lead the genealogy towards an inquiry into how those exiting CF may reconstitute themselves as ethical subjects beyond the previous Christian hermeneutics of the self.

It is recalled from Chapters 3 and 4 that Foucault did not analyse what ‘we are becoming’, nor in his histories of systems of thought attempt to outline clear directions for change in the present. His genealogy of resistance may be considered undeveloped, hence this analysis is augmented by ideas of resistance, freedom, dispersion and deterritorialisation from Bakhtin and Deleuze. This chapter is about the emergence of trouble, as the participants protest and confront the process of Christian subjectification. Their responses and resistances to the experiences of disseminated power will be considered as: emergent internal and external protest; the reversal of the gaze through the nurturing of independent thinking and active questioning of the ‘truth’ discourse; protests against homophobia and restrictions on women’s roles; and emergent alternative ethical substance and deterritorialising.

Refusal expressed as internal protest

Firstly, the majority of the participants (David, Louise, Martin, Rachel, Sadie, Sue, Wendy, Belinda, James, JoJo, Louise, Ollie, Sadie and Tom) spoke of an emerging response of internal anger, protest and indignation in relation to their experiences of disseminated power. Such a process was also instrumental in participants ultimately leaving CF, and helping them navigate an alternative way of being, recalling Carrette’s suggestion that silence may be understood as a potent strategic protest against pastoral power (2000). This internal anger was entwined for some in the propagation of the double-life as described in Chapter 7, and led to significant changes in their alternative becomings, as will be illustrated.

For Martin, his protest was directed at his denomination’s silence on the AIDS epidemic. His ongoing frustration and isolation as a result of the church’s marginalisation of gays speaks of a refusal to accept authoritative discourse, and a development of his own subjugated knowledge. Here he speaks of the church’s ‘lack of grace’ pushing him further to his alternative progressive theology.

Martin: Now, during this time, you know, society had moved dramatically. And again and again the [named denomination] Church came out with very strong directives 193 against women in leadership, on sexuality, and so on. But the thing that annoyed me the most, whilst they were touting these two things, they would make no comments on gambling or drug addiction, or anything, or youth suicide…

Josie: So this was your church at this time saying these things. Can you talk about how come you were so angry?

Martin: Because I just thought there was no grace. No forgiveness, no love. But also a complete misunderstanding of who we are—that each of us is born in God’s image. Are gay and lesbians really born out of God’s image? And I never believed that I had an option or a choice. I was never told to go and have therapy or anything, but I just knew that my church was so unforgiving.

Sue spoke of her rage against bigotry, mostly stemming from what she saw as the suffering experienced by her friend Rick, forced into a double-life by his church community of which she was a part. As has been said, her friend’s death was a significant turning point in her deconversion. Sue’s narrative, like others, emerges as a story of the subjective experience of control, which then becomes a site of silent resistance, and then even a story of emancipation. The double-life story is associated with being silenced, but then people using that silence to internally protest. Being the ‘outsider’ then allows some later expansion into that role. Tom discussed the invitation extended to him to participate in the chain of silencing. He refused to do this covertly, and so began his internal process of dissent.

Tom: The issue of women came up in theological college. Oh, and the second issue was homosexuality. When I was appointed, I was actually directed to pick out the homosexuals in college, and report them through the system—which I declined to do.

Josie: Report them, like McCarthyism?

Tom: My job was to find them and report them, so they couldn’t be ordained. And I decided in myself I couldn’t do that. I came across several students who were gay.

Josie: Did you get into trouble for refusing to do that?

Tom: No, I knew how to play politics.

Josie: Okay, so in the keeping of the rules, you learnt to—

Tom: —breach them…When the issue of women came up, I was uncomfortable about their attitude, but said nothing. 194 Josie: This was the keeping quiet?

Tom: I kept quiet. I objected to it, but kept quiet.

Louise summarises her experience in a similar way when she says, ‘I think I’ve been very internal, but I’ve been quite good at finding a path somehow in these varied experiences’. As Sadie suggests, keeping internal stirrings quiet is to do with keeping safe, as this is a potentially frightening and dangerous process.

Sadie: I just think I started to think in my own mind. But I had no one to actually ever talk to about it.

Josie: So it remained internal at this stage?

Sadie: And the person I probably did speak the most to about this was my husband. And I think he was struggling too—we were probably on a bit of a parallel path at this point. And we talked to each other, but we didn’t talk to anybody else. I was becoming more and more, umm—I suppose unbelieving about what I was being taught, and that is very scary to start to not believe what you thought was so totally fundamental to your being.

James’s internal protest against intellectual absolutism kept him outside the inner sanctum of the hierarchy of Christian acceptability, but formed the basis of his new ethical frame.

James: Yeah, I don’t like intellectual absolutism…that intolerance of other people’s ideas, that kind of thing. That has never sat well with me.

Josie: So that kind of intellectual absolutism—even back then—there was a part of you that was not comfortable with it?

James: Oh, absolutely. One thing that I always prided myself on as a Christian, just internally—I didn’t ever really voice it—was always to step outside the comfort of the Christian circle and try and look back in at what other people would be seeing, at what other people would think, how other people would handle these intellectual points. So I always tried to deliberately maintain that outsider’s perspective.

Josie: Do you think that was helpful to you to do that?

James: (pausing) Somebody who chooses to be an outsider will actually very rarely ever find full acceptance within that community.

195 Finally, Ollie considers rather intriguingly that although she felt ‘compelled’ to go to church, she went elsewhere in her mind. This could later become a point of expansion into her re- formed non-evangelical identity.

Josie: Were there any other legacies that you thought were shaping of you in any way?

Ollie: It also cemented a deep hatred for Sydney evangelicalism. A very deep hatred.

Josie: Sounds like you were never fully persuaded of it?

Ollie: No. Have you ever read Karl Marx?

Josie: The Karl Marx? Sure.

Ollie: You know, he talks about work for itself, and work in itself. Like, it’s church for itself, but I was never in the church.

Josie: What does that mean?

Ollie: It means I went to church, but I didn’t really go there in my brain. I physically went. Like you go to work to do work, but if you’re in work, you go to work because you’re engaged with it.

Reversing the gaze and the cultivation of independent thinking and research, combined with a new ‘space’

Following internal protest as a preliminary act of refusal to comply, was the cultivation and nurturing of independent thinking and reading. Rather than being seen, these inquirers were moving to the counter-conduct of self-seeing, while valuing their own experience and knowing over the authoritative discourse. Perhaps this suggests not only an insurrection of subjugated knowledges (Foucault, 1980f: 81) but also a more contemporary version of the mysticism within early Christianity that Foucault referred to as counter-conduct in response to pastoral power and a dissident reversal of the gaze (2009). As mentioned in Chapter 3, he also wondered at mysticism as the survival of the ‘parrhesiastic pole of confidence in God’, rather than the pole of the suspicious decipherment and mistrust of the self (2011b: 337). As such, it becomes akin to courageous truth-telling about the self, rather than the self-surveillance associated with subjectification.

As described in the previous chapter, there are many negative consequences for acts of non- compliance within CF, yet many participants (Max, Martin, Sadie, Lucy, Belinda, James, Tom,

196 Rob, Louise) not only tried it, but also enjoyed the process and the trouble and disruption it caused. Firstly, the independent thinking often involved reading the Bible differently than had been previously taught or ‘encouraged’. Lucy explicitly describes this process, as she speaks of her changing relationship to reading the Bible as a member of her new church.

Josie: Has your view of the Bible kind of changed?

Lucy: Umm, yes, completely. But it’s gone through many changes, because it’s been through, ‘let’s flip it open and pick a verse’, to this dogmatic cult view, to evangelical fundamentalism, to now reading in context—understanding the culture, but being open to lots of different perspectives, because man is fallible. You know, who are we to think that we can completely work out the mind of God? And I’m very open to looking at all different perspectives on it. Let’s not just read the theologians we ‘should’ be reading. Let’s not just stick to Calvin and Luther.

Josie: So you’re talking again about different rules in [your new church]?

Lucy: Completely. So in the [named denomination] they say, ‘you shouldn't be reading that book’, because they’re really protective of what you’re feeding your mind. But here it is: ‘read whatever you want to read, you know, and let’s talk about it. But not talk about it because I have a certain perspective I actually want to bring you to. I don’t have any agenda. I just want to help you heal. I just want you to have a safe space to question, to do church whatever way you want, in order to reconnect with God. And there is no right or wrong way of doing that’.

Sadie explains that she too decided to read the whole Bible through differently, and came to the conclusion that it was a history and poetry book, but not the so-called ‘inspired word of God’.

Sadie: The real determinant at that stage was this. Everything is based on the validity of Scripture. The whole system hangs on the word of God. This is the reference point for everything. So I thought, ‘what I’m going to do is read this book from cover to cover. I’m going to immerse myself in it. I’m not going to read analyses or commentaries—I’m just going to read the book. So I read the book through. Right through, and I stuck at it. And at the end of it—it was like, all the lights went on.

Josie: Really?

197 Sadie: Uh huh. It was like an epiphany. I thought at the end, ‘this Old Testament, if this is what God is like—no thank you’. I was horrified.

Josie: You hadn’t read it before?

Sadie: I had read the Bible my whole life. But I had never read it like that, sort of immersed myself in the unfolding of the book. And it just went from one horror story to the next, one murder to another.

Josie: Did you move to a place of atheism?

Sadie: No, no. I just thought I do not believe any more in the validity of inspirational scripture. This is a book where principles are laid down about how to live—it’s a wonderful history book about the Jewish people, and the Gentile people. Somehow it fits into an historical context, which I’m interested in. It’s got a whole lot of poetry in it. It’s got some great stories. But this is not the Word of God.

Max describes his personal mantra as ‘keep reading’, particularly applied to the fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible on matters of gay sexuality. He described the previous authoritative discourse that he needed to wade through before finding his own internally persuasive discourse. His resistance speaks to issues of justice and an alternative morality, as he protests not only the requirement of behavioural change, but also the erasure and prohibition of his identity.

Max: After twelve months [out of the church], I thought ‘you know what? I can look at that stuff again’, and I began reading and researching. So this is a process I’m going through. The first thing that comes up for you is, ‘maybe I’m being deceived? And these people who are writing these different perspectives on this, you know, are deceiving about God’s word. God says you can’t lay with a man as with a woman’.

Josie: So it could be ‘from the devil’?

Max: Yes. I say to people, ‘keep reading’. The next thing that comes up for you is, ‘you know what? Those authors are self-justifying. They’re gay authors. They’ve got a gay theology—so this is all about self-justification’. So I say, ‘keep reading’. So I did. I just kept reading. I hadn’t figured out this process at this stage. And so the next step is that you get all this information, and you realise, ‘well, it isn’t just gay authors who think this. There are straight theologians’. And then you get to the point where you have enough information where you go, ‘actually, you know, this isn’t a black-and-

198 white issue, as I thought’. And then, if you keep reading, you go, ‘that was so wrong’ (laughing).

After reading the Bible differently, and so reversing the Christian gaze, participants then moved towards reading different theological and/or other books, which seemed to sustain the refusal to again succumb to tightly controlled, rigid evangelical thinking. Sue speaks for others when she values the ‘unfolding of the self’ (the equivalent for her of seeing, not being seen) and a valuing of an understanding that is one’s own. Lack of certainty and ‘not knowing’ seem to be more highly valued than the certainty associated with previous evangelical discourse. A theme can be noted of an emerging hermeneutical suspicion of ‘sacred’ and ‘God-breathed’ texts, which leads to alternative options for self-constitution. The previous hermeneutical reality—that there is ‘truth’ in the subject, that ‘true’ discourses can be articulated about it by theology and those who are authorised to interpret it—is relentlessly resisted. Sue even references mysticism, as Foucault did, naming it a completely different game of visibility in the resistance of pastoral power (2009).

Sue: Some of the people I studied were the mystics. Theresa of Ávila, those sort of people. And The Cloud of Unknowing is one of the spiritual texts that is, you know, centuries old. And the mystics talk about greater uncertainty the further you go with God. Which is just totally different to all this evangelical stuff, where they’ve got the answers, there’s always a reason for stuff, there isn’t room for this sort of unfolding of the self, and coming into an understanding that is (pausing) the person’s own.

Barbara also describes her reading as being instrumental in her identity changes, leading to a non-exclusive view of faith. She speaks of the process of deliberately reading books that were ‘off the list’, and mentions some of the titles with great relish. Interestingly, she says once she was out of Sydney it was very easy to do, as though she needed to escape the disciplinary space and the panoptic gaze to find a new spatial practice that was anti-disciplinary, in a somewhat de Certeau-like manner. That is, procedures of such everyday creativity, empowerment and signification as reading and ‘feeling good’ in particular places is reminiscent of the French philosopher’s observation that manipulating spaces may well constitute the subtle art of ‘renters’ who ‘know how to insinuate their countless differences into the dominant text’ (de Certeau, 1984: xxii). In other words, resistance can be subtle, in situ, everyday and certainly quite upbeat—particularly outside the Sydney milieu with its narrow normalising gaze and centripetal power.

Barbara: But I’ve always read a lot. I had one year in [theological college], and they used to go through the book lists for each subject and tell you which ones were sound. 199 They were the ones you could tick. Well, I read all the others. Over the years after that I started reading a bit more liberal ones, and thought, ‘hey this is fabulous’, so I read more of them. So it was a gradual process.

Josie: Were you kind of surprised by yourself, reading the ones that weren’t ticked?

Barbara: Oh no. And once I was out of Sydney, I felt no guilt—I just got interested. …and I’ve had great sustenance from feminist theologians. I’ve been to several conferences in the UK where—do you know anything of feminist theology?

Josie: I’ve read some—

Barbara: …Carter Hayward wrote a book called Saving Jesus from those who are Right (laughing).

The concept of finding a new physical space to think and act differently as an act of resistance could also be considered in relation to the actual new churches that participants now attend. As Lindemann Nelson comments, ‘those who create counterstories acquire their cognitive authority from [new] communities that constitute abnormal moral contexts’ (2001: 174–175). That is, the standards for evaluating what people do are now considered differently, and not keyed to the requirements of those who perceive certain others through the gaze of Christian normalisation. Participants are therefore offered alternative moral standards, particularly less patriarchal, to evaluate their lives and thus lend some credibility to their counterstories.

Ruth, Lucy, Charlie, Barbara, Martin, Belinda, David and Ollie are the participants who describe being content and satisfied with the new, more diverse church meetings that they attend. Belinda uses the actual word ‘space’, which allows her freedom to think her own thoughts.

Josie: Are there words that you would use to describe your changes? Any words or themes that would describe how you have changed as a person?

Belinda: (pausing) Well—wrestle, when it comes to understanding Scripture. Freedom to think my own thoughts. And a space—that sounds terribly whatever—but a space where I’m allowed to think my own thoughts. Literally, I mean my new church probably.

Martin summarises for others when he says of his new church-space: ‘I’ve given to the church because the church opened itself to me’. The church offers him not only space and acceptance as a gay man, but also an alternative more congruent theology, to which he responds with loyal 200 support. David’s story about attending a gay fetish club also indicates how much he appreciates a church-space that is genuinely friendly and accepting of all people, with an alternative, ‘abnormal’ (but preferable) moral context.

David: [This club] is a kind of gay, fetish club that meets every month. And it’s like the best fancy dress party you’ve ever been to—like latex, rips and chains, the whole bondage thing. But it’s all a show, it’s not really happening.

Josie: Sure, sure. Like a performance?

David: It’s a performance. I took one of the church leaders along. A girl. And I’m thinking to myself, ‘I love this environment, I love the people’. And she connected with them. And I just sat with her over the night, and connected with people and had the time of my life. Now why am I telling you this? What was the question you asked?

Josie: About the word ‘Christian’, whether you’ve got another word that you would prefer?

David: (sighing, pausing) Okay—this is why I’m telling you this story. Someone said to me on the night, ‘where did you meet her?’ And I said, ‘oh, I met her at church’ (laughing). And they went, ‘oh my God! You met her at church? What the hell church is that? And I said, ‘it’s a church where we just get together and meet in a bar and have a couple of glasses of wine and cheese, and talk about life’. And they said, ‘I’d like to go to a church like that’. And I think to myself, ‘that’s what it ought to be like. It ought to be attractive and friendly and fun and accepting’. That has not been my experience of church.

For the three participants, Rob, Michael and Arthur, who lost their belief through independent reading and thinking, Michael summarises the process. He considers that people’s responses were inadequate to his arguments, and so his cognitive dissonance grew. The reversal of the gaze for Rob and Michael was also shown by their amused discovery (as described in Chapter 8) that giving up the evangelical identity did not lead to a scandalous, moral descent—in fact quite the contrary, as they valued their own experience and moral positioning over the authoritative discourse.

Michael: You know, I met some very interesting people with some very interesting viewpoints that I didn’t realise existed. And I went to the library and there were whole sections of books that I had never heard of—that delved further into various aspects of theism and anti-theism…I had started to really study apologetics arguments, and I 201 found that with most of them I felt more persuaded by the other side. And I identified more closely with the opponents than the people I was going for. I felt more of an affinity with their way of thinking, and my cognitive dissonance really rose to the surface. I very much did everything I could to retain the faith, and I think that is how faith works. The best faiths are ones that, you know, somehow keep you on their side—in fact I guess all of them do. I desperately wanted it to be true so I could continue believing it. I think that’s why religions can be so strong. And, you know, I started to talk to people at church, friends, about having doubts, and I was quite shocked and amazed by some of the reactions. I think most people hadn’t really considered some of the arguments—a lot of Bible college trained people were not particularly well versed in what I was raising. And the ones that were, didn’t have any really good answers.

Rob too was on the path of intellectual dissent, and like Michael wanted to be convinced, but found his research more compelling than the evangelical response. He bargained with himself, hoping he could believe disparate ideas at the one time (as he says Christians do), but his doubts turned into unbelief. His counter-conduct was to also privilege his own experience over authority. This shifting of identity through the dabbling, then immersion, in counter-discourses to the evangelical paradigm also reflects Deleuzian thinking about ‘folding’. A new line of subjectification may be constructed when one takes a moment from outside of experience and folds it into oneself and then pursues the line created by the fold in a certain direction (Winslade, 1999: 341). It may be asked what exactly is infolded. As Rose suggests, it may be ‘composed of anything that can acquire the status of authority within a particular assemblage [including] machinations of learning, of reading [and] of wanting’ (1998: 189). Therefore it is suggested that the participants’ narratives of resistance to the power of CF through reading is like following a line of flight along a fold—that is, the outside constructs interior experience and forges changes in identity and selfhood.

