Balance competitivo desde la temporada 1999/00 a la 2016/17

The testimony narratives of seven participants can be viewed as peripheral

testimonies since they vary yet again from both the insider and inbound testimony narratives. These peripheral testimonies can be further separated into two categories: Evangelicals and non-Evangelicals with four participants in the former category and three participants in the latter. The students with Evangelical church backgrounds whose testimony narratives can be considered more peripheral include Adria, Corbin, Eric, and Travis. Adria grew up attending a United Methodist church, Corbin attended a non-denominational church, and Eric and Travis both attended Wesleyan churches. All four students included only Moves 1 and 2 in their testimonies. They each noted their childhood in church as Move 1 with Travis offering the most details, “[Church] was part of my life and [I] went to Sunday School—you know, three weeks old and on” (line 8).

The event of their conversions in Move 2 differed among the students. Adria’s young conversion occurred during an after-school Bible study at her public school when she was eight years old (line 16). Eric recalled his conversion happening during a children’s lesson at church when he was six years old (line 6). Travis experienced his conversion at the age of thirteen during a youth conference held at Indiana Wesleyan University (line 10). Despite the

variations in location and age, these three students could pinpoint the particular moment in which they converted to Christianity. Corbin, however, could not remember his initial conversion and deferred to his mother’s memory about it when he said, “The story my mom likes to tell is that I accepted Christ at VBS when I was three” (line 8). I asked him if he ever made a deeper commitment when he was older that might signal a personal appropriation of his faith. He responded, “There were a couple of times when I thought I was accepting Christ for the first time, but it was never a rededication kind of thing” (line 12). He went on to explain that this had occurred twice by the time he was ten years old. Thus, Corbin

experienced an initial conversion multiple times as a young child with no significant change in his faith as a young adult.

Eric came close to including Move 4 in his testimony narrative. I had prompted him by asking if he had experienced any other defining moments in his spiritual development over the years since his conversion. He mentioned he had attended multiple church camps, in which the leaders asked the campers if they “wanted to rededicate themselves” (line 16), which is one form of personal appropriation for those who converted as young children. However, he never specifically noted that he himself had done this. This suggests that Eric, like Corbin, is aware of this move in an Evangelical testimony narrative, but he has not personally engaged his faith to this point.

The non-Evangelical students deviated from the testimony narrative moves in a significant way. Marci, Collin, and Astrid identified themselves as Lutheran, Catholic, and a Catholic-turned-agnostic respectively. When I asked if they would share how they became a Christian, the Lutheran and Catholic students replied with similar answers. The Lutheran, Marci, stated, “I have always, I mean, I just grew up in this church” (line 112); and the Catholic, Collin, said, “I always felt like I was a Christian” (line 18). They both included Move 1 when they talked about how they had attended church since their infancy and had

been involved in the life of those churches – Sunday school for Marci and first communion, confirmation, and CCD (Confraternity of Christian Doctrine) religious education classes for Collin. Both of them spoke about various experiences they had involving Bible study and their growing understanding of what it means to be a Christian.

Like Michelle from the insider testimonies, Marci included an Anti-Move 3 in which she stated, “I was already starting to grow before I even really could remember it, so it’s just always been a part of my life” (line 174). She went on to say that she had always believed the way she has. Just like Michelle, there was no reflection on any prior ignorance about her faith, only a firm statement of unchanging belief over time. She concluded her testimony narrative with something akin to Move 4, in which she affirmed, “I have always been able to find that perfect joy that Jesus loves me and that I am saved—that I know I’m going to heaven” (line 174). Clearly, she appropriated her faith, but that seemed to come from a gradual growth rather than a significant, intense faith experience.

Collin’s response to my question of how he became a Christian was unusual in two ways. He spoke of his faith identity as a “role,” a term which none of the other participants used. He explained, “About two or three years ago, I guess I kind of came into the role a little more” (line 18) because he and his father began discussing the topics from the Bible study his father attended. As a result, Collin became more interested in his faith as a Christian. Also, Collin’s response included hedging, such as “I guess” and “kind of,” which indicates hesitancy about this personal appropriation. While this is similar to Move 4, his hesitancy demonstrated the incompleteness of his personal appropriation process.

Finally, Astrid’s experience, moving from Catholicism to agnosticism, shaped her “testimony” in distinctive ways from the other participants. She explained how she was raised in a Catholic church and attended mass and CCD classes regularly until she was in eighth grade, which fits with Move 1. At that point, her grandfather became seriously ill, and

she declared her anger towards God as the primary reason she stopped attending church. The event of her grandfather’s illness acted as the pivot point in which Astrid experienced a faith crisis. This functions as an Anti-Move 2, in that she “converted” away from the faith rather than to the faith. After turning away from the faith, she chose to take time, as she said, “to figure everything out” in her own way (line 18). This seems to be a similarly incomplete process of Move 4, like Collin, regarding her own personal appropriation of her decision to reject the faith.

Even though these three participants’ faith identities lie outside the Evangelical community, they still referred to their religious experiences as children either at or near the question of how they became a Christian, thus including Move 1. After this, there was a range of variations. The testimony narratives from Marci and Collin both lacked Move 2, which may indicate that Move 2 is the primary distinguishing feature of an Evangelical testimony common to the IWU community. Astrid manifested an Anti-Move 2 using the testimony genre against itself. In addition to the absence/reversal of Move 2, none of these participants used the typical Christianese terms associated with these Moves. Marci included an Anti-Move 3 to clarify that she had no conversion experience akin to Move 2. Collin and Astrid both discussed their ongoing appropriation of their faith or lack thereof as a partial realization of what is usually rehearsed in Move 4. None of them included Move 5, which is in keeping with the majority of the participants in the full data set.