Making Disciples, Constructing Selves

Abstract

This project explores the concept of identity through the lens of narrativity, a multifaceted concept that describes the way the consciousness makes meaning about life, throughout life. Narrativity depicts meaning-making as both an intensely personal and communal endeavor, epitomized in the way people tell and listen to life stories together. Narrativity is endemic to who we are as humans; yet it dramatically evolves over time. Indeed, it must continuously evolve, so that we might continue to learn, love, and maintain hope amidst the myriad circumstances and exigencies we face. And so when theologians and researchers in the social sciences alike speak of an “identity crisis” at work in the United States today, they are speaking directly to a deficiency in the way people make meaning together—a deficiency that, in the present view, is indelibly linked to the country’s history of hegemonic, colonizing practices of exclusion and domination by those in power. This history, which is also our present, has profoundly shaped the capacities of people from every walk of life to co-create meaning. Understood in this way, identity formation must be seen as a pivotal task for Christian religious educators in the United States. Of course, such educators are typically interested in the formation of a “Christian identity,” and rightly so. But this work makes the case that nurturing narrativity—that is, personhood and personal identity-development—is part and parcel to Christian identity formation, which in turn is inseparable from social and political engagement. In this view, narrativity is actually ingrained into the very pedagogy and praxis of the discipling community that Jesus cultivated through his ministry. Present-day Christian communities should likewise consider themselves as discipling communities, who embody this collective (or communal) identity precisely to the extent that they cultivate narrativity through their missional-pedagogical practices. This will require most US churches to radically re-imagine their structure and aims. The primary tasks of this work are threefold: (1) It defines identity in terms of the psychosocial and spiritual notion of narrativity—and Christian identity in terms of discipleship, which awakens and restores narrativity. These definitions inform a holistic philosophy of narratival meaning-making, and a practical and liberationist approach to theological anthropology, ethics, and ecclesial mission. (2) It attempts to depict narrativity as it evolves through the lifespan, with the help of current research in neuroscience and narrative developmental psychology. This is articulated in terms of a “narratival-developmental” perspective. (3) Guided by these definitions, it suggests ways that churches in the present-day United States might begin to re-orient their missional and teaching practices around these notions of narrativity and narratival-development. Chief among these suggestions are four hypothesized principles for teaching for narrativity, which emerge at project’s end.