The Church of England is becoming notorious for holding secular events in the country’s cathedrals in the name of Christian outreach – often times without a sense of boundaries giving offense to dedicated Christians whose presence and stewardship make possible the life of the church, and giving rise to associations such as Save the Parish.
This is now the case of the ancient seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the monastic-cathedral foundation where the monk Augustine was sent from Rome by Pope Gregory the Great to begin mission activity in the British Isles. It is also the location of the martyrdom of St Thomas Becket. Recently, global Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops arrived in a pilgrimage of unity as part of IARCCUM.
The recently arrived Dean of the Cathedral has confirmed he intends to hold successive nights of a ‘silent’ rave in the cathedral, including a paid bar, in an attempt to make the cathedral relevant to the public once more.
The growing criticisms of such events are commonly met with the retort that medieval cathedrals hosted all sorts of profane activities, an explanation that is meant to deflect any questions of appropriateness and accountability around so-called ‘edgy and relevant ministry’. Yet these appeals to history are far more complex and nuanced than such quick debate-closing responses acknowledge – and avoid the fact that the excuse doesn’t actually hold water for any serious scholar of church history.
I have written at PrayTell before about the spiritual imagination as it relates to sacred space – and the danger of tampering with such experiences. I don’t intend to retrace such arguments here. But I am reconfirming my considered perspective that such radically profane and strongly re-scriptive events (rewriting of the narrative of a sacred space) are destructive of the sense of the sacred embodied by such buildings and locations and detrimental to believers and society alike. In short, the Canterbury rave in the cathedral is simply another step in the disenchantment (see Weber’s Entzauberung) of the world.
Drawing upon the insightful conceptual categories developed by the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, such events as Canterbury’s rave in the nave represent the church capitulating to doing ministry in the immanent frame of absolute humanism (See Taylor, A Secular Age, 2007). Here the church is trying to appeal to human meaning and significance without any account of the divine or transcendence. It is as if organizers are trying to use what is left of the contested and un-believed enchantment of the cathedral to entice ‘visitors’ without actually involving a sentiment of faith. All the while ignorant that doing so simply makes the sense of the transcendent and the sacrality of the space even further contested and unbelievable.
In a less philosophical tone, George Guiver of the Community of the Resurrection in the UK has made a similar point in his recent essay in Shaping the Assembly (2023). Guiver argues that each church building has its genius, and how it is treated and used can either kill or liberate that spirit. Sacred space, he notes, is not simply a neutral space of human acting. He warns of the great interest in the secular use of church buildings for art exhibitions, markets, sit-down meals, coffee bars, stalls and activities, noting that however desirable it is for a church to be outward facing “we are not always so good on the fine-tuning. The divine voice in a building can be lost” when sacred spaces are used as “mere venue” (Shaping the Assembly, 184). He closes his essay with the unapologetic admonition, “I would go as far as to say that church buildings are part of the Gospel. Christ’s good news is by explicit intention for real human beings, and there is a profound instinct in human beings for special places.” Special places are indeed special, because they are treated as different, even as precious and set apart.
Of course, perhaps one anticipates the objection: “this is about mission, not buildings!” A colleague in ministry immediately responded with the question, asking what does an alcoholic disembodied (it is after all ‘silent’ and all in participants’ ‘heads’) rave have to do with mission really? She pointed to the Anglican Communion’s Five Marks of Mission: 1. To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom, 2. To teach, baptise, and nurture new believers, 3. To respond to human need by loving service, 4. To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation, 5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth.
In this light it may be worth asking where and when the gimmick becomes more than hollow marketing that destroys the spiritual ethos of a beacon of Christian witness. And when does event-obsessed occasionality transition from being “mere venue” to actual mission in the grace of the Spirit?