Poll: Insular Social Cultures

[Ernie]

Insular social culture: A culture that is largely isolated from that of others; largely self-contained.

For many people, social life revolves around their...
1. Family
2. Relatives
3. Fellow workers
4. Friends (of a similar culture, hobby, church, or political persuasion)

For many people in the world, social life rarely extends beyond some combination of the above. The social life of many Christians doesn't seem to be much different. If they have lots of family members and relatives living nearby, a lot of time gets spent with them. If not, they mostly hangout with fellow church people. They may occasionally reach outside of their social circle and sing at a nursing home, help at a soup kitchen, or volunteer at a children's club, but they rarely make these folks a part of their social life. They do their acts of service for an hour or two, leave that setting, and then hang out with their own social group again when they are finished. Some even do their service with the same people they normally socialize with.
Discretionary time is spent going to visit relatives, friends, or people of a similar church persuasion and it is spent hosting the same folks whenever those folks come to visit them. Till they get this all done, there is very little time for anything else in their schedule. If an outreach church is started, there may be some initial efforts to connect with the local community, but before too long, the social dynamics are basically a clone of where they came from. 

Closely associated with this is a strong peer dependency that puts incredible pressure on those in the social circle to conform to the ethos of the social construct. (This is really no different than football fan culture where you need to drink, tailgate at stadiums, and spend lots of time and money travelling to games.)

The desire to broaden one's social circle simply isn't there. Most have never even heard it suggested that they should try to broaden their social circle beyond what it currently is.

So my questions are...

Should everyone be encouraged to broaden their social circle? Should every person be looking to make friends with people who are not very much like them?
Should every Christians be encouraged to broaden their social circle? Or should this only be for the evangelists and missionaries and church planters?
What about a remote tribe somewhere? Should they be encouraged to broaden their social circle if possible?

If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, why do you think so?

You can also describe what your social circle includes and how it came to be.

[Ernie]

Some people mostly hang out with those who frequently use the same terms a lot. e.g. "Mennonite", "Democrat", "born again", "kingdom", "inclusive", "Anabaptist" or...

What other terms do those around you seem coalesce around?

[Ken]

So my questions are...

Should everyone be encouraged to broaden their social circle? Should every person be looking to make friends with people who are not very much like them?
Should every Christians be encouraged to broaden their social circle? Or should this only be for the evangelists and missionaries and church planters?
What about a remote tribe somewhere? Should they be encouraged to broaden their social circle if possible?

I think you are mixing two different topics here.

Christianity is by definition an evangelical and universal religion. It is all about breaking down barriers between people. There are no "denominations" in the Bible.

By contrast, maintaining one's unique culture, language, traditions, etc. requires building barriers of some sort. Especially when a smaller and weaker culture encounters a larger and more dominant culture.

So there is always going to be a tension between those two objectives. If a small remote tribe somewhere wants to maintain its own unique identity in the face of a larger dominant culture it is going to have to erect barriers of some sort. They might be geographical, cultural, language, etc.

There is also a difference between cultural dominance (everyone should look, speak, and act like us) and cultural diversity (every different culture is valued and important). Should America be a "melting pot" or "patchwork quilt"? All too often, Christians confuse or conflate culture and religion. In most cases I don't think there are right or wrong ways for Christians to dress, speak, eat, and worship. And we should be more humble about such things.

[Josh]

Nearly all human beings are insular. About 3% (myself included) enjoy experiences with people from new families, people groups, languages, and so forth. But the overwhelming majority don’t.

[Neto]

I haven't (yet) taken any of the choices given. The objectives I chose for my life aims forced me to broaden my contacts with people from other cultures. And, to a large degree, my choice of life aims was influenced by forced contact with other cultures. Mennonites were/are a very small minority in the community where I grew up, and the public school system put me in contact with other cultures - main stream American, Southern, and various Indian cultures, that were themselves mixing to greater or lesser degrees. Then I chose missionary as my future, and my remaining reluctance to move outside of my own culture had to give way to that purpose, in a struggle between my cultural identity and my identity as a follower of Jesus.

I'm reminded about something one of the panel participants said in the National Geographic film "The Mission" (about John Chau, who attempted to reach the Sentinelese people). (Maybe he doesn't say it in the film - I have not seen it, but he's an atheist, a former ordained minister and missionary whom I know personally, and he said it in a FaceBook discussion about the film.) Anyway, he said that "This reveals a problem in the American Evangelical Church, this extremist view of evangelism," (not a direct quote), going on to say that the American Evangelical church was one of the worst in this regard. I responded, saying that Jesus himself was an extremist, and anyone who wanted to really follow him would also be "an extremist". (Extremist in the sense of telling others about things they might not be willing to hear.) (I also said that I don't think that the American Evangelical church has really done an outstanding job of this, but that is another matter.) My point, however, is that this is what we are called to do, to be. (Although I think that John Chau didn't go about it in the best manner, in fact, I called him a "loose cannon".)

I was prepared to take a strong stand against the idea in the last item in the survey, but then I thought of how I've seen Indians in Brazil enjoy and learn from interactions with other tribal Christians. And that certainly involves going outside of their "insular social cultures". Some 16 years ago a family friend here in Holmes County, a woman who was in the county government for most of her working life (she was widowed as a young wife, and never remarried) told me that the county was thinking of opening up a county-level program to help integrate the many immigrant (legal and illegal) workers into the society at large. She encouraged me to apply for this position, so I wrote up a proposal for assisting these non-English speakers in their relationship with the local government agencies and the people in general, with the long-range aim of instigating cultural change (cultural integration). One of the points I made was that 'Americans' - the local people, regarded these 'foreigners' as a single insular culture - "Hispanic", but that many of these people were actually speaking Spanish as a second language, that they were from many different language groups, and from different folk societies, with many differences even within this very generalized group that people called "Hispanics". (As it turned out, when I went in for my appointment, the people I was to have met with were "not available", and although I left a copy of my program proposal with the secretary, I was never contacted again. And no such program was ever started at the county level. Actually, the only people I heard of who were attempting to help in this area was the Catholic Church here in Millersburg.)

[Franklin]

I am insular. I hate modern people and do my best to avoid them. I have my family and a few fellow workers. No relatives or friends.

[joshuabgood]

I am currently in a pretty insular culture - now in my 9th year. I have also been in settings for extended periods of time (over 10 years) where my social culture wasn't insular at all.

There are pros and cons both ways as I see it.

[cooper]

For most of human history, people lived in insular social cultures. It certainly is not automatically a bad thing.

[Ken]

For most of human history, people lived in insular social cultures. It certainly is not automatically a bad thing.

On the other hand, the Roman and Babylonian empires were among the most diverse societies in history, rivaled only by the modern US. Rome at the time of Christ was an absolute polyglot society of different cultures and languages mixing Black Africans from provinces like Mauritania with blonde Germanic tribes from the northern provinces and middle eastern tribes from Egypt, Syria, and Judea.

[Josh]

For most of human history, people lived in insular social cultures. It certainly is not automatically a bad thing.

On the other hand, the Roman and Babylonian empires were among the most diverse societies in history, rivaled only by the modern US. Rome at the time of Christ was an absolute polyglot society of different cultures and languages mixing Black Africans from provinces like Mauritania with blonde Germanic tribes from the northern provinces and middle eastern tribes from Egypt, Syria, and Judea.

I'm not sure I'd hold up either Rome nor Babylon as an example of a society Christians should aspire to.