Speaking out, particularly protesting homophobia and gender roles

For many participants, internal anger and protest, which began as a refusal to comply with prescribed norms and then led to independent thinking, also led to risky acts of visibility. That is, people started to quite loudly make their feelings known and speak out. Despite the potential for serious consequences such as ostracism (described in chapter 9), speaking out became a social justice issue for many. Integrity, agency, self-acceptance and autonomy emerged as valued life stories, which have been described in the plotlines of chapters 6 and 7. People began to see and experience that fundamentalist identity projects, while privileging

202 rigid discourse, marginalise and erase even their basic choices within an apparent liberal democracy. Their ensuing counterstories of protest may even be understood as ‘narrative acts of insubordination’ to such authoritative discourse. (Lindemann Nelson, 2001: 8). Such resistances are perhaps all the more real and effective because, as Foucault says, ‘they are formed right at the point where relations of power are exercised’ (Foucault, 1980c: 142). It is again suggested that such risky acts of truth-telling may also reflect the courage of the parrhesiast, as true parrhēsia emerges as confidence in the self and others and what can be done together expands, not the ongoing elaboration and decipherment of self which involves mistrust of oneself and the requirement for unquestioning obedience (Foucault, 2011b: 335).

A good example is when Barbara tells the story of the Tanzanian president Nyerere as an illustration of her own protest against people telling her who to follow, and who she can listen to. She admires Jesus as also being politically subversive in an unjust system, based on domination and oppression, which led to his death. She too chooses to be subversive, different, and speaks out.

Barbara: I met people—people that I admired very much, who were totally out there in the world, doing good things as I saw them, who didn’t have the foggiest idea about the Bible (laughing). And you know, back in Tanzania, President Nyerere was the first president after independence. And Tanzania is still a very undeveloped country, but it was just about second bottom in the world then. And President Nyerere got the Chinese, who were Communist in those days—Communist of the sort that the Americans would terrify you about—and he got the Chinese to build the railway. He got the Americans to build roads, and he got the Chinese to build the railways. And the Americans said to him, ‘why are you letting Communists come into your country and help in the development?’ And he said to them, ‘I don’t let my friends choose my enemies’.

Josie: Does that story reflect you too?

Barbara: Yes. Why should other people tell me who I can’t follow, who I can’t listen to? I’m not sure I would have articulated it as clearly as that then, but I was very impressed by that way of doing things. You do what you think is right at the time, regardless of, you know, what heavyweight tells you, ‘that’s sinful’, or whatever else they tell you.

The least ambiguous and most common act of speaking out was in relation to the participants’ views of the evangelical church’s treatment of gays and women. This is personal, and includes

203 themselves, their friends, and their family members. However it is more than that, and seems again to stem from a concern for justice and an emerging alternate spirituality and/or completely new ethical substance. Indeed, such counterstories reflected strong moral self- definition, as participants found that cracks and fissures in the old stories widened alarmingly, revealing glimpses of new stories. The denial, erasure and stigma applied to alternative identity expressions to the heteronormative blueprint were increasingly questioned. Normative gender stories which had masqueraded as descriptions were exposed as prescriptions, meaning that gaps were exposed between what truth-discourses demand and what people actually do, or are (Lindemann Nelson, 1996: 99). This allowed some questioning, dispersing and fragmenting of the ‘God-given’, freeing up alternative choosing and positioning. Some representative comments will be considered, before moving onto the question of people’s re- forming of their own ethos.

For Arthur, a heterosexual married man, it was the arbitrary imposition of external rules upon people’s sexuality and calling it ‘sinful’ that moved him along out of CF.

Arthur: There was something that was a key thing that moved me along, and that was thinking about transsexuality. I read something about the experience of a transsexual, and I could understand what they were saying—that they felt one way inside, but externally looked something else. That made a lot of sense to me. And I guess I saw homosexuality in a similar way—that it’s something that you feel very strongly about. It’s not something that you’ve chosen for yourself, it’s something that you find yourself in, and how distressing that must be. So it was just something that pushed me on the way to thinking, ‘well, it doesn’t really make sense to think about homosexuality as sinful. What reason is there for it to be sinful?’ The only reason that it would be is if there is a God who is imposing arbitrary rules upon what is right and wrong. So there’s no natural reason why that is immoral. It has to be imposed arbitrarily.

It was the gay issue that led Tom, also a heterosexual married man, to make choices that led to his choice of church leadership, and eventually which led to his exclusion from mainstream CF.

Tom: I saw a range of strong women fighting and winning the issue for women. They may have a long way to go, women have changed society—but no one was working for the gay community.

Josie: Within the Christian community?

204 Tom: Yes, only gay people were. And they were struggling. They were isolated. It seemed to me I met an increasing number of gay people who were decent people, who had found love, they expressed their dignity through that relationship, and I needed to honour that. So I needed to be in a gender-open society. That’s what I needed to be in…

Martin spoke of working within his new church and denomination against people who would lobby towards barring all gays and lesbians from positions of authority. While taking this task very seriously, he also spoke of employing his rather mordant sense of humour to protest homophobic comments within the church community.

Martin: Now, we still deal with sexuality…I was talking with a group of people at Synod, and a fellow came up from [a particular church], and he was in charge there. And he said, ‘every time I look at you, I think of sex’. And I said, ‘well!’ And I was overweight at that time—pretty chubby, I’d turned 50—and I said, ‘you’ve got more of a problem than me if you’re finding me attractive at 120 kg and over 50!’ And of course the others with me, half of whom were leaders, just burst into laughter. And he just stormed off, and I said, ‘but if you want to meet up—here’s my card!’

David’s outrage is evident in the following excerpt, when he stands up for being a transgendered person. He challenges the power of the minister to label and exclude him, and claims his right to a self-authored, self-accepting identity. This represents an extremely bold challenge to the conservatism of his church, reflecting his level of distress about the erasure of his identity, but also the moral demand for truth-telling about himself, no matter what the cost.

Josie: And so when you said this to the Minister, ‘I’m not going to see it as a problem any more’, what happened?

David: He said, ‘well then, I’m not sure that you can be a leader in our church’. I said, ‘why not?’ He said, ‘because if you go out in the street as a girl, and you met one of the people in our church, what would they think?’

Josie: Well, what would they think?

David: That was my question…I mean, ‘what the hell, I’m 50, can’t I dress as a girl?’ And I would wear bras—I wear girl clothes all the time under my clothes—and he said, ‘what if someone saw that you had a bra on, at church?’ I went, ‘so what? So fucking what?’

205 Josie: I imagine this was quite a big thing for you to say?

David: Oh, totally…and he said all this [other] insulting stuff. I wanted to hit him. I actually had two hours with him in a coffee shop after that, and I said, ‘you are the biggest fucking arsehole. You’re supposed to be love and acceptance and understanding, and I’ve had none of that…I was so upset and angry…and I got it from some of the other leaders too, that they said, ‘how dare you have this transgender thing? God’s plan for you is to be a man, and here you are, breaking God’s rules’. And I’m thinking, ‘fuck off! That’s not how it is at all!’

Lucy undertook the brave task of explaining to her very young nieces and nephews that she wasn’t bad nor ‘hurting God’ by being gay, despite what other members of the family may say.

Lucy: So I get this phone call from my niece, ‘hi Auntie Lucy, I hear Chrissie’s your lover.’ I was like, ‘wow, okay, this is awkward’. I would never have even talked to her about this, you know. And then she said, ‘haven’t you read Genesis chapter one, and God says this can’t happen—do you love us enough to change?’ All of this hoo-hah. So I was like really angry—not at her, bless her. I wasn’t ever going to be angry at her…

So of course I sat down with them. I said, ‘darls, I can’t explain to you. You’re kids’. They were like, ‘talk to us like we’re adults’. I said, ‘I can’t—but you have to trust that, you know, I’m not doing anything to hurt God’.

In regard to protesting the silencing of women and the restrictions put on their lives, sexuality and participation, comments from Barbara, Ollie, Sue and Belinda have already been included. Tom makes a further contribution by reflecting that the restrictions placed on women restricted him and his participation. He no longer would accept the taken-for-granted God-given authority conferred on him as a Christian man.

Josie: But how was it that the church keeping women in particular roles—

Tom: Because it kept defining their roles as non-intellectual—it set them up as the spiritual guides of the church—all of which seemed to be demeaning to men. Because it was offering me a model for my discipleship or my humanity, which I couldn’t live out. It wasn’t validating the energies I felt within myself. And I needed to be in a free environment, where women could express their energies, and be legitimately understood and valued, so I could do the same. So that meant it wasn’t really just a gender discussion, but a sexuality discussion. And if it was going to become a 206 sexuality discussion, then the issue of gay people became at the centre of the whole thing. It wasn’t women at the centre—it was gay people at the centre of it.

Wendy actively protested having to share her sex life with anyone again, after the counselling she had been required to undertake. When she changed churches, she decided to stay closed and private in regard to her personal life. In other words, confession and obedience were no longer accepted and undertaken as a form of pastoral power.

Wendy: I started going to a small Bible study, but never mentioned my boyfriend, never mentioned that I was living with him at the time as well. Just kind of hid that I was living with him. It got to about eight months and my group leader realised I had a boyfriend, realised he wasn’t coming to church, and I just said, ‘I’m not doing this again’.

Josie: So when the leader started asking you questions about it, you just said—

Wendy: ‘It’s not open to discussion’. I was really like, ‘you can think what you think, this is what I think: I think what I’m doing is really healthy’.

Rachel’s angry and pertinent remarks conclude this section, providing a summary for the other women in the study who have subverted evangelical norms and gender prescriptions. She sets up what she has been told ‘God wants’ as a ‘regime of truth’, and then uses it paradoxically to describe her new identity. God may not want it, but she does, and laughingly exposes the joke in her story of resistance and subverted power.

Rachel: I remember one time at a camp one of the female leaders was talking about gender roles, and how God wants me to be in the kitchen with the kids, cooking. I came from a very strong feminist family! (laughing) I don’t know if you know about this activity—where you write little notes to each other and put them in an envelope, and then you get this envelope full of affirmations at the end of the camp. And she wrote to me: ‘can’t wait to see you in an apron, sister’. And I was like, ‘fuck off! No way. That is not who I am’. And I was just being drilled about it—‘that’s what God wants, God doesn’t want you to have a career, God doesn’t want this, God doesn’t want you to have sex before marriage, God doesn’t want you to think independent thoughts’ (laughing).

Through internal and external protest, and the frequent parallel process of independent reading, participants have embarked upon journeys of refused participation in a self-constructed Christian identity. As Deleuze points out, there are those lines that ‘make detours’, and where 207 many things can happen including becomings and micro-becomings (Deleuze and Parnet, 2002: 124). While there may be first ‘the little cracks, the imperceptible ruptures which come from the south’, these stories also bear out the idea that ‘everyone has his south, his line of slope or flight’ (2002: 131–132). The next section considers these lines of flight as forming the basis of an alternative ethical substance.

Alternative ethical substance and deterritorialising

The excerpts from participants in this and preceding chapters are pointing to not only changing plotlines and counterstories, but also alternative exercises in freedom and the contestation of the forms of subjectification encountered within CF. As this genealogy renders the modes of subjectification intelligible and hence able to be judged, participants emerge as experts of themselves without ‘requiring submission to an image produced by entrepreneurs or a truth produced by authorities’ (Rose, 1999: 97). As has been suggested, they have counted the costs of what they have become, and are storying ways of becoming other than what they were. All twenty participants described an alternative spiritual journey and/or a reforming of their own ethos. Even those who no longer call themselves ‘Christian’ spoke of alternative spiritual possibilities and a different ethical frame of living. Foucault’s comments in his final lecture series point to the process of the re-formation of the self as an ethical subject beyond the Christian truth games towards one’s own truth-telling. He finally concludes that: ‘this exercise of the truth about oneself is not enough. It is possible, it finds a foundation only on the basis of that attitude of the courage of the truth: having the courage to tell the truth without concealing anything and regardless of the dangers this involves’ (2011b: 339). The continuing dangers of re-forming the self, along with the rewards, are well described by the participants.

Alternative Christian and other spiritual journeys

For those who still call themselves Christian, their new understanding is formed around such themes as acceptance, genuine discussion, diversity and God as love—not about dogma and being ‘right’ and ‘obedient’. As described in Chapter 6 and 7, the evangelical Christians in this study who have moved out of CF have re-defined for themselves what being a Christian is, and tailored it to their own experience and preferences.

Firstly, Louise speaks of the rewards of a genuine, open discussion experienced in a church she attended in another country. She repeats the word ‘real’ four times to make a clear contrast with the veneer of respectability she has experienced and described earlier. Again, the urge to be right and obedient is contrasted with the preferred option of a personal spiritual journey.

208 Louise: You could say there was real discussion, real people, real issues and genuineness. And real acceptance, you know. Like—you’re not being judged as to where you are in the order of things. It’s genuine. A genuine welcome, and a genuine discussion and exploration of ideas—social issues.

Josie: This is quite refreshing?

Louise–very refreshing…and what I do notice [here] is much more fear about being right. A lot less therefore about a personal journey into spirituality, and a lot more about obedience. That’s heartbreaking to see. Heartbreaking.

Lucy speaks of letting go of ‘shoulds’ and rules, and reclaims the Biblical concept of ‘fruit of the spirit’22 as being more present in her life than ever before.

Lucy: No more ‘shoulds’. I don’t have any obligation to do quiet times.23 In fact, half the time I rarely do that, to be honest with you. I just feel settled knowing that I have a relationship with God—you know what I mean? I feel like he has changed me more, and I’m more compassionate, and more peaceful, and the fruits of the spirit that I actually think are of God—that are in the Bible—I see that at work in my life more than I ever did when I was dogmatic. In fact that was a harshness, and anti-fruits-of- the-spirit than, you know, the peace and the kindness.

Barbara has chosen an alternative theology, which disendorses the control and might of God, and reflects her non-patriarchal and social justice ethos.

Barbara: (speaking deliberately) I cannot address God as a God of power and might. I think that whoever God is—I think that God is the energy, the love energy if you like, that connects the whole universe. And it’s vulnerable. And it’s with the poor.

Josie: So to call God—

22 1 Galatians 5:22-23 New International Version (NIV) ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law’.

23 Quiet Time is a term used to describe regular individual sessions of Christian spiritual activities, such as prayer, private meditation, or study of the Bible. The term ‘quiet time’ is used by 20th-century Protestants, mostly evangelical Christians. It is also called ‘personal devotions’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_Time (accessed 11 April 2014) 209 Barbara: —the God of power and might? Well, to me I could rationalise it and say, ‘the power is the power of love’. But I know that that isn’t what people think of when they use the words power and might. They think of worldly power meaning power over others, and I think God is power with us.

For those who are no longer Christian, the spiritual journey continues. Rachel’s journey, which moves from anger, to a protest against sexism, to a new curiosity valuing genuine intimate connections, is quite representative. Belief in God is not central to her new ethical frame, or to its telos.

Rachel: Over the last few years it has been something that I’ve been thinking about more. Especially because I think I kind of cut my spiritual side off—if that makes sense. And that’s not who I am really.

Josie: Why do you think you cut it off?

Rachel: Because I was just angry. And I thought, ‘that’s all bullshit. I don’t want to think about it’. And because my only way of knowing God was that way—where does that leave me if that’s not who I want to be or how I want to fit in?

Josie: Right. Does that mean you’re thinking about alternative ways of knowing God, or alternative ways of being spiritual?

Rachel: Yes. Definitely. I wouldn’t use the word ‘God’ anymore. It’s too ‘God-ish’ (laughing)…It’s male, it’s got a very strong gender—and I feel disempowered by the word. So I’m not having a bar of it. But I really am interested in spirituality…I’m reading a book by Alain de Botton called Religion for Atheists (laughing). I’m finding that really interesting, because I don’t think I’m an atheist, I just don’t believe in a deity. It’s more about connecting with other people in a genuine and authentic way. And just being nice! (laughing)

Re-forming the self with a new ethical substance

While considering alternative ethical substance, conceptually the cartography of Deleuze’s ‘lines of flight’ and Bakhtin’s ‘ideological becoming’ continue to be useful. Deleuze’s maps suggest an understanding that the participants in this study are reaching for different terrains of life, which offer other possibilities for selfhood. According to Deleuzian logic, new questions are generated when something draws us out of ourselves, out of our usual locus of thoughts, ideas and concerns (Clark, 2003). Such openings, possibilities and interconnectivities also

210 echo Bakhtin’s concept of the zone of contact or the locus for hearing a voice (Holquist, 1981a). As the participants’ stories are never finalised, it is reasonable to suggest that they are in border-zones of contact—disputing, retaining and discarding various voices of the self and their own ethos.

The changing identity stories thus provide a diverse range of ideological becomings, and newly embraced internally persuasive discourses (Bakhtin, 1981b). The participants have spoken of various alternative principles to live by, as they sift through diverse modes of subjectification in order to reduce the self-imposed control of their lives, and to embrace more agency and freedom. Lindemann Nelson points out that the twin injuries to identity of the deprivation of the opportunity to enjoy different roles and relationships coupled with a so- called ‘infiltrated consciousness’ imposed by oppressive dominant narratives, can be repaired if alternative identity-constituting stories can be embraced. Moral agency may be freed if a good counterstory can dilute the moral poison (2001: 186–187), even if the zone of contact between disputed zones is not fully traversed and completed.

Some particular stories can be highlighted to illustrate this point. Charlie’s conclusion about ethics is a representative example of a blending of utterances to find his voice. His ethical substance is about living by wisdom, generosity and courage, while his mode of subjectification is not a set of normative standards or authoritative ‘truths’, but a blend of Biblical and eastern philosophy. The telos, or end point, is healthy and engaged relationships and doing what he loves.

Charlie: I kind of feel like in some ways I’m trying to live my life, trying to make sense of being a healthy and engaged and passionate person. And trying to just, I guess, have healthy relationships. That’s really important to me. And doing what I love, and what I’m good at.

Josie: Do you find yourself living by, or inclined towards biblical principles, or your own principles? Or a mixture of both?

