Journeying Out

Ann Morisy's, Journeying Out: A New Approach to Christian Mission provides refreshing insights into how the local church might engage with community.

A brilliant book...  Some reflections on key concepts:

• the principle of Obliquity (pp. 11-18 & 215) - In most cases in the business world the ultimate objective is getting your money/maximizing profit, but no company states this upfront.  Rather, the objective is achieved by selling a product or service which offers the promise of a life transformed.  The Church on the other hand often states its objective upfront.  For example: join our church, be baptised, become a disciple of Jesus Christ (cf. Matthew 28.20 or any number of alternatives).  When it should be creating structures which led to an opportunity to be truly transformed by Christ.  Morisy argues that authentic community ministry offers a transforming space in which people can encounter God, and so find themselves part of the Church.  So, in this postmodern world sceptical about sales-pitches, power games, and authoritarian institutions, should not the Church be using a different marketing strategy?  This is a fascinating insight garnered from business studies, further reflection might be useful on whether it holds water theologically.  To what extent do we see salvation history or the great commission work on the principle of obliquity for instance?

• Grace Cascades (pp. 32 & 213) - Morisy writes, 'We have been slow to recognize that when people, motivated by venturesome love [cf. Karl Rahner], embrace a struggle for the well-being of others, it can prompt a very graceful, and often unanticipated dynamic, a cascade of grace, and this dynamic should be the very thing that churches are seeking to generate.'  Here we have a critique of every outreach initiative (or even ecclesiology) that aims to offer gospel proclamation and professionalism from a position of power to a world that doesn't know any better.  There is no mission or discipleship without struggle and vulnerability.  When we have all the answers and all the resources, there is no room for God's grace and transforming presence (2 Corinthians 12.9).  Furthermore, grace seems to abound from the most unlikely sources and the most unlikely people are drawn together when disciples embark upon challenging projects.  (An example from Muxton and Lilleshall is the Activity Days, a summer holiday-club for primary school-aged children, which is always difficult to plan and execute.  The event is now drawing interest and sponsorship from all sorts of community contacts and partners.  Over the past few years, our experiences is that, with collaboration and prayer, God is able to supply all the strength, energy and resources need to achieve his purposes.)

• The Suburban Challenge (pp. 95-106), the Story-rich life (pp. 67-90), and the Experience Economy (pp. 106-114) - Two subsequent chapters take up issues that I have deep concerns about: the nature of human society in large swathes of the affluent postmodern West - i.e. those living in suburbia.  Here, I believe, Morisy offers a substantial antidote to the malaise Alain de Botton describes in his book Status Anxiety.  In reverse, Morisy argues that the most valuable economic good (in the contemporary West) is that of experience.  It is hunger for experience that drives consumerism and lifestyle choices.  The houses we buy, cars we drive, the holidays, the way we socialize, who we socialize with, the choices we make for our children and the values we live by are shaped by a narrative of experience.  Businesses have caught onto this dynamic.  Hence, the most successful products and services are sold on the basis of the experience they offer.  However, as Morisy has gone on to espouse elsewhere, chasing a narrative of experience based on material consumption will always leave us wanting.  In the comfort and monotony of suburban dwelling, people are left empty with lives actually devoid of narrative - the stories which bring true wealth, meaning and purpose.  These are the stories that the Church can offer.  Morisy suggests some quite radical action is necessary to turn this around.  One example involves travelling to another country to serve the poor, returning with rich experiences and stories to share.  Another, could be taking on the local council about the decision to build new houses in the community!

• Without Power (pp.117-135) - Eva McIntyre recently argued in the Church Times that a more mature and sensitive theology is needed in the Church to engage the spectrum of human experience in the world (Church Times 18 July 2014).  In this short controversial chapter on power and the church, Morisy calls for the same thing but draws special attention to the nature of power and the traditional claim of the church as guardian of the truth.  What emerges in these pages has huge implications for the kerygmatic ministry of the church. 

