Some years ago, out of curiosity, I went to a service at megachurch in the area. It was quite an experience. They had it all: The hustle and bustle of important people; the man with a walkie-talkie who met me at the door and briskly ushered me to "my" seat; the dimly lit auditorium with its brightly colored stage; the use of words like "vision" and "awesome"; the advertising segments (last week's sermon was available on DVD for only $14.95); the slick businessmen with their Rolexes and their glamorous wives; the exuberant music; the give-your-life-to-Jesus altar call; and throughout all this, the ubiquity of what Peter Berger has called "the Protestant smile".
There were no limits to the professionalism of this worship service. The preaching was motivating and highly inspirational: The sermon's title (sorry, I'm not kidding) was "Ten Kinds of People That God Can't Help". The main idea was that you should "invest" your time in positive happy friends, instead of making bad investments in friendships with hopeless, unhappy people: "Why are you trying to help people like that when even God can't help them?" The sermon's one-liner that sent shivers down my spine was: "The Bible isn't a book about God's love for creation; it's a book about our love for God". It was like I'd stumbled into the church Reinhold Niebuhr or Joseph Fletcher had built.
But the most interesting aspect of the service was the dominance of the screen. Every moment of the service, from start to finish, was broadcast on to huge screens around the auditorium. When the pastor spoke, he would address one of the many cameras. When the worship-leader spoke to the congregation, he would speak into the camera. Even the heartfelt altar call at the end of the service was addressed to the camera. During the worship songs, the screens would be filled with the faces of those gorgeously happy singers and musicians; then a camera would pan across the crowd of raised hands before cutting back to a shot of the worship-leader's face, full of adoration and passionate sincerity.
What made this so interesting was that the songs' lyrics were also superimposed over these images; so if you wanted to join in singing, you had no choice but to turn your face away from the altar (if there had been an altar), away from the congregation, even away from the flesh-and-blood performers on stage. In short, participation in worship was possible only through the mediation of the screen. The entire worship service was orchestrated primarily as an event of the screen, so that one could take part only by turning towards the screen and participating in its projected images of worship.
The Protestant reformers used to complain that the Roman Catholic priest was "doing worship" for the whole congregation, standing in their place and performing everything on their behalf -- and a similar complaint is often made about today's Pentecostal megachurches. But I think the function of the screen raises a much more interesting problem: Not merely that the congregation is worshipping vicariously through the onstage performers, but that the entire worship event is actually taking place onscreen.
Think about it.
Even our worship leaders aren't direct participants in the worship event, anymore. The real worshiping subject are those onscreen images. Flesh-and-blood performers participate in this kind of worship indirectly, through a vicarious participation in the projected image -- a larger-than-life image which becomes the bearer of transcendence. Similarly, the congregation is involved in worship only vicariously, through the mediation of the screen. This is an instance in which the screen comes to possess more ontological depth than the flesh-and-blood world itself; the projected image becomes "more real" than reality.
This is what worshiping with Plato would be like.
I remember glancing down for a minute from the screen and noticing the flesh-and-blood preacher at one point. He seemed so small, so insignificant, that I instantly felt out-of-place. So I had to replace my viewing back to the screen.
That's the problem with screens in worship. They strip us of our incarnational faith and give us something phantasmagorical in its place.
And that's a Very. Bad. Thing.
There were no limits to the professionalism of this worship service. The preaching was motivating and highly inspirational: The sermon's title (sorry, I'm not kidding) was "Ten Kinds of People That God Can't Help". The main idea was that you should "invest" your time in positive happy friends, instead of making bad investments in friendships with hopeless, unhappy people: "Why are you trying to help people like that when even God can't help them?" The sermon's one-liner that sent shivers down my spine was: "The Bible isn't a book about God's love for creation; it's a book about our love for God". It was like I'd stumbled into the church Reinhold Niebuhr or Joseph Fletcher had built.
But the most interesting aspect of the service was the dominance of the screen. Every moment of the service, from start to finish, was broadcast on to huge screens around the auditorium. When the pastor spoke, he would address one of the many cameras. When the worship-leader spoke to the congregation, he would speak into the camera. Even the heartfelt altar call at the end of the service was addressed to the camera. During the worship songs, the screens would be filled with the faces of those gorgeously happy singers and musicians; then a camera would pan across the crowd of raised hands before cutting back to a shot of the worship-leader's face, full of adoration and passionate sincerity.
What made this so interesting was that the songs' lyrics were also superimposed over these images; so if you wanted to join in singing, you had no choice but to turn your face away from the altar (if there had been an altar), away from the congregation, even away from the flesh-and-blood performers on stage. In short, participation in worship was possible only through the mediation of the screen. The entire worship service was orchestrated primarily as an event of the screen, so that one could take part only by turning towards the screen and participating in its projected images of worship.
The Protestant reformers used to complain that the Roman Catholic priest was "doing worship" for the whole congregation, standing in their place and performing everything on their behalf -- and a similar complaint is often made about today's Pentecostal megachurches. But I think the function of the screen raises a much more interesting problem: Not merely that the congregation is worshipping vicariously through the onstage performers, but that the entire worship event is actually taking place onscreen.
Think about it.
Even our worship leaders aren't direct participants in the worship event, anymore. The real worshiping subject are those onscreen images. Flesh-and-blood performers participate in this kind of worship indirectly, through a vicarious participation in the projected image -- a larger-than-life image which becomes the bearer of transcendence. Similarly, the congregation is involved in worship only vicariously, through the mediation of the screen. This is an instance in which the screen comes to possess more ontological depth than the flesh-and-blood world itself; the projected image becomes "more real" than reality.
This is what worshiping with Plato would be like.
I remember glancing down for a minute from the screen and noticing the flesh-and-blood preacher at one point. He seemed so small, so insignificant, that I instantly felt out-of-place. So I had to replace my viewing back to the screen.
That's the problem with screens in worship. They strip us of our incarnational faith and give us something phantasmagorical in its place.
And that's a Very. Bad. Thing.