David Brannan PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

43
In the 1997 book, Being There: Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools, 98 a
work whose subject is the relationship between theology and culture within theological
institutions, the authors make several observations, which are directly applicable to the work at
hand. First, the authors observe that there is more to the culture of each of the case study
institutions than the theology itself. They recognize that the theology does play an important role
in forming the internal social group at each school, but that the theology alone is not the
determining factor. Rather, that the theology acts in concert with the individuals who make up
the student bodies being taught the theology and each builds on the other. At one point the
theology affecting the social groups’ structure and outcomes while in the next instance the social
manifestations are impacting the theology. 99 A second point is that “being there” is the key to
understanding any of these relationships, which develop between theology and social group. 100
Observation from a distance makes these connections impossible to observe or understand; two
points which are directly applicable to the study at hand and will be returned to in some depth in
Chapter Three, Analytical Frameworks.
This observation of an obvious deficiency in the literature is not to suggest that there has
been no significant work upon which this thesis builds, since clearly it has benefited from the
plethora of writings on rightwing ‘terrorism’ in general and the broad religious movement, which
is identified in general as “the Identity movement.” Yet the current literature has largely failed to
approach the various Identity groups from a theological or social perspective in part because of
98 Jackson W. Carroll, Barbara G. Wheeler, Daniel O. Aleshire and Penny Long Marler, Being There:
Culture and Formation in Two Theological Schools (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1997).
99 Ibid, pp. 31-60.
100 Ibid, pp. 203-221.