Charlie: Yeah that’s an interesting question—(pausing) umm— well, I guess the idea of grace is the one that affects me the most, in terms of biblical principles. I try and make the most of what I have, and remember all that I really have is the future—I can’t really do anything about the past. And I guess I like the idea of being present, and while I know that’s not a—it’s more of a modern thing that is juxtaposed on Jesus—I think it’s really helpful.

211 And then there’s this Japanese book that talks about these three values: wisdom, generosity and courage. And for me, I see each of those in Jesus. Wisdom being the rejection of foolishness, generosity being the rejection of greed, and courage being the rejection of pride. So those three things are really valuable to me. And the idea of being greedy or proud or foolish—while I can’t eliminate them completely—I guess I try and be aware of where they’re active in my life. I try and diminish their influence.

Charlie also speaks of a unique line of becoming, or perhaps transformative practice, amongst the participants. He speaks of trying to ‘normalise’ his life after years within the evangelical community. In his concern for himself and others, that they had handed responsibility for their lives over to the church, he started having dinner parties and ‘pagan parties’. This excerpt is noteworthy in that Charlie considers it is his responsibility to help others do things differently, after years of being a more evangelical-type leader. The dinner parties are a form of reparation of his own and others’ lives. For Charlie, it is not only about a critical re-engagement with ideas as a care of the self, but a specific practice of self-care and care for others who were in his flock. It is an alternative shepherd-flock game, not enacting confession or obedience, but self-responsibility and life skills. It is also about spreading the net beyond the small closed church community and expanding his world with new people and ideas: a perhaps free-jazz- type-deterritorialisation.

Charlie: So towards the end of when I was still working at the church, I started cooking a lot. I realised that in the youth leader thing, I’d eaten really bad food, and I was often out at night. I was relaxing on holidays once and watching Jamie Oliver on TV, and so he taught me how to cook. And then I cottoned on to the idea of just having food being a spiritual thing, and loving the idea of having people come over to my house to eat and drink. So since then—this is probably six months before I left— about once a month I’d just invite a bunch of people over for dinner, cook food for them. And almost try and subvert the idea of having to have the church sanction and control everything…[The dinners] were kind of saying, ‘we should be enabling people to do this kind of stuff, rather than forcing them to turn up’. The other thing I did was—I realised that I had hardly any genuine friends who weren’t Christians—so me and my two right-hand men, who left the same time I did, started throwing what we called ‘pagan parties’, because they were parties that were designed to be attractive to pagans.

Josie: (laughing)

212 Charlie:… It was really from my sense—I just wanted to reconnect with people. I felt like I’d missed something. I’d become a little bit emotionally retarded in that sense. And the dinner parties really helped in that as well.

Josie: So the dinner parties and the pagan parties—how would you describe them?

Charlie: Well, they were just what ‘normal’ people do. That’s what it was—it was kind of a normalisation of my life…I was trying to teach myself things that I had actually either forgotten or never learnt. Because I’d handed responsibility for that to this community, you know? And around that time I really felt the burden of that for myself—but more so the fact there were so many people in the community that had missed out on it, because of what we’d done. And so I felt like it was my responsibility to show people that they could do things differently.

JoJo’s reflection on the ‘who’s-in-and-who’s-out’ selection process of CF also indicates an overall concern among the participants about social injustice and arbitrary, even cruel, distinctions made between people within and outside evangelical communities. It is apparent that various discourses intersect, even clash, in people’s minds within a border-zone of contact, with some voices becoming less internally persuasive and even offensive. The ethical substance, or perhaps ‘bottom-line-consideration’ (White, 2004: 198), for JoJo seems to be the valuing of the moral, contributory life.

JoJo: I remember very clearly the inordinate number of sermons on good people don’t go to heaven. I think that sort of sermon is an incredible disservice to people who are good moral people. It doesn’t matter what your sexuality is, or what your belief system is; some people are highly moral and some people are highly immoral. And people are in between that. One of the reasons I wouldn’t call myself a Christian is that I believe I live a good life. I contribute to the well-being of other people. And I don’t think you need a system to value that. You need to contend with that in private…and if you’re not in it, it doesn’t matter how pious you are—doubly, triply. The people who are in it are the winners and you’re the losers. You sit there as a person and a family—they’re talking about your parents, your siblings, your friends—and you’re meant to be able to sit there and say, ‘yes the other people in my life are evil’.

David’s eventual self-acceptance in the face of continued demands for change speaks to a bottom-line-consideration that maybe ‘goodness and badness’ are not decided by gender identity. This is the ‘revolution’ not only for David, but also for many participants; the

213 internally persuasive discourse (in this case, people have been harder on him and less loving than the God of love) may be privileged above the authoritative.

David: So long as I didn’t accept that part of my life, that was okay. But [some years ago] I said to the pastor, ‘I can’t do this any more. I’m old enough now to explore what the hell is this transgender stuff. Maybe it’s not that evil. Maybe I’m not a bad person’.

Josie: So would you see this is quite an important turning point when you started to say, ‘no, I’m not going to see this as a problem any more’?

David: Totally. It was revolutionary. And there was a guy in the Baptist Church that got me to that point. He said, ‘God loves you, no matter what. You don’t have to change, you don’t have to be some religious person—you don’t have to be nothing. You can be as bad as you want and God will love you anyway’.

David, in reviewing his transcript, also wanted to make it clear that he has moved on from anger and now embraces good and precious things in his life, such as connections with loved ones. The valued voices no longer appear to be those of the previous shepherds or ‘sacred texts’.

David: Lastly, I’m concerned the focus of the interview was very negative, so perhaps you might comment on some positives, which might not have come out. My family has been amazing. I gave up my life for them. They are still amazing...my wife is my hero. I’m still angry but better than I was. There’s a lot that’s good in my life that’s kept me going. I guess it’s [the] focus—this has been about the shit.

In a similar vein, Rachel has spoken of love, inclusion and compassion as her telos, using multiple sources and voices as modes of subjectification to now constitute herself as a moral agent. Sadie, like Rob, wanted to name ecological and environmental conceptions of life as a new mode of subjectification, which again would lead to the contributory, loving, caring life as her telos. A life to be enjoyed, rather than disciplined, emerges.

Sadie: You know, I wouldn’t know how this has evolved. But I guess I was moving to a position that was really about asking the question, ‘what is important? What is life? Why am I here?’ And I kept coming back to the idea that, ‘I’m here and I need to make some sort of contribution to the world I live in’. I became quite conscious of the environment—that seemed to be emerging more strongly.

214 Josie: Are you talking about the emergence of some alternative moral code?

Sadie: I don’t think I was ever really connected to that concept, but I seemed to become much more interested in the natural world. I wanted to be in it more, I started to enjoy it more. I started to get really connected to natural things in a new sort of way, and that I think linked with the idea that I needed to be a responsible person within it. And I think I have always been connected with living in a caring way towards other people, and what I think has—I don’t know if I’m jumping ahead here—is that I think I really uphold Christian principles in terms of the life of Christ. Which is grounded in the care of others, and loving.

Conclusion

This chapter has further layered the Foucauldian genealogy of identity change through considering the participants’ narratives through the third axis of the triangle: the self and government of the self. Through internal and external protest, different readings of the Bible and alternative literature, and the forging of alternative conclusions about gender roles and sexuality, the participants have all described a re-forming of their ethical substance, through new lines of flight. They are less being seen and more doing the looking; within border-zones of contact, they are revising and re-fashioning their sense of self and morality. Alternative diverse churches become new spaces and even abnormal moral contexts, which are potentially restorative and reconstructive of the self. The perhaps abstruse notion of deterritorialisation finds some clarity in the image of the creative, improvised and uncertain journeys of the disaffiliated participants beyond the interiorised self-government of CF. Deleuzian free jazz journeys become layered upon Bakhtinian resistances, fragmenting and dispersing authoritative texts within heteroglossia.

This genealogy through the triangle of truth, power and self has storied the topography of subjectification of the evangelical Christian subject with freedom understood as resistance to self-constituting practices. The dispositif has been developed through considering how personal narratives become the medium through which identity connections are made and regimes of truth are established (Tamboukou, 2013: 96), while exploring how the lines of force cross over and intersect with lines of subjectification. The genealogy has thus illustrated within the modern power structure of CF a picture of the Deleuzian multilinear ensemble, what he says we are (but what we are already no longer), and ‘what we are in the process of becoming: the historical part and the current part’ (1992: 164).

215 To summarise, Foucault wrote concerning the subject and power that the target ‘is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are’ (2002a: 336). In deconversion journeys, such repudiation seems to happen in lithe, unfinalised and creative deterritorialisations. Political spirituality is re-imagined beyond panopticism and the confession and obedience requirements of pastoral power, towards the courage of parrhēsia and the responsible, ethical care of the self. This analysis is now further textured in regard to the ‘how’ of identity change by providing an additional layering of Bakhtinian thought to the transcripts.

216 Chapter 11

The ‘how’ of resistance and Bakhtin: understanding resistance through interactional positioning and voicing

Introduction

The previous three chapters used the transcripts to create a Foucauldian genealogy of identity formation and re-formation within CF along the axes of truth, power and self. I now turn to Bakhtin and the dialogic word to illustrate in more depth how the participants establish their own version of the story and their persuasive positioning of a re-formed identity. Methodologically, this analysis moves back toward the dialogical narrative approach and away from the genealogy. It is noted however that Bakhtin’s writings have been read frequently alongside contemporary post-structuralist theory (Vice, 1997: 3), while also employed in narrative research (Ball and Freedman, 2004, Josselson, 2011). Such a detour and bringing together of multiples lenses may provide a creative magnification of the data, providing further depth to the stories and voices of resistance already described.

As Frank points out, the dialogic process appreciates how people are using stories to ‘hold their own’ in difficult conditions, seeking to sustain their identity in response to what may diminish it. Indeed as these participants hold their own (in protesting the practices of CF), he points out that it can be dangerous to others, particularly those who remain within the fortress (2012: 50). Through the participants’ choice of discursive devices, particularly through their voicing of others, they signal a position of the speaking subject in relation to these potential ‘others’, and so draw boundaries around themselves. As Michael Bamberg helpfully comments, it is typically through such discursive devices that people define themselves as same or different to others and indicate the communities to which they belong (2012: 105). His earlier research provides a good example of an analysis of the function of such ‘positioning’ when subjects use rhetorical devices such as ‘reported dialogues’ to express counter-narratives in relation to master narratives (Talbot et al., 1996). Within the contact zone between the narrator and alternate voices, the participants therefore voice themselves and others to indicate a shifting and diverse position of identity. The word may become one’s own when the speaker populates it with his/her own intentions, appropriating and assimilating it as internally persuasive (Bakhtin, 1981b), particularly through alternative positioning in relation to others’ words.

217 Bakhtin’s writings on heteroglossia and polyphony have been compared to the Cubist aesthetic, which provides a multiplicity of perspectives or vantage points (Gardiner, 1992: 94). In this study, I have incorporated the Cubist metaphor to refer to the constellation rather than integration of layered analysis of the transcripts, texturing the data into a plurality of intersecting surfaces without privileging the single, unitary perspective. This chapter represents the third dimension or perspective through which the data may be examined. The aim is therefore to create a more detailed, nuanced, even unexpected layer to the genealogy of resistance. The overall goal of such an interaction with the cubist mode is to create diversity with coherence within the analysis.

Double voicing and ventriloquation

As described in Chapter 5, Bakhtin uses the term ‘ventriloquation’ to describe the process of positioning oneself by speaking through and in relation to others’ voices. Subjectivity is thus formed through the dialogic struggle between contending voices, texts or discourses. This continuous dialogue, which creates the fluid dialogic self, occurs not just with the ‘other’ but also significantly with oneself through inner speech (Gardiner, 1992: 72). In the absence of Bakhtin specifying the types of cues narrators use to accomplish voicing, the interdisciplinary researcher Stanton Wortham has suggested a list of analytic tools to consider the dialogue of people engaging in the ventriloquation of multiple and conflicting perspectives as they establish their own version of themselves and the story (2001: 70–75). I have incorporated elements of this list that are most applicable to these interviews, namely referencing and predication, followed by quotation and reported speech. This provides some structure to the consideration of how the participants creatively position their resistance in a multi-voiced world, and so further re-cast their identity.

Firstly, referencing and predication enables the participants to pick things out of particular people’s speech, and so then characterise them in their social worlds. The person may then place this character in a recognisable social group and take an evaluative stance with respect to them. A participant’s choice of expression inevitably characterises the referent in some way. For example, Charlie references a ‘frowning’ group, gives them a name, and indicates, by laughing, his disdain for their ways of excluding and marginalising him through his apparent lack of Biblical rigour.

Charlie: There was a group of guys I used to call the Sanhedrin, because whenever I spoke, at the end of my sermon, they would be up the back, (laughing) with like frowns on their faces. And they were the Jensenites…The thing I found hardest about that was they would never involve me in the conversation. A couple of days or weeks 218 later I would hear about, you know, what they’d said and about how what I’d said wasn’t ‘biblical’.

The specific tag ‘Jensenites’, referring to both the amorphous and specific groups of people who follow the teachings of a certain prominent Christian family in Sydney, was also used by other participants to denote the propagation of bigotry and closed-mindedness. As Sue states:

Sue: I block out what I see as the same old tired Christian teaching which is so unhelpful for the vast majority of people because its so simplistic and lovey-dovey and so unreal. Anything that ‘the Jensens’ had to say—that sort of bigotry, just got me all fired up.

Similarly, Lucy refers to the leaders who pressured her to go to church when she was depressed with a specific label: ‘the fundamental, dogmatic, black and white’ group. By referencing the group using such adjectives, and emphasising their lack of compassion, she gives a strongly negative evaluation of them. She also indicates her own preferred boundaries by voicing herself, and by implication what she gives value to, as her internally persuasive discourse.

Lucy: When I was depressed, I was quite open, in terms of, ‘I’m limited, I can’t commit to this group, I really want to be involved—I just can’t say I’ll be there every week. Let’s be honest about that.’ But then people would say, ‘well, you know, you need to commit’. Basically people were not compassionate in that. And I just got angry at that. I felt like I couldn’t necessarily be around people all the time—so Sundays I’m not going to be there, necessarily. And people would say, ‘[a named church leader] says if you don’t go to church, you can’t be a Christian’. So that just made me more and more angry. Is he Jesus? So that made me want it even less. So I pulled right back…

Josie: What do you think angered you the most?

Lucy: The leaders. The leaders—them being black and white. When I had come from a group that was black and white and I saw how detrimental that was—and that I had learned about grace, and it was the only thing keeping my head above water—and they were being fundamental. There is no other word for it. And dogmatic. And not showing grace, not showing compassion. I had seen the extreme version of that, and having conversations with them, they just didn’t get it. And I didn’t like that, when I

219 was in a moment of need, there was no compassion. It was like, really? Really? I don’t care for that.

She then spoke of ‘an older man’ telling her what to do; she subsequently went and did the opposite. By emphasising the adjective ‘older’, she implies that there is an element of seniority and control, while the word ‘man’ speaks to her historical experiences of men telling women what to do. Her identity statement is to negatively evaluate both those words, defy his advice, and so position herself with respect to such a character.

Lucy: I felt I needed to see a counsellor or something, and he was like, ‘I don't agree with counselling, the Holy Spirit or the Bible should be your counsellor’. I’m sure his holy spirit was a different understanding to the Holy Spirit.

Josie: So you were asking for help, having been through this, and you were in another situation where somebody, a man—

Lucy: An older man—

Josie: An older man is telling you—

Lucy: Yes, not to approach it in that way.

Josie: And what did you think about that?

Lucy: I didn’t agree, so I went and got a counsellor (laughing).

Secondly, quotation and using reported speech while speaking enables people to not only filter the quoted speaker’s message, but also frame the material and their own response using some type of intonation. For example, several participants chose to speak with frank mimicry, imitating what they experienced as the silky voices of evangelical persuasion and, by implication, hypocrisy and lack of sincerity.

Charlie uses such a mimicking voice when he quotes church people within CF saying: ‘hey, we don’t really like where you’re going there, we’re worried about you’, and: ‘you won’t be able to stand up to the temptation out there’. He then makes his own position crystal clear: ‘And I think that’s retarded, that’s just such an unhealthy and unhelpful culture—when you’re so worried about what will happen when people leave, that you feel you have to contain their lives’.

220 In this extract, Lucy is speaking of her new liberal and inclusive church, when she uses mimicry to show her disdain for her experience of enforced church attendance.

Lucy: Well, I think that lots of people in our church have come from a very similar experience. Well maybe not as extreme. But, it’s very loose. What you find is, you don’t have a lot of the same people there every Sunday, which you do find in other churches. That’s okay. No one is ever made to feel…you don’t get the phone call saying (mimicking), ‘I’m just wondering how you’re going, and I notice that you weren’t in church’—that voice…

Josie: What’s that voice?

Lucy: ‘The spiritual voice’—like, ‘I’m just checking up on you, it’s not genuine, but I feel like an obligation’.

Josie: So it’s not a genuine caring voice, it’s a spiritual-obligated voice?

Lucy: Yes, like, ‘I’m actually pretending I care, but I’m actually wondering where you were, because numbers were down, and, you know, that’s my job’.

Louise also explicitly mocks the people from the church she has left, to make a comment about the abuse of power, and her own exclusion as a result of the exercising of that power.

Louise: Yes, it’s very clear. Absolutely clear—(mocking) ‘I want you to understand Josie, it’s very clear who’s in and who’s out!’ (both laughing)

Josie: Who is talking? How is that all decided?

Louise: Well, it’s all decided by those with the power I think. Those with the power make the rules so that they can keep their power, because they convince themselves that they are good and right. This is the way to go. And then they find the odd Bible verse to back them up…

Ollie also quotes with mimicry and sarcasm, to frame the message of the evangelical group in such a way as to illustrate her attitude to their teaching on gay sexuality: ‘repent and be saved or you’ll go to hell, and, you know, if you’re a lesbian, you’re dead anyway’. Quotation is thus used to show how a participant dialogically resists a particular enforced identity, by directly confronting and countering the words of the other. Wendy directly and unequivocally counters the voice of her ‘counselling’ minister in the following way, accentuating her assertiveness by

221 pointing out the age disparity. She then juxtaposes her words with his to strengthen her protest, and indicate her self-acceptance within the games of truth she has experienced.

