Identity: The ongoing integration of our heritage and our allegiance

Defining categories and communities

This node is defined through categories including geographic, linguistic, ethnic or familial descriptors – for example, land, language, tribe and nation (Gen. 10:5, 20, 31; ESV). ³ Shin (2017: 13) suggests that ‘[e]thnicity refers to common ancestry, tribe, nationality, and background, often with shared customs, language, culture, values, traditions, and history’. Nationality and ethnicity may be both significant and different (e.g. Australian Chinese or Indian Punjabi) and also religious and/or sectarian affiliation (e.g. Lebanese Maronite (Christian) or Syrian Shi’ite (Muslim)).

These categories range from immediate family through to sociocultural global alignments or imagined communities. ⁴ Tribe or family links to immediate community; larger groupings, such as nation and religion, are imagined communities. Land has both physical and imagined dimensions. The latter is true especially for diaspora, where people may define their belonging by a place they have physically never been to, such as a village in Palestine or the Punjab where their family of origin has lived for many generations. Language includes cultural dimensions.

Expanding and converging communities

Identity is defined at the boundaries, in expanding circles of belonging and opposition. A person may define themselves as an Australian, not a New Zealander; as an Indigenous Australian as opposed to an Anglo- or ABC-Australian; ⁵ or from a particular indigenous grouping such as the Wurundjeri or Noongar. These extending or contracting circles of identification and difference, of allegiance or distinction, find an echo in the Bedouin proverb: ‘I against my brother, I and my brother against my cousin, I and my brother and my cousin against the world’.

Some theories of identity suggest three levels of belonging: individual, group and global. ⁶ However, the individual does not live or function independently of relationships, and the three ‘levels’ are in fact not separable, but closely interconnected and mutually influencing (Dale, 2018). ⁷ Iyadurai (2006: Kindle 12859) describes ‘the self’ as ‘plural’: ‘it is relational, and one changes according to the situation or the external realities’.

Circles of belonging are not always exclusive but can converge. Here, the node of origin functions as a point of intersection, not just as the nucleus or centre. For example, an individual may include Irish, German and indigenous as their heritage. Paul in New Testament times is an example of someone who was bicultural and bilingual – a Jew reared in Tarsus as a Roman citizen, who had also studied under leading Jewish scholars in Jerusalem and could speak Aramaic and Greek. ⁸ He was able to take up different parts of his identity and move within them, and was thus ideally suited to take the gospel to so many different parts of the Roman Empire of the time.

For those who are formed through multiple different communities intersecting in their node of origin, it can be more work to incorporate the different tributaries of identity as they grow up. This is so particularly for minority populations existing where the dominant cultural identity is presented in terms of another ethnicity or religion. Potentially, it can offer them more choice of how to act in any given situation. If we can imagine life as an enacted drama, they have a choice of scripts on which to draw to act a given part. Barnett (2013b: 26–27) suggests that ‘[e]very believer has internalized a unique combination of narratives from multiple cultural sources. Each of these narratives carries its own scripts, roles, and belongings which in turn can appear as a voice of identity within the dialogical self’. He pictures the self as a stage ‘where the subjectivities of group belongings and personal roles can be indwelt imaginatively and thus given “voices”’. Choosing the script to enact ‘can be understood then as a dialogue within the self between many identifications, roles and belongings’. ⁹

Barnett (2013a:21) offers the example of an Arab believer who must choose how to live his role as a ‘father’ from how it is defined by the Christian West, his tribal Arab context and his Muslim community as part of ‘numerous external cultural systems – each one with its own definition of father’. My daughter, having grown up in the Middle East, understood the difference between western and Arab hospitality, but when she moved into an Australian indigenous hospitality house, she found that she had to learn again quite a different way of offering hospitality. The influence of particular communities is not immutable but will differ over time and circumstances. Maalouf (2000: 22) suggests that, of the different parts of our identity, that which is most prominent at any time is often the part which is most under attack.

Embodied identity: formed and formative

The node of origin frames our first identity in a way that is embodied and not just an internal mental construct. From our community of origin, we learn how to move, how to walk and how to talk; the most basic life actions are culturally learned so that our identity is expressed in our bodies. The French sociologist Marcel Mauss (1973) was the first to describe how ways of walking, marching and digging, and other movements, are culturally formed through both imitation and education. This is why, in an airport or at a tourist site, we can often identify people as being from another community or nationality, even before we have heard them speak, through how they dress or sit or walk, reflecting the social values that have shaped them.

