Enneagram has faced pushback, but remains popular
As the Enneagram has grown in popularity among faith communities, it has also faced pushback. Some Evangelicals have voiced discomfort over connections to mysticism or Gnosticism, or the story that the Enneagram system came to Ichazo in a dream, gifted to him by an angel.
In 2010, the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod issued an evaluation of the Enneagram, saying it could be a “fairly harmless tool if used solely to investigate personality traits,” but also saying that its “spiritual connections make the Enneagram program spiritually deceptive and dangerous.” The Catholic Church has also grap
pled with the Enneagram, with the Vatican saying in a 2003 document that the Enneagram, “when used as a means of spiritual growth introduces an ambiguity in the doctrine and the life of the Christian faith.”
That hasn’t stopped the Enneagram’s popularity. Smith teaches Enneagram workshops to United Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and more. Some Unitarian Universalist seminaries require students to know their type before they graduate, she said.
A Google search shows Catholic parishes, retreat centers and chaplains’ organizations holding Enneagram workshops.
‘It showed me where my blind spots and my pitfalls were’
On Jan. 30, the participants in Smith’s workshop divided up into smaller groups based on their types: A large group of twos (the helpers), a large group of eights (the challengers), a few smaller groups of the other types.
Smith asked them to speak with each other about their gifts and their struggles. For many, the workshop wasn’t about how they would use the Enneagram with others, but how they would use the Enneagram to better understand and develop themselves as people.
Lori Guy, who leads with a type four, isn’t in leadership at her church, but decided to attend anyway since she’s found the Enneagram helpful in her own spiritual practice.
Years ago, she realized her own bias and perspectives were limiting her during prayer or while she read the Bible, she said.
Through the Enneagram, she can see how she needs to learn from the personality traits of others, she said.
“My fixations I have as a type four get in the way,” Guy said.
“All nine types, if you’re from the Christian tradition, are a reflection of Jesus. No one type has all insight. That’s one thing I really struggle with is leading with the type and confusing that once you become a Christian is believing at my best most glorified four that I’m somehow like Jesus. I’m not. All those other things are key character attributes and virtues of a person that’s spiritually mature.”
When independent spiritual director Linda Douty Mischke first encountered the Enneagram, she found it “revelatory and powerful,” she said.
“It showed me where my blind spots and my pitfalls were,” Mischke said. “And I thought of myself as a pretty selfaware person — wrong. Knowing one’s self helps you to be open to knowing another person.”
Knowing her traits as a three, including how much she can be task-oriented, allows her to get herself “out of the way” when she’s assisting a client, she said, and be a better spiritual director.
“One of the main tenets of the faith community is to love your neighbor as yourself,” Mischke said.
“If you don’t know yourself and love yourself, it’s very difficult to know and love someone else.”
Katherine Burgess covers county government, religion and the suburbs. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com, 901-5292799 or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.