Churches of the Global South are spreading egalitarian aspirations that have transformative impacts on law and politics, economy and culture.
Individuals have multiple identities which often run parallel to one another. The situational nature of identities means that some identities are activated while others subordinated in different interactions and conditions. For instance the Christian identity is clearly salient when a female, conservative Christian medical officer has to advise a friend planning for an abortion. But the conservative Christian identity is less likely to be activated when she is dealing with chauvinistic and paternalistic senior male doctors at the hospital.
However as people embrace the postmodern worldview (a common characteristic of post-industrial, information age societies) they will desire greater authenticity (i.e. being true to oneself) in the articulation of their identity. Multiple identities can be contradictory; some aspects of identity interfere with others. Identifying oneself as a moral liberal and consequently supportive of gay rights seems irreconcilable if one also embraces the identity of a Bible-believing Christian.
The way to shift away from this cognitive dissonance is then to embrace a holistic identity found at the intersection of diverse and sometimes even contradictory identities. Thus identifying oneself as a moral liberal, Bible-believing Christian generates greater authenticity and provides a framework for the individual to make sense of his/her subjective experiences and those of others. The holistic identity is by no means though, merely a string of hyphenated markers that individuals self-identify with. It often requires individuals to be aware of the intrinsic tension of the identity parts but simultaneously seek to reconcile them. As such little effort is taken to obliterate the tension between the parts – i.e. there is no suppression of the fact that one is Bible-believing or morally liberal, but strategies are employed to find coherence in the whole identity (such as appealing to metanarratives - “the true Jesus of the Bible embraces everyone regardless of their moral behaviour” that can seemingly reconcile these contradictions).
While how individuals reconcile the different parts of their identity and make them part of a cohesive whole might be idiosyncratic, the formation and maintenance of this identity is very much related to how it is verified within a community. The internet and social media has made the search for such communities, for those who will increasingly embrace such hyphenated and complex intersectional identities, relatively simple. Since the postmodern worldview is generally averse towards authority figures defining identities or their performance, the manifestations of these hyphenated identities will be increasingly negotiated within online circles where other “peripheral” trappings (such as the brands one consumes or even nationality) do not hold sufficient power. In the absence of centralizing forces on hyphenated identities, such identities are likely to be in constant flux, constantly being reformulated based on its numerous interactions.