The Labyrinth, Postmodernity and Ritual

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Spirituality

The standard theory used to make sense of religion since the 1950s has been secularisation, that the Western world is in an advanced state of living without gods. Modern society runs on non-religious principles. It is inhospitable to faith, religion and the sacred. Church attendance and social influence declines and religion becomes increasingly marginal to society at large.

On the surface, this seems to be a tenable theory. Certainly in the UK, Christian churches, particularly the main denominations, are only too painfully aware of their waning influence and the decline in church attendance over the last twenty years, especially amongst the young. However, in recent years, much to the surprise of some commentators, there has been an explosion of interest in spirituality.

Drane observes that people are responding in two ways to the current cultural shift. The first is to immerse themselves in a hedonistic lifestyle and ignore questions of ultimate meaning. But 'many others are trying to deal with the threatened disintegration of our culture by engaging in a self conscious search for spiritual answers that will hold out the possibility of providing a secure basis on which to build new lives in the third millenium'.

But this is not doing anything to affect the decline in numbers attending churches. Institutions are suspect and 'the great majority of these spiritual explorers do not make any connection between their personal quest and the existence of the church'.

Tom Beaudoin narrates his own story in 'Virtual Faith' and I suspect it is typical of many when he writes:

I was awash in popular culture and alienated from official religion. Despite all this I still considered myself unmistakably spiritual. By this I meant that I thought about religion, I thought there was more to life than materialism, and I pieced together a set of beliefs from whatever religious traditions I was exposed to at the time.

Why is it that so few people who are searching for spiritual meaning either look for it or find it in the institutional church? Several writers have concluded that the church has so wedded itself to the culture of modernity that it's the only frame of reference in which it knows how to operate. Cray suggests that 'People young and old are looking for spiritual answers but the last place they expect to find them is in the Christian church. The institutional church is assumed to be part of the old (modern!) order that has failed'.

Going to church feels like visiting another era. This is seen in the cerebral nature of expressions of faith, emphasis on doctrines, propositional truth, the pervasive rationalism, and the old fashioned patriarchy of the British Empire that still seems so evident. Whilst elsewhere in the culture there is a fascination with mystery, the numinous, angels, heaven and the after-life, 'at best the church seems to speak uncomfortably about them'.

Postmodern times are tactile, symbolic, and image based while in the church, the Word seems to have been imprisoned in words rather than becoming flesh. Those best touched by the intuitive, artistic and creative find little that speaks to them in church.

Postmodern times elevate experience and community. Church isn't the kind of place for expressing emotions like grief and failure. Grimes identifies ritual as a feature of postmodern times. But the ritual on offer in churches somehow feels empty and boring. It's what Scheff calls 'overdistancing', i.e. has an absence of any emotion.

Postmodern times celebrate the body and being human. The dualism in much of the theology of the church has left a view of bodies and matter as bad and this in turn has been destructive of ritual. Because of this, when people do look to Christian rituals they 'find ritual action which often contradicts their own basic feelings'.

This is all compounded by a general failure to take postmodern times and in particular people's spiritual search seriously. This new explosion of spirituality is easily dismissed as individualistic, and reflective of consumerist attitudes and lifestyles. It doesn't at first seem to detract from the secularisation thesis either because these private beliefs don't impact the way society runs.

But as I argue below consumption is the way society runs now, or at least a very significant factor. So then this is precisely where we should look to find openings for religious activity. They are just invisible to many institutional leaders and to academic accounts of the modern world.

There is a story told by Australian Aboriginals of a mighty river that once flowed across the land. Generations were sustained by its flow but gradually it ceased to flow. Some waited for its return but others went to see what had happened. It turned out that the river still flowed but had changed course upstream creating a billabong on the curve where the Aboriginals still sat. The river still flowed, but elsewhere. Religious life in postmodern times has not dried up as predicted by the theorists, but it is being relocated. Patterns of religious behaviour are being restructured. The river is flowing elsewhere.