Members of organized religions, even small sects, have a variety of reasons for adhering to their chosen faith, as we have noted elsewhere; but their membership in a community of believers will lead them to take on one or more social roles and participate in certain types of activities as much based on personality traits and long-standing preferences as on anything tightly coupled to their original motivation to be part of the community.
Personality traits may be fairly stable over one's adult life, but even longstanding preferences can be subject to modification over time, and social identities are largely constructed on what the society recognizes and makes available to one as these align with one's personality and preferences. So nothing strictly prevents a person who has taken on one sort of social role in their religious community from changing to something quite different. True engagement with a religion can be a life-altering experience, in terms of its effects on one's goals, values, and orientation toward society; so undergoing a further evolution in these as one lives out the ramifications of the changes is certainly possible, if not necessarily common. And although there are various theories and classification schemes for personality “types” (Jung, Myers-Briggs, HEXACO, etc.), individuals are almost never pure types but display some more and some less emphasized aspects of personality, which allows for a certain degree of fluidity. We also can guess that the members of a religious community will be more likely to describe their own individual personality-defining traits and qualities in a way that aligns them more closely with the values of the religion, which may make personality testing for such individuals more complicated and prone to unintentional misdirection.
One could justifiably question whether people, influenced by their personality traits and acquired preferences, take on any different roles in religious communities than they would take on in any other organized community. It's safe to say, at the very least, that there will be some overlap between the roles and behaviors that people gravitate toward in an organized religious group and those they would gravitate toward in many other types of groups that are comparable in size and in formal and informal decision-making structures (such as hierarchy, network, consensus-building, etc.).
Following are some of the more common personality types that appear among those who become members of religious communities. These are not based on the theorized typologies of personality mentioned above, although there may be some correlation between what we describe and some of those systems.
Contemplative individuals are those who prefer time to be alone with their own thoughts and to devote that time to considering the types of questions that their religion tries to provide answers for. This could be time coming to grips with the intricacies of theological issues, or time trying to enter into mystical or similarly heightened states of awareness of the underlying divine principle or being that their religion considers real. Although a contemplative individual can be sociable in their religious community, the experiences they prize are interior more often than they are oriented to other people. One reason why monks and nuns in many religious traditions live apart from ordinary society is to allow those who are contemplative more space to devote to their interior work while providing a social structure within which they can still function with other people.
What might seem like opposites to the contemplative personalities are performative individuals. These are individuals whose emphasis is on participating in rituals and taking on ceremonial roles. Their reward is being able to perform in front of an appreciative (or at least passively supportive) audience, and to act out different personae than those they take on in their quotidian existence. Their penchant for dramatic opportunities could lead them to stand before the congregation as a minister, deacon or other participant (e.g., providing music) in the central rituals of the religion's congregate service. In religions where the laity can speak out (either in “tongues” or in ordinary speech), these individuals will be quick to take an active part. And in ceremonies that normally occasion outsized emotional expression (weddings, funerals, etc.), they will not hold back. If charismatic, they may well become leaders of their religious community. The intellectual and legalistic aspects of the religion will have less importance to them than the ability to participate in a prominent public role.
In contrast, the legalistic, doctrinal, and organizational details of the religion will be the paramount concern of administrative individuals, those whose personalities gravitate toward an orderly environment and firm structure of beliefs and practices, one that changes slowly if at all, one in which they can become experts. Those who are somewhat more people-oriented may become experts in the organization itself, developing a deep knowledge of its history and structure, the distinct personalities involved, and how work gets done. These are often the traditionalists among the religion's clergy and scholarly and bureaucratic arms. They will be concerned that ceremonies are carried out exactly, that rules and bylaws are followed, and that exceptions to doctrine are avoided (other than where there are very old and well-known precedents for such). An intricate set of doctrines, complex ceremonies, and a large volume of scriptures are all welcomed by these individuals, who will do their utmost to learn as many details as possible, so they can maintain the stability of the religion's traditions, perhaps on rare occasions adding their own commentary or small, incremental details to the overall body of lore. These individuals could become ministers, church administrators, theologians or religious teachers. Having a part in a large and stable organization and developing (and having recognized) expertise in the service of its traditions is their preferred form of activity on behalf of the community.
A much less community-oriented approach is taken by the investigative or exploratory personality. These individuals are seeking personal fulfillment and the solutions to their deepest existential concerns through the religion. It may be that they switch from one religion to another multiple times in their quest, but while they take part in a religion they want to extract the maximum amount of meaning from it. They will enter into the religious community with extreme enthusiasm and metaphorically try to sink their teeth fully into the system of beliefs and practices to derive the greatest intellectual and emotional benefit from it. They will be considered “intense” by other members of their religious community and may expend great effort asking questions and trying to argue through all the ramifications of the religion's propositions and ritual behaviors. If they stay with the same community, they may eventually become ministers or deacons, and they may even bring significant innovations to the body of existing traditions; but the odds of them staying in one spiritual “place” for long are often not very good.