These basic ways of using our bodies as we do life are also formative of our identities. Smith (2013: 92–95) suggests that ‘[r]itual is the way we (learn to) believe with our bodies . . . So a social order or a social body recruits me by conscripting my body through the most mundane means: through bodily postures, repeated words, ritualised cadences’. We can describe these ways of inhabiting particular historical and cultural contexts of place and time as ‘performative practices’, where ‘practices’ refers to their habitual and reiterative nature and ‘performative’ suggests both their enacted and formative character (Dale, 2016: 112). Changing from one social group to another, with new group values, involves relearning how to move within the embodied expression of those values in everyday actions, ways of walking or eating or talking. In both an Australian indigenous community and the Middle East, I learned to walk more slowly. For the Middle East, I learned to move in a way that was more defensive, understating my presence as a woman on the street, along with different patterns of eating and a different language and intonation in speaking.

Communal rituals are significant in forming identity as we grow up in a community or as we become part of another community. Rites of passage mark transition across the life cycle from one stage of life to another. Examples include baptism, graduation, marriage, and rituals around life and death, as people transition from one stage of life to another. Rites of passage are effective in forming people with the traits that are valued in their community, whether it be courage, cooperation, independence or community loyalty. ¹⁰ Rites of intensification are seasonal, tied to the calendar. Examples include weekly worship times, annual sporting finals, and religious festivals such as Christmas, Easter and Ramadan. Rites of intensification serve to deepen a sense of community and affirm communal values. ¹¹ Both rites of passage and rites of intensification are important dimensions of someone entering and becoming part of a new community.

Our desires are formative

As ‘embodied agents of desire or love’ (Smith, 2009: 47), we are further formed (or de-formed) by what we love. Our wants and needs shape how we respond to the world around us each day. It is the object of our love, our desire, that shapes what we seek to become, and thus makes or re-forms us as people; alternatively, it may de-form us through wrongly focused desires or loves. ¹² This node forms us teleologically, calling us from our origins to what we desire to be, to where we want to arrive.

Communities fashioned by history and culture

The formation of desire is communal. Allegiance is an expression of desire – desire finds its form in the community to which I give allegiance. The community informs me what ways of being and what practices are desirable. The community of allegiance determines what are seen as the ideal ways of being and behaving, which qualities and characteristics are esteemed.

As in the community of origin, so in that of desire: the community-determined ideals are not neutral but fashioned by the interaction of history, geography and culture. Hafez (2011: 3) notes that ‘[d]esire both creates and, in turn, is created by cultural and social experiences, by historical traditions, by state agendas, and by individual negotiations’. Joseph (2005: 80) describes the Arab community of Camp Trad in Beirut, where desires are ‘configured within notions of relational selfhood [and are] learned, taught, and practiced in the context of intimate patriarchal familial and communal relationships’. In an alternative community, Mahmood comments that the agency of Muslim women in the piety movement

is a product of the historically contingent discursive traditions in which they are located. The women are summoned to recognize themselves in terms of the virtues and codes of these traditions, and they come to measure themselves against the ideals furbished by these traditions. (Mahmood, 2005: 32)

This means that we need to ask about any given community, how the ideal is formed and, in particular, how culture and history have shaped the interpretation of ideals and of scriptural principles. Rosner (2017: 46) cites an American Indian who became a Christian being told by his pastor, on the basis of Galatians 3:28, to forget ‘about being Indian anymore – just be like us’. The pastor was mistakenly identifying becoming a Christian with taking on white culture as ‘Christian culture’. ¹³

Models define values

The ways of being and behaving that define a community are exemplified in the models that embody the values of that community and shape who we want to become. A particular person as a leader or exemplar for the group becomes the mimetic ideal for members of the group. In this way, the node of desire is shaped by available models. It is hard to imagine that I can be what I cannot see. Girard (1989) suggests that all our desires are prompted by imitating another ‘model’. These models find realization in the leaders of local groups. The pastor of a popular church in Melbourne has planted other churches, and his influence can be seen in the leaders of the daughter churches – the intonation and gestures in preaching, and even hairstyle. The leader of a women’s programme in a Middle Eastern mosque provided a model of a woman teacher and leader, validating her role through conservative dress and behaviour, and her example was taken up by many of her students. There is also the global/cosmic ideal model that animates a community. For the Muslim ummah, Muhammad embodies the ideal; the worldwide Christian community looks to Christ as its focus for imitation (Dale, 2016: 87–97).