Wendy: This 32-year-old guy and this 17-year-old girl, and he’s asking me ‘am I having sex, how often am I having sex?’…He kept saying, ‘you’re a really bad influence on the young kids you’re teaching and organising the youth group for’. I kept saying, ‘well, I think the fact that I’ve been in this monogamous relationship for over a year at 17 is very healthy—is a very positive factor’.

On the other hand, quotation can be used to restore valued people into one’s life and privilege their words above the discourse of others. For example, Rachel speaks about her grandmother’s words as being antithetical to the church message, thus providing strength to her as she countered the church’s sexist attitude to women. (This also echoes with the idea of an alternative political spirituality—a way of knowing the divine, or oneself, without organised or prescribed knowledges.)

Rachel: I remember my Nanna used to say to me—because she came from a Catholic background but she was not Christian or anything like that—she used to say, ‘Rachel, God is not found in a church. It’s under a tree. Like that’s where you connect to the world’…she was really a huge influence on me. She was a really strong woman.

Thirdly, the evaluative indexical refers to particular expressions or ways of speaking that get associated with certain social groups when members of that group habitually speak that way. Voices are thus indexed, while the narrator is positioned with respect to those voices, more often than not through parody or irony. Images are brought to life by the storytellers putting particular marked registers or ways of speaking in certain characters’ mouths (Koven, 2012: 158).

Participants in this study frequently refer to ‘evangelical Christians’, what they believe, how they talk, and how they respond to others’ beliefs. Through quoting them directly, they make a potent comment on their own position, which is frequently to distance themselves, and so imply that the evangelical view lacks any credibility. For example, Arthur uses deliberate irony when he quotes the ‘evangelical Christians’ as saying to him: ‘I see a lot of [the Bible] doesn’t make sense, but I’m happy to live with ambiguity, and accept that I’m not smart enough to understand’, and ‘look at the lifestyles of homosexual people, look at how many relationships they go through’. He thus indicates his distance from not only their lack of intellectual rigour, but also their judgmentalism.

222 ‘Sydney Anglicans’ in particular were singled out for special opprobrium, again with mocking humour. For example, Barbara laughingly quotes a bishop as saying, ‘everybody knows that the Sydney Anglicans are very, very fundamentalist, and it’s lucky you’ve escaped’. Ollie famously calls the Sydney Anglicans a ‘shanker’, and that some of these Anglicans in particular would like to ‘de-ball’ the progressive leader of her new church, who has decisively defied convention and authority.

In summary, such mockery and mimicry of certain groups of people through double-voicing reflected a movement among the participants towards an enacted-self, fashioned and positioned dialogically. The tension between the individual and the collective indicates the tension between centrifugal rather than centripetal forces (Bakhtin, 1981b, Wortham, 2001: 147). That is, centrifugal forces encourage the proliferation of other voices beyond the monologic self, producing a creative complexity in presenting the discursive patterns that make up the self.

Laughter may degrade power

It will be clear to the reader at this point that participants laughed frequently in these interviews, hence the meaning of such laughter potentially offers a further creative layer to the analysis. Somewhat surprisingly however, social scientists have rarely analysed the use of laughter in research interviews (Grønnerød, 2004). To reiterate, Bakhtin wrote of folk humour in this way:

Laughter overcomes fear, for it knows no inhibitions, no limitations. Its idiom is never used by violence and authority… it resisted praise, flattery, hypocrisy. This laughing truth, expressed in curses and abusive words, degraded power (1968: 90–93).

It may be asked therefore whether there are other different expressions of laughter among the participants who, while describing the seriousness of their personal changes, also may be understood as degrading or undermining power. It can be noted that all twenty participants laughed during their interviews, some frequently and volubly. I too, more often than not, joined in the laughter. However I attempted not to be the instigator of the laughter, but more curious of its meaning.

In the analysis of this laughter, it became evident that the majority of laugh events were either ironic or mocking of truths or practices which formerly enmeshed them, or were celebratory, expressed after a reflection on a particular turning point in their life. In other words, laughter seemed to be expressed either to disrupt previous truths which had been interiorised, or to

223 signal a dialogic moment showing the self in dialogue with itself at a moment of identity revision (Josselson, 1995: 37). These laugh events may thus reflect counterstories, directly challenging defective regimes of truth and the moral authority of the church community.

The exceptions were Tom and Arthur. Tom did laugh delightedly once when he reflected that he was now living out his existential adolescence. This accords with the observation that laughter reflected pleasure in one’s changes. Arthur laughed eight times, but it seemed he mostly laughed when expressing his own identity dilemma, such as how confusing it was to maintain two worldviews, and his struggle to define himself now. His laughter was in accord with his identity plotline, being more wry and self-deprecating than mocking of previous discourse, or celebratory of change. For example:

Arthur: Being a Christian would have been the key part of who I was before. And now that Christianity is not a key thing, I’m partly defining myself by my work I guess. Which is not of great interest to me, but it’s something (laughing).

In considering those participants who laughed more than ten times during the course of the interview (Belinda, Wendy, Max, Rob, Rachel), the laugh events were about disrupting power, or acknowledging self-awareness. For example, Wendy laughs twice when describing the final nail in the coffin, or turning point of her leaving: an argument with a person about the nature of mental illness. Her laugh comes at the end, when she says she is ‘so sick of this place’. She reaches the point of identity differentiation, then laughs again as she emphasises that she is trying to find her own thoughts and so a sense of re-positioned self.

Josie: Just in terms of your final leaving, were there are any more turning points, events, or crisis moments for you in the journey?

Wendy: It just petered out really…At that time as well, the church was very big on spirit, and ‘you will heal people through the holy spirit’. So this guy I knew was saying that, ‘there is no such thing as mental illness, it’s just the devil’s work’. And I would just be getting into these huge debates with him about that, and I just ended up going, ‘you think what you want to think—I know that there is mental illness, I know it’s not of the devil. People do not have demons’. So I think that was really the final, ‘I’m just so sick of this place’ (laughing).

Belinda and Max laughed more than the other participants, a total of eighteen times each. Like Wendy, Belinda particularly laughed at moments of self-awareness, decision-making and identity revision, such as when she decided men were no longer going to tell her what to do,

224 and when she decided the Bible wasn’t true. Many of Max’s laugh events fall into the category of parody and mocking, while also expressing a significant horror in what he used to think, and moral outrage at how he has been treated. The laughter may be ironic, but the emotion underlying it also reflects the pain of transition, loss and change. He laughed while joking about his gay self always ‘lurking’ in the background, mocking that he was ‘blessed’ when he was ‘fighting it’, rather than accepting it.

Josie: So while this prominent Christian identity was in evidence, what was happening to the other part of you?

Max: He was still lurking in the background (laughing), and he was falling every now and again. This might be a six-month gap in between, it may be a bit of a binge, but they were happening.

Josie: So how were you managing this?

Max: Interesting (laughing)—it was very interesting. The way that I managed it was, ‘as long as I’m fighting this, God can bless me’.

Later, he parodies the Biblical teaching on depression, as he describes it. When I challenged him that this was not funny, he laughed again and used more sarcasm to almost accentuate his horror and outrage at what he actually used to think and do. This represents a turning point of identity re-positioning, with laughter disrupting the inert sacred, or authoritative, discourse (Bakhtin, 1986: 133).

Max: Of course, depression was of the devil as far as I was concerned. I had a saying way back when I first became a Christian which was ‘depression is a luxury I can’t afford’ (laughing). Can you believe that? That was my saying. Because ‘the joy of the Lord gives you strength’, that’s what the Bible says.

Josie: You’re laughing about it, but is it funny?

Max: (laughing) Yes! It was the way I managed it. It was my way of managing it.

Josie: Again, I guess it was an important piece of who you were, and the context in which you were living—this was your view on depression, it couldn’t be other?

Max: Yeah, yeah. Because: ‘depression is not of God. Jesus promises abundant life. Depression is not part of an abundant life. So we don’t have that. Sickness is not of

225 God. Mental health issues are not of God. Addiction, all these things are not of God. And God is the answer for all these things’.

Max then laughs when he speaks of a different sexual experience that he had at this time, which was slow and sensual. While being quite vulnerable in the interview, he also laughs ironically at his previous ‘fast-get-it-over-with-quick’ sexual experiences. Again laughter, in a dialogic moment with me as listener, disrupts the net-like operations of power. Max enjoys a welcome and savoured freedom to parody the monologic Christian identity constructed within CF. That is, the bonding of authoritative discourse to identity and inner speech is disrupted, as the sacred text becomes relativised against other texts and voices, including his own. The resistance offered by dialogism provides diverse voices, where some may be invigorated and others repudiated.

The remaining participants laughed between five and ten times, excluding Sadie and Michael who each laughed twice. Some further examples continue to indicate that laughter mostly expressed indignant protest, specific irony, or was somewhat celebratory at a moment of self- revision. Rob laughs ironically at the notion that giving up Christianity makes you a worse person, and uses hyperbole to make his point. He then moves to an alternative identity statement, suggesting that it was never the Christian identity that propelled his life forward in the preferred direction.

Rob: I think as an example, one of the guys I talk to from church, I asked him, ‘what do you think life would be like for you if you gave up Christianity?’ And he said, ‘ah well, I think it would be pretty bad. I think I would just get worse and worse, and I wouldn’t have God getting involved in my life, and I’d be a worse and worse person’. (laughing) And I wondered about that myself. If Christianity is true and I’m just giving it away, and if I’m giving away God's Spirit in my life, maybe I’ll give up my family? Maybe I’ll just spend all my money, who knows? Maybe I’ll get drunk every night, beat my wife, who knows what? But it hasn’t happened. And maybe that’s just because when you’re living your life, you just keep going in the same sort of direction, and that Christianity was just sort of the scales that just fell off. It wasn’t really a part of me, because it wasn’t true.

Sue and JoJo both laughed at how ‘daggy’ (Sue’s word) many people were in church, mocking their looks, dress-sense and lack of social skills. This type of parody makes it crystal clear to the listener their current position on ever returning to such a community, as well as their alternative moral positioning.

226 JoJo: I started to get to know very closely gay and lesbian people who I thought were very fine people—which brings into question this whole vilification of homosexuality within the church. And you know, I mean, you also kind of know you don’t really fit with those kinds of people who wear socks with their sandals, and beards (laughing). You kind of know!

JoJo also laughs at the church’s efforts to keep men and women apart from each other, and create ‘godly’ same sex households. This denial of the existence of gay people meant gay women were encouraged to live together, albeit in an unacknowledged way. Her sense of ridicule of this system is evident as she laughs uproariously.

JoJo: And ironically when I look back on the households I was involved in, at least two of the people I lived with are now living as lesbians with children in long-term committed relationships…here I was in houses with people who were potential partners! (laughing)

Josie: What do you think about that?

JoJo: I think it’s hilarious! (laughing) But ‘I’m a Cheerleader’ [she is referring to a particular movie where ‘interventions’ are done with people who are gay or lesbian, being sent off to re-conversion camp where all the girls are in one room and all the boys in another room] as you have to see, because it’s hilarious—the absolute stupidity and lack of reality of these puritanical systems.

Martin parodies an infamous and publicly anti-gay member of parliament in the following story. The event takes place outside the Medically Supervised Injecting Centre in Sydney, where people may safely inject licit and illicit drugs without legal sanction. His provocative humour and bravado in telling what seems like a favourite story disrupts authoritative power and status, and further stories identity revision beyond the monologic discourse of CF.

Martin: In the early days, [this man] would be outside with a gigantic cardboard needle. And I’d walk out, and say, ‘oh—hi there’. You know, in the street, the photographers would be there. And I’d say, ‘which prick are you going to be touching up today? What you are holding—or me?’ And he’d say, ‘oh, you’re going to hell!’ And I said, ‘well, I’ll see you there’ (laughing).

In short, there are many examples peppered throughout all seven of the analysis chapters where the participants are having their funny bone tickled by what now seems outrageous or absurd to them. The final example comes from Charlie, who tells a story involving his 227 positioning in relation to ‘the Sanhedrin’ at a major turning point in his leaving of CF. He laughs vociferously as he becomes aware that the Sanhedrin are blissfully unaware that the ‘ball and chain’ he refers to may well be them and their negative voices. There is a delight about breaking out of boundaries, being subversive and yet one step ahead, and with making this discovery with me as his audience.

Charlie: We did this activity one weekend when we were away—‘here’s a pen and paper, draw a picture about your life’. And I drew this hill, and there was me (laughing) and at the bottom of the hill was this ball and chain. And I was halfway up the hill and (big laughing) it was a pretty traumatic drawing! And I don’t even know why I had the courage to draw it at the time. And one of the guys, who was part of the Sanhedrin, was like, ‘does the ball and chain represent anything?’ And I was like, ‘no, I just feel like I am walking up a hill, and I’ve left some stuff behind’ (laughing). Yeah, and that’s the picture that I have.

Josie: Is it just retrospectively that you’re making sense of this?

Charlie: Oh, absolutely, yeah. I think I had forgotten about it until right now until you asked me (both laughing).

A further dialogic moment: providing advice to a mental health professional

The final question asked of the research participants concerned ‘the advice’ they would give to a mental health professional who might be assisting someone move through the transition process of exiting CF. Unsurprisingly, the answers provided yet another prism through which to understand the way the participants enhance and augment their transformative identity stories. Asking this question allowed the participants to further persuade both them and I that their changes were justified and consistent with their new preferred stories of themselves. In this way, they represent yet another dialogic moment where the self was in dialogue with itself, revising preferred identity and discourse. The voice they find internally persuasive here happens to be their own advice, which emerges at the end of the interview when I ask this final question. Some notable examples show how each person’s advice was wholly consistent with the stories of themselves they had just told me, and provided the participants with another opportunity to carefully extend their positioning, while further thickly describe their stories (Geertz, 1973). Indeed, the speculative advice provided was almost a summary of the most significant legacy of their disaffiliation journey as they voiced their own internally persuasive discourse.

228 Barbara thought the counsellor should be aware of the writings of people who have been on such a journey. Charlie said that ‘if someone is trying to help a person reinterpret their life as a result of leaving a fundamentalist community, then that’s probably one of the biggest journeys they are going to go on’. James thought he would have needed to see a mental health professional more while he was in the evangelical church, rather than after his exit. He certainly did not see it as necessary post-exit. Lucy particularly appreciated the time she and her counsellor spent ripping up her fundamentalist books about homosexuality. Max emphasised the importance of the non-judgmental attitude of the counsellor, who may help the person manage the cognitive dissonance. Michael would have liked to have been told: ‘there are other people that have been through the same thing, and that they were the same type of person as you are…normal everyday people continue in normal everyday lives that are a lot more fulfilling’. Rachel suggested that the counsellor should help the person get connected with what is important to them, their own values and sense of self apart from religion. Ruth wanted the professional to be aware of the lingering self-doubt for gay people, that ‘no matter how out and proud you are, you wonder whether what you are doing is somehow wrong’. Wendy wanted someone to challenge the idea that she was a bad person, and also protest the ‘counselling’ church leader by saying, ‘he’s doing what? That’s not okay’. Finally, Arthur wondered how anyone could possibly help him, as he realised he was going to die and didn’t like it. This comment clearly provided further amplification of the already described sense of hopelessness and loss he had experienced in discarding his affiliated Christian identity.

Conclusion

The creative turns in identity of the participants have been further developed in this chapter by considering the how of resistance and refusal, using the Bakhtinian concepts of double- voicing, ventriloquation, laughing, and the dialogic moment of speculatively providing advice to a counsellor. This additional lens has further illustrated how people reverse, expose and re- position themselves in relation to various characters, voices and texts of power. Centrifugal, or dispersing forces, using the figures of the clown and mimic have provided alternative discourses to the authoritative Biblification of their lives. A multi-voiced world has proven very fruitful for those exiting CF in the acquisition, expression and adoption of new internally persuasive discourses.

In summary, the analysis in these last six chapters has illustrated the formation and re- formation of the fundamentalist identity within and beyond the specific system of modern power of CF. The journey has been represented as a movement towards an alternative identity, a new ideological becoming, an alternative ethical substance, and an improvised

229 deterritorialisation of the self. However what is also evident is that within the carceral society of CF, in which both men and women are subject to the Christian normalising gaze, women and gays are subject to additional disciplinary practices that maintain heterosexual dominance. As viewed by the arrogant male eye (Lindemann Nelson, 2001), these ex-CF members have described their identities as constructed and re-constructed in ways that have been experienced as harmful, hurtful, potentially self-erasing—and ultimately morally repugnant. Yet at the turning point, the discursive site of injury (Butler, 1997) and dialogic moment—there seems to exist a relation that can be turned against itself, reworked and resisted. As described in these last two chapters, resistance has occurred through laughter and mimicry, alternative engagements with authoritative discourse, and the repudiation of oppressive discourse and social practices by both silent and vocal protest. The re-invention of the self away from CF is not established through peeling back the layers of the psyche to find a true self, but an unmasking and re-positioning in regard to the edifice of self-constituting social practices.

Finally, the de-storying of Christian identity, as a care of the self, an ideological becoming and a deterritorialisation, is achieved dialogically with many others, including the researcher as audience. But what may this mean when examined not only reflexively, but also from a counterstory point of view? Lindemann Nelson considers that good counterstories challenge in a more public domain the dominant perception of marginalised subgroups, and aim to free not only individuals but the entire group whose identity is being damaged (2001: 171). Could the interview context itself be such a public domain? It is to this detailed co-construction that I now turn to answer these two questions, and to complete and bookend the analysis.

230 Chapter 12

Co-construction: the role of the interviewer in the construction of identity stories

Introduction

The question of reflexivity, and the active role and voice of the researcher has been considered in depth while outlining the methodology of the study in Chapter 5. Further, each analysis chapter has provided detailed extracts from the transcripts including the researcher’s contribution to the unfolding stories, allowing the reader to observe the dialogue rather than a stripped-back monologue. As Barbara Tedlock observes, the self-conscious task of ethnographic writing, and I would suggest all post-structural QR, is to ‘braid the oral with the written and to give shape to a multi-vocal aesthetics of diversity’ (2004: 23).

As previously explained, this research illustrates that narratives told in conversational situations often involve co-authorship, thus this study has an explicit focus on the development of my voice as I have co-constructed others’ voices and realities. This is how reflexivity is generally understood: a degree of accountability about the researcher’s own participation which allows other researchers to assess how the stories and counterstories were told in this project. This chapter thus bookends the discussion from Chapter 5, providing a detailed analysis of such a co-construction as well as an analysis of the effects of my insider/outsider status, drawing some further conclusions about the chain-like operations of power and resistance within CF. This completes but also expands the dialogical analysis, treating the narratives as socially suited interactive performances, produced in this setting, for this particular audience, for particular purposes (Chase, 2008: 65).

