In Christian missiology, an insider movement is a group or network of people from a non-Christian religion who consider themselves followers of Jesus while remaining relationally, culturally and socially a part of the religious community of their birth.
Though members of insider movements do not typically join Christian churches in their area or region, they may see themselves as part of the wider Body of Christ.
It has been observed that as members of these groups follow Jesus and the Bible, they personally reject, reinterpret, or modify the non-biblical beliefs found in their religious communities.
This process makes them different in some ways from their co-religionists, yet when groups can faithfully follow Jesus without formally disassociating themselves from their religious communities, insider movements can occur.
If these groups of people who decide to follow Jesus choose to remain within the non-Christian religious communities of their birth, observers often refer to them as insider movements.
A cultural approach to world religions, however, holds that they are a conglomeration of diverse communities, defined more by traditions, history and customs than a singular stated core theology.
[13] In terms of insider movements, opponents generally adhere to the essentialist viewpoint, and hold that any mixing of religious traditions involves confusion and compromise.
They note the diversity of thought and practice within any given religious label, and see leeway in non-Christian communities for a legitimate expression of following Jesus to develop.
They thus contend that a Muslim or Hindu or Buddhist follower of Jesus does not necessarily create confusion or compromise, but can represent an appropriate expression of personal identity.
[24] A study of Churchless Christianity[25] in Tamil Nadu by Herbert E. Hoefer drew attention to the widespread phenomena of Hindu discipleship to Jesus in contemporary India.
Hoefer declined to consider this a movement despite impressive numbers, mainly because there was no indication of interaction among the numerous individuals who were following Jesus as Hindus.
[28] Riggs stressed that in much of the world, religion, politics and culture are highly interrelated and that Jesus needs to be brought into existing social and religious groups in order to make following him a viable option.
In 1969, a Southern Baptist missionary, Virginia Cobb working among Muslims in the Middle East, stressed the centrality of Jesus in Christian witness: “We are not trying to change anyone’s religion.
[33] In 1989 Dudley Woodberry produced a seminal article that showed strong links between Muslim beliefs and practices and those of Jews and early Christians, as well as mentioning, without naming the country, one of the first case studies of an insider movement.
[34] In 1998 Evangelical Missions Quarterly articles by Phil Parshall[35] and J. Travis[36] described and critiqued six types of Christ-centered communities found in Muslim majority regions of the world.
[40] A further study by Doug Coleman published in 2011 analyzed insider movements based on available literature at the time from four perspectives (theology of religions, revelation, soteriology and ecclesiology).
[41] Authors and missiologists whose articles illustrate both sides of the debate are Gary Corwin and [42] Timothy Tennent,[43] with responses by John Travis, Phil Parshall, Herbert Hoefer, Rebecca Lewis,[44] and Kevin Higgins.
[49] In 2015, Harley Talman and John Jay Travis edited and published Understanding Insider Movements, the most comprehensive work to date, addressing historical, biblical, theological, missiological, ecclesiastical and sociological issues surrounding IMs.
[51] Genealogies of the development of the ideas surrounding IM and contextualization from a critical perspective have been composed by Matthew Sleeman (surveying literature from 1998 to 2010)[52] and J. Henry Wolfe.
[59] William A. Dyrness provides case studies of insider movements in varied religious contexts, including Latin American indigenous peoples, African traditional religions and Buddhist communities in Asia.
The Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary estimates that as of 2020 approximately 7.4 million non-Christians were following Christ from within the context of their own religious and cultural traditions.