Contested identities and schisms in groups: Opposing the ordination of women as priests in the Church of England

Abstract

Schisms constitute a common characteristic of human groups. Nevertheless, they have been neglected by social psychology, mainly because social psychological theories either dismiss group consensus or else depict groups as monolithic. This study proposes a social psychological approach to schism which integrates recent developments of self-categorization theory (SCT) with work on category argumentation. According to SCT, shared group identification leads to a process by which members should reach agreement. However, it is suggested that where members construe the positions of others as fundamentally altering group identity, then consensus is impossible. The corollary of assuming that groups will be consensual is that lack of consensus indicates the existence of different groups. This idea is examined through an analysis of a video and booklet produced for a rally organized by Forward in Faith, an organization opposed to the ordination of women as priests within the Church of England. It is shown that the existence of women priests is construed as changing the essence of the Church both on a structural level (by dividing it from the rest of the Christian community and turning it into a sect) and doctrinally. Such changes are seen as threatening the very existence of the Church of England and therefore demanding all out opposition. However, it is also shown that the decision of whether opponents fight the changes from inside the Church or by splitting from it depends upon the perception of whether they will be accorded the opportunity to advance their position from within. Thus schism is associated with both a perceived 'change of essence' and also with 'lack of voice'.

Saving Bulgaria's Jews: an analysis of social identity and the mobilisation of social solidarity

“…Our analysis of the documents is based upon SAGA (Structural Analysis of Group Arguments) as outlined by Reicher and Sani (1998) and illustrated by Sani and Reicher (2000). SAGA is not a method in the sense of an invariant set of procedures.…”

Institutional Change in Toque Ville: Nouvelle Cuisine as an Identity Movement in French Gastronomy

“…A more potent criticism of social identity theory is that it presupposes group identity to be unitary in nature and excludes the possibilities of schisms and splits in groups despite their ubiquity (Ashforth 2000;Sani and Reicher 2000). Although splits in organizations and occupations arise through social movements and lead to defections of individuals from the parent group, social identity theory has had little contact with social movement theory (McAdam and Snow 2000).…”

Phd Thesis: " How outraged reactions to intragroup threat affect group membership preference"

“…Although, schismatic phenomena has been traditionally associated with religion (Sani & Reicher, 2000), they occur in many other types of groups, such as political parties (Sani & Reicher, 1998), nations (Bookman, 1994), professional organizations (Dyck & Starke, 1999) and social movements (Mamiya, 1982). Despite the diversity of contexts, these events were triggered by similar events, and followed the same course: at same point of the group history, some group members started to have conflicting ideas about the status quo and attempted to change it.…”

“…Research on schism in political parties (Sani & Reicher, 1998), religious association (Mamiya, 1982;Sani & Reicher, 2000) as well as management teams (Jackson, Brett, Sessa, Cooper, Julin & Peryronnin, 1991) further provided evidence of the impact of diversity on group scission. Based on interviews with members of the Italian Communist party, Sani and Reicher (1998) suggested that the schism occurred in the party in 1991 could be attributed to severe differences in opinions between different factions regarding what the party's position should be after the fall of the Soviet Regime.…”

“…Sani, 1999Sani, , 2000 as an extreme reaction to conflicts over the group-identity (value, status, morality). These conflicts split the group into different factions that start to negotiate.…”