Coalescence with dissonance

It is in the interaction between the two nodes that the formation of identity takes place. The process of identity formation is the ongoing integration of the two nodes – of origin and desire, of heritage and allegiance. When the telos which gives shape to the node of desire is located in our community of origin, there is little discord. For those who do not leave their community of origin, the node of origin remains closely aligned with the node of desire: there is little or no conflict between where they have come from and what they want to become. The values and models remain closely aligned. However, when there is a shift from the community of origin to a new or different community of allegiance, there is usually some dissonance or conflict between the embodied ideal of the community of origin and the community of allegiance. I come from a farming background where those in the academic world are often viewed as ‘couch potatoes’ or ‘lounge lizards’, with few practical skills. Conversely, many of my academic colleagues view farmers as people with a low intelligence quotient.

For people who seek to move into a different community, some try to cut themselves off from the community of origin and not attempt the difficult task of integration. Tragically, many end up in a state of anomie, having lost their moorings. We can picture a flower that is picked and stuck in a new pot of soil. No longer attached to its roots, it has nothing to help it survive while it finds its place, to be able to flourish in the new soil and setting. For others, particularly those who manage to retain some contact both with their community of origin and the community of allegiance, the process of integration may happen over time. Kang-San Tan, reflecting on his Buddhist origins, suggests that ‘one stage of wholesome growth in Christian discipleship requires a return, retrieval and reintegration of those appropriate elements from one’s socioreligious past’ (quoted in Higgins, 2006: Kindle 12753). Because identity formation is comunal, if there are others making the same transition, the work of integration is greatly facilitated.

Individual creed or corporate identity

We often view religious systems and communities of origin through the lens of western Christianity, where religions are understood as statements of individual credal allegiance. However, in many places in the world, ‘religious’ alliance is more about corporate identity. For example, the word ‘Hindu’ originally meant someone from India, rather than signifying narrow religious allegiance to Hinduism. Williams describes a believer with a Buddhist background:

For my friend, being a Buddhist is a fundamental part of his identity. In his view, ‘Buddhist’ is a category that helps him define his race, his culture, ethnicity, nuclear family, extended family, land, home, traditions, his feasts and celebrations, his sense of belonging. It also described, in the past, his religion. He knows that ‘Buddhist’ no longer describes his religion, but he is reluctant to let go of the label because it explains so many other parts of him. If he abandons ‘Buddhist’ as a way of identifying himself, he thinks he will lose connection to the things that have made him who he is. (Williams, 2019)

Richard (2015) questions the use of ‘religion’ as a self-evident construct. Western missiological thinking can view religion as a matter of individual choice or doctrinal belief rather than socio-ethnic identity, as it is for many people of Buddhist or Hindu backgrounds. There has been much debate among scholars of Islam about the meanings of ‘Muslim’ and ‘Islamic’. It seems to have settled on a consensus that ‘Muslim’ refers more to ethnic identity, whereas ‘Islamic’ denotes religious allegiance. However, it is not clear whether the distinction is widely taken up by people across the Muslim world, or whether the distinction is made within other groups such as Buddhists and Hindus. The term ‘Hindu follower of Christ’ speaks of the nodes of both origin and allegiance. That which demands allegiance to something other than Christ is displaced, but the individual is still from the node of origin that names them ‘Hindu’ (or ‘Muslim’ or ‘Buddhist’).

The nodes of both the womb and the heart are central to all identity formation. If we are accompanying someone on a journey of transition across two different communities, we need to pay attention to the community formation of both the womb and the heart, and the process of how they may integrate. This is true for people who are seeking to move between geographic or national communities, or communities of faith or other allegiance. In the next section, I want to discuss more particularly people who are moving from another faith community to the community of allegiance to Jesus Messiah.

Origins repurposed

Our node of origin is not replaced or erased. Rather, it is redefined and repurposed. In giving allegiance to Christ, we honour our origins. We are known by God in the womb, called according to His purposes from before the beginning of time (Ps. 139). All that I am is called into the service of Christ. ¹⁴

Our culture and ethnicity are still part of God’s call to us for a great purpose; they are not rejected but rather repurposed to bless all the nations (Gen. 12:1–3; Acts 3:24–25). Our culture and ethnicity are an enabling, not constraining, gift from God, to be taken and used in service of His call to us. Abraham is not called to become a Canaanite, but to bring his extended family into answering God’s call to bless the nations. Jeremiah is called by God from among his particular family, tribe and land, to call his own people back to God in a message that goes against simple tribal allegiance and patriotism. Jesus does not ask the Samaritan woman to become a Jew, but to return to her village and tell them about Jesus (Jer. 1:4–5; John 4). In Philippians 2:1–11, Jesus does not give up his identity but rather gives up the privilege and status that are attached to it. We see this enacted in John 13:3–5 (NRSV), where Jesus,

knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around him. Then he poured water into a basin [and began to do the duty of a slave].