Probably the most common type of individuals in an open (as opposed to monastic or esoteric) religious community are those with a connective personality. These are people with a religious orientation who value the community most for its ability to connect with other people who share their concerns and beliefs. They may also be helpful at bringing new members into the community, and at taking part in groups that locally carry out aspects of the religion's mission in the larger society (“good works”, etc.). In some senses the congregation is more important to these individuals than the clergy or the fine details of doctrines and practices. Of all the types so far described, these are the ones who place the most emphasis on the community and the support they feel from other members of it. The community represents their major voluntary social commitment in an existence where other not very voluntary commitments are thrust upon them (work situations, family situations, etc.). Their participation might include working on the sorts of important but undramatic tasks that would have little appeal to performative types.
Most obviously opposed to the connective type of individual is the manipulative type, meaning those who view a community as a field in which to exercise their ability to manipulate other people, in terms of both emotional states and behaviors. Individuals with manipulative personalities get most of their reward from goading other people to actions they might not otherwise take, which requires a certain amount of emotional intelligence and social skill untrammeled by empathy or respect for others. Since these are people who can end up, worst case, as cult leaders or demagogues, they are unfortunately what many secular humanists point to when they decry the supposedly unique and inevitable evils of religion. Yet this is a not a rare personality type (although thankfully far from prevalent), and it frequently shows up in many other types of social groups as well. And manipulative individuals can operate at a much less dramatic scale and make their presence felt in more subtle but still detectable ways. They may either try to take part in the religious community's governance structure to influence those in authority, or they may seek to undermine authority from the outside. In a sense they are always on the offensive, looking for ways to exert power over other people, but in less extreme cases they may be able to be channeled into doing useful work for the organization.
The final personality type that will be discussed here is the defensive individual, defensive in the sense that they seek out membership in a religious community almost as a form of protective coloration socially. They perhaps belong to a larger community of which the religious organization is a sizable or favorably recognized subset, and membership provides them with a way to conform to the larger society's expectations and gain the rewards that may come from doing so. Their commitment—to the other members of the congregations, to the doctrines and practices, and to the underlying set of questions that the religion tries to address—is not deep. It may even be tinged with skepticism or be an “only on Sunday” type of belief and involvement. But they are keenly aware that being a member of a religious community is expected of them, and they do their best to find a community to join that will be advantageous to them in as many ways as possible. It isn't impossible that they could even become part of the clergy or a respected “elder”, but the value they would try to extract thereby would be almost completely non-overlapping with that sought by the investigative or exploratory type of individual.
One might ask if there are individuals who can combine the best talents of each (or at least more than a few) of the above personality types, whose engagement with the belief system and organizational traditions is deep and passionate, but who can function well with people in leadership, fellowship and influencer (or manipulator, if necessary) roles, and who can act as public figures and yet still devote time to contemplation, while gaining prestige in the wider society in the process. This might sound like an almost impossibly ideal minister to many people. It's doubtful there are many people who can integrate and balance all of these factors, but some individuals may well display combinations of multiple different types as described above.
What the above leaves out are some of the most colorful and frightening people in the realm of religion: the ranting street corner preachers, the violent holy warriors, the (claimed) recipients of new revelations, the bitter and hectoring critics of the shortcomings of their own religious organization, the most outrageously self-aggrandizing cult leaders, etc. For the most part these individuals stand outside the religious community or interact with only small offshoots of it. When the religion as a whole has many cult-like properties, individuals like this may play a more prominent role. Some of them may have similar personality types to those found in the ordinary members of religious communities (particularly manipulative, performative, and administrative types), but tinged with psychopathology or at least problems with reasoning intelligently and with respecting other people. Some of these individuals could be classified as fanatics, but even an ordinary congregation can have fanatical members. Within a community where they have some emotional stake, the fanatical individuals can experience moderating influences on their behaviors if not necessarily on their beliefs; when they are leaders of their own sects or lone wolves, the moderating influences they experience are fewer and weaker.
Religious adherents who mainly function in settings other than a closely interacting religious community also are difficult to characterize as we have done above. These include missionaries, proselytizers, mendicants, religious teachers in secular environments (academic or other), and those primarily focused on ecumenical relations. What must exist is a strong bond with the parent religion and the ability to deal with challenges and doubts that arise in an environment with less reinforcement and fewer contacts with fellow religionists; and while some personality types may improve the odds of a successful adaptation to such a role, the nature of the social environment will heavily influence that.
The above also focuses on people in existing religious communities, from small independent churches to large multinational organizations. What is more difficult to describe is what sort of personalities are involved in starting a new religion. So many of the factors that lead to a new religion coming into being and gaining its first and second generation converts are unpredictable and hard to generalize. We would expect charismatic individuals of some sort to be involved, but the social world in which they gathered followers would have to be in some sense welcoming; this means both that their inspiration and message must resonate with the temper of the time, and that competition from other new religious movements must not be so intense that the message is drowned out. Academics have tried in the past to psychoanalyze (or at least psychologically profile on a more superficial level) past founder figures of religious traditions, including the Buddha, St. Paul, Muhammad, Martin Luther, etc. But the historical record is much too scanty to support most claims about the psychology of persons such as those. Many different personality types are probably needed to get a new religion off the ground, but the exact balance of those types is very likely to be different in every case. Finding converts and sponsors in the upper social strata is most helpful, whatever the personalities of those supporters might be. They can provide shelter, financial support, and contacts in far-flung places. A sufficiently large initial congregation of less prosperous people can provide some of those same things collectively, but at the cost of more hands-on management of the practical necessities on top of the always present interpersonal issues.