The post-rapturous vision: empty mega-churches

Themes: Church, Philosophy

Archie Poulos has been wondering why Sydney doesn’t have Anglican mega-churches here. While over here, Joe Johnson has an exhibition of photos of empty mega-churches (if you can’t see the pics, look under artists for ‘Joe Johnson’. Aren’t the interwebs full of strangeness and serendipity?

Generally, I’d say that mega-churches exist for the same reasons that people exist: for transcendence. The dominant intellectual story that we’ve been telling ourselves in Western societies is pretty thin stuff when it comes to spirituality. And frankly, people can’t exist without believing in something bigger than themselves. Even hard-core reductionist-materialist-Atheists become quasi-religious about their position given opportunity. Anything, or anyone, who can offer and deliver an experience that lifts us beyond the limits of the normal, and particularly any thing that challenges the dominant materialism of our cultural discourse will be a winner.
Mega-churches are winners because they have generally offered either Big Sound, Big Gestures, or Big Words – but most important: a Big Narrative.
Of course, the decline of Church, has been paralleled by the rise of alternative places to get these experiences. Mega-churches exist (partially at least) because they need to compete in a more densely contested marketplace. There are far more people at the Cinema and the Sports Stadium on any given weekend than in churches (and more than ever if you can unite a Big Sporting contest with a Big Narrative like that provided by Anzac Day).

I think you’d be misreading our culture though, if you think that mega-churches are really where everything is heading. The genius of modern Western societies has been to embrace pluralism in a way never seen before. Particularly in areas like subjectivity and transcendence, the presentation of plural forms and opportunities to find satisfaction prevents the overall architecture of the system from ever facing genuine radical challenge.
So it should be no surprise that just as many people are on the lookout for Small when it comes to transcendence: small community, unique, unrepeatable experience, hand-made, organic, natural fibre.
The photographs of the empty mega-churches, with all the wires, pulleys, cameras and leads exposed, are an attempt by Small to subvert and expose Big. It’s a classic move, it’s like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when they pull back the curtain and show that the Big Wizard is just a little man playing tricks.

These photographs are a move in the endless power play by which our society exists. There are lots of teams, lots of games, but there’s probably only one Game, and most importantly, if that game ended nobody would have won – we would find ourselves in a reinvented world.
That might seem all a bit esoteric but there are two important points for Christians who are thinking about Church:
1. Don’t be too quick to hitch your wagon to someone else’s team: don’t forget that eco-villages are just as much a part of the cultural landscape as mega-churches.
2. More interestingly, Joe Johnson’s photographs makes use of the absolute silver bullet argument for our culture. If everything is experience, if transcendence is a form of The Good that exists in plurality, then the Ultimate Critique is ‘authenticity’.
Whatever you do in Church, it better not be fake or feel fake. If you are fake you will die.

I wonder what sorts of practices and beliefs would actually challenge The Game, if possible?

pic by flickmor

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Hoping for Others

Themes: Church, Hope, Society

The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster in England, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, last night gave a valedictory lecture at Westminster Cathedral. It includes an interesting perspective on the history of Catholicism in Britain over the last 160 years, but also some rather beautiful insights into the role of the Church in our secular society. The Church is one of the last voices in our culture to hold onto a set of expectations for the future which transcend personal or nationalist interests. We have a universal hope.
In the search for inclusive, inoffensive labelling, our secular society has taken to branding Churches as ‘faith communities’. Perhaps we have an opportunity to fill out that label with our own particular content – something that brings out the truth that (largely uniquely now) it is Christians who are The People Who Hope For Others.

Here’s a quote from Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor,

One day the Church may be in favour with the secular powers, another it may be pilloried. We do not seek respectability, we seek faithfulness – faithfulness to the reality of Christ who is the Light of this age and every age and to the Church which receives its truth from Him and the gift of his Spirit. And with that faithfulness to Christ and his Church comes faithfulness to what it is to be human and building of a society in which everyone has the capacity to flourish whatever their race, creed, age, status and ability. The lamentation for a past time, some glorious golden age, is not a Christian song. It is not the song of faith but of despair, for our faith gives us a vision not of what has been but of what will be – whatever the difficulties or sufferings we have to endure – we cannot surrender or lose confidence in the future which God has secured for us. This is why the Church must always be an active agent in the creation and building up of a genuinely humane culture.

It’s worth reading the whole thing, which you can do on Ruth Gledhill’s blog here.

BTW, what is the Cardinal doing to Rowan in that photo?

Photo by Catholic Church (England and Wales)

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