Now I know where I’ve been going wrong. All the time I thought
I was leading a church, but have just discovered that instead I could be
running ‘powerful purveyors of emotional religious experience.’ Puzzled? Let me
explain...
An intriguing new piece of research, reported last week by Christianity Today makes
the suggestion that the experience of many worshippers at American megachurches
is akin to that of addicts looking for their next high. You can read the full
paper, written by University of Washington research staff here.
The article draws on previous work by American sociologist
Randall Collins, and begins with the hypothesis that what drives and motivates
humans is their desire for ‘emotional energy,’ defined by Collins as ‘confidence
and enthusiasm.’ It’s important to note that EE is not presented as just a
narcissistic quest for warm and happy feelings; the writers also note the
theories of Emile Durkheim, suggesting that EE has a ‘powerful and motivating
effect upon the individual,’ which could lead to a change in moral behaviour.
But the Washington researchers also offer the theory that our feelings of EE are
closely linked to our levels of oxytocin, a hormone related to a variety of actions
including social recognition, pair bonding and tribal behaviour, including
bonding with insiders and the distrust of outsiders. And having established
these factors, they then get to the heart of their argument, with the
suggestion that megachurch worship effectively offers an ‘oxytocin cocktail’ to
those attending, through its carefully choreographed blend of a large number of
people, the sharing together of an intense emotional mood and time spent in the
presence of a charismatic senior leader.
The sort of techniques referred to in the article may be
familiar to many of us. The music is upbeat and loud, not unlike a concert, the
lighting is low, all around people will be raising hands and swaying along. In some
venues, large screens will even project images of the most intense worshippers
in the auditorium, reminding those present of the appropriate response to be
making at any given moment. The impact on those present is often deeply
intense, and reflected in the testimony of many interviewed for the purposes of
the research: ‘Expressions relating to the sensory
experience were common—tasting seeing, feeling, touching, listening, feeding,
thirsting—and words related to the emotions—loving, longing, feeling, moving,
vulnerability, wanting, crying, joy—were not only peppered throughout the
interviews, but rather were the driving force behind nearly every description
and often the punch line to every story.’
But it also needs
to be noted that the article isn’t just about the experience of gathered
worship. Those attending megachurches speak passionately about the friendliness
and love of others in their community, and also bear witness to a strong sense
of purpose they’ve found concerning their personal morality.
So are there any lessons we can learn from this? The
suggestion that emotional hysteria, and even manifestations which could be
labelled as ‘signs and wonders’, can be generated through manipulation
techniques is hardly new news. Inducing fear, failure or hopelessness before
introducing the answer, the effect of a large crowd, these are techniques which
have been employed by some of the most cruel and unscrupulous political regimes
our world has seen. There’s no place for such practices in Christian worship.
But we need to be careful not to dismiss the experience of megachurch
worshippers too readily. Reading their stories, I was reminded of the words of
Barth in Church Dogmatics, VI/2: “The Christian
community, can and must be the scene of many human activities which are new and
supremely astonishing to many of its members as well as to the world because
they rest on an endowment with extraordinary capacities.”
This doesn’t mean that the experience of church is reduced
down to offering an intense hit for spiritual adrenaline junkies. Discipleship,
of course, needs to consist of the death of self and the forming of
disciplines, as well as the ability to think in depth about issues of faith. In
his moving book, A Churchless Faith, Alan Jamieson has chronicled the
tragedy of those who have walked away from apparently successful evangelical
and Pentecostal churches, disillusioned and stifled with no safe place to talk
about their doubts and questions. But surely Christian worshippers also need to
feel some sense of intimacy with God, some inkling of having been in his
presence, when they gather with others in the community of believers. This doesn’t
have to mean making judgements on the worship service on the basis of ‘how I felt’
or ‘what I got out of it.’ But if we’re called to love God with our hearts,
souls and minds, our emotions need to be impacted by our faith as well.
I’ll leave the final word to James Smith, from his excellent
book on worship, Desiring the Kingdom: ‘While Hollister and Starbucks have
taken hold of our heart with tangible, material liturgies, Christian schools
are “fighting back” by giving young people Christian ideas. We hand
young people (and old people!) a “Christian worldview” and then tell them, “There,
that should fix it.” But such strategies are aimed at the head and thus miss
the real target: our hearts, our loves, our desires. Christian education as
formation needs to be a pedagogy of desire.’
