The group-think challenge is going to be a critical issue for all Christian ministries to consider--it's not just college students who are susceptible to it, an entire German nation got caught up in it under Hitler. Post-modern culture is increasingly a communal culture in reaction to the strong emphasis on the individualism that marked modernity. As post-modernity inevitably over-reacts to modernity and swings wildly into the emphasis on community, group-think susceptibility will most likely increase as well.
Allow me to steal an illustration from my boss's boss. In the 1950's the number one television show was The Fugitive--one man up against the world trying to prove his innocence. In the late 1990's the number one t.v. shows were Friends and Seinfeld. Both of these shows were essentially about nothing. In fact Jerry Seinfeld towards the end of the series got so fed up with the meaningless-ness of the characters lives that he said, "these people ought to be put in jail." Which, of course, is what he did to them in the final episode.
Both Friends and Seinfeld were about a community of people. We were invited to vicariously share life with them once a week (and now endlessly in syndication). This was (and still is) attractive to our freshly post-modern world.
To make a Christian sub-culture parallel. The 1950's image of a growing college student Christian and their walk with Christ was a person over their open Bible in solitary 'quiet time.' The 2006 image of a growing college student Christian is at a Passion or One Day conference--essentially Christian Woodstocks.
This is not a bad thing, but it means that we'll have to grow in pressing people to really grapple with their faith in deeper and more personal ways. The post-modern movement is a healthy correction to the over-emphasis of the autonomy of the individual, but like all periods (modernism especially included), it has it's dangers as well.
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I think you might also want to think about how Fowler's Stages of Faith informes the group-think phenomena. In particular, there is a way to understand Faith development in which group-think is actually a right & proper stage of life/faith development.
Kind of like there are right and proper stages of development for your kiddies. At some point, you were constantly interpreting Davis' babbles to non-family members: "Oh, that's Davis' way of saying, 'Hi!'" or, "Oh, that's Davis saying, 'I love you!'" or, "That's Davis saying, 'Excuse me while I spit up on your shirt.'"
Now, it wouldn't be a good thing for you to keep interpreting him when he's 23 years old. He needs to develop his own comunication skills! But we wouldn't say to a 2 year old, "He's a terrible communicator!" No, we'd say, "For a 2 year old, he's a fine communicator."
I think there's a way to talk about college students (or anyone, for that matter) with a kind of, "for this place in their growth in Christ . . ." qualifier. This way we can avoid comparing an 80 year old's faith with a 13 year old's faith.
It also creates some grace-filled space for people to "be where they are," if you will, and not communicate to folks that they're spiritually deficient if they haven't gotten to your level of devotion/theological acuity.
The inimitable Joe Moore is the resident expert here, btw.
Good points, Macon. I touched on the age/stage appropriateness stuff yesterday, but it deserves better and more treatment. Joe B. Moore went through that with our staff team this fall.
In Fowler's model, he readily concedes that some people never 'move past' certain stages. So some people will continue to think/talk/live out their faith at 36 as they did at age 6. Is that nature or nurture? It seems that it's probably a confluence of both. Does God love the 36 year old who still has the faith accuity of a 6 year old? Yes. Is he content with that, I think probably not.
The tension I always have in working with students is when to push and when to allow them to just be where they are. This is probably true of most 'religious professionals.'
elizabeth: thanks for the thoughts! Alex keeps letting me comment here, regardless of whether I have any idea what he's talking about, so no worries on whether you've read Fowler or not.
AK: I'm totally hearing you, and can comiserate with the, "do I push now? do I not? Crap! What do I do?"
I imagine that you feel the same tension with Davis on at least a weekly basis. I know that Kells & I get into situations with Aidan and think things like, "Hmmmm, do we start disciplining now? How 'bout now? Are we too early? Too late?" This seems to me to be analogous to our spiritual "push" thinking.
A different part of the group-think good/bad discussion is one, I think, of epistemology & belief: does it matter how you came to hold the content of your belief?
One of my philosophy professors was fond of saying, "Knowledge is justified true belief." According to that equation, you don't know anything if you aren't justified in believing it, even if the belief is correct. So, if I believe "water is wet" because the Easter Bunny told me so, then I do not know that water is wet.
