‘Who am I?’; ‘Why am I here?’; ‘Where am I going?’ Each of these questions is a question of personal identity. However, people are who they are in large part because of the relationships in which they are engaged. People influence one another and shape one another for better or worse whether one knows it or not; one identifies with certain groups or behaviours both in person and increasingly online. For example, my Twitter bio currently reads:
Assoc. Pastor: Providence City Church, Perth.
PhD Theology (Exon): Research incl. NT, 1 Peter, Narrative, Identity. Jesus, coffee, sport & whisky enthusiast.
Each of the identities listed is unmistakably social in nature: as a pastor, I am a leader in a faith community called a church; as a PhD in theology, I am part of an academic community, and so on. In fact, one would be hard-pressed to understand who I am, apart from the social groups in which I engage. It is at this point that socio-psychological theories such as Narrative Transportation Theory and Social Identity Theory become relevant.
Aaron Kuecker discerns, that ‘Any thesis concerned with “identity” must consider how identity works, especially within and between social groups’.1 He is surely right in his assessment, and 1 Peter, perhaps more than most letters in the NT, is particularly ripe for an approach that takes narrative and identity into account.2 Because the language of calling in 1 Peter invites one to consider notions of identity in relation to OT and Christological narratives, a fruitful avenue to pursue may be to conduct our research with the aid of resources derived from contemporary social psychology. Theories or models that take the persua- sive power of narrative into account prove to be valuable, as do those focus- sing on the social nature of identity formation and conflict. Social Identity Theory (SIT)—with its focus on identity formation, group status, intergroup relations and conflict, social creativity, and conflict resolution—is well suited for our purposes. This is because mission is a fundamentally relational enter- prise that can, and sometimes does, lead to conflict with the wider culture (as 1 Peter makes abundantly clear). Together with Narrative Transportation Theory (NTT)—which focuses on the impact of narrative on a person’s identity, beliefs, and lifestyle—one possesses the instruments by which to examine the relevant texts to be investigated in 1 Peter.3
What follows is an outline of the basic tenets of both NTT and SIT respectively. Concerning NTT, I chart broadly the same outline as that laid out by Tom van Laer, while for SIT I follow the lead of Aaron Kuecker.4
Narrative Transportation Theory
Narrative Transportation Theory is a social-psychological theory initially advanced by Melanie Green and Timothy Brock. In brief, narrative transportation is ‘the engrossing, transformational experience of being swept away in a story’.5 That is, people may be absorbed into stories/narratives to such a degree that they impact on their beliefs in the real world, regardless of whether they are fictional or factual.6 Green and Brock’s theory is established on a metaphor found in the work of Richard Gerrig, whom they quote in full:
Someone (‘the traveler’) is transported, by some means of transportation, as a result of performing certain actions. The traveler goes some distance from his or her world of origin, which makes some aspects of the world of origin inaccessible. The traveler returns to the world of origin, somewhat changed by the journey.7
On this basis, the power of narrative or story is apparent: a story well-told and subsequently imbibed by its recipient(s) has the power to shape one’s beliefs, identity, actions, and way of life. It is, therefore, no overstatement when Tom van Laer et al., remark that ‘nothing is less innocent than a story’.8
Social Identity Theory
Social Identity Theory is a branch of social psychology that investigates the impact of group membership on an individual’s identity. One’s social identity is but one facet of an individual’s identity that is grounded in ‘their knowledge of their membership in a social group (or groups) together with the value of and emotional significance attached to that membership’.9
According to Michael Hogg, people have a ‘repertoire’ of social identities that have varying degrees of salience in the self-concept.10 Another way of put- ting it is to say that people embrace multiple social identities and that those identities vary in importance according to any given context. To give a simple example, if two Australian travellers meet overseas, they are likely to associate based on their common nationality (i.e., they will relate as fellow Australians). But if those same people happen to meet within Australia, they are more likely to associate based on local geography: ‘I’m from Perth’, or ‘I’m from Melbourne’.