Frank quotes the oral historian Alessandro Portelli’s reference to the storyteller’s ‘painful search for meaning’ (1997), and his own suggestion that ‘what counts is not some fixed meaning in some propositional content, but rather to understand meaning as an ongoing process of re-telling, with attendant effects on different occasions of telling’ (2010: 92). As people spoke with me about their changed identity, sadness and loss, resistances and counter- conduct to Christian subjectification, the opportunity for deeper understanding of their painful search for meaning was provided, as well as how stakes were raised or lowered by the process of disaffiliation. Most of the stories of change were even amplified during the process of telling, to perhaps further justify their exit and the consistency of a new disaffiliated identity.

231 To reiterate, reflexivity is the ‘conscious experiencing of the self as both inquirer and respondent, as teacher and learner’, coming to terms not only with a research problem, but also our own multiple selves and identities (Guba and Lincoln, 2005: 210). There is always the possibility that the inquirer may be over-invested in a topic, and in too closely identifying with people or a cause, lose sight of her influence. This means that the inquirer must be involved in a process of awareness and interrogation of the self, creating rather open-ended, complex and problematic ways of writing and representing this process. This chapter is an attempt to continue a perhaps rather rhizomatic type of analysis (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), moving in a decentralising way through illustrating the layering of subjectivity of myself and the participants as an ongoing process of becoming—constructed and re-constructed (Loots et al., 2013). This additional layer aims to therefore contribute to not only the authenticity but also originality of this research project.

The principle of co-construction, or a socially-situated identity performance, is mentioned frequently in the post-positivist QR literature, however the microanalysis of how that actually occurs is more difficult to locate. Certainly, existing QR studies in the Christian disaffiliation and apostasy arena do not include any detailed analysis of how the researcher him/herself has been unavoidably involved in the creation of the participants’ stories. I refer to two uncommon examples from other research fields. Firstly, Andrew Sparkes and Brett Smith move beyond the standard realist-telling, ‘author-evacuated, interpretively omnipotent and cognitively- oriented’ QR (2012: 57), in their fascinating reflexive analysis of their own emotional embodiment in the narratives of young men who have had a catastrophic spinal cord injury. Secondly, the Finnish researcher Jarna Grønnerød (2004) provides a close and frank analysis of her research interactions, showing how data is created through analysing the laughter and heterosexual tension between herself and male research participants.

In addition to the power and influence of the researcher (however that is understood) being rarely analysed, it has also been suggested that certain material may be omitted from research ‘because of the desire to present a clean study, which is as uncontaminated as possible’ (Bhavnani, 1990: 143). Josselson similarly remarks that the actual ethical dilemmas of narrative research, the failures and regrets, are seldom acknowledged or written about (2007: 538). If it is accepted that a theoretical analysis and critique is iterative as it is reviewed and deepened and that an analysis of power should be a part of all accountable, ethical research (Pittaway and Bartolomei, 2013), then this chapter represents that process. Again, like a cubist painting, this analysis illustrates a further unexpected refraction of the participants’ stories, as well as a commitment to reflexive accountability on my part.

232 Specifically, the research participants expressed an interest not only in their stories being documented and the purposes of the research being achieved, but also an interest in their own identity changes and how they compared with others, including myself. The participants’ interest in others who may think differently to the authoritative narratives may also indicate the kind of community in which a counterstory or alternative identity story can be told. Half of the participants have actively chosen new churches that were described as supporting their counterstories. In addition I would argue, following Lindemann Nelson (1996: 102), that the interview context itself and the insider/outsider continuum may also become moral spaces in which it is possible to tell a counterstory, as both reauthorise people to take their judgments seriously. The interview process thus has the potential to confer some moral authority to the emerging story. The experience of being part of a research project (within a real and virtual community) which documents resistance and change within CF becomes precisely the kind of community in which people can take a stand for something before fellow (real and imagined) moral deliberators, which may augment their moral re-storying.

The researcher’s background

As stated in the Introduction, my interest in this research project was ignited initially through the dilemma of managing my own transformative exit journey out of CF in relation to my clinical work as a psychotherapist (McSkimming, 2009). After writing of this process, I commenced reading apostasy biographies and autobiographies written by ex-church members, as described in Chapter 3. It then seemed important to write my own autobiography in some detail, not only to increase my self-awareness, but also to keep my issues and story differentiated from the potential respondents in the study. This was a private journaling process rather than an attempt to achieve publication.

While preparing to undertake this research, I have always been aware of my insider status within CF, however my outsider status changed considerably during the duration of the research project. Indeed, my story reflected one of the central concepts of the research, and that is the unfinalised nature of dialogue and ‘the unclosed whole of life itself’ (Bakhtin, 1984: 63). Nothing is ever finished, rounded off and concluded in a Foucauldian genealogy, or through a Bakhtinian prism. There are constantly possibilities and opportunities for changing ourselves over time.

In other words, from being an insider working towards positive change within the evangelical church, I have become since 2005 a non-church-going-ex-evangelical and non-practising Jew, engaged in some activism and public protest against CF (e.g. McSkimming, 2011, 2012). As Andrews writes, our research positioning is never static; new experiences and new 233 understandings of old experiences bring new perspectives on our present and past lives, and also on how we understand the lives of others. Therefore no interpretation can ever be final and may change over time (2013: 205–209).

In her autobiography, Tanya Levin, who exited the Hillsong-Pentecostal church in Sydney, writes that ‘fundamentalism won’t leave me alone. It continues to upset me despite my best efforts to exit, stage right’ (2007: 269). The comedian Su-Anne Post, who exited Mormonism, says that ‘every life is normal to the person who is living it’ (1997: 25), and that such beliefs become just part of the ‘mental furniture’ in your head, always there and familiar. These comments have resonated strongly with me as although I am now an outsider, I still carry a lot of that furniture around in my head, and find the structures and wide-reaching tentacles of CF continue to engage my attention. It was not that long ago that I felt frank fear about publicly disclosing the changes in my universe of discourse and ongoing biographical reconstruction (Snow and Machalek, 1984).

From a social constructionist and post-structural perspective, words and talk are not neutral nor do they ‘represent’ more or less naturally some kind of underlying reality. My knowledge of CF is thus shaped by discursive practices, which mediates my understanding of this so-called ‘reality’. Tanya, Su-Anne and I (and many like us), know about CF within the limits of the language games (Wittgenstein, 1958) and social practices in which we were immersed. Again, much is at stake from an identity and community point of view when nascent concerns about curtailed freedom, and the self-monitored/self-constructed identity begin to come into sharper focus. For me, freedom has been attained not through pursuing a state, a quality, or an ideology. Foucault maintained the value of freedom as a way of practising upon oneself, presupposing that subjects of power have the capacity to act (Rose, 1999: 95). Indeed, this is how I understand and shift the mental furniture. It has become a process of exercising some detachment from the previously inviolate given codes—the Biblification of discourse and practice—not through a quest for moral autonomy or the absence of power and government. Freedom in my case was experienced as embracing the capacity to judge, accept and transform subjectifying practices (Rose, 1999: 97), while undermining the universalising ‘truths’ that previously constrained and inhibited. This of course reflects a parallel process with many of the research participants, and so required observation and bracketing during the interview and analysis process.

Set-up and recruitment

From the outset, it became clear this research context invited the telling of a story that may not easily be told in other contexts. While recruiting for the study and talking to prospective 234 participants in 2012, I commenced the process of bracketing my story so as not to eclipse or set the stage for others’ stories. However two participants, before agreeing to participate, asked me explicitly whether I was still a part of the church, one querying whether the research was ‘church-sponsored’. Two other participants (one before and one unexpectedly during the interview) mentioned that they ‘knew some of my story from the grapevine’. It was implied that this made participating in the research a more reasonable, even safer, proposition. A further participant asked me searching questions about myself before agreeing to participate, as he is ‘frequently asked these questions and has become tired of answering them’. As Susan Chase suggests, the documenting of these interactional processes in the manner this chapter attempts thus provides a further window into the shifting nature of hegemonic discourses in these participants’ lives (2008). This early exchange with JoJo reflects her concerns, and the possibility of experiencing fear or shame during the interview:

Josie: So even in telling this story to me—it’s not a common story for you to be telling?

JoJo: No.

Josie: And perhaps you’re influenced by the fact that I was in and now I’m out too. Does that influence the telling?

JoJo: If you weren’t in and then out too, I wouldn’t be telling you.

Josie: Yeah, yeah. It’s kind of interesting too about telling stories about this. And who you tell, and when you tell, how you tell.

JoJo: Yeah. And whether it’s safe.

It was thus evident in the early stages of this project that participants were using some careful positioning to ensure that an unwelcome apparatus of power, judgment or scrutiny was not re- created. Ensuring my ‘credentials’, particularly not as a current church-insider, was paramount for several respondents.

The insider/outsider continuum: ‘how in, or how out are you? How out, or how in, am I?’

The continuum of a certain level of belonging within CF was evident not only early on in the study, but also became increasingly influential in terms of the stories people were prepared to tell me. How my own (changing) story was known, understood and then de-centred, rather

235 than taking centre stage, was considered throughout the entire interview process. However my exit status to non-church-attendance became somewhat problematic, as each participant had a different exit journey and a variety of emotional and cognitive responses regarding the process.

As mentioned in Chapter 5, I had decided that I would provide a small story at the beginning of each interview (if asked) and any further ‘storying’ or elaborating from myself would happen after the interview was complete, and the digital recorder was switched off. Other studies have referred to this time as having a cup of tea and chat before and after the tape is switched on (e.g. Green, 2006: 111). I have wondered while reading other studies about the level of accountability researchers have for the content of such ‘cup-of-tea-chat’, and its impact on the research process itself. The exact nature of the conversation rarely seems to be recorded or considered as relevant to the analysis of the co-construction process. Indeed, half the interviews in my study were conducted in this manner, until I became aware that in some cases the cup-of-tea-conversation after the interview was potentially creating a secondary effect upon the interview participant. It became my intention to provide further authenticity to this study by reflexively analysing this process.

Specifically, most of the first 10 participants interviewed asked me where I formerly attended church, which I honestly answered. They then asked if I still attended church and I said ‘no’. There was interest, but I did not experience, detect or elicit discomfort about the effects of my answers on the participants or their own conclusions about their lives. However I became aware in the final two interviews of this group that these questions were more problematic, creating a space that was not being used as a research space, and therefore neither recorded nor acknowledged.

When these two participants asked me at the end, ‘are you still a Christian?’ and my answer was directly pertinent to their own disclosures about their somewhat ‘unfinalised’ experience and feelings about being inside or outside the organisation, I knew my response would place me in either camp and thus potentially have an impact. In one case, the person expressed quite unambiguous longing to be back in the organisation, and my response could have inadvertently replicated the situation with which he was struggling. That is, if I said yes, he may have felt marginalised again; if I said no, he may have felt relief, or even doubt and fear for both of us. As it was, I did not provide a clear answer, and in the evangelical discourse under investigation, that generally means a ‘no’—which I regarded as creating a problematic situation for the participant. If you cannot say a clear ‘yes’ according to fundamentalist discourse, it indicates you are not a ‘real (evangelical) Christian’ and therefore an apostate, which creates a particular interview space for the participant.

236 The question itself also had the potential to set up a power dynamic between interviewer and responder, as the responder assessed how ‘out’ or ‘in’ the interviewer was. If I am very ‘out’, does that help the person who is seeking empathy, understanding or camaraderie about their position feel better understood, and perhaps then be able to mock it even more? If I am still ‘in’, does that invite others who are confused, and perhaps trying to find a way back in, to feel judged, fearful or condemned? That is, in maintaining a critical reflexivity, I became concerned over my own possible participation in setting up another system of power, which could interrupt the participants’ freedom to invent ways of becoming other than who they were.

As pointed out by Christine Bold, it is important to analyse the subjective position of the researcher at all stages of the process, and if necessary make ethical choices in situ as different issues emerge. She observes that ‘just as narrative research is often an evolutionary process, the ethics evolve alongside the research as part of the process’ (2012: 54–55). Therefore in an attempt to maintain respect and responsibility as key ethical principles, as well as a flexible reflexive position, I made the decision to not turn off the recorder at any time, and to transcribe all questions put to me along with my answers, as a part of the research. In deciding to answer these questions about myself, insight was also provided into the ways in which the participants perceive the researcher, providing a central focus for the analysis of power relationships (Bhavnani, 1990). It also meant that the research space was maintained, and all information was recorded, transcribed and then sent to participants for their comment and consideration. Keeping the research space open also limited the over-asking of questions.

The analysis of the cup-of-tea data, which emerged after the formal interview, shows that some people certainly positioned themselves with me in various ways on the insider/outsider continuum. As noted, ten of these sessions included the taping and transcribing of this extra conversation. Other information was acquired from my research diary. Sixteen participants asked me specific questions about my personal Christian disaffiliation story after the interview. This excerpt from the interview with Belinda reflects a typical curiosity, a comment on our shared familiarity about church matters, and an identity statement about herself in relation to her own acceptance of my non-attendance at church. While previously she would have felt compelled to ‘fix that’, she sees it as a comment on my authenticity, and her own personal changes. She, like several other participants, also had a strong response when I named the church I used to attend. My assumption is that this is because the church is well known for being particularly conservative and influential within the city of Sydney. The strong response allows some further disclosure and positioning on her part, as it showed just how far ‘out’ I am. 237 Belinda: Well, my main question is, what is your background and interest in, or your personal experience of change?

Josie: Well, I guess you know some of it and figured out some of it from our conversation.

Belinda: Yes, from your familiarity with various things.

Josie: Well I was converted at a very young age. I went to church regularly—I guess I was a card-carrying member for probably 30 years.

Belinda: Which church?

Josie: Many churches. Probably what interests people the most is that I was at [named church] for about 16 years.

Belinda: Aah!

Josie: (both laughing) I did leave that, and then went to a church I thought might be more perhaps honouring of women. And then ultimately I left that, and so currently I am not a churchgoer. And I guess because I’m a counsellor too, and I’ve seen lots of Christian people over the years with lots of dilemmas relating to the church—the church as an organisation and the church as a structure—I was very conscious of my own journey and became interested in other people’s journeys. So I decided to study it academically…

Belinda: Before, if I had heard people with a story like yours, I would have thought, ‘oh no, maybe I could find her a church? How can I make it better?’ Now I think, ‘how interesting, and I wonder whether it might be more authentic to stay away?’

Josie: Well, I guess that’s the change in you, isn’t it? Perhaps you’re less anxious about me not going to church?

Belinda: Yes, that’s right.

David’s question reflects an ironic tone, questioning why I would be interested in such a thorny problem as the church, the effects of which he has just spent some hours discussing with me. He also is keen to make connections with me, when he finds out where I used to attend church. I then imaginatively become someone a bit different, someone closer to him, who may well have trod a similar road.

238 Josie: At this point, I do say to people if you would like to ask me any questions about my interest in this research, why I’m involved in this, you’re welcome to do that. I just [like to] make sure that you have the chance to tell your story, the freedom to tell it. You may not have any questions, but if you do, I’m happy to answer them.

David: Now that you raise it—why the fuck are you interested?

Josie: Of course, it can be a long story, which I won’t explain in a whole lot of detail. Suffice to say, I’ve been a very long-term member of evangelical churches. Very involved in leadership. And over a period of time, kind of went on my own journey of change…I’m not a churchgoer any more.

David: What church did you go to?

Josie: I went to several, because I was converted very young. Probably the most significant, and the one that seems to startle people, is that I was at [named church] for 16 years.

David: St [X]? Fucking hell…I bet you know some people I know.

Josie: I may do. But we won’t go there (he asked me anyway).

Michael is intensely curious, and asked me several pointed and personal questions to further establish my degree of outsider-ness. For example, he asked if my husband was still involved in the church (I said ‘no’), and whether I thought faith was a ‘bad and unhealthy thing for people and humanity in general’ (I said ‘I don’t know’). This was in the context of him speaking about the letter he wrote to his friends and family to which they never responded. He asked me to read it, which I did after the interview. Again his positioning was affected by my positioning on the continuum, and suggested a desire to be further understood and acknowledged for his complex journey—in the absence of interest from those from whom he was hoping to receive it.

Josie: So what would you find it helpful to ask me?

Michael: I’m just interested in your story really. Start from the beginning.

Josie: (laughing) How much detail do you want?

Michael: Yeah, as much as we have time for.

239 Josie: Well, the short story is: converted young, intense involvement and leadership, the complete immersion in the evangelical church and the university Church, married a Christian.

At one point, I made the decision while talking to Sadie to mention my outsider status to help her tell her story, which she valued as a reference point for her own identity journey. The issue of locating a fellow-traveller, or someone who may understand the story of disaffiliation, is again illustrated.

Josie: So, you know in simple terms that once I was in and now I’m out. Does that make it easier for you to tell the story?

Sadie: Yes. You see, I don’t think I know anyone who was in and is now out (both laughing).

Rob’s questions also reflected a desire to know, and be reassured, that there were other people who thought like him. Again, this indicates that a comparison with others on the insider/outsider continuum is helpful in re-positioning and re-forming a preferred identity. I therefore do reassure Rob on this front, also wanting to prioritise respectful and supportive relationships with the participants.

Rob: From my experience, how does that compare with other people? I’m just curious because I don’t know any people who have done what I have done.

Josie: Sure, sure. Well, it’s interesting. I can tell you that I have talked to at least a couple of people who have described something quite similar, for what it’s worth. Through a process of self-learning—true autodidacts if you like, [they] have dismantled the fabric of their belief. And for the people that I have spoken to, and I guess this includes you, that has had certain consequences particularly in terms of relationships. For some it’s been harder than others. But people like you definitely exist. And in fact, there’s quite a lot of literature on this.

Rob: Yes, there is ex-Christians.net, which is a great place to have a look.

Josie: That’s exactly right. Lots of stuff on the internet. But also lots of books, memoirs, autobiographies…I don’t know if that helps?

Rob: Yeah. And how do you find this process yourself?

240 Josie: Well, I find it very, very interesting. So diverse. I’m just interested in, as you know, not just the journey and the content of it, but how people feel about themselves. How they understand who they are.

