I'd really love to know more about this subject.

I am a client of IFS. My therapist and I are both very strong Christians. I visualize that myself is in essence the Holy Spirit within me. I feel that it is God in my heart that allows me to be open for my parts. My parts trust God which helps comforting them. My Self is my core self that God inhabits. I think the Self has the same qualities of God. I think they really do intertwine.

IFS and Christianity… now there’s a topic.

The most obvious piece to me is that being raised within a cultural context imbued with Judaeo-Christian values is going to create and inform parts. The many forms that Christianity takes will lead to clusters of parts existing in relation to the teachings being presented. For example I have many parts that took on beliefs about their shameful unnaturalness, identified as disgusting sodomites, and were convinced eternal fires awaited them. Within a more enlightened cultural context these parts would have been recognised for their inherent loving nature.

Those of us who have parts that have been hurt by the “truths” espoused by those who claim the mantle of Christian will of course have manager parts that want to simply avoid the whole topic. I wonder how many manager parts have not allowed individuals in this forum to open a post for fear of hurt and exiled parts overwhelming the system with their distress; or of activating angry firefighters.

In terms of IFS I think it is helpful to explore these exiled parts for several reasons. One of the most attractive elements of IFS work to me is the awareness of the intersection of the transpersonal realms with the personality system. Guides can and do engage with the system and critters too can invade and set up house when a distressed exile takes on their role and the malevolent entities have a place of purchase. I believe it behooves those of us who are IFS practitioners to hold the existence of these beings in our consciousness as we work with our clients.

Yet if our systems have conflated spirituality with Christianity (and we have parts that have experienced spirituality/religion as harmful) our hard-working managers may dismiss any reference to the transpersonal and subtly filter our perception of the client’s system. We do our clients a disservice if we are not open to helping them expunge the all- too- familiar negative harpings of a critter that is not inherent to the system and does not belong. If our own systems are uncomfortable with recognising that these voices come from “out there” then we will misleadingly treat them as parts and risk further cementing their hold. Similarly we may encourage clients to view guides as “nice parts” and invalidate the connection to a benevolent entity from a non-ordinary realm.

The flipside of this, of course, is to engage in the work from blended parts that hold quasi-romantic notions about guides and interpret the client’s experiences through such a lens. Chances are the part seeing guides everywhere may be blinded to critters. Again if we have the courage to explore the exiles connected to this arena then managers that protect us with rose-tinted lenses may be willing and able to disengage.

We can of course look outside of the Christian context to find connection with the Divine. Judaism, Shamanism, Islam… all paths hold the Golden Rule as a fundamental principle and this is the embodiment of compassion. Our parts detectors are quite able to notice when an interpretation of Divine Law clashes with Self energy. Asking the question, “How does this teaching further compassion for my brothers and my sisters?” guides us back to trusting the wisdom of Self.

As a self-identified Christian (now) I have been able to journey back to the simple faith I had as a child, and my kid part’s my delight in saying the Our Father. The comfort I experience from the Great Mother during difficult passages, my gratitude for the gifts of my life and my child and for being guided to serve is immeasurable. And the trip home was not helped by false “teachings” about who I am.

I invite and encourage the exploration of parts connected to Christianity. I understand manager part’s concerns about opening the can of worms. Firefighters too may be on alert at the thought of engaging with parts that may hold beliefs about being “wrong” and/or that have been shamed. If we can acknowledge and address the concerns of our protectors and invite their trust of us as we embody Self energy to hear the pain of the “sinful” exiles, we may be able to adapt the Golden Rule and “Do unto parts as you would have others do unto you.”

I am ordained as a Protestant minister and also have taught theology and ministry courses for Fuller Theological Seminary. With that background, my recent discovery of IFS (I'm finishing an MFT degree this year) was an immediate delight, partly because of a significant overlap between the IFS view of personal multiplicity and the New Testament description of human personhood. Many of Paul's epistles describe the Christian's normal state as a sort-of interplay or even power struggle between subpersonalities. Paul's language includes phrases such as "old self" "new self" "inner self" "outer self""natural self" "spiritual self" etc.- and while the New Testament model does not predict Richard Schwartz's model explicitly, the commonalities have been striking to me.

What about a fundamental "Self" beneath the parts? Notice this: “Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.” (Rom. 7:20) Here Paul seems to believe that a variety of negative habits stem from a different "I" than his deeper, more determinative self -- a self that is basically free, compassionate, and resting securely in God and the pleasure of knowing/being known by him. Of course, the explicitly Christian "new self" that resides beneath the parts is not autonomous, but finds its joy in receiving the Father's love, in its acceptance by virtue of the Son's self-sacrifice, and in its empowerment derived by Holy Spirit's indwelling it. Does the Christian then aim for Self-Leadership or Divine Leadership? Well, both, but in different ways. The trintarian God (talk about an an internal family system!) is the Christian's ultimate ground, though that God happens to be in the business of re-creating human selves in his image, that is, selves who can freely function with analagous versions of his own compassion and love. Do Christians aim to put their fundamental trust in God versus self? Yes (and, of course, other IFS-ers would disagree here), but the shape of that Christian trust is, in part, that God would progressively renovate their "new self" so that it is free of burdens, polarizations, etc. To paraphrase someone else, "God recreated the self in his Son's image, and God don't make junk."

Now, of course, there are plenty of "yeah, buts" that long-time Christians might respond with at this point, and those objections are understandable. IFS in its barest form is not the same as Christian spirituality. Much more could be said about all of this (and I'm hoping to keep hashing it out myself in the next year).

I'd love to see other posts on this topic.

Interesting topic, this "not I/but sin within me" idea...

I guess I have always just viewed this behavior in Christians as a "transference/denial of responsibility" mechanism for avoiding confrontation or the admission of guilt and subsequent necessity of humility before fellow humans, not necessarily as some recognition of a partitioned subconscious. of course not all Christians exhibit this behavior.

I can't see how Paul is not distancing himself from "the sin within me".
How does the Golden Rule fit in with this...?

Yes, I agree, there are plenty of people who may (mis)use Rom. 7 to scapegoat certain behaviors in the same vein as saying "the devil made me do it." I think that's the denial-of-responsibility problem you are noticing, if I read you correctly. I do think it would be hard to see this as Paul's own point, since he is also quick to admit his personal guilt (calling himself "chief of sinners" in one place)and even at the end of Rom. 7 saying that he needs "rescuing" from his sin-nature.
But I also agree that,yes, at least in some sense Paul is distancing himself from his sin. So while he would admit his real guilt, he seems to also say that his sin-nature is somehow alien to his truer self, the one that the Spirit has begun to recreate in him. While the old-self and the new-self duke it out within the Christian, the new-self is closer to what the Christian should think of as the "real me" - a me that the Spirit is strengthening over time in cooperation with my own efforts to be more like Christ.
IFS provides a somewhat similar way of treating these conflicting parts within, and certainly says that unloving behaviors (for example) do not arise from the Self, but from some other less fundamental role played by a sub-part. Like Paul, neither does IFS suggest that we avoid responsibility for our misdeeds (our subparts are still "us", afterall). Put another way, it's not the Self that hurts other people, but a sub-part, and yet we still owe the hurt person a humble apology.
Glad to see this thread continuing...!