Groupthink, and the church
Reading
a couple of books on communication recently, I have been struck by the
powerful way in which group identity shapes the ideas we hold - above
even self-interest, or reason, or idealism. You can convince someone to
believe or do something if you convince them that 'this is what people
like me think/do'. I wonder about this in church circles, since on the
one hand I think that we are meant to
think in groups - that's who we are made to be. That doesn't make it
wrong. But on the other, in a group that claims to be open to
self-criticism, and aware of the human tendency to perpetuate sinful
patterns of thought and living, this 'ideas = identity' thing has a
tendency to shut down important debate. Not thinking XYZ means you are
not 'one of us', since thinking XYZ is what 'we' think.
2 comments:
Does the book say anything about the different contexts of groupthink? For example, does it occur more powerfully in majority groups or minority groups? Appyling this to our Anglican context, which would be more powerful - groupthink among evangelicals in Sydney (90%+ evangelical) or Melbourne (around 30% evangelical)?
You would initially think it's more powerful among majorities, but sometimes minority groups make particular issues definitional whereas majorities are a bit more flexible.
What are the important debates that may have been "shut down" by the Sydney Anglican variety of groupthink?
I imagine the "XYZ" in a SydAng higher clerical context would include permanent female subordination, along with the peculiar subordinationist view of the Trinity that is designed to underpin it - the complete complementarianarian theological package!
I'd have thought such tricksy Trinity-tweaking moves beyond the merely "distinctive" and into the sectoid. But what would I know? When it comes to fortifying 1 Timothy 2:11-15 - that theological summa - perhaps the very nature of God submits to SydAng theologues!
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