"The manner in which a new member fits into the status order, the social networks and the activities of the work organization is crucial if the initiate is to acquire simultaneously the attitudes, behaviors and values appropriate for participation. Within certain broad limits (e.g., financial, legal, cultural, etc.), the organization has many options available regarding the choice of methods by which to 'break in' its members." (p. 101)
Here's another loaded paragraph. As far as my status order, social order and activities of the work at the Vienna mission, these were all centered around my title of secretary, which pretty much labeled me and put me in a box. They seemed pretty set, for the most part, on pegging me thus and setting limitations based, not just on the organization's work in general (which assumed certain basic limitations, in my opinion, irregardless of the position held), but on that label, on that (in my view) restrictive job description. They may have eventually seen that I had other skills, but I was still and always basically a secretary and my position within the organization was defined by that primary role/function.
If the mission truly wanted to assimilate me, I'm afraid I was a slippery one. I refused to accept their image of me, for starters. I felt that that image was very much a constraint, that I wasn't willing to limit myself to. That is I was willing to do the work and do it to the best of my ability, and I didn't have anything against hanging around other secretaries, but it felt overly constraining to me, and limiting myself in these ways was unacceptable to me. I didn't see a conflict between having outside activities, including some local ministry, and being a secretary, and I also didn't see that I needed to limit my relations to the organization. But this type of thinking and acting on these things made it more difficult for the mission to socialize me, I'm sure. And, as far as I could see, the main reason they had to put such high priority on socialization was because of the work being in "closed" countries. I thought I already understood the issues involved in work in "the East" (Eastern Europe) well enough, however and that there demands were excessive. I still think this way about them.
As to "certain broad limits", this statement opens a whole new can of worms. Just what were those limits and who set them? This is another million dollar question, and you win the prize if you can answer it more definitively that I can, and I can't answer this all that definitively. So mostly, I have a lot of questions in this regard, but I do have some issues about it that I can suggest might be pertinent considerations in the search for the answer.
First of all, let's start with the potential limits suggested in this text, which are: financial, legal and cultural limits. I'm not sure how important finances are in this situation, although if they had more money to work with I dread to think of what else they might have come up with. But I'm going to skip over this one; the mission wasn't strapped, but they generally had what they needed to function reasonably well and not much more than that.
I'm going to skip to potential cultural constraints and come back to legal later. Cultural constraints could be a bit complex considering the mix of potentially relevant cultures which include (but might not be limited to): U.S. (and some other Western - the various missionary homelands and sources of support) Evangelical cultures, Austrian culture, the cultures of the various East European countries we were working in, the organizational culture of each of the 15 missions comprising the work in Vienna, and the culture of nondenominational missions in general (again from countries represented by the various missionaries in the Vienna mission). If you ask me, that's a lot of cultures to consider and potentially constraining the mission as to how it might socialize missionaries.
Here's my take on it. The "back home" Evangelical cultures were pretty much dealt with by withholding information (ostensibly for the sake of security - to not compromise the ministry). If they did anything the might upset those sensibilities, however, they would somehow have to minimize the risk of such information getting to them and being credible to them. The geographic separation made this somewhat easier as did the stature and reputation of the leaders of the mission (which might help assuage any concerns that might otherwise slip out and cause concern).
The Austrian culture was kept at bay by having certain safeguards in place, such as a sort of informal buddy system, where most outside relations (i.e., missionaries with external Austrians) were shared with more than one missionary. This wasn't always the case, by any means, but it did seem that there often was this kind of protection in place. In any event, probably most relations with Austrians were known about by someone else in the mission just by every day conversations (e.g., in discussing the previous evening's activities: "I had my landlady and another neighbor over for dinner last night. Luckily my landlady is a veteranarian because this yellow jacket wouldn't leave the kitchen and she told me that it was a dangerous one that you could die from in just a few stings, so I was able to take necessary precautions to get it to leave." - This event really did happen to me.) Thus, if there were any concerns about relations with Austrians there generally would have been knowledge about it to deal with it as needed.
That being said, they did want to have good relations with their neighbors - whether neighbors of the office itself or neighbors of the missionaries. They didn't want to raise any alarms or stick out. One example is that the children of the missionaries had to be prepped as to how to talk about their parents and what they were doing there in Vienna. This, would be an example of socializing the children, but it's the kind of thing that everyone had to deal with. There were Austrians that knew more or less what the mission really was about, and a lot of these Austrians, as far as I knew, went to the Vienna International Chapel, as did my landlady (the veterinarian mentioned above). You maybe have heard about how Vienna was (at least in they heyday of of Communism to the east) a hotbed for spies? Well, the Vienna International Chapel was a hotbed of missionary, many of whom worked in the East. There, were of course other foreigners in that church, such as workers from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
So the Austrian cultural constraint issue was dealt with mainly by keeping under the radar and being careful with external relations. As long as that was under control, the Austrian cultural norms weren't too much of an issue.
As to the East European cultures and the believers' subcultures in those countries, these were of primary importance, I believe, to the mission. However, broader culture and the believers' subcultures had 2 different impacts on the mission, regarding constraints. Regarding the broader culture, the mission mostly wanted to not be found out by them so they took all kinds of precautions in that way. As to the believers' culture within those countries (and these were the people the mission had relationships with on an ongoing basis), the mission had to not offend their sensibilities and understand their value system and norms to best be accepted by them and teach them. These two constraints had a huge impact on the content of the mission's socialization efforts, but not so much, I think, on the methods, which this text is specifically talking about. After all, the socialization took place in the West almost exclusively, so that by the time a missionary went "in-country" (in Eastern Europe) they were already pretty well socialized, at least enough for that particular assignment. There could be some mentoring, however, in the East, such as me traveling with a veteran women's instructor to Romania, and me following her lead), and those in the Communist countries might not necessarily known how missionaries were socialized, and they would have understood about the "need to know" approach to such things (compartmentalizing knowledge so only those who "need to know" know something), thus providing another layer of protection, allowing the mission more freedom in how it socialized its workers. That being said, though, there were ways that information, such as anything being unacceptably amiss, could spread among those circles, but since the Communist governments could also use (generally false or misinterpreted) gossip to break down trust amongst believers, such information might not have necessarily been believed, even if it were true.
