The Voice
“With the country (America) having been founded on exit and having thrived on it, the belief in exit as a fundamental and beneficial social mechanism has been unquestioning.” (Hirschman, 274)
After listening to my students’ presentations today in my “World Religions” class I thought about the book by Albert O. Hirschman, “Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States,” and especially his idea of “exit” as a preferred belief as opposed to “voice.” In class, each student discussed his/her experience visiting a religious service or meeting that is not of their own faith. Many of my students were not raised in any particular faith and so they are curious about “religious life.” Since these students have not been raised in a particular congregation it will take a unique situation to inspire loyalty to that specific community. For many, their parent/s were raised in a specific religion but decided to exit for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons it seems were due to the fact that they didn’t feel they had a voice in the community, or their questions/concerns were not addressed; or perhaps they didn’t feel a loyalty that required them to risk offering his/her voice. Therefore, their children (my students) have never been exposed to any type of church situation. It was interesting to hear how my students described their “field trips” to the variety of religious sites they chose. Some of my students explained that they felt “warm and welcomed” at the church or temple and this seemed to be refreshing to them. One Jewish student commented that the people at the church she visited seemed to care about her. After a presentation where a student visited a Jehovah’s Witness meeting, questions arose from the other students whether or not the believers’ of this faith were allowed to question the interpretation of the Bible that was presented to them; in other words, have a voice. One student explained that at the Sikh gurdwara she visited the granthi suggested that she learn more about her own religion and find the connections between religions. She is LDS/Mormon and seemed to find that this gave her a stronger desire to see the patterns in her own tradition. Without a religious family heritage how might an individual develop a strong enough loyalty that he/she would choose voice over exit? This leads me back to the quote at the beginning of this writing regarding exit.
I wonder how much of the lack of loyalty and the fluidity of people in and out of churches has to do with what Hirschman terms “evolutionary individuality,” that very American urge of upward mobility and exiting one group in order to go into a “new season” where one might find more “enlightened” individuals than in the last group. That movement of leaving one’s own group to join a “higher group” as one continues finding oneself. Is this a natural process or can it be destructive in any way? One of my students did not like the “group chanting” feeling of reciting the Nicene Creed while another student felt it was part of bonding the community in their shared belief.
If my students don’t feel a natural loyalty to any type of religious institution due to their complete unfamiliarity with this concept, how then might having a voice develop their loyalty? How do you give people voice in your context? When have you felt loyal enough to engage “voice” instead of “exit?”
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