ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the onset, outbreak, and consequences of catastrophic internal conflict in one such congregation in light of sweeping transformations occurring within its socio-cultural environment. It aims to construct from elements of interim minister to Queens Road Church and from reports by participants in the events that unfolded there. The chapter focuses on the devolution of the mental, emotional, and social systems of a homogeneous, functioning congregation faced with emerging socio-cultural threats to its survival over which it had no control. On the one hand, a congregational minister is responsible for the care of souls, and on the other, with their spiritual and functional leadership. E. Hopper demonstrates that catastrophic failure of a basic assumption of dependency within the social unconscious of a group or organization traumatizes its participants, evoking and exacerbating psychotic anxieties of annihilation that shatter internal cohesion and devolve complex emotional and social systems into primitive forms focused singularly upon survival.
