LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY gloucester)

I found this quote in dogemperor's piece on cell churches:

"A particularly damning psychological study mentioned in "The Discipling Dilemma" has noted that longterm involvement in churches that use "cell churches" as a method of control actually causes longterm personality changes. Among other things, two particular groups known to have used coercive "discipling and shepherding" (the Boston Church of Christ and Maranatha) were shown to have members with personality types that changed over time on all scales of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator to ENFJ (including a number of complete reversals from ISTP to ENFJ, which does not generally happen without some coercion..."

Of particular interest to me is the revelation that the members become ENFJ. For those of you not familiar, that's:

Extrovert: preferring to "recharge" (rest, gather energy, regroup) alone with group activities, drawing personal energy from shared groups like parties--its spectrum opposite is introvert, which prefers to recharge and rest alone and with solitary activities. Some sources also list this axis as being significant to what NLP practicioners call "internal check" vs. "external check:" Do you build your model based on feedback from others (as the extrovert does), or do you rely on your own perceptions and processing?
Ntuiter: preferring to form beliefs based on abstract models rather than concrete observations. An intuiter prefers "values" to "results."
Feeler: One who processes information by "gut check," unconsciously/emotionally, rather than having all the reasoning be conscious, as, for example, math or accademic research would have to be.
Judger: This one is best described in terms of flexibility. If there is a discrepancy witht he world, Does the data invalidate the model, or the model invalidate the data? A judger prefers the latter.

You will easily see how the above MBTI type makes for good followers for a cause that requires unquestioning faith in authority.
But it is not a good model for authority. I guarantee that the sheep-herders like Dobson, Wildmon, Coulter, O'Reilly, and Perkins are not ENFJ (I didn't include Robertson because I think he may be just dumb enough to believe his own shinola). So what are they, and is that information even useful in the fight against dominionism? I ask that second part because there's only so far you can go in knowing your enemy--it's not like they don't stand out, and we know who they are. It might concievably give us more insight into how they think, but would that even help us at all? The thing we know for sure is that the followers are honest but the leaders are not. The leaders are clearly able to see and deal with a greater level of complexity than the followers, and are able to incorporate and master more complex tools of the trade than the followers, such as politically saavy speech, which they then teach to the followers as "talking points."

I will later attempt my best "guess" as to the types exhibited by the five leaders I've listed above, but not if no one thinks there's any value to it.