1.2.3 A Modified Framework for Exploration and Description

A complex religious phenomenon, like the Israeli Messianic Jewish movement, forms a particular challenge to a social science study. Traditional social science agnosticism paralysed religious anthropology (Kloos 1991: 113). Droogers questioned attempts to „reduce religion to nonreligious factors” (Droogers 1990: 4, 15, 1994: 36). He suggested recognising methodologically religious aspects of the researched. Social science can neither verify nor falsify the supernatural. Yet it can study and describe expressions of human interaction with it. Already Weber submitted Protestant ethic and prayer to a social science study (Abercrombie, Hill and Turner 1988: 268, Wilterdink and Heerikhuizen 1989: 178).

Though „it may seem strange to include supernatural entities as actors in a social science model of religion” (Droogers 1993: 5), Droogers recommends and does it (Droogers 1997: 54-73). As believers experience the supernatural as real, it contributes to their construction of social reality. A theologian can call the supernatural true or false, real or unreal. A social science researcher should neither deny nor prescribe a theology to respondents. Such only distorted the observation of expressed perception of Interaction with the Supernatural (Saperstein 1992: 5). Theologies may treat what „should be”, social science what „is”.

Droogers encourages conducting studies on religion to be „more emic than etic” (Droogers 1993: 5). He appears aware that it requires both views to perceive and depict religious phenomena sufficiently. An etic approach looks from outside onto various religions as social phenomena to construct common structures by criteria regarded as universal. An emic approach looks inside out of one religion to depict its inherent structure with criteria itself offers. The etic view allows remoteness. The emic requires immersion. Describing the movement in an emic way requires participation in and observation of believers' religious expressions. When I describe the movement, as a whole and in its parts, the emic prevails. When I describe the parts of the movements in relation towards another, and the total or parts of the movement towards their external environments, the etic view gains importance.

Droogers offers a „Framework for the study of gender and religion” that combines various insights and approaches (Droogers 1993). It builds on Berger and Luckmann's insight in „The Social Construction of Reality”: „Society is a human product. Society is an objective reality. Man is a social product” (Berger and Luckmann 1991: 79). It follows Ortner's „Practice Approach” (Ortner 1984), Giddens' „Theory of Structuration” and Bourdieu's „Praxeology” (Coenen 1989). Also, it pays attention to dialectic processes in the triad,

1. social actors,
2. symbolic and social structures,
3. events and phenomena (Droogers 1993: 4).

In this study, the term „social actor” refers to individuals and groups of the movement and its environments. „Symbolic structure” refers to culture as a dynamic assembly of held beliefs. Viewing the movement's subcultures as one static and shared culture would conceal its internal, dynamic variety that is also externally influenced. The definition and sharing of its symbols appeared ambiguous and dynamic (Cohen 1992: 55). ⁸For example, with his ‚Rock of Israel’ (Weiner 1961: 223), already Ben Gurion took advantage of ambiguity. A rabbi and a Marxist had a problem about a phrase in the Declaration of Independence of Israel. Ben Gurion suggested the „words ‚Rock of Israel’ which each group might interpret according to its own philosophy” (idem). Weiner doubted that ambiguity would solve differences lastingly (Weiner 1961: 223, 245).) I could not reduce symbolism to an immaterial realm of interpersonal perception either (Van Brakel 1998: 40-60). Symbolic „artefacts” (Schein 1992: 17-18), or „physical arrangements” (Martin 1992: 39), also deserved attention (Tennekes 1982). Though I could have done this, I did not add physical arrangements to Droogers' framework. As observation in the field usually started at physical arrangements, also each description of the four types will begin with it. The term „social structure” refers to how individuals and groups relate dynamically to one another, within parts of the movement, towards its totality and towards its environments. „Events and phenomena” refer to occurrences, intended and unintended, and happenings relating to entities inside and outside the movement. Droogers has also an eye for the importance of „relational power” in religion (Droogers 1990: 14-17, Meijers 1989: 13, Tennekes 1995: 33). Schematically the modified framework looks as follows.

Predominantly:	Cultural	Social-structural
Relational power	supernatural	internal	external
Social interaction	God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Bible believers	religious specialists laity group - group	individual groups Christianity Judaism
Religious construction	revelatory explorative	hierarchical inclusive	conflicting cooperating

„Cultural” and „social-structural” are attributed predominantly, as they relate inseparably to one another. Social structure may be regarded as cultural anyway. The made distinction is pragmatic. Supernatural relational power relates to believers' interaction with the supernatural, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, the Bible. A social science description of human Interaction with the Supernatural necessarily bears a particular one-sidedness. A researcher can interview human actors about their interaction with their supernatural. Interviewing their supernatural counterparts surpasses for what social science stands. Social-structural internal interaction happens between and among religious specialists, laity and groups. Social-structural external interaction takes place between and among individuals and collectives of the movement and external Christian and Jewish entities.

