The Power of Group Identity
The power of group identity is a conversation we began a couple years ago with the Street Psalms community. We came together with the concern of being a group of people who want to connect across the religious, social, political, and economic spectrum. We have seen how polarization keeps dividing us in ways that hinder us from imitating one another in positive ways. The positive imitation of one another is difficult amid our current context. The only way to resist is in coming together to teach and remind one another how to be more human.
From the Top, From the Bottom
When I started working in the slums, I soon realized that there were divisions that I could not fully understand; some were geographical, and others were invisible. In one of the neighborhoods I worked, there was a series of steps that would take the breath way of anybody going up. It did not matter whether I was in good shape, I would always be out of breath at the top of the steps.
The steps served as a geographical and social boundary between two communities. One community was impoverished with better housing, and the other one was a slum community. As time went by, I noticed a deep fragmentation within the communities, which led me to search for the not so visible boundaries that divided people—ethnic, religious, social, political, and economic.
In the process of mapping the neighborhoods, it was clear that social polarization was part of everyday life. Everything the residents did was to protect themselves from their neighbors. The youth were especially zealous of the perceived boundaries. In one neighborhood, they referred to each other as “those from the top” and “those from the bottom.” Those at the top of the steps saw themselves as superior due to having better housing and slightly better economic means. The ones at the bottom saw the ones from above as pretentious and arrogant. The kids from above saw the kids from below as dirty, poor, and dangerous.
Both groups lived no more than twenty-five meters away from each other, and anybody could sense the strength of their group identity as being from the top or from the bottom. Interestingly, they were not that different from each other. They liked the same music, TV shows, and soap operas. They also struggled through the same social issues, attended the same schools, walked the same streets, and faced the same dangers. The group rivalry escalated to a point of violence that made the work in that area very dangerous. For that reason, the organization that I was working with at the time made the hard decision to stop gathering the youth in that area. We did not leave the community. We moved to a different location that was seen as neutral ground between groups; little did we know, there is no neutral ground. There will always be a contested space.
One question that always puzzled me while working in the slums was: how is it that the youth from this communities saw each other as abysmally different? Those who have worked with youth may feel tempted to think that we are a bit more sophisticated than they are. We may feel a bit more mature and solid in our identity. In fact, we may believe that we would never engage in such rivalries. The truth is, we do the same all the time.
In her book Uncivil Agreement Lilliana Mason offers an interesting response to my question about the youth. She argues that our loyalty to a specific group—social, religious, political, and so on—is more connected to our need to belong than to our personal convictions. For that reason, the rivalries between groups grow as we see “team us” and “team them” in constant conflict. This continuous engagement turns every interaction into a battle. As a result, our identity and group belonging alters how we see the world, and it creates a zero-sum mentality.
When it comes to group identity, we tend to agree with one another more than we are willing to admit. Our similarities are stronger than we imagine. Our loyalties, however, divide us. As a result, we make our choices in relating to one another based on beliefs rather than what is true about one another, our humanity. I do not have the time nor the space to unpack the proposals presented by Lilliana Mason. However, one thing I take from her insight is that we are on a road to being more polarized. We are being forced to choose a team through social sorting. In choosing a team, we will fall into the violence created by the system. This violence will take us into a crisis that has the potential to end into a brutal carnage. As a result, we will be pushed to find a scapegoat(s) to blame, somebody who can bring us all together and save us from the hell that we have created.
Inside the Church
I have experienced first-hand what the power of group identity does. Six years ago, my wife and I were invited to apply for the youth pastoral position at our local faith community. We were thrilled with the idea of working together in serving the youth of our church. We began the job application process, and the pastor and the elders gave us a go to start working with the youth. The pastor and the elders repeatedly told us they wanted us to be the youth pastors. The one thing pending to place us as youth leaders was an interview with the board of elders.
During the interview, we began by sharing about our faith journeys and how we came to love working with young people. The elders asked us several questions, and right at the end one of the elders told us that there was one question the pastor wanted to make sure we answered. The elder proceeded to ask: “how would you pastor a kid who is struggling with his or her sexuality?” Since this is a pastoral question, we gave a pastoral answer. We explained to the elders how we would walk and share life with that person. We would encourage transparency with his or her family, and we would point them to Jesus. We emphasized that we would care for that person without judgement.
The elders kept asking the same question over and over. At that point, it was clear to us that the issue was not regarding pastoral practice. The elders wanted to ask something else, but they did not work the courage to even formulate the question. At some point, one of the elders said to us: “I do not want to know how you would pastor a kid; would you be willing to tell the kid that he or she is going to hell if they are gay?” At that point, my wife and I realized that it was an issue of group identity. They didn’t really care for the youth of the church. They wanted to make sure that we agreed with them in their view of sexuality and their interpretation of Scripture in this specific issue. The elders even told us that we needed to choose which group we supported, those who did not take the Bible seriously, or those who considered the Bible as the word of God.
My wife and I decided not to give a response. We decided to respond pastorally to the question asked by the elders and the pastor. By not responding, we unknowingly threatened the group identity of the church; how could it be that members of the church and community leaders did not think like the elders? As a result, non-affirmation of the LGBTQI+ community has become the litmus test of belonging to that faith community, even though the church identifies as an interdenominational and open church. We were marked as outsiders within a church that had been our faith community for many years.
This was an extremely painful experience, though we learned a lot. As a result, I came to understand that group identity matters more than we can imagine. The reason is that humans are relational beings. We have been created to connect with one another and build strong bonds of solidarity. We are relational beings before rational beings. If this is true, we must accept that it is our teams that dictate our identity. It is our systems of belonging that tell us how to interpret reality. Moreover, this means that reality and facts are outranked by our identity. No wonder fake news and alternative facts gain so much traction within some of our Christian circles. For that reason, whenever we enter a debate, we are not dealing with the facts of any given issue. We are dealing with what we believe to be truth. Belief is a powerful force because it is tied to our identity. Therefore, any attempt of persuasion is a threat to our very existence. As a result, changing our mind about any fact is seen and felt as a denial of our self.
As I reflect on all this, I wonder: if the system uses something that comes natural to us, identity and belonging, as a tool to divide us, could we use and redeem that as instrument of formation that attends to our identity? How do we create learning communities that help us resist the polarization we experience? I do not have an answer to this questions. I can just hope that by asking them I start a conversation.