Three points worthy of further consideration:

• Morisy's concept of Apt Liturgy (p.156)
• Religious experience and the growth of moral sensitivity (p. 168)
• Transformation (pp. 218-221)- 'Transformations are a distinctive economic offering, they form the final, i.e. the highest aspect of progression of economic value. A transformation is what the out-of-shape person, the emotionally troubled person, the young managers, the hospital patient and the struggling company all really desire.' (Pine and Gilmore).  Interestingly, Morisy argues that the church needs to contest the types of transformative experiences offered in the world.  Those for example which Till defends in his analysis of Pop Cults (cf. p. 220).

Pop Cult - New Religious Expression

A brief review of Rupert Till's, Pop Cult, Religion and Popular Music, (London: Continuum, 2010).

Similar to other works on cultural phenomena in conversation with theology or religious practice,  Till takes a history/philosophy of religion approach to this study.  The main question he seeks to address is '...whether functions formerly served within society by religions are now being addressed by cults of popular music', giving a nod to the 'effects of postmodernity, or liquid culture on religions, and the roles of cults of popular music in this process' (p. ix).

Till '... aims to show how popular music mixes, confuses and plays with imagery and traditions that are traditionally regarded as either sacred or profane, transgressing borders and creating a 'Sacred Popular' set of popular cults that lie between the two, in the realm of popular culture often thought of as secular, but in fact drenched with meaning, belief, faith, worship and ritual...' (p. 5)

In Chapter One, Till defends his use of the term 'cult'.  He convincingly points out similarities between the practices of traditional religions and the new religious movements which are heavily criticised in mainstream circles because of questionable theological orientation and the seemingly negative social practices they encourage.  He argues that cults of popular music in the West have moved to fill in the gaps left behind as traditional religion has rejected activities that connect with certain aspects of faith and religious expression (p. 10).  (For example, consider the controversies surrounding icons and music in church history, or the question whether dancing is acceptable in a place of worship!).

Chapters Two through Eight contain a detailed analysis of the different cults within the Sacred Popular that have emerged in the Twentieth Century:

• Sex cults - the centrality and celebration of physicality, sexuality and eroticism in music, lyrics, clothing and performances;
• Drug cults - the relationship between drug-taking and popular music; 
• Personality cults - the deification of artists and admiration/imitation of their life-styles; 
• Local cults - the emergence of local scenes to differentiate regional identities (c.f.  The Beatles and Brit-pop);
• Virtual cults - where the personas of artists, or as Till prefers, 'mediaphemes', only exist in the media (e.g. the Monkees and Gorillaz);
• Death cults - the way that certain genres of music celebrate death (e.g. various kinds of Metal) and the martyr myths surrounding artists who have committed suicide or died young; 
• Cult of Electronic Dance Music - which brings together many concerns: ritual/transcendent experiences/drug-taking/dance/social connection/spirituality;

This is quite a neat list that highlights the parallels between the features of the Sacred Popular and traditional religion and shows what is arguably missing from traditional religious expression.  I found it surprising that Till was able to demonstrate that many of these cultic features of popular music stretch right back to the origins of this cultural movement.  

Alongside historical analysis, Till suggests that 'opposition' against the controlling mainstream culture is partly why these cults have emerged in popular music.  Hence, conservative values about the human body and sexuality are challenged.  The traditional stance on taking drugs for recreational and transcendental purposes is ignored.  Artists and musicians that represent anti-establishment behaviour or alternative life-styles are invested with god-like qualities and are exalted and worshipped.  Features of local culture challenge the prevailing homogenous mainstream culture, and so on...

However, I wonder whether this is where a small crack opens in Till's thesis.  Using historical analysis and working with an organising narrative to study any subject in the contemporary world is likely to collide methodologically with the currents of the intellectual climate of postmodernity that defies such inquiry in the first place.  (But, I suppose books must begin somewhere, follow some logical pathway, and end somewhere else.)  To be fair, Till offers more trajectories of thought rather than firm conclusions, and this is apparent in his rather discursive and cyclical style.  Yet, if one reads popular culture today there are good reasons for suggesting that something new is happening outside of Till's thesis.

