I had the privilege of speaking at Harvest this morning. I spoke of hope, and used Matthew 9:35-38 to illustrate how Jesus brought hope to communities.

As I was thinking on this I was brought back again to my thoughts last week of identity. To a post here, Darrel made an interesting comment which has been sitting with me for a while:

Identity is always stronger when you’re from, or perceive yourself as being from, a minority group. This is particularly the case if there is prejudice against this group either now or in the recent past.

I agree, but I also wonder whether we are not seen as a minority group already. There is certainly prejudice against what is perceived to be Christianity, and if this is so, should we not be seeing a stronger identity should already be developing.
For a group identity to develop does there need to be a minority, or a marginal, mindset. Before an identity develops, do we need to feel that others are against us? This seems rather negative, but many Christians do feel they are in a minority group and yet there is still a lack of identity.

I wonder if when a group moves from marginal to mainstream and returns to marginal again that the development of tat identity can no longer come from the marginalised feeling, but needs to come from a total re-think of what that group exists for?

I wonder whether what we are seeing now is a marginalised group that was once mainstream fighting hard to reclaim ground and ideals that are never going to return. The old ground has been lost (and I’m not so sure that is a bad thing)and there is a need now to claim the new ground before us.

Our identity cannot come from past events but from an agreement of a new paradigm and a commitment to re-assess where we are, who we are, and where we are going.