Negotiating the flow: an ethnographic study of the way two URC congregations shape and are shaped by members

This study was conducted with two congregations from two different joining denominations within the United Reformed Church in two post-industrial towns. I spent two years with each congregation as a participant observer, taking part in congregational life and interviewing members for a total of four years. My interest is in the activity that members of these congregations undertake to sustain and change their congregation’s identity. What particularly interested me was how a Reformed cultural identity was sustained, as there is no central body preserving the tradition. In tackling these issues, I explore the interplay of identity with location, community and worship. The recurring tensions drew my attention to the ways identity is renegotiated, which I explore further by engaging with the dynamic metaphor of flow and turbulence. I formulate a concept of belonging by modifying Foucault’s understanding of technology. I go on to explore the way that this technology of belonging is a driver of members’ interaction with the congregational identity. I therefore argue that congregational identity is a recapitulatory process, which engages the members’ understanding of themselves as belonging to the congregation. In doing this I demonstrate the unsettled, contraplex nature of members’ engagement with the congregation’s identity