Transmission

Nightline is doing a segment tonight on a U2charist put on by a church in Westchester. I happened to be there, so TiVo it if you want to have some stock footage of me praying…

I think it’s interesting that they’ve gotten so much press for this because, frankly, the service wasn’t all that cool. I applaud what they’re doing, but there are a lot of small things they could have done to make it much more effective. If anyone’s interested, I wrote an entire critique of the ritual from an “emerging” perspective…

Background:

Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation, in conjunction with the ONE campaign (“the campaign to make poverty history”), has developed an outline for using U2’s music in liturgy. Episcopal Churches nationwide are presenting Eucharistic liturgies in this mold in an effort to raise awareness (and money) for the Millennium Development Goals, an effort to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015.

Bono, the lead singer of U2, has been outspoken in his support for the ONE campaign and since Bono’s lyrics often contain distinctly Christian imagery, liturgical use of his songs feels natural.

Ritual Space:

The service took place in the church’s sanctuary, which was small but laid out in cathedral style (i.e. shaped like a cross with a nave, a transept, and a chancel). The pews were wooden and placed closely together, providing little opportunity for movement. Pews in the transept were faced towards the center of the room, perpendicular to the pews in the nave, but very few people sat in them.

The room was prominently covered in dark wood, including two altars, a pulpit, a lectern, the pews, and numerous shrines, statues, and crosses. The ceiling was supported by two crossing sets of beams and the lighting for the room was suspended from these beams, shrouding the ceiling in shadow and making it difficult to see.

The pulpit was covered by a medium-sized portable screen, much like you would see at a corporate presentation. There were two sets of speakers; one set was permanently attached and used for microphones and the other was on portable stands and used for playing music.

Ritual Objects:

The most prevalent objects used in the ritual were the bulletins, which were 16 pages long. The bulletin included the complete liturgical text, taken from Enriching Our Worship (an inclusive language text sponsored by the national Episcopal Church), complete song lyrics for all of the U2 songs used in the service, information about U2, the Millennium Development goals, and the ONE campaign, reflective paragraphs about the theological implications of each of the songs used in the service, the church’s mission statement, and a listing of the staff and vestry.

Some of the most visible elements were pieces of recording equipment. Four people were recording this service, two with video cameras, one with a boom microphone, and one with a still camera. The first three were representing Nightline, a national news program, and it was unclear if the fourth was from a print news publication or was photographing on behalf of the church. All four moved around the room freely during the service giving attention to both the presiders and the congregants.

Other objects included kneeling pads in the pews, the standard plate and chalice for communion, and a richly decorated lectionary from which the gospel was read.

Ritual Participants:

The congregation was overwhelmingly over the age of forty with about a dozen preteen girls also present. According to one member of the church, a little over half of the attendees were members of the church and the majority of the rest were members of churches from neighboring towns, mostly Episcopal and Lutheran.

Ritual Action:

The format of worship followed the outline provided by Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation pretty closely, although All Saint’s Church did replace about a third of the songs. All the music of the service was taken directly off of CDs and played over the PA system with the congregation singing along with the original vocals.

The service began with a warm-up song, a quick collect, and a single scripture reading (the Good Samaritan from Luke), immediately followed by the sermon. The service continued strictly following the Episcopal Eucharistic tradition, occasionally interrupted by a song. Congregants stood, sat, and knelt at the usual moments, the sermon was preached from the pulpit, and the Eucharistic prayer was spoken from the high altar in the chancel. Traditionally sung pieces of the liturgy, such as the Sanctus, the Memorial Acclamation, and the Agnus Dei were present but were spoken rather than sung.

There were three actions which separated this service from the normal. First, a man in the front row projected the entire bulletin (both liturgy and lyrics) onto the screen during the service. During instrumental breaks, relevant facts about global poverty were displayed. Second, at several moments the group of young girls entered the aisle to dance; the adults expressed approval but did not join in. Third, the camera crews were constantly visible but the congregation acted as it they didn’t notice them, an unrealistic façade as the camera crews were allowed free access to the entire space, even if they were blocking the action or the projection screen. Yet there was a certain sense that even if the church was performing for the cameras, the recordings ought to look candid rather than posed.

After the ritual, the congregation gathered downstairs for punch, grapes, cookie, and mingling.

Summary and Criticisms:

First and foremost, I found the earnest character of the ritual to be quite moving, even though I would not classify the service as being “cool.” The presider, who was also the priest of the church, clearly believed in the message of the service and the entire gathered congregation was rooting for the ritual to succeed. Although the service did rely on a gimmick, it was also, in fact, sincere worship.

The service was severely limited by the space in which it was performed. The audience at a rock concert generally does not sit or kneel, nor are they confined to pews. Although the service did, to some extent, reproduce the sound of a U2 concert, it did not reproduce the energy of a concert. If they had performed the ritual in a smaller space with standing room only and concert lighting, I suspect that many more of the attendees would have found themselves dancing and engaging each other.

The ritual placed a lot of focus on the priest and deacon who were presiding, providing very little opportunity for the congregation to respond. The congregation spent the entire service facing in the same direction, not seeing each others faces. Other than singing, taking communion, and putting money in the plate, the congregation was entirely passive. Dancing would have helped, but so would time for personal prayer, communal breaking of the bread, or time to engage and discuss the material during the service.

The only mutual engagement occurred after the service during the reception, but the reception hall was brightly lit, very quiet, and much too large for the crowd; the attendants quickly dispersed. Placing the mingling time in the ritual space itself, with dim lights and loud U2 music still playing in the background would have created an environment much more conducive to meeting and engaging people.

I was also curious about the fact that the entire bulletin was projected AND printed. People who focused on the paper tended to spend most of the service looking at the bulletin and were therefore even more removed from their fellow worshipers. People who looked at the screen were more engaged in the room but left their bulletins unused on the floor. If they had intended to project the entire liturgy, they could have saved a great deal of paper.

The presence of the camera crews did not bother me; there is something inherently performative about ritual and the cameras were just one more layer of audience. It did bug me, however, that the cameras were not included in the ritual action. Pretending that they weren’t there at all made them stick out even more. The congregation was both performer and audience for itself and if the camera crews had been welcomed and acknowledged, perhaps they could have been performer-observers as well.

I think a great deal could have been done to foster congregational singing. Bono has a wide range, sings with tremendous emotion, and is prone to changing the melodies for dramatic effect, all of which make him very difficult to sing along with. The congregation sang very loudly and very well with the songs they knew but were largely silent with songs they did not know.

It would, perhaps, have been better if instead of playing the entire song, only the well-known and easily singable choruses were used, perhaps as repeated congregational responses. Repeating the music a few times would enable the congregation to sing with confidence and the text from the verses could be used in other, more approachable ways.

Finally, it is a shame that CDs were used instead of a live band. Learning that much music would be ambitious but certainly not impossible, and it would have increased the energy of the service tremendously. Additionally, a live band would allow for the incorporation of service music. There are plenty of Sanctuses and Agnus Dei’s written in contemporary styles, and even if they weren’t written by Bono they could be performed to sound like U2.

Posted in: links, musings, ritual