Support from scholars, upright companions and a good community can strengthen religious consistency. Yet drawing strength from sound companionship differs from allowing changing public opinion to determine one's standard of truth. In the first case, communal support reinforces a principle; in the second, social approval replaces the principle.
Changing an intellectual position after a careful examination of evidence is not hypocrisy. By contrast, knowingly contradicting what one recognizes as right merely for popularity or advantage is an ethical inconsistency.
The corrective principle is to ask what supports the position and whether the same standard would be maintained when an audience is absent. This test distinguishes genuine conviction from convenient conformity.