Interesting Story, Useful Teaching Tool
Categories: uncategorized
Date: 23 May 2010 06:27:00
Gina Welch's "In the Land of Believers" is something I've come across via Josh's blog. It's an account of this somebody secular, with a Jewish background, going undercover in a conservative evangelical church. I haven't got hold of the book yet, but I think it will make a really interesting read, aswell as a potentially useful teaching tool about covert participant observation.
According to her website the motivating force behind her study was facing up to her own prejudices. She says: "Among secular progressives like me, Christians were the only demographic it was still okay to openly mock or fear. But I started to meet Christians in Virginia who didn’t fit the stereotype."
She makes the point "When I started undercover, I sort of thought I could automatically fit in by showing up to services in a sweater set. Joining an orientation class and attending sermons I quickly discovered that fitting in had very little to do with how I looked: Evangelicals communicate in an entirely different language, and until I knew the mothertongue, I wasn’t going to get an intimate understanding of anyone."
This is interesting because it's not just evangelicals who talk in a different language. All Christian groups tend to. We also have our own stories and histories that we make reference to which people outside have little or no knowledge of. This provides us with a huge challenge.
Foratv. has Welch talking about this, (can't work out how to insert it directly).