WELCOME TO THE PLEASUREDOME has officially opened, we made the front page of the Maroon. I think the show went over well. We had a ridiculously large audience, which may not hold next Friday when we'll be competing against Rufus Wainwright at Mandel, but whatever, the word is out. Some of our sketches I was particularly proud of: a satire involving Hurrican Katrina and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, "Penguin Classics" (in which "Pride and Prejudice" is performed by penguins), and of course, the Chicago "Manuel" of Style. Not to mention our opening five minutes of dancing to Frankie Goes to Hollywood's "Welcome to the Pleasure Dome" (a must-download, if you have the means).
It's also nice to be back in the Blue Gargoyle where your audience knows you and supports you and will forgive you for a flat scene. I'm thinking how much more encouraging and positive this is than it was performing for an unknown Atlanta audience paying $15 at DG. Granted, I know which of the two is the "real thing" I would face "out there" in the "professional world" (I'm grasping for euphemisms for the contestable term, "real world"). But, as Sam and I agreed, none of us will ever get a better performance opportunity with such a great responsive audience once we leave OOC. For chrissake, there were audience members last night who brought their parents visiting for Family Weekend. Inevitably these will be my glory days I'll keep retelling to Kristen and boring her with years from now (if not this weekend).
A few of my friends were busy celebrating the High Holidays this month, and it got me starting to think about my experience with the church. I chalk it up mostly to nostalgia, which has been rampant with me during this month of Halloween, but even still I've given thought to what it would be like to go to church again. Not so much for spiritual fulfillment, but to be part of some kind of tradition or community. Maybe I'm just wondering if there isn't an equivalent to attending a Christian church like there is to keeping up with Jewish holidays in the name of "tradition." I don't think there is; I think it's easy to point to why there are so many Jewish people who attend services regularly yet don't get anything out of it that they would call "religious"--it's inherent in the history of the people. I think it's equally interesting why it doesn't happen in the Christian church, or the American Protestant church at least. In this political age, we at university mostly talk about Christianity in terms of it being archaic and reactionary and evangelist, because that kind of Christianity is visible in politics and it's been mobilized in politics like it hasn't been until, I would guess, the last 10-20 years.
Throughout middle-class America, though, I think if you walk into a Protestant church you'll be more struck by how corporate the church seems. I'm not talking about North Point and all those Megachurches with jumbo-tron screens (I picture during breaks in the service these screens would focus up close on small parts of the crowd, who would realize they were on camera and wave and shout ridiculously and lift their shirts like at sporting events). The church council has always been a defining feature of Protestant churches, and you'll find a big to-do made over them in early American history with the Puritans; what I find important is that the Protestant church is so very malleable in a democratic society. In a denomination like the Lutheran church, the way the service is run has much more to do with the shape of the church's council than it does with doctrine stipulations that come from a larger Lutheran heirarchy. As such, there isn't a lot of tradition that gets retained from one generation to the next; the Church changes rapidly with the democracy. Certainly this happens in Catholicism and Juddaism, but both have sources in the form of a heirarchy or a tradition/history that reigns in too much radical change from within (not counting more radical or reformist sects that form themselves with the times). Ms. Serkedakis used to say that in our age, our society perceives that government should be run like we run our businesses; this can be extended to local church governments, who constantly think in terms of "synergy" and "growth." The church my family attended was always fixated on the "growth" of their church; it was as if the Christian message of spreading God's Word had been synthesized with an existing, ready-to-use business model. By extension, people who are examining their options with local Protestant churches are often "pitched" by council members who speak of the progess that the church will make in 5, 10, 15 years, as if they were giving stock tips of a choice corporation on the rise.
Anyway, my point is that the Protestant church is far too malleable and pandering to offer "Tradition" with a capital "T" like Catholicism and Juddaism will. I think there are far fewer Protestants returning to the church in adulthood because it's what their parents did when they were young, simply because today's Protestant church has changed noticeably in the past 30 years, and will keep changing to make itself marketable. It will always offer a spiritual experience within the comfortable context of today's values. I don't have enough knowledge to say whether this really conflicts with a Christian doctrine based on scripture or theology, but I might conjecture that it's harder to be passively involved in the Protestant church than it is in Catholic or Jewish services.
Anyway. I still might try this Hyde Park Lutheran Church someday, because it's got a pretty courtyard.
I almost just drank the 4 day-old dregs of a coffee mug I set by the computer. Time to do dishes.
