The Self-Help Movement That Is Upending American Christianity

The Enneagram has recently found a passionate following in the Evangelical world, drawing young believers steeped in astrology, self-care, and wellness

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Sarajane Case remembers the precise moment she severed her lifelong relationship with Christianity. Her uneasiness had been building over time, sparked by the realization that her queer friends were not at home in the church she loved. But the end came suddenly and quietly: In 2010, at the end of a yoga class, the instructor told Case and the other attendees to thank themselves for showing up.

“That just broke something in me,” she says.

What Case realized in that moment was that she had never truly thanked herself for anything. “Everything I had ever done in my life I was like, ‘All credit to God, everything good is God, I am terrible, anything good in me is God.’”

Case had grown up going to church every Sunday, had attended a Southern Baptist university, and had effectively built her identity around her devoutness. That day in 2010, she realized that religion made her feel she had to downplay her own identity as a form of religious devotion. So she stopped.

Five years later, she was introduced to a self-improvement practice that would fill that newly created spiritual vacuum — a personality typing system that has become wildly popular among young Christians, called the Enneagram.

There are nine Enneagram types. Here, Type 1, The Reformer.

Today, Case is a well-known figure in the Enneagram movement. She is comfortably situated at the top of an Enneagram online content machine that is dominated and consumed predominantly by Christians. She runs an Instagram account with a following of roughly half a million, Enneagram and Coffee, where she shares a mixture of insight, tips for growth, and fun memes around the constellation of types springing from the personality rubric.

Though derived from an ancient wisdom tradition, and not explicitly Christian, the Enneagram has recently found a passionate following in the Evangelical world, drawing young believers culturally steeped as much in the self-centric spiritual practices of the secular world — astrology, self-care, the wellness industry — as they are in biblical teachings.

The Enneagram’s surge in popularity among American Christians has spawned an increased demand for resources from spiritual seekers hoping to identify and explore their personality types. In response, a thriving industry has emerged to accommodate that demand.

Since 2016, Evangelical publishers have released a slew of books on the topic, and the most widely-read Christian publications have seen a whirlwind of coverage. Megachurch pastors preach the system from live-streamed pulpits, and ministers of smaller churches work it into their sermons. Christians are shelling out hundreds of dollars for sessions with professional “Enneagram coaches” to find their type and pursue self-development. Others spend even more to become coaches themselves. (Your Enneagram Coach, perhaps the premier Enneagram coaching service targeting Evangelicals, offers individual coaching sessions at $125 and a packaged series at $674. You can enroll in a course to become a coach yourself for $1,500.)

For Case, who says her current lack of religiosity makes her “weird in the Enneagram world,” such enthusiasm from her old church-going cohort means that what began as a passion project has blossomed into a thriving career.

Now an accredited Enneagram coach, Case hosts live events, including a five-day virtual summit featuring webinars with other leading Enneagram professionals, and charges fees for speaking events and workshops. She hosts a podcast and sells mugs and T-shirts customized for each personality type. She has partnered with a coffee company to sell an “exclusive, private-label” whole bean light roast named after her website. In April, Case launched an online network called Club Enneagram, which for $20 a month or $200 a year offers weekly newsletters with journaling prompts, Q&A sessions with Case, private forums for each personality type, and access to a private members’ Instagram. Followers of her Instagram include the singer/songwriter Julien Baker and the vulnerability researcher Brené Brown, both known for exploring their faith in their work and public lives.