Radford quotes a Kyrgyz believer:

God’s word teaches that God is the God of all peoples. I will quote from the Bible. I don’t remember the place where it was written but it says, ‘If you were a slave, if you were a Greek, if you were a Hebrew, stay what you are’ [1 Cor. 7:17–24]. So as long as I was created as a Kyrgyz, I should stay as a Kyrgyz. (Radford, 2013: 8)

Desires reshaped

Giving allegiance to Christ reshapes our desire(s), and this reshaping guides our choices – what we are becoming. ¹⁵ We gain new models. Jesus becomes the pre-eminent model. We also look for local models. This is why the outside cross-cultural worker is rarely the impetus for a mass movement of allegiance to Jesus: they remain an outsider, not an inside model. But the cross-cultural worker may be part of discipling a local person, who is then able to both witness and model to others from their community what it means for someone of that community of origin to follow Jesus, and an inside model becomes powerfully reproducible. Believers of other religious backgrounds are uniquely equipped to represent the gospel to the community from which they have come.

Allegiance to Christ re-forms our communal loyalties. Loyalty to Jesus is central, beyond allegiance to family, tribe or nation. Nationalism is one of the most highly held values; treason is a crime eliciting capital punishment in most contexts. ANZAC Day in Australia, commemorating those who served their country in war, elicits some of the most religious language of any day in the year. As we follow Jesus, we are still citizens of our country, but cannot give that citizenship our highest allegiance, beyond that of the kingdom of heaven. We cannot subscribe to the cult of emperor divinity or burn incense on the altar to the emperor. We are ineradicably bound in prayer and love to others who confess Christ around the world, regardless of politics or nationality.

Expanding circles of inclusion

The Bible, in particular Jesus’s teaching, suggests unlikely models not for cultural behaviour, but for how we are to live as disciples of Jesus. In Jesus’s teaching, the hated outsider, the foreigner, or sometimes even females or children become the model for a life lived in response to God’s love. To his Jewish hearers, he offers as models for ideal disciples Gentile examples such as the widow at Zarephath in Sidon and Naaman the Syrian leper, the good Samaritan, the people of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba, and also a tax collector, little children and a poor widow (Luke 4:26–27, 10:25–37, 11:31–32, 18:1–8, 9–14, 17, 21:1–4). ¹⁶

We are all defined by those who are insiders or outsiders to us, in expanding circles of loyalty or difference. But in Jesus’s teaching about the Good Samaritan, the hated outsider is the example of how to fulfil the law of loving our neighbour, our near insider. Whether Jew or Palestinian, Turk or Kurd, Anglo or indigenous, we find a new identity and new relationship with one another in Jesus. We are invited into a shared journey of repentance and reconciliation – one that does not ignore our histories but is not confined by them. With Jesus, our identity as Christians is now radically redefined in expanding circles not of opposition, but rather of inclusion, love and radical service.

Narrative

The first task is narrative – that of retelling our origins in the service of our new allegiance to Christ. Stahl (2010: 164) comments that ‘[o]ur stories identify us to ourselves and to others’. Bible storytelling is the tool that helps us here. As we learn and tell the stories of God’s people in the Bible, through them we are able to see how our own story (including the story of our community of origin) is brought into and made part of God’s big story. Stories of rebellion and obedience among God’s people help us see how our own stumbling path of discipleship can become part of God’s work among His people. The obedience of Abraham and of outsiders like Rahab and Ruth gives models of incorporation into new communities, which become histories of obedience and faithfulness over generations. We not only have a past, but we are also part of a future that goes beyond us.

The discipler’s task is to grow new believers in deeply knowing and retelling the stories of the Bible showing God’s redemptive work, alongside telling their own stories of God’s work in their life. Rather than constructing a testimony oppositionally, emphasizing the disjuncture between then and now, it can be integrational, showing how God has been working from the beginning of someone’s experience and equipping them for the future. ‘Tarek’ became a believer as a student in the West and then returned to his own country. He is using both the theological studies that he went on to complete in the West and his inside knowledge of culture in the complex work of living near to and honouring his family of origin and seeking to build the first fellowship of faith in the community from which he came. The continuing narrative of an individual life becomes part of the one metanarrative of God’s work throughout time.

Helping people explore their own heritage can be an important contribution (which is why history is becoming a more urgent branch of missiology). A discovery of Christian heritage in a community is a powerful rejoinder to those who insist that allegiance to Christ must necessarily entail a betrayal of one’s node of origin, one’s community. Alexander (2019) writes of being asked twice to lecture on local Church history to congregations consisting mostly of Christians of Muslim background on two different continents. Alexander suggests that it was to enable these believers to give their identity a grounding in their own local history (whether geographic or ethnic). Discoveries such as the Nestorian stele now in Xi’an, China, or ruins of early monasteries on the Arabian Peninsula can demonstrate that allegiance to Jesus is not a recent foreign or western import, but has been historically part of the local community and story.