It's also nice to be back in the Blue Gargoyle where your audience knows you and supports you and will forgive you for a flat scene. I'm thinking how much more encouraging and positive this is than it was performing for an unknown Atlanta audience paying $15 at DG. Granted, I know which of the two is the "real thing" I would face "out there" in the "professional world" (I'm grasping for euphemisms for the contestable term, "real world"). But, as Sam and I agreed, none of us will ever get a better performance opportunity with such a great responsive audience once we leave OOC. For chrissake, there were audience members last night who brought their parents visiting for Family Weekend. Inevitably these will be my glory days I'll keep retelling to Kristen and boring her with years from now (if not this weekend).
A few of my friends were busy celebrating the High Holidays this month, and it got me starting to think about my experience with the church. I chalk it up mostly to nostalgia, which has been rampant with me during this month of Halloween, but even still I've given thought to what it would be like to go to church again. Not so much for spiritual fulfillment, but to be part of some kind of tradition or community. Maybe I'm just wondering if there isn't an equivalent to attending a Christian church like there is to keeping up with Jewish holidays in the name of "tradition." I don't think there is; I think it's easy to point to why there are so many Jewish people who attend services regularly yet don't get anything out of it that they would call "religious"--it's inherent in the history of the people. I think it's equally interesting why it doesn't happen in the Christian church, or the American Protestant church at least. In this political age, we at university mostly talk about Christianity in terms of it being archaic and reactionary and evangelist, because that kind of Christianity is visible in politics and it's been mobilized in politics like it hasn't been until, I would guess, the last 10-20 years.
Throughout middle-class America, though, I think if you walk into a Protestant church you'll be more struck by how corporate the church seems. I'm not talking about North Point and all those Megachurches with jumbo-tron screens (I picture during breaks in the service these screens would focus up close on small parts of the crowd, who would realize they were on camera and wave and shout ridiculously and lift their shirts like at sporting events). The church council has always been a defining feature of Protestant churches, and you'll find a big to-do made over them in early American history with the Puritans; what I find important is that the Protestant church is so very malleable in a democratic society. In a denomination like the Lutheran church, the way the service is run has much more to do with the shape of the church's council than it does with doctrine stipulations that come from a larger Lutheran heirarchy. As such, there isn't a lot of tradition that gets retained from one generation to the next; the Church changes rapidly with the democracy. Certainly this happens in Catholicism and Juddaism, but both have sources in the form of a heirarchy or a tradition/history that reigns in too much radical change from within (not counting more radical or reformist sects that form themselves with the times). Ms. Serkedakis used to say that in our age, our society perceives that government should be run like we run our businesses; this can be extended to local church governments, who constantly think in terms of "synergy" and "growth." The church my family attended was always fixated on the "growth" of their church; it was as if the Christian message of spreading God's Word had been synthesized with an existing, ready-to-use business model. By extension, people who are examining their options with local Protestant churches are often "pitched" by council members who speak of the progess that the church will make in 5, 10, 15 years, as if they were giving stock tips of a choice corporation on the rise.
Anyway, my point is that the Protestant church is far too malleable and pandering to offer "Tradition" with a capital "T" like Catholicism and Juddaism will. I think there are far fewer Protestants returning to the church in adulthood because it's what their parents did when they were young, simply because today's Protestant church has changed noticeably in the past 30 years, and will keep changing to make itself marketable. It will always offer a spiritual experience within the comfortable context of today's values. I don't have enough knowledge to say whether this really conflicts with a Christian doctrine based on scripture or theology, but I might conjecture that it's harder to be passively involved in the Protestant church than it is in Catholic or Jewish services.
Anyway. I still might try this Hyde Park Lutheran Church someday, because it's got a pretty courtyard.
I almost just drank the 4 day-old dregs of a coffee mug I set by the computer. Time to do dishes.
3 Comments:
When I went to services here on the High Holidays, the rabbi was a woman with a yarmulke. I mean, I don't think that's exactly tradition with a capital "T." There is a belief here that religious observance should not be dictated from above, but it should com out of personal devotion, however that might express itself. All of American is Protestant, including the Catholics and the Jews.
wait, you're looking for a ritual community? you have OOC! thinking about it. Weekly services, preparations that stres syou out so much that people wonder why on earth you ever choose to be involved, a historical legacy that often leaves one scratching one's head trying to understand what the founders could have possibly meant, archaic initiation rites and a communal lexicon which baffles outsiders. even ritualied drinking (or at least there was in the good ole days ;-) )
Rita: That's a good point-- that all religions in America are somewhat "Protestantized." Still I feel, and I am speaking out of my ass here, that attending Jewish services, no matter how reformist, satisfies a desire for tradition (more in principle than the experience of what the service is like) that attending a Lutheran service does. Possibly for the same reason that nobody talks of the "Lutheran people."
Jose: Well, Ben has been saving those two young virgin goats to sacrifice before the last show... but I always thought that was an 18th generation thing.
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