The Three Christs of Ypsilanti - Milton Rokeach [14]
Most important of these non-primitive beliefs would seem to be those that concern positive and negative authorities—the authorities that sociologists call reference persons or reference groups.[5] Which authorities could know and also would know? Which authorities, positive or negative, are we to trust or distrust as we go about our daily lives seeking to learn about the good, the beautiful, and the true? For each individual the answer will be different, and will depend on his learning experiences within the historical context of the social structure—family, class, peer group, ethnic group, religious and political group, nationality—to which he belongs.
If we know about a person only that he believes in a particular authority, we should be able to deduce from this the nature of a great many of his other beliefs—all of those that emanate from that authority. These beliefs, which can be called peripheral because they are derived, are less important dynamically than the beliefs about authority from which they spring. Many of them should, therefore, be relatively open to change—either through direct communication from the authority or if the individual abandons that authority as his guide. These peripheral beliefs form what social scientists call an ideology;[6] along with the identification with authority on which they are based, they provide the individual with his sense of identification with a given group.[7]
Finally, there is a class of beliefs which for lack of a better term we will call inconsequential. These beliefs concern matters of taste; if they are changed, the total system of beliefs is not altered in any significant way. If a person changes his mind about whether the mountains or the seashore are preferable for a vacation, or about the color that is most becoming to him, or about the movie actress who is most attractive, the rest of his system of beliefs is hardly likely to be affected in any important way.
In summary, a person’s total system of beliefs is composed of beliefs that range in importance from the inconsequential, through the peripheral, to beliefs about authority, and finally, at the core, to primitive beliefs about the nature of the physical world, society, and himself. All these beliefs (except, possibly, the inconsequential ones) are formed and developed very early in life, and undoubtedly the child first learns them in the context of his dealings with his parents. As he grows older, he learns that there are certain beliefs which virtually all others hold; others which are true for him even though no one else believes them; and still other beliefs about which men differ. The total system of beliefs may be seen as an organization of beliefs varying in depth, formed as a result of living in nature and in society, designed to help a person maintain, insofar as possible, a sense of ego and group identity stable and continuous over time, an identity which experiences itself to be a part of, and simultaneously apart from, a stable physical and social environment. As Helen Merrell Lynd writes: The search for identity “is a social as well as an individual problem. The kind of answer one gives to the question Who am I? depends in part upon how one answers the question What is this society—and this world—in which I live?”[8]
It is against this background of theoretical speculation, admittedly incomplete, that I was led, first, to examine various phenomena which seemed to involve violations of primitive belief, and eventually to bring together the three Christs of Ypsilanti.
I had come home from the office one day, late, tired, and irritable. We all sat down to dinner. My two daughters, Miriam