ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on an ongoing research project into the formation of the Christian Fundamentalist identity within church communities, and the re-formation of this identity when people disaffiliate, or in fact de-convert. Through a narrative analysis and Foucauldian genealogy of twenty in-depth interviews, this study explores how the 'Christian Fundamentalist identity' as a regime of the self is socially constructed, put together and negotiated. The dialogical analysis (DA) interrogates 'who' an utterance may be directed to, 'when' and 'why', and shifts the interest to storytelling as a process of co-construction, where teller and listener create meaning collaboratively. The Foucauldian 'genealogy of Christian identity' aims to analyse the discursive and non-discursive ways the Christian subject emerges in history and therefore the subjectivities shaped by the Christian Fundamentalist (CF) community. Christian Fundamentalism has been understood as a thoroughly modern social movement, with its own centripetal apparatuses of power designed to maintain a collective self-constructed, solipsistic identity.