Rob also tentatively asks me three questions: ‘So, what turned you around? If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s all right’; ‘can I ask, what do you believe now?’ and ‘what do you hope to get out of this?’ I reproduce this exchange almost in full, to show accountability and integrity to the readers of this research, in that I attempted to answer the questions honestly as I indicated to Rob I would at the beginning of his interview.

Although this comes right at the end of the interview, and does not eclipse Rob’s story, I wonder in hindsight whether I may have been too forthcoming and open. I appreciate that my disclosure affected Rob in the moment creating more questions for him, and may also in the future as he perhaps positions his exit in relation to mine. I was not a therapist in these sessions, and so attempted to be transparent rather than remote, considering mutuality and the ethics of ‘participatory action research’ (Ezzy, 2002: 44), but I acknowledge my words in a conversational dialogic sense are not without effect. Rob’s final comment, which he emailed after the interview, shows that perhaps an open approach was ultimately helpful to him: ‘I must say that I did enjoy speaking with you, and appreciated your relaxed, approachable and compassionate approach to the interview’.

Rob: So, what turned you around? If you don’t want to talk about it, it’s all right.

Josie: Like you, many turning points I think. And one of them is my work. I have worked a lot with Christians who have serious issues with belief, the church structures themselves. I have to say that for me personally, one big thing is probably the way [my old church] has been moving over the last 20 years to a place of quite conservative positions on lots of things. I haven’t gone with them.

Rob: Yes, I mean, I don’t see any other way to be a Christian other than being quite fundamental in your understanding of the Bible and who God is. I don’t think you can be liberal.

Josie: It’s interesting that, isn’t it? Is it possible to be a liberal Christian?

Rob: I have a lot of problems with that (laughing).

241 Josie: Well, as you know, a lot of people would describe themselves in this way. Liberal Christian or some variation of Christian. The evangelical Christians may say they’re not Christians—proper ones—but they call themselves Christian.

Rob: Can I ask—what do you believe now?

Josie: Oh, I think that’s probably a bit of a work in progress (laughing)…I’m not a great believer in black-and-white theology, nor the inerrancy of Scripture, nor heaven and hell.

Rob: oh, okay.

Josie: Perhaps some of the big ones are gone. But that doesn’t mean I would call myself an unbeliever. As I say, it’s a continuing work in progress. And I’m interested in this for the people I interview too. Who is a Christian and who is not a Christian, and who decides? Insiders and outsiders.

Rob: Yes, yes. That was another thing in my journey. What about people who have become Christians, and then had an accident where they lost their memory? Are they Christians any more, or not? If they were to die then, would they be saved or not? What about people who haven’t heard, or have only heard part of the story?

Josie: I guess there are a lot of questions about ‘who is saved and who isn’t’. I’m interested in this not just theologically, but how this might operate within the church community. How matters of truth are taught and reinforced.

Rob: Yes, I think truth is a big thing from the churches I’ve been to. ‘The Bible is true, what Jesus taught is true’. But the fact that sometimes it seems contradictory or a bit hard to understand—well, that’s our problem, that’s not God’s problem.

Josie: I guess that’s part of the problem (both laughing)…

Rob: What do you hope to get out of this?

Josie: I’m very interested in documenting people’s stories and somehow writing about this academically, because it’s an area not very well researched in this country. There might be stuff on the internet, but not many people from an academic point of view have talked about this. Self-concept, and how that may change. So I’m interested in documenting people’s stories and writing about that. So that’s what I hope to get out

242 of it. And it is of course interesting for me too. A researcher is never untouched by what she researches.

Rob: Especially in this work.

At this point, I will include comments from other participants about their experience of participating in the study emailed to me after they had read and commented on their transcripts. The comments are highly suggestive of how useful people find it to position themselves after they have told their own stories with me as a fellow-traveller negotiating the insider/outsider continuum. Not only that, but an appreciation of the worth of the research and hence their own story is implied, as well as an increased self-awareness and self-disclosure. Their counterstories of resistance and refusal are thus potentially amplified and reinforced. The exception is Arthur, whose comment again reflects the struggle he has already described in the loss of affiliated Christian identity. It is therefore suggested that finding the right audience for one’s story (particularly in a research interview), or what has been called in the narrative therapy literature, ‘a team of life’ (Denborough, 2014: 94), may significantly influence how a person describes who s/he is, and who s/he may become. Some team memberships can then possibly be reviewed, renegotiated or repudiated.

Barbara: There are ongoing crises of moving into retirement with the prospect of never having the kind of intimate relationship that I observed last week when attending the funeral of a lesbian friend. There are constant dilemmas of whether to stay in unsatisfactory groups or relationships or whether to leave them and take the risk of not finding anything better to replace them…This process has helped me. Thanks Josie. By the way, I did appreciate your own sharing at the end. That is always a huge encouragement to me.

JoJo: Thank you for your time in putting this together.

Sadie: I think there is so much more buried within. It causes me to wonder if some further exploration would be of benefit to me.

Tom: The text you sent offered me a rather stark encounter with myself—not always lucid, sometimes rushing ahead to other ideas and so getting the story out of sequence. But that is the way the words came and no doubt you have already decided what will and will not be useful—so all the best with the entire writing and research.

Sue: Thank you for the opportunity to share my experiences.

243 Lucy: I am happy with it as is. I think you summed it up perfectly and it was good to reflect on how things have changed.

Max: I use the word horrendous a lot, don’t I—hehe. Possibly because it was. I love this poem. I cried when I first read it.24

Louise: I was very interested in your summary and what you made of my ‘ramblings’. I was as honest as I could be and it helps me to read your summary, to understand myself better. It is a privilege to participate and I wish you all the best as you proceed.

Rachel: It’s been a really interesting experience for me so thank you also!

Wendy: Thanks for the transcript—it was really fascinating to read back on. I hope there were some useful parts that you could use.

Arthur: I am finding it difficult to read the transcript, not because of the subject matter, just feeling very awkward about it.

Being a therapist and a researcher: story co-construction

Reflexivity is now further demonstrated through the provision of specific examples of conversation moves that illustrate shared story construction. There are some moves on my part that with hindsight may have been too prominent, and which potentially eclipsed the

24 This poem by Derek Walcott reminds both him and I of his quest for self-acceptance, and his desire to share his journey with me as well as with others on the continuum. The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other’s welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life. 244 participant’s story. Brendan O’Rourke and Martyn Pitt suggest that as the technology of the confessional is now all pervasive in society, researchers need to demonstrate a more pragmatic but self-conscious and creative use of the interview context within their analysis (2007). Therefore, as previously stated, I have maintained reflexivity and accountability over my own possible participation in setting up an alternative system of power, even inadvertently setting up a traditional clinical setting.

There were times in the interviews where people not only engaged perhaps in the projection of the ‘preferred-other’ in terms of my outsider status, but also as a therapeutic listener. For example, in regard to the empathic, supportive researcher’s (therapist) voice/self, a strong alliance was positioned, particularly with participants who had been significantly marginalised in church communities. The notable examples here are Michael, Sadie, Louise, David and Wendy. In this excerpt with Louise, I note quite a therapeutic interpretation on my part, which while appreciated by Louise, may have been somewhat over-stepping the role of researcher. Not only that, but my choice of the words ‘true self’ are even essentialising, and run counter to the philosophical foundations of this research.

Josie: And in just talking to me now, has that been a difficult thing?

Louise: Oh no, no. I’ve been very happy to talk to you, and been encouraged by your interest and the questions you’ve asked. And just sort of observing myself answering them…

Josie: Sounds like what you’re talking about at 79, is that you’re still discovering your true self?

Louise: Yes, it is true in a way.

Josie: Or maybe, you’re talking about things that were simmering away when you were in your 20s?

Louise: Yes, and monitoring some of my habits. We all have habits and interpretations, and so monitoring some of my habits and, checking them and realising where I’m not consistent.

With Michael, I am empathic but it does not interfere with the telling of his story, and in fact may enhance and amplify the articulation of his central plotline.

Josie: I can imagine this may have been difficult emotionally, because you spoke before about really wanting to believe. It doesn’t sound as though you were pursuing 245 this easily without realising what the consequences may be?

Michael: Yeah, I think that life outside religion was a very great unknown. It’s not that you couldn’t perceive it, but it’s an enormous change in your frame of reference. I think the thing with evangelicals is that, a lot of it boils down to good and evil— everything is framed in those terms. So you’re joining the evil side in a way.

At one point I also reassure Rachel that she isn’t the only person to have feel ‘stupid’ or ‘ashamed’ about being a member of CF. I regret using the expression ‘sucked in’, which may have been too colourful and emblematic of my own outsider-positioning at that point.

Rachel: I think sometimes when I say it out loud, when I talk to people, I feel really ashamed about it actually.

Josie: You may be surprised, or you may not be surprised, to hear that other people have said similar things to me.

Rachel: Really? I’m actually really surprised. Like I feel really ashamed to talk about it. Like I was manipulated and dumb.

Josie: Yes, similar to what others have said. Like—ashamed that you could have got sucked in.

To David, I deliberately used the expression ‘that’s cruel’ to empathise with him after he related a story of being humiliated and berated by a church leader. This was appropriate and ethical in the moment, and allowed him to story his experience of injustice further. I also shared Tom’s indignation at being publicly snubbed at a church service he attended. As has been demonstrated, his was a silent, subversive protest until he fully nailed his alternative colours to the mast. The consequences for him have been brutal. Shocked sarcasm can be detected in my voice.

Josie: I’m just wondering in terms of where you’re up to now?

Tom: Well, I don’t go to church. And I don’t go because I have tried to go. For example, I went to the induction of a new pastor at a particular church. I got the usual response. [A named church leader] was there, and he says to me, ‘what are you doing here?’ This is the only comment he makes to me.

Josie: (mimicking, sharing the indignation) ‘What are you doing here?’

246 Tom: Yes—‘what are you doing here?’

Josie: Like you don’t belong, you’re a pariah?

Tom: That you don’t belong. He makes it very clear to me, and makes it very clear to my family too. We just don’t belong in church. We’ve made overtures—

Josie: Aren’t people free to attend church?

Tom: Not if you’ve been part of the system. I don’t even want to go [back] into that environment.

When he later explicitly cast me in the role of the therapist, I ignored the invitation, and persevered with asking questions to elicit an alternative answer.

Josie: What about in terms of who you are now, as opposed to the Tom you were?

Tom: I can’t answer you. I don’t know. You’ll have to tell me that! You’ll have to analyse me there. I don’t know the answer. Aah, I feel I’m still changing, discovering.

Josie: How so? Do you feel there is more freedom in yourself? Or something different?

James surprisingly mentioned at the beginning of our interview that he would rather not know anything much about the research as his friend suggested that ‘it would be more fun if it were a surprise’. At the end he was curious to hear about my ‘angle’ and whether it lined up with his ‘original guess’. As it turned out, he thought I was researching ‘the post-traumatic stress of leaving the church’. I queried him on this, and somewhat confirmed my hypothesis that James’s lack of curiosity about the purpose of the research reflects where he is up to on his identity trajectory. In other words, the church and its functionaries, or any possible replication of that with me or anyone else, is of little concern to him. He now laughs unashamedly and sardonically at church practices and discourses. I am not sure if this was relevant to his comment on two occasions that he thought I had a ‘knowing smile’, about which he seemed to enjoy calling me on. I confessed to him that, ‘I don’t keep a poker face’, admitting that my face showed some shared understanding, even humour. This seemed to be a positive projection of the preferred-other on his part, but I am not sure whether it related to my showing empathic understanding of his issues, or that I appeared very far-out on the insider/outsider continuum.

Josie: I found it interesting that you spoke to me ‘sight unseen’, because some people won’t speak to me unless they know a little bit more about where I am coming from. 247 For example, am I sponsored by the church. But that’s not where you’re coming from. I wonder too if you not wanting to ask these questions may reflect something about where you are up to in your exit journey anyway?

James: Yes, absolutely. That’s a completely reasonable guess.

Finally, it can be noted that no respondent in this study requested a referral to a counsellor as a result of their participation, nor later withdrew from the study. The participants also did not invite me into a counselling role in any ongoing way. All but three gave feedback about their transcripts (which has been incorporated into the analysis), but this is where our contact finished. One participant signed me up to her blog, but that required no further direct communication between us. Ethically this is reassuring, that even though the interview space may have provided an opportunity for identity revision and story amplification, the relationship with me was well understood as non-therapeutic, finite and professionally limited.

Agreement and Disagreement

Pamela Hardin suggests that researchers pay too little attention to how context and certain narrative structures affect story construction (2003). Most particularly, she focuses on those conversational-moves where participants articulate what we want to hear, mostly in accordance with culturally grounded norms around what is appropriate or inappropriate to say. Bearing this in mind, I deliberately tried to invite participants away from being polite and in agreement with me, towards being different and difficult if necessary. Again, this method of data analysis considers power dynamics as well as focusing on the construction of experience as an active, fluid social performance. There are many examples of how the researcher and the storyteller negotiate meaning, often through overlapping exchanges, such as this one with JoJo.

JoJo: You know, I tried to have relationships with men but they didn’t prosper because it wasn’t where I was at. But the idea of hiding from other people and myself was quite enticing.

Josie: With that kind of acceptance from God thrown in? That you are acceptable?

JoJo: Yes!

Josie: That you can hide here and be acceptable—

JoJo: As long as you don’t practise—

248 Josie: Right. As long as you don’t practise—

JoJo: Or kiss anyone even—

Josie: Be wholly celibate—

JoJo: Yes, wholly celibate is a good word.

There are also times when I suggest or volunteer words or ideas to participants somewhat tentatively, and ask them whether this fits with their experience. The examples below show times when people say yes, and other times when they say no and disagree, and find their own word. An attempt was made to create an atmosphere, or micro-culture, within the interview itself, which would allow differences to be expressed beyond the expected or polite response. For example, James and I together negotiate a word that most accurately describes his experience.

James: I was always conscious that there’s the person I needed to be around Christian people, and encouraged myself in my private thoughts to be more the person I would just automatically and naturally be.

Josie: So there was something about the Christian self that was—

James: Limited.

Josie: Limited. It sounds like performed?

James: To a degree.

Josie: Maybe that is the wrong word. Maybe assumed—or taken on at different times?

James: That’s a better word. Assumed.

Charlie and I work out together what phrase might most precisely describe his meaning. He seems to roll it over in his mind for a moment, before accepting it.

Charlie: And so I felt like it was my responsibility to show people that they could do things differently.

Josie: That they could umm (tentatively) grow up, is that what you mean?

Charlie: I guess so, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

249 Josie: Is there a better phrase than that?

Charlie: No, I think that’s probably appropriate. And I think that maybe they could sustain their own life, you know.

The following examples indicate when participants dispute or disagree meaning with me, and make clear their own meaning.

JoJo: I think I lived the double-life stuff for a long time in that system. So I was pretty used to double-life. I think it was more the issue of, ‘am I ready to stop denying myself the right to love on the basis of some ideological system that quite frankly wasn’t cutting it for me?’ So, umm, I think leaving was about being ready to come out.

Josie: A statement of alternative identity?

JoJo: I didn’t really make it as a statement—

Josie: Statement may be the wrong word—

JoJo: It was a statement of being open to myself, an acknowledgement to myself that I could no longer go on denying that.

Similarly, my clumsy attempts to extract, push and otherwise extrapolate meaning are thankfully corrected by Ollie.

Ollie: I felt compelled to go. It was something to do on a Sunday night I suppose, when there was nothing else to do. It was convenient.

Josie: I’m just wondering whether because you had a different attitude to church, and had another project, meant that you were somehow protected, or less swayed by what was being said? I wonder if you were somehow protesting or resisting—

Ollie: I don’t think it was protesting, or resistance. I think it is what it is. You know, you went, it was what it was. I could have chosen not to go at any point, but I didn’t.

Josie: But you were separate from it in some way?

Ollie: Yes, like I said, the music was good, the circumstance was good.

Rob also corrects my use of the incorrect word to describe his experience.

Josie: So you have given up a belief in heaven and hell? 250 Rob: Yes that’s right. In theory, that’s what I’ve given up.

Josie: So is there a sense of disappointment you mean? My life could have gone on forever, but now it’s going to end when I’m 80?

Rob: Umm, I’m not sure if its disappointment.

Sadie too corrects my over-enthusiasm to ascribe meaning to her experience before she does so herself.

Sadie: And I kept coming back to the idea that, ‘I’m here and I need to make some sort of contribution to the world I live in’. I became quite conscious of the environment— that seemed to be emerging more strongly.

Josie: Are you talking about the emergence of some alternative moral code?

Sadie: I don’t think I was ever really connected to that concept.

In the early interviews, I was also less skilled in asking more accessible and easily understood questions. Ruth for example struggled against my confusion and unclear questions.

Josie: So, your Christian identity now includes being a gay woman. Are there other aspects to it? You know, you said you see some things now differently than what you did back then, how do you think your sense of self has changed over the years?

Ruth: Oh, these are such hard questions! (both laughing) I keep getting lost in my answer.

Sometimes my language is too colourful, even mocking, and perhaps overly indicative of my own stance. Such forays into rank subjectivity were more apparent in the first two interviews, and were perhaps a product of over-enthusiasm and lack of research experience. These are times when the potential for overtaking or eclipsing someone else’s story become apparent, as these three examples below show. In each case, I played my hand with more of my own meaning than what may be the preferred stance of curiosity and restraint.

JoJo: One of the reasons I wouldn’t call myself a Christian is that I believe I live a good life, I contribute to the well-being of other people. And I don’t think you need a system to value that. You need to contend with that in private…you’re meant to be able to sit there and say, ‘yes the other people in my life are evil’.

Josie: And on the highway to hell— 251 JoJo: ‘And because I come to this place every week, and subscribe to this I’m all right’. There’s something really wrong with that.

Michael: I’m just trying to think how I would have felt at the time about women teaching in church. I guess it didn’t particularly affect me too much.

Josie: (laughing) I guess it’s because you’re not a woman!

Michael: Yes, if I were a girl I might have had more say about that.

Sadie: They know I don’t go to church, but they don’t really know why I don't go. They don’t sort of ask me and I don’t want them to either. Because if they did—I would have to tell them. And if I told them I don’t believe, if I told them the things I’ve told you today, I wonder if I would keep them as friends (long pausing)…

Josie: So they don’t ask, and you don’t tell?

Sadie: No.