Relationships

The second task is relational. Our reconciliation with God is primarily about a restored relationship with God. This becomes expressed also through growing inclusion in the Body of Christ.

A shift of communities can lead to rejection. That rejection may come from the person who has shifted or, more often, from the community of origin. Hibbert comments that:

Most Turks, for example, assert that ‘To be a Turk is to be a Muslim’ and Turks in Bulgaria assume Bulgarians are all Christians. . . . When a Turk in Bulgaria becomes a follower of Jesus, therefore they are often seen by fellow Turks as having rejected their Turkish-ness and become Bulgarian. (Hibbert, 2015: 65)

These attitudes can be strengthened by outsiders who too closely identify communal adherence with credal belief. It is not unusual for believers of other religious backgrounds to face being thrown out of home, or even the threat of death, because they are seen as having betrayed their community.

It may sometimes be necessary to step away from the community of origin for a time in order to achieve reintegration. Disjuncture, conflict and tension may be a necessary part of the journey to resolution. However, this is different from a long-term individual rejection of the community that has birthed them – to do so is to reject their birth, the context into which God called them into being. ‘Zaynab’ was beaten and then thrown penniless out of her home for her faith. She remained in her city, continuing to honour and care for the members of her family, and so helping to disarm their opposition while planting church fellowships and working to help the condition of vulnerable women in her community.

The discipler who walks alongside believers of other religious backgrounds needs to find ways to help them not let go of their node of origin, but rather honour the ‘womb’ that birthed them, allowing dual belonging. This can be aided by the discipler developing relationships of honour and trust within the believer’s community of origin. In the meantime, the discipler can act as a patron or broker for the new believer in networks within the wider community of allegiance. This can mean making introductions, brokering trust (Acts 9:26–28) and also practical life dimensions, such as providing accommodation if they are thrown out by their families or helping them to find a job, get a car or negotiate a marriage partner.

Practice

The third task of discipleship involves practice – ways of being and doing. Practice includes re-formed behaviour, expressing service and sacrificial love. This includes love, service of and witness to others – both the community of origin (even in the face of family rejection) and the community of allegiance. Models offer practical demonstration in their own lives of patterns of prayer, knowledge, memorization of and obedience to the Word, and loving, sacrificial service of Christ’s community. The closer the discipler is to the believer’s community of origin, the more effectively they can model culturally how these patterns can be lived out, or they can help the believer find other useful models, enabling cross-communal or international connections.

Lingenfelter and Mayers (2003: 24) talk of us becoming 150% people. We remain 75% people of the tradition from which we have come, not denying our origins, but we take on more, learn and adapt to follow another culture, becoming effectively bicultural. Lingenfelter and Mayers are drawing on a description by McFee (1968: 1100) of Blackfoot Indians who have acculturated to both Indian and white cultures. McFee names this group ‘Interpreters: because they are able to talk to and understand both sides, this is a role they frequently fulfil with regard to the two societies.’

Shin (2017) describes the journey that we all need to take – of appreciating both what is precious and also what is broken in the ethnicity from which God has called us, in order to appreciate the healing and redemption that Jesus brings each of us, as He sends us all out with the same message of healing and redemption.

The discipler can help the new believer find same- or near-community models for their life in Jesus. They can also help the new believer to experience God’s healing and redemption in their particular context from their experience in their own context, and so interpret it back to others from their community of origin. This also grows the community of allegiance in understanding the breadth of God’s redemptive work (Eph. 3:14–19). The discipler can also help explore appropriate community rituals that aid the believer in their communal participation.

I recently helped ‘Amira’ make connections with a local church to enable her baptism (she had come to faith alongside others from her community in a Salvation Army congregation). The church she chose followed a prescribed liturgy, including responses of commitment from ‘Amira’ and from the witnessing community. Comprehension of the formal language was abundantly aided by the richness of the symbols: the white robe ‘Amira’ was given to wear, the full immersion in water, the lighted candle she received afterwards and the verbal participation of all who were there. Others on the same journey were firmed in their own desire for baptism by witnessing it. At the end, I wrapped around her a North African towel, of the kind given there to believers being baptized, ¹⁷ as a reminder to her and also the rest of the people present (including Anglos) of her and our participation in a wider fellowship of people confessing and suffering for faith in Jesus.