"A clan requires not only a norm of reciprocity and the idea of legitimate authority..., but also social agreement on a broad range of values and beliefs. Because the clan lacks the explicit price mechanism of the market and the explicit rules of the bureaucracy, it relies for its control upon a deep level of common agreement between members on what constitutes proper behavior, and it requires a high level of commitment on the part of each individual to those specially prescribed behaviors. Clearly, a clan is more demanding than either a market or a bureaucracy in terms of the social agreements which are prerequisite to its successful operation." (p. 839)One problem here is the fact that we're talking about a Christian organization. Now yesterday I had my first membership class for the church I've been going to (when I'm able) since I moved back here just over a year ago now. Yesterday we learned mostly about the history of the denomination, which is a new denomination for me (I'm more committed to my beliefs than I am to a particular denomination, so I find the church that seems the best fit wherever I happen to be living.) So I learned that this church practice triple-dunk baptism, and they use Matthew 28:19 ("Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit") as their reasoning. However, Scripture doesn't exactly say to "baptize by dunking face first in the water three times, once for each member of the Godhead." So there is a little interpretation going on there - sort of reading between the lines, if you will. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with this, just that we should recognize it for what it is.
But this instance is at least an attempt to base a practice on Scripture, whereas that's more that the Vienna mission could say for its "security" measures. In fact, not only were these "measures" mostly unwritten, they were also "unspoken" which means that you could wheedle your way out of any assertion that any particular security measure exists. For example, let's consider the roommate thing (where they kept trying to set me up with that poor unsuspecting Alaskan secretary). If confronted on this they could all turn to each other and say, with very innocent looking eyes and looks of surprises on their faces, "I didn't know anything about you not wanting a room mate." Then turning to the next person, "Did you know anything about you wanting a room mate?" "No, I didn't. Why did you think we wanted to set you up with a roommate? All we did was provide a place for you to stay when you first got here so you would have the choice yourself as to where to live rather than us setting you up with one. How would we know what kind of apartment you'd like?" Etc., etc. But the thing is, that in doing this kind of thing, they might very well know that someone or the other probably knew of my desire to live alone, but they wouldn't ask that person if he knew anything about my wanting to live alone.
So that's the kind of thing you'd face there, all these unspoken rules that were intentionally unspoken so that there were quite reasonable ways they could brush off any assertions of anything other than the surface truth going on. But if you were an anthropologist you might be able to read between or look past some of their words to pick up discrepancies, or anything that might betray their carefully mastered disguises. I hope you don't doubt me by now and even if you do, if you know anything at all about what the former Communist regimes were like in the Warsaw Pact countries and what it might have been like to be a believer in them, you might agree that this kind of thing is quite possible. However, my experience is that the believers in Eastern Europe generally had a lot more integrity than those missionaries did. Which makes me think that maybe the East European believers should be teaching the missionaries and not the other way around. After all, head knowledge can only take you so far in Christianity, and, if you agree at all with Kierkegaard's interpretation of Scripture, eventually you have to take a "leap of faith," which we know these missionaries weren't prone to do, preferring to rely on their own security machinations instead of God. And again, I'm talking about not taking such precautions any farther than what Scripture allows. As soon as you start in on things that are clearly contrary to Scripture you're on spiritual quicksand.
Returning again to the text, however, I'd like to talk next about "deep level of agreement among members on what constitutes proper behavior." In the case at hand, the Vienna mission, that is, I have already demonstrated in previous posts how the mission's demands, especially the security-related ones, were often unbiblical. So then it becomes the mission's challenge to get seminarian to agree on a "deep level" to such "proper behavior[s]." This might be where Milgram comes in, not that the missionaries were shocking anyone, but just that they took the same stance towards authority as did the subjects in Milgram's famous study. That is, they put the mission's authority above Scripture, which is sort of how, for example, a lot of German pastors could go along with Hitler, whereas Bonhoeffer was one of the few who wouldn't. (This example is good in as much as the individuals are all church workers, but the mission can't be compared to Hitler, so that part of the comparison is not good.) Despite the differences in the nature of the authority and what was asked of the church workers, they were, in both cases asked to do unscriptural things and went along with it, putting the authority above Scripture and God's authority. In other words, in their service to God they were willing to disobey God, because, apparently they believed that the ends could justify the means and/or the means were good because the authority status they ascribed to the mission made them (the means) good. This is a new twist to in trying to understand their logic, and the comparison between these two mechanisms looks like this:
The mission leadership makes an unscriptural demand.
The members of the mission ascribe a certain quality of authority that allows them (the members) to view the demand as being justified and scriptural.
The members accept the demand.
[View of authority allowing for acceptance of the demand.]
Or...The mission leadership makes an unscriptural demand.
The members of the mission believe that the objective of the ministry and/or demand is adequate to override any Scriptural sanction or instruction contrary to the demand.
The members accept the demand.
[View of the objective and pragmatic belief structure.]
However, I'd be guilty of "false dilemma" if I suggested that 1) these two are mutually exclusive and/or 2) they were the only options. For example, another possibility might run like this:
The mission leadership makes an unscriptural demand.
The members of the mission actually believe that the demand is scriptural.
The members accept the demand.
This case is somewhat more complex, I think, then the other two, however. For example, in this case errors could happen in 1) mistaken understanding of scripture and/or 2) mistaken understanding of the demand. In this case, the mission could provide their interpretation of the relevant scriptural teaching and/or they could present the demand in such as way as to make it seem biblical (thus hiding or glossing over potentially unbiblical aspects of it).