Josie: Because in the telling, there is a possibility, or probability, of something happening to the friendship? Why would it be that you couldn’t be friends?

Sadie: Because I think I still have this view that they think, ‘you’re either in or you’re out’.

Josie: And if you’re out—

Sadie: You’re out.

Josie: And not even possible to be a friend with?

Sadie: Maybe at some sort of a—

Josie: Maybe some sort of evangelistic project?

Sadie: Possibly…

252 Conclusion

A dialogical narrative analysis within the structure of post-structural QR requires the researcher to be aware of and take responsibility for her role and footprint in the storying of the participants’ plotlines and alternative journeys of identity re-formation—otherwise a predominantly humanist lens may be privileged. As Riessman states, narrative inquiry has been criticised for its lack of attention to historical, class and cultural contexts, with the idealisation of individual agency, rooted in the Western Romantic impulse and its assumptions about the interior self (2002a: 5). Sociologist Paul Atkinson also comments that, ironically enough, a social constructivist discourse can become ‘a surrogate form of liberal humanism’ (2006: 378). He thus promotes the formal analysis of narrative structures, not by stripping out the social or replacing it with individualised versions of experience. In fact, this chapter follows his encouragement to provide a genuinely ‘thick’ description as Geertz intended (1973), not by necessarily providing richer data, but rather fuller descriptions of social settings. The interview context as a social setting has indeed been acknowledged as another venue of potent power differentiation, or more subtly, another ‘truth game’ or confessional, and a place of potential subjectification. Somewhat surprisingly, even though an analysis of co- construction, reflexivity and use of power on the part of the researcher is frequently encouraged in the literature, it is infrequently provided in the detailed manner that this chapter has provided.

This final analytic layer has therefore attempted to illustrate how participants in this study have used my position on the insider/outsider continuum to more fully story their own exit journey. For some, their very participation was affected by my self-disclosure on this continuum, while others people used my story to thicken and enrich their own. As the participants’ curiosity was piqued by my story, many of them used their questioning of me to augment and adapt their own counter-conduct and identity moves. The interview context may have been influential (reflecting the concept that knowledge/power is always present), but the comments of the participants suggest that it was not overly therapeutic or dominating, and allowed them to exercise practices of freedom. That is, as Foucault suggested, any restrictions in a social setting need to be ‘within the reach of those affected by them so that they at least have the possibility of altering them’ (1997: 148). My reflexive awareness and openness invited the participants to adjust any restrictions they felt, while also layering further counter-experiences to the practices of CF.

In summary, it is inevitable in the dialogic creation of meaning between people and voices for each to influence the other. Happily, along with the narrative turn in social sciences, has come

253 an accompanying relational turn in understanding human lives, in which we are invited to appreciate the relative influences of communion as well as agency (Josselson et al., 2007: 5). One of the great strengths of narrative research is that it is involved in developing new languages of theory and method, including ways of talking about reflexivity that can address the ethical issues that arise in narrative research (Bradbury and Sclater, 2000: 198). Not only that, but as Andrews writes, ‘we come to more fully appreciate that our conclusions are always and only provisional, that they will be forever subject to new meanings’, particularly in relation to the researcher’s life circumstances (2013: 219). This chapter has attempted to contribute to this development within social science research, not only through my observation and awareness of this process, but also my willingness to address this in an ingenuous, analytic way. It has also highlighted that the research interviews invited a virtual community of people into the room, as the participants positioned and re-positioned themselves in relation to myself and others, allowing further construction and reconstruction of identity stories. The constellation of analytic steps is now complete, leading to the final chapter and thus the final conclusions that may be drawn from this project.

254 Final Discussion and Conclusion

When you climb

out a black well

you are not the same…

your hands are webbed

inviting you

to trust yourself

in water stranger

and wilder

than you’ve ever known

Dorothy Porter,

Not the Same

Background

This study has documented and analysed twenty stories of identity change of people who have journeyed from an evangelical/fundamentalist Christian identity, to new definitions of being Christian, or to no Christian identity at all. CF has been described as a backlash against modernity, and a trend towards a defensive collective solipsism. Understanding the local milieu in Sydney itself has been significant in appreciating how the research participants experienced the strictures and demands of the modern evangelical Christian community.

Concepts from new social movement theory addressed the question of how collective identity is incorporated into self-definition and personal identity, suggesting that some particular totalising and demanding groups may require complete identity and biographical reconstruction within an alternative universe of discourse. Christian conversion has been described as a re-formation of the self in terms of social order and political purpose, leading to the reconstruction of family and society. The prescribed gender roles, along with heteronormative sexual expression and identity within CF, marginalise feminists and

255 homosexuals as enemies and de-stabilisers of the Christian family. The heterosexual couple (with the permanent subordination of women) remains the pivot and frame of reference for the specification of other sexualities, and has been demonstrated as a significant discursive context for identity constitution.

The research on deconversion and disaffiliation from CF indicated a primarily humanist, explanatory approach, within the limited studies using a qualitative research (QR) methodology. In terms of larger theoretical frameworks that may act as a guide for social science within the sociology of religion and deconversion, this current project represents a significant contribution to an amorphous and under-theorised field. Sociologist Christian Smith has urged for more research which creatively crosses conceptual boundaries, particularly beyond modernity and into the content of religious beliefs and how they are inscribed into and govern the behaviours of bodies (2008). This study has contributed to such a forward-looking research agenda by analysing the silencing of voices, the shaping of bodies and the interiorising of a discursively constructed identity as acceptable or unacceptable. This has occurred within the context of a post-structural analysis of the intersection between Foucault’s writings on Christianity and subjectivity within modern CF.

Methods and findings

The study has therefore provided an original project in its post-structural theoretical underpinnings and symmetry with its methodology. An overall dialogical narrative analysis formed the backdrop to the four-tiered analysis of the research data. To reiterate, the following research questions informed the investigation:

 How may a Christian sense of identity be socially constructed, and what are the effects of apparatuses of power within church communities that shape that process?  What are the responses of people to the ‘apparatuses’ of power? How are gender differences and sexual identity negotiated and maintained?  What personal narratives do people tell about the change process, their new discursive self-concept and changing Christian beliefs?

The findings have suggested that there are many unfinalised journeys out of CF, and that these may be reasonably understood as emerging from a changing relationship between the self and the organisation, which has previously invited a process of self-decipherment and self- modification. The twenty individual journeys happened over many years, all with significant

256 turning points and attendant experiences of loss including dialogic moments with the self, however eventually all but one led to a subjective experience of emancipation and freedom.

Three plotlines were illustrated: immersion to emancipation, the double-life to integration, and the Spinozan-like movement towards anti-scripturalism and naturalism. These journeys were not fixed or rigid, but rather illustrated the re-negotiating of a sense of self within the discursive production of power/knowledge within CF, and then beyond. As people’s lives moved outside the narrowly-specified Biblification of their thoughts and actions and the limited anthology of stories the church culture made available to them, they discovered their own versions of their possible selves, using such evocative language as freedom, growing-up, strength, creativity and integrity. Biblified lives shaped by certain templates and canons were unmasked as being other than what they purported to be. Beyond them, recipients described their rigidly prescribed self-narratives as increasingly contested. Many sought alternative communities with which to re-construct more preferred versions of who they might be, and become.

Some findings from the previous research described in Chapters 1 and 2 were reinforced. Firstly, trauma and pathological symptoms are less evident than descriptions of freedom, personal growth and emancipation. This is not to say that the pain of loss, particularly as it related to the loss of community and friendship networks, was not described. However, this is balanced against the finding that only one participant expressed any longing to be a part of a fundamentalist church again. Loss was described more as part of the transition process rather than an ongoing problem.

Secondly, it emerged that the push-factors were indeed stronger than the pull-factors, as disaffiliation was most frequently understood as being affected by the intersection with the church community and leaders. The pull-factors of new friends, lovers and preferred communities were relevant, but less potent as turning points or catalytic moments.

Thirdly, the concept of ‘believing without belonging’ (Davie, 2000) was demonstrated through the finding that many people do not lose complete faith after leaving the churches of CF, as alternative spiritual paths emerge in their lives.

Fourthly, turning points and experiences of injury and disillusionment are highly significant in shaping individual identity in the journey of disaffiliation. The exit may take years, as the high investment in CF (including the entire fabric of one’s social life as well as the bonding effects of previously persuasive or transforming discourse) holds people within. It was illustrated that the incorporation of the collective identity of CF into self-identity may be challenged, through

257 the increase of negative emotion and the loss of some identity salience. Finally, more diverse, less rigid spiritual communities were described as highly significant by participants who are looking for an alternative moral space for their counterstories, providing an opportunity to experience acceptance within diversity.

The genealogy

The Foucauldian genealogy problematised identity change out of CF, then expanded to a more detailed analysis of resistance, refusal, counterstory and transformation. Theorising and enacting the genealogy as a map of the topography of subjectification within CF was both a sober and weighty endeavour. To extend beyond a simulacrum or replication of a modernist/humanist analysis of identity change (while maintaining respect for the interview transcripts) often seemed a quixotic research quest. The researcher made several attempts to move from a narration of the history of the participants, towards a history of the relations they established with themselves as Christian-selves. The heterogeneous processes and practices within CF that located participants in particular regimes of truth and Christian personhood gradually emerged through the fog of the anthologies of stories they told. The foldings of the exterior into the interior could perhaps be described metaphorically: the movement from a full eclipse by CF towards emerging penumbrae, and then to a full sun among moving clouds.

The axis of truth revealed how and what particular discourses impacted on the participants’ lives, as they considered the layering of ‘correct thinking’ in their lives and the emergence of ‘independent thinking’. They spoke of the shaping of their lives along a very specific interpretive discursive frame, and how dissidence and diversity (unauthorised discourses) were swallowed up and disallowed by their community before they could gain a foothold. They described the boundaries being policed by open rebuttal, silencing, correction, normalising and homogenising practices. Fear of apostasy was generated, accompanied by centripetal forces of circular arguments, to keep people within the accepted regime of truth. Pastoral relationships (entailing confession, self-disclosure and self-inspection) influenced and cultivated the requisite compliant/acceptable identity.

The axis of power detailed the various assemblages of disseminated power within fundamentalist churches, which exerted disciplinary power and a self-constituting level of control over the participants. Participants described experiences of continuous surveillance, control and correction—an expression of power I termed the Christian normalising gaze. This apparatus was linked with an assemblage of other devices, including the tiers of acceptable Christian identity, ‘cult-like’ rules, conditional acceptance, and the circulation of

258 heteronormative and patriarchal discourse to further ensure appropriate Christian value-based identities were storied and re-storied.

The small group meeting was considered a major locus of the shepherd-flock game and the reinforcement of ‘groupthink’. That is, ‘we all need to think the same’—and the centripetal forces of micro-social control ensured the ongoing enclosure within the fold. ‘Christian counselling’, with its demand for introspection, self-disclosure and self-renouncement, also emerged as an influential technology of power. The participants described the consequences of transgression (such as exclusion, marginalisation, humiliation and being ‘black-listed’) at times with distress and sadness.

The big losers (who described the most morally comprised and faulty identity descriptions) were those who most significantly transgressed such an assemblage: women who broke the headship and heterosexual rules, and LGBT participants. The discourse that considers heterosexual sexual practice as naturally given and thus built into God’s creation effectively erases alternative identity stories. The Foucauldian perspective however analysed its production as an historical construct—a great surface network in which knowledges, discourses and the strengthening of controls are linked to one another. These participants have described willingly (and now regretfully) cooperating in the subjugation of their own and others’ lives, often for many years, before their alternative exercises in refusal and re- fashioning of the self. They have discovered that stigmatising certain expressions of sexual practice led to further labelling and interiorising; their stories demonstrate that it is one of the most successful technologies of CF to bind knowledge/power to their own bodies.

The resistance

Theoretically, the participants deterritorialised (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) along multiple lines of flight to places of refusal, identity revision and most particularly, to transformed ethical landscapes. The final axis of self and subjectivity illustrated that anti-pastoral revolt often emerged through the internal silent protest and subterranean double-life, which became a site of resistance, then an outsider perspective, then an identity expansion beyond the prescriptions of CF. Further, the cultivation of independent/subversive thinking and reading, not only of the Bible but also of other texts, provided a foundation for the insurrection of subjugated knowledges, over and above the previously authoritative discourses of CF. Re- formation of one’s ethical substance as a care of the self also emerged for the participants, as particular value-based identities were understood not as possessed intrinsically, but fashioned by fundamentalist groups, then latterly by alternative churches and divergent communities.

259 Some appreciated the de Certeau-like space (1984) of new churches for their emerging new selves.

As subjectivity was re-organised and re-signified, the gaze reversed, and new space found for alternative identity stories, a form of agency and choice emerged. I understand this agency as occupying ‘transitory discursive positions’ (Davies, 2006: 101), as it seems to allow participants to make the discourses and their inscriptive powers on themselves and their lives and bodies visible and thus able to be refuted, subverted, and even laughingly mocked. They were thus able to enact ethical and philosophical distinctions between the (God) given and the chosen (Lindemann, 2014).

It may be considered then how the participants further refused such inscriptive and performance powers of CF on their lives and bodies. Elizabeth Grosz reminds us that Deleuze (following Spinoza) regards the body in a refreshingly affirmative way; that is, neither as a locus for a consciousness nor an organically determined entity, but understood more as what it can do, the things it can perform, the linkages it establishes, and the transformations and becomings it undergoes (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 257, Grosz, 1994: 165–174). Perhaps this understanding of the body, what it can link with and how it can proliferate its capacities, provides the advantage to ex-CF women and the LGBT community to move beyond explanatory rigid paradigms about themselves. New becomings are therefore not simply a matter of picking out options freely without regard to systems of power, but involve a substantial re-making of subjectivity and may be wondered at as a series of flows, energies, movements, strata, segments, organs and intensities. Perhaps rigid structure, rules, presupposition and prescriptive discourse (both in an inscribed and performed sense) may no longer be considered as relevant or important to the body, when it separates from CF.

From this study it has emerged then that resistance and identity change seem to be about uncoupling. The technology of government within CF is not about crushing subjectivity, but shaping it and seeking to align institutional goals with individual pleasures, desires and the fulfilment of the self. Some participants spoke of a longing for the promised Christian freedom from the identity claims, secularism, loneliness and cultural straitjackets of modern life, built on a diverse, loving community. However many have moved to fringe Christian and non- Christian communities which they say have truly offered them the freedom, support, space and caring that they did not receive in their former churches. Moreover, to enact such hopes, they have discovered that they no longer are obliged to fulfil their roles as active church-goers, ardent Bible study members, and enthusiastic promoters of the narrow Biblification of their own and others’ lives. They have detached themselves from the original Christian identity

260 project of freedom and attendant subjectification within CF. They perhaps now embrace a more Deleuzian idea of their own desires, which is less about yearning and fantasy, and more about deterritorialising. Such free jazz involves a series of experimental practices, producing ever-new alignments, nascent linkages and connections: it is more meandering, creative, non- repetitive, proliferative and unpredictable. Lines of flight and movements of intensities and flows are thus directions or movements, not fixed states or final positions (Grosz, 1994: 172).

In the un-becoming of the fundamentalist self, there are of course new modes of subjectification post-exit which may produce different exclusion practices, and new practices for re-forming the self. There is no pure space outside CF untrammelled by the governmentality of other subjectivities. However, the participants demonstrate in their new becomings that there is indeed great heterogeneity available within the territory of possible foldings of exteriority into interiority. They sedulously describe the contestability of forms of being that were invented for them, and then how they have invented themselves differently, towards alternative moral authority. Freedom is no longer linked to postulations about nature, essence or a fixed self.

In summary, the fundamentalist community may create a rather defensive collective identity, but the participants’ counterstories reflect technologies of the self that move them to positions of re-defined freedom allowing refusal of this specific type of subjectification and leading to a more creative less fixed notion of the body, self and desire. These stories thus represent a significant extension to Foucault’s ‘religious question’ through the participants’ refusing and re-fashioning of the idea of ‘political spirituality’ (1991b: 82). David perhaps best expresses such a notion when he says, ‘I think I had a very organised sense of self, very controlled. Now I think it’s very blurred and very grey and very unclear, and I like it.’ Similarly, Tom concludes, ‘I’m helping people to come to grips with a sense of being and becoming. And they understand that—because that’s what we’re all doing.’ These are not redemptive or heroic narratives, but people moving towards non-prescribed, uncertain identities, which resist normativity, self-disclosure, obedience and the Christian gaze. They may even suggest the survival of what Foucault terms the parrhesiastic pole of confidence in God (2011b), entailing self-seeing rather than being seen, achieved through free-spokenness.

Further refraction

The participants were further able to demonstrate their new ‘ideological becoming’ when their stories were refracted through a Bakhtinian lens, using ‘ventriloquation’ and ‘voicing’ (1984). Their alternative version of the story and justifiable exit was more completely established through the mocking and sardonic parody of others’ voices from their original communities. 261 This was yet another significant way that each participant could position his/her story with me, a fellow insider/outsider, not as factual or autobiographical ‘truth’, but persuasively within heteroglossia and the interview context that shaped its creation.

Not only this, but also their explicit and implicit positioning with me on the insider/outsider continuum enabled the layering and texturing of yet more counterstories. This reflexive and original analysis of story co-construction, narrative moves and negotiated meanings, illustrated the interview process as another potential system for the exercising of a normalising gaze. However, what emerged as even more intriguing is that the research context of a real and imagined disaffiliated community from CF conferred some alternative moral authority to the participants’ new ethical substance. The analysis thus indicated some authenticity experienced by the research participants, particularly as they noted overtly and covertly the worthiness of their own story being documented in company with other disaffiliation stories. Having said that, my own story (as it was at the time) imprinted my interpretation and analysis, and if I were to return to the data in ten years, further refraction and alternative storying is probable.

Limitations and suggested directions for future research

It is clear that generalisability from such a narrative study as this was neither aimed for, nor achieved. Further, the sample while specifically recruited for some diversity was very much self-selected and reflects a group of people who wanted to contribute, tell their story, and enquire about others traversing a similar identity re-formation journey. Nonetheless, there appear two emerging areas for further research.