For supernatural religious construction, Droogers associates exploration with exploitation. This may refer to what Kloos calls „Magic: the manipulation of impersonal powers” (Kloos 1991: 105-106, English ed.) Traditionally, Judaism and Christianity claim to interact with a personal deity that resists magic manipulation and seeks dialogue (Buber 1994). I assumed therefore little occasion to observe attempts to exploit the supernatural. Yet it occurs (Buber 1978). For this study a distinction between revelatory and explorative sufficed. ⁹In daily events exploitation of the supernatural became not obvious. Still, evangelization could be considered to thrive on an underlying exploitative understanding, on „Tikkun-ha'olam”, literally „fixing up the world, ... hastens the coming of the Messiah” (Stern 1991a: 47). Believers also 7BD expect that Messianic Judaism will succeed in reaching its goal of healing the split between the Church and the Jewish people” (Stern 1991a: 58).) Revelatory refers to experiences of, sometimes even overwhelming, intrusions of the supernatural into the human realm. Exploratory refers to human attempts to explain the supernatural, particularly by studying the Bible.

Internal social-structural religious construction refers to the interaction within the movement and within the groups that constitute it. It concerns interaction between and among religious specialists and laity. Religious specialists hold relational power by virtue of expertise, seniority, experience, effort, sacrifice, nomination or election for organizational positions and tasks. The mode of religious construction ranges from hierarchical, even autocratic (21/97), to inclusive, participating managerial practices. Within the movement, executed relational power occurs internally for the movement as a whole and its particular groups, and „internally-externally” between its parts, individuals and groups. The mode of religious construction accordingly ranges from hierarchical to inclusive for the one, and from conflict to cooperation for the other.

The external social-structural religious construction refers to interaction of individuals, groups, and the total of the movement, with national and foreign, Christian and Jewish entities. For Christian entities, the mode of religious construction ranges from excellent cooperation via scepticism to barely concealed hostility, and, from indifference to outspoken violent hostility for Jewish entities. The future of the movement in its Israeli setting appears linked to a positive development of its relationships with the latter.

The combined application, of the fourfold typology and of the modified framework, for the study of the movement meets Martin's observation that a „methodological and epistemological eclecticism makes it easier for a researcher, with a particular set of skills and preferences, to move” between „perspectives” (Martin 1992: 185), to „more fully understand cultural context” (Martin 1992: 174). Martin sets out with three perspectives, integration, differentiation and fragmentation, to study organizations. Finally she concludes that one should at least apply all three perspectives in an organization culture study:

When one perspective seems to be the „best” way to regard a context, the other two, forbidden perspectives may be particularly useful sources of insight (Martin 1992: 177).

I perceived no perspective „forbidden”. The fourfold typology simultaneously allows to view the movement as integrated and differentiated. The movement as a whole has common cultural traces and a certain consensus. Yet it shows also differentiation into clusters, which an isolated application of the integration perspective would hide (Martin 1992: 174). In the „particular mix of cultures” (Martin 1992: 111), non-charismatic versus charismatic and ecclesiastical versus synagogal, one could see the uniqueness in the movement's culture. The modified framework further deepened the sense for the differentiation within the movement and its parts. Systematic attention for the internal social structure worked out the fragmentation of the movement and its parts, to discern „complexity, multiplicity, and flux”, thereby „overcoming many shortcomings of more simplified, oppositional modes of thinking” (Martin 1992: 139). The systematic attention for the external social structure (Droogers 1993) parallels Martin's „feeder cultures” (Martin 1992: 113). Contextual interpretation (Van den Eeden 1994) parallels Martin's „nexus” (Martin 1992: 113), both take into account that

[w]e cannot understand what goes on inside an organizational culture without understanding what exists outside the boundary (idem).

The fourfold typology and the modified framework, each on its own and together, depict the movement's cultures as „multiple, overlapping, and nested within each other (idem). The early finding of the fourfold emic typology allowed a more flexible and emic approach to the movement. Compared with this, Martin's approach appears etic, alien, even rigid, and would probably have taken me far around to arrive where I began with the fourfold typology. Martin's approach appears general, universalistic, essentialist (Van Brakel 1998: 11), mine was, on the opposite, tailor-made, more particularistic. The conscious, systematic attention for the movement's Interaction with the Supernatural surpasses Martin's threefold perspective (Martin 192: 168-188) and postmodern suggestion (189-202).

Besides the aforementioned parallels with Martin's theoretical approach of organizational culture, I warmly share her critical view on competitive social science. I have no intent to „struggle for supremacy... and personal career enhancement” (Martin 1992: 17). Also I despise „an atmosphere of fierce debate” and the denial of uncertainties, „to score a point, beat the competition, and destroy opposing arguments” (idem). No social science theory and finding can be sacrosanct. I admire her „style of conversation” and respect for the integrity of varying social science viewpoints and modesty about limitations (idem). Or, to say it with still another „Martin”, that is, Buber:

ich habe keine Lehre, ich führe ein Gespräch.
(I have no doctrine, I run a conversation.
English, May 2014 ed.)

This essay's intent is, neither to score points, nor to beat others, not even where I question other views and approaches, but to contribute to an ongoing conversation about the movement.