I find all of these possibilities to be reasonably plausible and suspect that they were all in effect with different workers regarding different demands under various circumstances. In any case, once you get sucked into this kind of thing, I suspect that it begins to look normal to the individual, they receive lots of positive affirmations upon acceptance of it, and then it's hard to get out of it, like the spy gradually hooking his recruit in with gradually more and more unethical or illegal cooperation. Eventually you're in a potential blackmail situation and the costs of extricating oneself are greater than continuing on in the relationship. (I'd like to also take this opportunity to thank the mission - along with a certain Goodwill Games guest and the Bratsk Komsomols - for providing the impetus for my learning about spy tactics. If it weren't for them I would be none the wiser on these issues.)
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Next the author explains explicit informational demands are greatest for the "market system" than for the "clan system," while the implicit demands are greatest for the "clan system." This certainly fit the Vienna mission, a "clan system" too, as I've discussed above, regarding how mission leadership could fairly easily deny things in the "implicit" realm, which was one of the main purposes of their being a highly developed "implicit realm" (which was in their case largely deceptive in purpose and nature). The authors describe this as "a very efficient set of symbols with which to communicate complex ideas, thus conserving on the very limited information-carrying capacity of an organization." (p. 839)
It might have been even more efficient, however, to just do away altogether with the written policies and guidelines, since they weren't adhered to consistently anyway. It's possible, however, that much as the Soviet legal nihilism, they could find some helpful use (or misuse) for such written missives. It might also be noted that the mission, it seemed, wanted to have a monopoly on written explicit communications, which is why all prayer letters had to be censored before being sent out to supporters. That is, if anyone was going to make use of explicitly written communiqués, it was going to be them and/or on their terms. Fortunately for me and you (unless you are connected with the mission), they can't censor my written communications now. Unless you can't tell... I just want to make that very explicit... in case there were any doubts about that, I mean.
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"Ivan Light [22] has described the Chinese-American Hui and the Japanese-American Tanomoshi, revolving-credit lending societies which provide venture capital for starting new businesses. They carry out all of the functions of any Wall Street investment bank, but, within their ethnic group, they are able to make loans which would be far too risky for any bank because they enjoy potential borrowers or members. None of their practices are explicit - even the rate of interest paid by borrowers is left unspecified and implicit. Entry into a Hui or Tanomoshi is strictly by birthright, a practice which guarantees that each member is a part of a social network and kinship network which will support the values and beliefs upon which the control mechanism is founded. Clearly, the Clan information system cannot cope with heterogeneity nor with turnover, disadvantages which make it all but infeasible as a central mechanism of control in modern organizations, but the Clan, like the market, can operate with great efficiency if the basic conditions necessary to its operation can be met." (p. 840)Like these Asian-American revolving-credit societies, the Vienna mission could most definitely not tolerate any non-homogeneity at all. That is, except regarding secretaries, it would seem. Secretaries, I think were a special class because they were generally uneducated (that is, without higher education degrees) and so because of this more maleable, especially by Th.M (and Th.D.) holding theologians. Well, except me, of course, as it turned out. Anyone who really might want the mission to continue to function in the manner in which I'm describing here might take note of this, that in the future it might be more advisable to select less-educated secretaries.
The thing is that homogeneity also included what kind of education a person must have. I've already spoken enough about my European Studies background, so I won't go into that again here. But what I would like to suggest, by way of adding to the homogeneity discussion, is that it seemed that the bulk of the new theologians came from one particular seminary, although not all of them did. But I think that having so many of them come from that one educational institution also increased the homogeneity. The woman who's apartment I first stayed in (with the Alaskan secretary) upon arrival in Vienna was at that very time studying at that seminary too. In addition, that seminary was located in the same city as the U.S. office of the mission. It seemed like a lot of these new workers were recruited by word of mouth, and they may also have come before for one or more teaching trips (like a visiting professor) into Eastern Europe. On the other hand, when someone on staff, such as the person preparing for women's ministry, needed to acquire a Th.M., they sent him/her to that seminary. So it seemed as if there was some mutual appreciation going on there between the mission and that one seminary. And new workers, having come from that one school would have similar outlooks, making it easier to assimilate them.
I actually attended a Bible school that had a pretty close tie to that seminary, in that a lot of people from my Bible school went on to get their advanced degree from that seminary. But part of the issue in my experience though, was that I didn't go through the undergraduate program, but a special one-year graduate program and then one more year as an "unclassified" student. The graduate program consisted of some approximately 60 students who all went through the same classes, with a few electives thrown in, so they were more or less isolated from the rest of the students in that way. Also, we were allowed to live off-campus, whereas undergraduates were, unless they were married, and I did live off campus that year. So a lot of us were also cut off from the other students in that way as well. The second year (being neither married nor in the graduate program) I did live off campus, but I could take whatever classes I wanted and didn't really have a cohort, although I did get along well with a lot of my dorm-mates, many of whom I kept in touch with for quite some time, until I began to rethink some of my views on life while living in Russia and trying to figure my life out. I didn't change my theology, per se, though. But still, my attitude towards the church did change considerable.
Also, missionaries coming (largely) from that one seminary could be similar, I think, to the Hui and Tanomoshi members coming from a particular "social and kinship network."
Regarding the untolerance for turnover, I expect my demise was problematic for the mission, but I'll never know how much or in what ways exactly. I think that once someone was properly socialized and acting as a useful member they hoped the person would stay on, although there was undoubtedly more turnover among the secretaries than the other workers, because secretaries might have been less likely to see themselves as career missionaries.
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Although there are only 5 or 6 pages left of this article, they are highly marked up. But I'll have to continue my comments in my next post.