Now to the culture of the 15 missions which comprised the group I was part of in Vienna. Among these 15 missions there was a fairly broad range in level of experience and expertise in working in Eastern Europe. There was also a fair amount of diversity in operational policies and practices for working in Communist countries. The theology was shared though and, while I understand there was occasionally some disagreement regarding issues in the textbooks we prepared, I wasn't aware of anything major going on in that area.
The cultures of the missions was crucial, perhaps even the most important part of this equation. Each of the different missions had their own ideas about how to maintain security and this was a ticklish subject. So the policies and practices (formal or otherwise) had to satisfy everyone. Maybe the mission erred on the side of being over vigilant, thus leading to what I experienced in Vienna. While I don't think it is the only consideration here, it is a major one. For example, the mission I'd worked with before was one of the initial 5 founding organizations and it was seen as very influential and the bearer of great knowledge and experience in working with Slavic peoples and in Communist countries, so other missions that might not otherwise have much (or any) work in these countries (but perhaps had a lot to offer by way of theological education, for example, and a special interest in this ministry type), might have deferred to those more established in the part of the world we were working in. In this way, a few of the 15 missions might have had an inordinate amount of influence in the tactics and safeguards used. It was these tactics and safeguards that formed a large part of the impetus for socialization into the mission. The mission I worked with before, as I've already said, took money from the CIA for it's radio work (my FOIA letter from the CIA convinces me by virtue of their refusal to answer directly my query about this.) If one bad apple spoils the whole bunch, then we're in for trouble already. That being said, however, even the missions that deferred to the more experienced ones in this geographical area would have had to agree to policies and practices used, and these things would be hard to hide from them because they would be sending their own missionaries to Vienna, and they'd have to go through the socialization process too. If they had any qualms about specific tactics (or assumptions that underlaid the tactics), they might have compromised in order to be part of the work.
These 15 missions also worked within the broader context of Evangelical missions in general (especially missions from countries represented by the missionaries that worked with us, such as Canada and the USA). For example, these missions bumped into other missions all the time, such as at missions conferences, and they also generally contributed to the same professional journals. But some of the 15 missions working with us also had work all over the world. One example of this is the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Association. In these cases, there would be, presumably, an even stronger association with missions in general (beyond Eastern Europe).
I think that two factors, especially, was in the favor of the missions working together in Vienna (regarding the leeway they might be given in their socialization efforts), and that was the broader societal anti-Communism bent and also the conservative politics of a lot of the Evengalical populace and institutions. Because of these factors, otherwise potentially controversial socialization measures would have been more acceptable because the evilness of the East European countries warranted it. So where there might (but not necessarily) have been more scrutiny of activities in other location, the political nature of the countries we worked on warranted secrecy and caution in the eyes of the broader Evangelical public (especially back home, where this would have been most important).
I hope I have shown in this rather lengthy discussion how social constraints on socialization tactics were minimal, and any secrecy deemed necessary by the organization was deemed acceptible, this granting a blank check in the socialization tactics department.
So now I'll deal with potential legal constraints, which I skipped over to deal with last. I'm not a lawyer and I'm really not all that astute when it comes to legal things, but my attitude over the years has come to be that, given an adequate (however that might be understood) cause for concern, in the under world, which we were more or less a part of, laws are not necessarily adequate constraints.
So now I'll deal with potential legal constraints, which I skipped over to deal with last. I'm not a lawyer and I'm really not all that astute when it comes to legal things, but my attitude over the years has come to be that, given an adequate (however that might be understood) cause for concern, in the under world, which we were more or less a part of, laws are not necessarily adequate constraints.
I need to proactively address potential protests to the assertion I just made that we were a part of the underworld. Come on, people, put your thinking hats on! A mission taking money from the CIA was a key member of our board, our H.R. dept. was comprised of two military reserve chaplains, and we were living this huge life of deception. How exactly we might have fit in the world, I can't say - I wasn't privy to that kind of information. But some (if there are any) of my readers will undoubtedly prefer to keep their naive head in the sand and call such claims as trash coming from a crack pot ("poisoning the well" - I'm a crackpot; "'generalization" - all Evangelical missions are good). I can't prove my assertion, but I urge you to not reject it out of hand; I do have some evidence that should at least make this assertion credible.
So, taking these issues under consideration, how shall I address the issue of legal constraints? To a certain extent there would have been some legal constraints, and if there was any disregard for laws at any point, I would think it would be in a particular ugly underside of the beast's belly, and possibly involve extra-organizational involvement. I don't think the mission would have done anything to openly break Western laws, although they certainly worked on the edges of legality in Eastern Europe. But I'm not aware of any situation where laws were of concern to the mission for their activities in Vienna and the West, meaning that I never was aware (as far as I can remember) that there was any concern of whether something they wanted to do was legal or not.
***
I can't believe I've taken about 3 hours to discuss only 1 paragraph. At this rate I'll never get anywhere. Nevertheless, this discussion could be helpful in unraveling my life with the mission and what was going on there.
I do have other things I have to do though, so I'm going to leave you now.