Although many of the cultic features of Sacred Popular highlighted are still very much present, it seems to me the most recent developments seem to pay less credence to what you might call, in modern terms, the canon of pop music and a narrative of 'opposition'.  The reasons for this are twofold: 1) The ideals of opposition and anti-establishment which have been an integral part of youth culture since the 50's have become so ingrained in society that there is less incentive to engage in cultural expressions that undermine traditional values.  True, youth culture still involves reacting against the parental generation, but I wonder whether this is as much to do with natural human development than being swept along by cultural phenomena;  & 2) Virtual Technologies are enabling more artists to create, record and market music for music sake without the support of 'traditional' record labels and publicity channels.  Consumers of popular music can download and stream whatever they like.  There is less interest in historic concerns about different musical tastes and also a distinct lack of loyalty between genres exemplified by the types of artists now appearing at Music Festivals during the summer months.

On one level, Till is correct about the mutually conditioning effects of the pop music on postmodernity - as pop music has evolved it has contributed to the fragmenting of culture and the search for new religious expression.  But I suggest that more recently there has been a 'philosophical turn' in discerning how we experience what we experience in postmodernity rendering the methodologies used to analyse cultural phenomena increasingly irrelevant.  If we buy into postmodernity wholeheartedly, it seems the pursuit of intellectual inquiry is destined to drown in the whirlpool of a 'liquid culture'.

Nevertheless, in the final Chapter, Till returns to his opening question and discusses what traditional religions might learn from the phenomena of popular music cults.  He deals with the contact points.  A particularly interesting comment is made about the use of pop music at funerals to manage the complex human emotions experienced over the death of a loved one (pp.168-169).  Going back and forth, Till suggests that traditional religions are currently failing to address the human need for transcendence and religious expression.

It is fascinating the way he argues that the history of Western culture has broadly followed James Fowler's, Stages of Faith.  The 'Intuitive-Projective' and 'Mythic-Literal' stages representing pre-history and the medieval period, the 'Synthetic-Conventional' stage during the renaissance and enlightenment, and the 'Individuative-Reflective' stage in postmodernity.  Till suggest the Sacred Popular in place of traditional religion has vitally helped the populace navigate through the crises of this fourth stage (p. 175).

Again, why do traditional religions not work today?
Till keeps reinforcing the same view often to do with a cultural fracture between traditional religion and society, the problems of power, control, regulation and institutions.  For example:

'Christianity, for example, has lost connection with the culture of contemporary society due to the conservative tastes of those in power within the organisation.' (p. 178)

'Mainstream religions are in many ways out of touch with contemporary Western culture [he can only seriously be talking about Christianity here], and therefore their rituals, music and culture are such that they are often not effective in helping members of youth culture experience the divine or transcendental.  In the West religions have traditionally been controlled by priests who were chosen from the educated classes, and who held religious knowledge in a world where few could read written religious texts.' (p. 182)

'Religions have presented themselves as all or nothing, as a complete systematic approach to life rather than a set of functions and practices developed as social technology, and selected as useful from a range of possibilities, and thus have largely ruled themselves out of postmodernity.' (p. 185)

The solution (and I am going beyond Till here in many points here): a 'new reformation' that embraces the notion of deregulation of religion as a contemporary concept and the loosening of control over sacred text and doctrine.  A 'new reformation' that also acknowledges the need for flattening the governance structures within traditional organised religions - after all the Church, for example, is meant to consist of a priesthood of all-believers.  In the other direction, a movement of 'reconstruction' and 're-enchantment' of religious practice is needed that reconnects with some of the lost elements of human spirituality such as physicality and mysticism possibly through new art forms, music and liturgy.  Here it seems that new religious communities, the Emerging Church and Fresh Expressions movement have a key role to play.

To conclude, by no means does Till hold up the Sacred Popular with its different cults as the total solution to the dilemma of religion in the postmodern West, however, this fascinating study raises all sorts of questions for religious minded people to grapple with as they consider the evolution of culture and intellectual history and what religious practice looks like today.  It certainly presents a challenge to those involved with mission and ministry in the local church.