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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012 wife has still not converted, but at least she does not accuse him of deceiving her. 6.2 Impact of marriage on converts’ social identity Here my sample identity issue is of “dual belonging” and how this is affected by a convert’s marriage choice. 6.2.1 Relevant sociological and missiological theory Recall that “social identity” concerns the question ‘who am I in relation to my group or groups’ Berger and Luckmann affirm the importance for converts of joining a new social group of those who share their new faith. 5 Socially, this means an intense concentration of all significant interaction within the group that embodies the plausibility structure… The plausibility structure must become the individual’s world, displacing all other worlds… This requires segregation of the individual from the “inhabitants” of other worlds, especially his “cohabitants” in the world he has left behind. Ideally this will be physical segregation. 92 What these authors advocate corresponds to the ‘extraction’ model of evangelism, whereby in order to strengthen a convert’s core identity in the new faith, he or she is entirely transplanted from the old social identity into a new one. By contrast, some advocates of “Insider Movements” prefer for new believers to remain entirely within their old social identities which, they believe, will gradually be transformed into communities of Jesus-followers. 93 Both these models, when presented in their most extreme form, 94 posit a “single social identity” for converts. One urges them to join exclusively the new social identity of ekklesia, the other tells them to 92 Berger & Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 144-146 93 See for example Rebecca Lewis, ‘Insider Movements: Honoring God-given Identity & Community’, International Journal of Frontier Missiology, 26:1, Spring 2009, 16-19 94 I realise that not all proponents of “insider movements” would support the idea of Jesus-followers being indistinguishable from the Muslim community, nor would all opponents advocate total extraction from the community; these are but the two extremes and I do not wish to stereotype the many whose position lies between them. St Francis Magazine is a publication of Interserve and Arab Vision 554
St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012 remain in the old social identity of ummah. 95 These two options, Christ’s community vs. the Muslim community, are then pitched against each other in stark dichotomy. Theologically it is helpful to contrast ekklesia and ummah, as Chris Flint has done in a carefully-researched masters’ dissertation. 96 Yet this is not and cannot be the whole story. In real life, including real life in the New Testament era, nearly all converts have to relate to the “world” as well as to the “church”. Only cults completely sequester their converts from wider society, but this is not the picture we find in Acts and the Epistles. Therefore even in terms of biblical theology, let alone sociology, it is reductionist to insist that believers must opt for only one social identity. For “witness” is the church’s witness in the world. Without the community of believers there can be no witness. But without believers’ involvement in the world there can be no witness either. Witnessing Christians, and especially first generation witnessing Christians, inevitably have a dual social identity. They did in the early church and they do today. Thus converts who continue to relate to their Muslim friends and family are not in principle different from converts who continue to relate to their Hindu, atheist or postmodern friends and family. However, the extent to which dual belonging proves straightforward or problematic depends on a number of factors, including two in particular. The first is the degree to which either social group tolerates an individual belonging to the other group at the same time, and this varies a good deal from place to place in the Muslim world. The second factor is the extent to which the two social identities make conflicting claims on a person’s loyalty at the core worldview level; here again membership of the ummah demands more in some contexts than it does in others. 95 meaning broadly, “local and global church” and “worldwide Muslim community” respectively. 96 Chris Flint, ‘A Comparison of a Christian View of Ekklesia and a Muslim View of the Mosque as part of the Ummah and an Analysis of the Missiological Implications of these Views’, Saint Francis Magazine, June 2012 St Francis Magazine is a publication of Interserve and Arab Vision 555
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