Firstly, knowledge gained from this project may assist social workers and other mental health professionals help people in their transitions not only out of CF, but potentially other high- demand groups and comparable micro-systems of modern power. This research indicates the potential value in a psychotherapy that moves beyond intra-psychic models of assessment, explanation and treatment towards deconstructing the significant impact of social discourse and practice from people’s micro-communities on problematic and preferred identity stories. Such a therapeutic approach need not be purely an esoteric exercise, but a robust collaborative analysis that could be undertaken with clients concerning the real effects of truth, power and subjectivity (in this case within the CF community or other culture of modern power) on their identity conclusions.

Such a post-structural therapeutic practice, sometimes characterised as a postpsychological approach to therapy (McLeod, 2006) seems to have a particular fit with the findings of this study. Contrary to some suggestions that grief, loss and existential counselling are appropriate 262 for people exiting CF (e.g. Brent, 1994, Ross, 2009), this study illustrates that one may bypass psychological explanation and interventions, and focus on the issues surrounding the performance of narrative within relationships, community and culture. This approach may assist people reflect on how their Christian identity has been socially constructed, then interiorised and reproduced both internally and externally. The researching of a socially constructed reality within various regimes of truth, particularly within social micro-cultures such as CF, therefore presents a possible future area of research within the clinical social work community.

Secondly, extending the concepts of meta-synthesis, bricolage and meta-analysis of the research context within a narrative methodology emerges again as an issue for post-structural QR. This study has worked towards providing an innovative yet rigorous four-tiered analysis of data in a research area that was previously arcane and neglected. Although it may at times seem daunting to engage in such a meta-synthesis, particularly layering the reflexive awareness and interrogation of the inquirer herself, it may lead to further creative developments within not just deconversion research, but narrative research itself. How the researcher uses and then analyses the use of self has the potential to move beyond invisibility, or sometimes tokenism, in future research projects. The analysis of story co-construction, perhaps extending what this study has offered, allows a continuing and complex discussion about not only the nature of objectivity and subjectivity but also representation and presentation within QR (Alvesson and Sköldberg, 2009).

There are no pure forms or templates within narrative research, inviting the addition of this project to the multiplicity and divergent approaches that enrich and enliven the field. It is hoped that an ongoing folding-back of ideas presented through this study may stimulate further debate about the nature and breadth of contemporary narrative research.

Final words

The participants in this study have generously shared with me their stories of involvement and disaffiliation from fundamentalist churches. I have attempted to respect and reciprocate their ingenuous disclosures with my own, and so not only provide an ethical, original contribution to the deconversion literature, but also to the literature of post-structural, narrative-based research.

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280 Appendices

Appendix A

Sample letter sent to various leaders/pastors of non-fundamentalist congregations

Dear (name)

Further to my voice mail yesterday, let me give you some more information about the research.

I am a PhD candidate within the School of Social Sciences and International Studies at the UNSW, researching people's identity changes when they leave Christian fundamentalist and/or evangelical congregations. The research includes those who leave and do not continue to attend any church, or those that choose to attend a less fundamentalist congregation. I believe you may have people who attend your church who may have in fact left a more fundamentalist church community and have chosen to join your congregation. I have attached a brief summary of the research in a brochure, for your information.

I was hoping you may place the brochure in your newsletter or online, or pin it up on a notice board for example, to advertise the study. I would also be most happy to attend a church service, and be available to talk with people afterwards, who may be interested.

The study has full Ethics approval from the UNSW (No: 11 158), and is supervised by Assoc. Prof. Carmel Flaskas (ph 9385 1960) and Dr Michael Wearing (ph 9385 1880). I am also a clinical social worker with a counselling practice in Bondi Junction, with a professional practice spanning 30 years. I can send you an article I have written on this topic from a clinical perspective, if you are interested.

I would be most happy also to talk with you about the project, if you wish. Thank you for your attention and interest.

Yours sincerely

Josie McSkimming www.mcskimming.com.au mob: 0402 956 966

281 Appendix B

Description of the Project

Brochure provided to church leaders to advertise the study

Have you left another church to come here? Was that church more ‘orthodox’ or conservative than this one? Have you changed your belief systems over time? Do you have ideas about how you may have personally changed as a result of leaving the more ‘orthodox’ church? Do you think your sense of self, or personal identity, is now different than before?

Josie McSkimming, from the School of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University New South Wales, is conducting some research as part of her PhD candidacy into how identity and self-concept may change as a result of moving away from evangelical and fundamentalist churches. If you would like to discuss your possible participation or ask any questions, please feel free to contact her on:

0402 956 966 or [email protected]

The interview will take approximately one hour, and you will be sent a full transcript afterwards if you wish.

All inquiries will be treated strictly confidentially, and all participants in the study will have their privacy and anonymity protected at all times.

282 Appendix C

Description of the Project

Brochure provided to non-church-goers to advertise the study

Did you once attend church regularly? Were you involved in church activities, such as home groups and Bible studies? Would you describe that church as conservative or evangelical in its approach? Have you changed your belief systems over time? Do you have ideas about how you may have personally changed as a result of leaving church? Is your sense of self quite different now than when you were involved in the church?

Josie McSkimming, from the School of Social Sciences and International Studies at the University New South Wales, is conducting some research as part of her PhD candidacy into how identity and self-concept may change as a result of moving away from evangelical and fundamentalist churches. If you would like to discuss your possible participation or ask any questions, please feel free to contact her on:

0402 956 966 or [email protected]

The interview will take approximately one hour, and you will be sent a full transcript afterwards if you wish.

All inquiries will be treated strictly confidentially, and all participants in the study will have their privacy and anonymity protected at all times.

283 Appendix D

Participant Information Statement And Consent Form

Approval No 11 158

THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

PARTICIPANT INFORMATION STATEMENT AND CONSENT FORM

“ Storying, Re-Storying and De-Storying the Christian Fundamentalist Identity –

Journeys of Faith, Interrupted.”

You are invited to participate in a study about the process by which people previously involved in Christian Fundamentalist (CF) or Christian Evangelical (CE) churches move away from their long held affiliations with these particular religious orientations. I hope to learn more about how people’s identity may change as a result of leaving CF and CE communities. You were selected as a possible participant in this study because of your previous involvement within a CF or CE community.

If you decide to participate, I (Josie McSkimming) will be interviewing you about your journey of moving away from your previous church, and your current beliefs and/or church involvement. The interview will take approximately one to one and a half hours. With your agreement, the interview will be audio recorded and the recording can be stopped at any point you choose during the interview.

The potential risks of participating in this study, while very unlikely, may include experiencing some discomfort and negative emotions, thoughts or memories related to your history of involvement with your previous church. If you do experience such feelings, you may take a break during the interview or terminate the interview at any point. You may of course ask questions at any time, or withdraw from the study completely. I will also provide you with the phone number of a relevant counselling service in your area.

I cannot and do not guarantee or promise that you will receive any benefits from this study.

Any information that is obtained in connection with this study and that can be identified with you will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission, except as required by law. If you give me your permission by signing this document, I plan to use the information to write my PhD thesis and to publish the findings in journals and other forums. In any publication, information will be provided in such a way that you cannot be identified. If the findings are presented to a professional audience, no personally identifying information will be released.

You will receive no compensation, financial or otherwise, for participation in this study. 284 Complaints may be directed to the Ethics Secretariat, The University of New South Wales, SYDNEY 2052 AUSTRALIA (phone 9385 4234, fax 9385 6648, email [email protected]). Any complaint you make will be investigated promptly and you will be informed of the outcome.

At the conclusion of the project, a summary report containing the results and outcomes of the study will be made available for review by participants. If you would like to receive a copy, please tick the box at the end of this form.

Your decision whether or not to participate will not prejudice your future relations with the University of New South Wales. If you decide to participate, you are free to withdraw your consent and to discontinue participation at any time without prejudice.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask me. If you have any additional questions later, I will be happy to answer them (email: [email protected], phone: 0402 956 966). You are also welcome to contact my supervisors, Associate Professor Carmel Flaskas (9385 1960) and Dr Michael Wearing (9385 1880).

You will be given a copy of this form to keep.

You are making a decision whether or not to participate. Your signature indicates that, having read the information provided above, you have decided to participate.

If you wish to receive a copy of the summary report of findings, please tick here. 

…………………………………………………… .…………………………………………………….

Signature of Research Participant Signature of Witness

…………………………………………………… .…………………………………………………….

(Please PRINT name) (Please PRINT name)

…………………………………………………… .…………………………………………………….

Date Nature of Witness

285 THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

REVOCATION OF CONSENT

“ Storying, Re-Storying and De-Storying the Christian Fundamentalist Identity –

Journeys of Faith, Interrupted”

I hereby wish to WITHDRAW my consent to participate in the research proposal described above and understand that such withdrawal WILL NOT jeopardise any treatment or my relationship with The University of New South Wales.

…………………………………………………… .…………………………………………………….

Signature Date

……………………………………………………

Please PRINT Name

Revocation of Consent should be forwarded to Ms Josie McSkimming, PhD Student, c/- Associate Professor Carmel Flaskas and Dr Michael Wearing, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of NSW, UNSW Sydney 2052.

286 Appendix E

Interview Schedule

1. Experience within the Christian community

a. the story briefly of how you became involved with Christian churches and the Christian community

b. the story of ‘conversion’ or being ‘born again’

2. How the influence of the church community was experienced

a. the story of your involvement and experience in the church community e.g. small groups, leadership roles, teaching roles

b. the influence of being a part of the church on your behaviour/thinking

c. the experience of any particular rules about how you should live, make decisions etc while a part of the church? (PROMPT: Can you talk about these rules, either explicit or implicit; some examples; effects on you; assessment of these rules; how did you LEARN to become ‘Christian’?)

d. experience of sermons/ teaching over time of your involvement in the church (PROMPT: words, concepts, language and effects on identity – perhaps even particular repeated words and phrases?)

3. Formation of Identity and Gender differences

a. stories about experiencing a Christian identity? When you called/call yourself a Christian what are the different aspects of that identity as you experienced it? (PROMPT: how you perceive and experience yourself?)

b. the differences between men and women in terms of experiencing and expressing a Christian identity? (PROMPT: were there different rules/expectations for men and women? How did these rules/expectations affect you? Rules around heterosexuality?)

4. Experience of Leaving

287 a. the story of your leaving of your church community? (PROMPT: catalyst, events that triggered the questioning, turning points, stages and processes of the exit journey)

b. what was it like when you first left? Down the track?

5. Aftermath

a. what have you noticed about yourself, life, relationships since leaving the church?

b. how have others treated you, within and outside the church?

c. do you still call yourself a Christian, or perhaps a different definition of Christian? Why or why not? (PROMPT: sense of identity; how you perceive yourself and experience yourself; changing sense of self in the world over time)

d. thoughts about God/Christianity/church/existential meaning of life?

e. advice for therapist/mental health professional?

288 Appendix F

Synopses of the 20 participants in the study

(in alphabetical order and with pseudonyms, mostly chosen by the participants themselves)

Arthur is a 31 year old male who exited CF in 2009. He was raised in a Christian family, which was quite influenced by the charismatic movement. He became very involved in Christian ministry at university and completed theological studies. He wants to participate in the community of the church, but cannot accept the truth of the Bible. He no longer attends church or calls himself a Christian. (Plotline 3)

Barbara is a 70 year old female who exited CF in 2000. She did not grow up in a Christian family, and described going to the local church as a 10 year old as a way of finding ‘somewhere safe’ to go. She was serious about her faith, and her Christian identity was totally governed by certainty and taking the Bible literally. She completed missionary service as a sign of commitment. She came out as a gay woman in her 60s. She still attends church and calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 1)

Belinda is a 38 year old female who exited CF in 2010. She grew up in a Christian household, and considered that she ‘had a faith very much based on the faith of her parents’. She was a senior leader in her evangelical church, assuming various roles. She still attends church and calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 1)

Charlie is a 31 year old male who exited CF in 2006. He grew up in a Christian family, left church completely and then came back to it in his teens when feeling somewhat emotionally vulnerable. He became a senior church leader. He still attends church and deliberately calls himself ‘a follower of Jesus’, rather than a Christian. (Plotline 1)

David is a 56 year old transgendered male who exited CF in 2006. He was converted in his teen years, and considers that he became a Christian to escape his life of drug taking. He credited the conversion to saving his life, but with hindsight, he also thinks he became a Christian out of guilt and fear of being punished by God because of his transgender secret. He married within CF, however both he and his wife have exited. He still attends church and calls himself a Christian. (Plotline 2a)

James is a 33 year old male who exited CF in 2007. He did not grow up in a Christian family, but was converted while dating a Christian girl. He describes the development of an assumed Christian self, with a worldview shaped by ‘Bible goggles’. He no longer attends church or calls himself a Christian. (Plotline 2b)

JoJo is a 48 year old female who exited in the early 1990s. She grew up in a protestant denomination and family, but left at age 12. She later had a conversion experience at age 18 at a local church, and continued on in that same church. She believes retrospectively that the church was an opportune and convenient place to ‘hide’ her gay identity. She no longer attends church or calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 2b)

Louise is a 79 year old female who exited in 2004. She became a Christian as a young woman, not having grown up in a Christian family. She attended youth group as a teenager, and then responded to an ‘altar call’ to commit herself to Jesus. She has experienced considerable rejection from former evangelical church friends. She no longer attends church, but calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 1)

289 Lucy is a 35 year old female who exited CF in 1999. She grew up in a church family, then spent 5 years in a high-demand Christian group she described as a ‘cult’. After leaving this group, she became involved with the evangelical student group at her university. She described a process of rebuilding herself as a person and a Christian after this experience, as well as coming out as a gay woman. She still attends church and calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 1)

Martin is a 56 year old male who exited CF in the early 1990s. He was converted at the Billy Graham crusade in Sydney in 1959, and was shaped by his boarding school experience to develop a ‘masculine Christianity’. This related to leading and serving on the sports field and in social endeavour. In midlife, as he was starting to come out as a gay man to family and friends, he encountered significant opposition within the evangelical church he was attending. He still attends church and calls himself a Christian. (Plotline 2a)

Max is a 61 year old male who exited CF in 1992. He grew up in a non-evangelical Christian family and was ‘born again’ as a teenager to escape his homosexuality. He subsequently went through exorcisms and ex-gay programs, which used re-programming and aversive techniques to help him ‘overcome his unwelcome same-sex attraction’. He married within the fundamentalist church, but is now divorced. He no longer attends church or calls himself a Christian. (Plotline 2b)

Michael is a 28 year old male who exited CF in 2006. He grew up in a strongly evangelical Christian family, was ‘born again’, and maintained a strong involvement through adolescence. He left gradually through a process he described as cognitive dissonance and extended outside reading. He no longer attends church or calls himself a Christian. (Plotline 3)

Ollie is a 61 year old female who exited CF in the early 1990s. Ollie went to the local Protestant church with her family and became a Christian by ‘osmosis’, accepting it as truth. As an adult, she kept going to her local church for many years and realised she liked the tradition, but didn’t like the message—particularly the condemnation of her gay sexuality. She still attends church and calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 1)

Rachel is a 30 year old female who exited CF in 2004. She was converted through her attendance at the local church youth group, not her family, and describes it as ‘peer-driven’. While she considered her Christian identity was important, she also described being ‘naughty and rebellious’ at the same time, and attracted to people with different ways of being in the world. She no longer attends church or calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 2b)

Rob is a 45 year old male who exited CF in 2007. He grew up in a strongly evangelical family and church environment, and described a ‘born again’ experience at the age of 13 years. He considered going to church and being a part of the group as the basis of his life. He deconverted through what he called cognitive dissonance. He no longer attends church or calls himself a Christian. (Plotline 3)

Ruth is a 30 year old female who exited in 2004. She was brought up in what she considered to be a fundamentalist Christian family and that she ‘didn’t know any different and thought of it as normal’. She has recently come out as a gay woman to friends, but not to her parents. She still attends church and calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 2a)

Sadie is a 62 year old female who exited in 2004. She was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family, where there was a literal acceptance of what the Bible says about oneself in the world. She considered her early Christian identity to be shaped by a sense of unworthiness and fear, experiencing repetitive teaching about the need to be saved. She had a long involvement of leadership within evangelical churches. She no longer attends church, but calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 1)

290 Sue is a 52 year old female who exited CF in 1999. She was brought up Catholic, and became an evangelical Christian as a result of a female friendship. She considers that that the church offered her not only the security of a caring God, but a caring family as well. Her turning point in deconverting was the death of a gay Christian friend, and her own eventual coming out as a gay woman. She no longer attends church or calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 2b)

Tom is a 78 year old male who exited in 2004. He did not grow up in a Christian family, but became a Christian in a school scripture class at High School. In terms of identity, the church offered him a family, a sense of belonging, a model of a way of being, and a long successful career. He has experienced considerable rejection by his former church community. He no longer attends church, but calls himself a Christian. (Plotline 1)

Wendy is a 30 year old female who exited CF in 2006. She did not grow up in a Christian family but was converted as teenager while attending church youth group. Her significant Christian experience was a long period of Christian counselling with the youth leader about her non-Christian boyfriend. She no longer attends church or calls herself a Christian. (Plotline 2b)

291 Appendix G

Transcription Conventions

In relation to transcription conventions, I have tried to transcribe the interviews with the general punctuation of written language, similar to how a play might be written. This is to render the participants’ words as accessible to the reader as possible, as large portions of dialogue are at times quoted. I have also corrected some glaring grammatical errors. In this matter, I have followed more a ‘Bakhtinian style of transcription’, and less of a discourse or structural analysis style (see for example Knoeller, 2004: 148-171). Name: indicates speaker’s turns, labelled by pseudonym, excepting the interviewer Quotation marks within speaker’s narrative: indicates ‘voicing’, or speakers representing explicitly or implicitly words attributed (or attributable) to others, their own thoughts, or from a written text (most commonly the Bible) Underscoring: emphatic stress of the speaker signalled by intonation, unless otherwise noted () curved brackets words indicate descriptions of tone, non-verbal expression, or pausing, laughing etc [] square brackets indicates the researcher’s explanations of content and/or context to the reader … three full-stops, or ellipsis, indicates that portions of talk from the transcript have been deleted, particularly where a lot of detail was provided by the speaker. The meaning has not been altered. — an em dash denotes a speaker’s natural breaks in speech, as well as overlapping speech between participant and interviewer.

KNOELLER, C. P. (2004) Narratives of rethinking: the inner dialogue of classroom discourse and student writing. In: BALL, A. F. & FREEDMAN, S. W. (eds.) Bakhtinian perspectives on language, literacy, and learning. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 148–171.

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