The Jesus People of Hillbrow, Johannesburg, assert that since joining the Jesus movement they have undergone radical changes; from a life of turmoil to a life of relative serenity. Such claims, if valid, have implications for the counter-culture, which is comprised largely of youth alienated from mainstream society and church. The present study then, was an investigation to determine whether the members of the Jesus movement have changed and if so, attempts were made to delineate such changes. The Jesus People investigated were members of the "Invisible Church", who had been residing communally for a period of not less than three months. A battery of questionnaires was administered on two occasions. The first occasion required the subjects to complete the questionnaires as they would have prior to their conversion, while the second administration required that the subjects complete the questionnaires according to their attitudes, values and opinions presently held. To counter any practice effects, the requirements for completion of the questionnaires were reversed for one half of the group randomly chosen. The order of presentation of the questionnaires was kept the same to counter any fatigue-effects. (The control group being matched with the experimental group should experience the same degree of fatigue.) The individuals selected for the control group were recruited from established-church youth clubs. These individuals were matched with the members of the Jesus movement for age, sex, home-language, general intelligence and occupation of father. The procedure of questionnaire administration for the control group was identical to that adopted for the experimental group. Both the experimental and the control group comprised 22 individuals. Incidental to the major design of the present study was the generation of a small (eight) group of Pentecostals, the results of which were analysed separately from those of the experimental and control groups. The finding that this group underwent the least change did not support the a priori expectation that Pentecostals should show changes which are intermediate to those of the experimental and control groups. It is argued however, that this Pentecostal group is not representative of Pentecostals per se. Bearing in mind, that the answers received depend, to a large extent, on the nature of the questions posed, the Jesus People, as a function of conversion (operationally defined as a "Jesus Experience"), underwent significant increases in their degree of perceived security but revealed significant decreases on attributes related to self-actualization. In addition, their predominant life-style orientation changed from personalistic to sociocentric, and there was an increased support for biblicistic fundamentalism. Associated with the above changes were decreases on the majority of the Wilson conservatism-scale dimensions, together with changes on a questionnaire explicitly developed for the present study. It is argued that the changes undergone by the members of the Jesus movement are in a positive direction, the "Invisible Church" serving as a 'half-way house'. Such changes are posited to be a function of an operationally defined "Jesus Experience"; a psycho-sociological experience rather than a theological, ecclesiastical experience.

The concern of this investigation is with the meaning of becoming as well as being a member of one of four specific small and structured religious communities. Three of these religious groups - the Jesus People, the Hare Krishna Devotees and the Maharaj Ji Premies - are considered to be nonconformist in terms of the life-style, value-system and theology each adopts within the mainstream social and theological ethos, while the fourth group - a sample of Catholic Seminarians - like the other groups is a small community with a structured life-style, but its life-style and value-system is not necessarily non-conformist. These groups are all to be found, amongst other places, in Johannesburg, apart from the Catholic Priests, all of whom were living in a seminary in Pretoria. All the members of these religious communities - both men and women - who were interviewed were Caucasian, their educational standard ranged from pre-matric through to university graduate status, and the overall average age of the 9rouP members was 24 years - the youngest subject was aged 17 while the oldest was 31 years of age. Rather than a meas~rement orientated procedure, a phenomenologically inspired methodological procedure was used to explicitate the data. It is argued that a descriptive phenomenological perspective is more appropriate for the elucidation of meaning-structures, especially with reference to the present inquiry, than would be a quantitative, measurement and mathematical treatment of the subject matter with which this thesis is concerned. The results are best summarized by stating that, although the explication revealed that the four groups are distinctly different in certain aspects of the meaning-structures of the individuals' becoming and being members of a group, there are nonetheless marked similarities between the groups in other aspects of the explicitated data.