Of course, social identity is not limited to geography. In any given context, I might identify myself as a British-Australian, a Christian, a University of Exeter graduate, a Liverpool FC supporter, or something else. Each of these cases speaks of my social identity, but it is my social context that will determine which identity comes to the forefront and will, in turn, influence how I relate to others. In 1 Peter, terms such as ‘elect sojourners’, ‘holy nation’, ‘royal priest- hood’, along with the language of calling, are used to define and/or describe the Anatolian churches and how they are expected to engage with those outside the church. A central concern of this monograph will be to ascertain what Peter is trying to achieve by applying such descriptors to the churches to whom he writes.
The emphasis on the social character of modern identities is a key reason why SIT is important for NT studies. Those of us in the modern West, with a propensity to see the world as individualists, need help to see our lives and our world more as collectivists.11 Social Identity Theory provides a framework by which we can receive the text in a manner that more closely resembles that of the original hearers who were a more collectivist culture than our own. This will be vital given that 1 Peter was written to a community of churches in ancient Anatolia that were experiencing opposition from their surround- ing communities. First Peter was written to instruct the recipients about their God-given (social) identity in Christ, as well as what that meant for their mission in a world that was growing increasingly hostile towards their new faith.
This is part 3 of a multi-part series:
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Aaron J. Kuecker, The Spirit and the ‘Other’: Social Identity, Ethnicity and Intergroup Reconci- liation in Luke-Acts, LNTS 444 (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 24.
What Miroslav Volf found compelling about 1 Peter was its central concern for how the church relates to the culture as ‘aliens’ and ‘sojourners’, and how that is narrated in relation to Jesus’ destiny with regards to his mission and subsequent rejection. See his ‘Soft Difference: Theological Reflections on the Relation between Church and Culture in 1 Peter’, ExAud 10 (1994): 16–17.
Kuecker, The Spirit and the ‘Other’, 24–25, n. 1, elucidates the benefits and dangers of engaging in sociological exegesis. Positively, it helps exposes attempts to claim purely ‘objective’ exegesis along with its culturally bound interpretations while also providing transparency in research. Negatively, such methodology can become deterministic, explaining all social phenomena within set cultural boundaries. For Kuecker, the value of sociological exegesis is that when well-executed, it expounds the normal so as to highlight that which is abnormal or unexpected.
On NTT, see Tom van Laer et al., ‘The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model: A Meta- Analysis of the Antecedents and Consequences of Consumers’ Narrative Transportation’, J. Consum. Res. 40, no. 5 (2014): 797–817. My outline of NTT draws primarily from this article as it is the most thorough review of literature covering two decades of research. The excel- lent summary of SIT by Kuecker is found in The Spirit and the ‘Other’, 24–35; see also, Philip F. Esler, ‘An Outline of Social Identity Theory’, in T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament, ed. J. Brian Tucker and Coleman A. Baker (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 13–39.
Tom van Laer et al., ‘What Happens in Vegas Stays on TripAdvisor? A Theory and Technique to Understand Narrativity in Consumer Reviews’, J. Consum. Res. 46, no. 2 (2019): 268.
Melanie C. Green and Timothy C. Brock, ‘The Role of Transportation in the Persuasiveness of Public Narratives’, J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 79, no. 5 (2000): 703, 707.
Richard J. Gerrig, Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 10–11; cf. Green and Brock, ‘The Role of Transportation’, 701; idem, ‘In the Mind’s Eye: Transportation-Imagery Model of Narrative Persuasion’, in Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations, ed. Melanie C. Green, Jeffrey J. Strange, and Timothy C. Brock (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2002), 324.
van Laer et al., ‘The Extended Transportation-Imagery Model’, 798.
Henri Tajfel, ed., Social Identity and Intergroup Relations, repr., 2010, European Studies in Social Psychology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 2.
Michael A. Hogg, ‘Intragroup Process, Group Structure and Social Identity’, in Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel, ed. W. Peter Robinson, International Series in Social Psychology (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1996), 66.
Kuecker, The Spirit and the ‘Other’, 26.