While I think that Knowledge as Justified True Belief can be a handy way of thinking about knowledge, I think this is a problematic way to think about faith.
The problem revolves around the issue: who decides what "justified" is? And this, imho, seems to be at the core of the Group-Think critique.
In my experience, the critique is Sophomoric. I mean this both ways, as it seemed to me that Sophomores were always making it (though, sadly, I've found it in post-Sophomores, like Professors, as well): [spoken with disdain] "I can't believe Johhny still thinks that! He only thinks it because all his friends do. I, however, come to my own conclusions about X."
The problem is that, regardless of how he came to his conclusion about X, Johnny may be exactly correct about X. And from what I can see, it doesn't seem like God is overly concerned about the vehicle of the message. Rather, he's concerned about what Johnny thinks about him. In fact, it seems to me that God uses whatever vehicle is most likely to be helpful to us hearing him. So when it comes to Sophomores, I think that part of helping them out of their wise-foolishness is helping them to understand this.
Culturally, though, I think that we (it's my culture, too) have this Sophomoric reaction to any arrival-at-belief-channel that's different from our preferred method.
To attempt for more clarity, I would say that Group-Think is a Channel-To-Belief. Listening to your Parents is also a Channel-To-Belief. Doing personal, private research is also a Channel-To-Belief. Hearing voices in your head is also a Channel-To-Belief. As Believers in the Lord Jesus, we evaluate the ends of all of those Channels for one thing: the declaration of Jesus as Lord. If that's not at the end of the Channel, then we generally critique what's being entered into the Channel, not the Channel itself.
Regarding your critique, AK, of Group-Think: You say your student needs more than Group-Think, he needs a Real Savior. I say, "Amen!"
And I would add that this is not a critique of Group-Think alone. It's a critique of any result of a Channel that does not end with: Jesus is Lord.
The problem with the German nation wasn't the Channel-To-Belief, it was the inputs into that channel. In fact, there were other groups of people, the Confessing Church, who disputed the German Fascist Zeitgeist. I would make the case the there were probably folks in the Confessing Church who were influenced by Confessing Church Group-Think. Perhaps they were "swept up" in the group by the sheer group momentum of opposing Germany Fascism. But they were right about their belief, even though they got it from the Group.
Sorry for the uber-long comment!
ladies and gentlemen, the one and only, macon stokes.
Willis: I don't think that a Channel-To-Belief is completely value-neutral in theory. I'm going to side with Marshall McLuhan here and say that the Channel definitely influences the Belief Content. But I would quickly say that each Channel influences the Content differently and equally. There is no Objective Channel-To-Belief this side of Heaven. Often the argument for the Thinking-On-One's-Own" Channel is that said channel is better (read: more objective) than the Group-Think Channel. I think we can all agree that this is definitely not the case. Both Channel's have their drawbacks & benefits.
So, practically & pastorally speaking, I would say that there is no sense in trying to get someone to switch channels for the sake of getting a more "pure" one.
The best thing, of course, is to have multiple channels informing your belief. I would say that's why God gave us so may ways to believe.
Great thoughts, guys! From a slightly different angle, Macon, I think one issue for those of us who have some power/ability to 'shape' channels of belief is to think critically about how we are exercising that ability.
Jacque Ellul, the imminent French Christian philosopher, is vehement that we must have very clear ends in mind before we start talking about means...and that the means we then devise must not take on a life in and of themselves except that they serve the ends. He argues that the 'technological society' is always obsessed with more and more technology without stopping to consider the ramifications of that technology. Ergo, we can do things faster and have increased capacities, but to what end? 'Faster' is not an end but a means.
So to frame it from the leaders perspective, we must be considerate about what kind of culture we're shaping--do our means 'comport' (to use one of Gary Deddo's favorite words) with the ends.
An example: showing a pornographic movie to demonstrate the dangers and consequeneces of unhealthy sexual practices is not a faithful means towards the ends desired.
So the question I have in that is do we unknowingly create channels of belief that facilitate greater group-think? Or to put it another way, are there more faithful means to the very great ends of students believing and living under the good news that "Jesus is Lord?"
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