March 31, 2007
Sexy Worship
Travis, we are, in general, trying to write somewhat serious defenses. Of course, the more idiotic you consider the belief to be, the more you will be unable to avoid satirical tone (I tried unsuccessfully to avoid this in my WO post).
I think that post must have been on the old I Think I Need a Stiff Drink blog, because I can’t find it in my other blog’s archives, which still exist and are accessible only to me. But if I remember correctly, the gist of it was that a lot of modern contemporary worship is highly erotic by nature. Step back and look at it—attractive, heavily made-up young women pant and sigh into microphones (if you’re really hip, you have dancers cavorting around, too), everyone’s passions get whipped up into a frenzy, and if you’re really in the spirit of things, your whole body is swept up in the passion. Worship in the contemporary setting could practically be defined as exciting one’s passions in preparation for a climactic spiritual experience. Of course, the same definition could be used of foreplay with the change of “spiritual” to “sexual.”
Let’s point out the obvious: replace the buxom blonde babes with stout matrons in their late 50’s, and the worship experience just plain doesn’t happen. Hire an older fellow that walks with a cane as your worship pastor instead of that handsome, young, energetic Cedarville graduate, and Sunday morning just won’t “work.” That should indicate something is wrong. This kind of “worship” isn’t anything new. Maybe fog machines, synthesizers, and colored lights are new, but sensuality and eroticism in worship aren’t. It’s just that in the olden-tymie days, you had to go to a pagan temple to get that. They did a remarkably bad job of incorporating the pagan culture into their worship. A few things changed with the imperialization of the Church, but the damage had already been done. Christian worship was doomed to centuries of reverence, formality, seriousness, regularity, and deliberation until the 20th century brought Aphrodite back to her rightful place as the orchestrator of our worship.
alastair.adversaria » Links said,
April 1, 2007 @ 7:36 pm
[...] ***Steven Harris posts a Palm Sunday confession. ***Byron Smith on the chocolate Jesus controversy. ***The Pirate comments on the erotic character of much contemporary worship: Let’s point out the obvious: replace the buxom blonde babes with stout matrons in their late 50’s, and the worship experience just plain doesn’t happen. Hire an older fellow that walks with a cane as your worship pastor instead of that handsome, young, energetic Cedarville graduate, and Sunday morning just won’t “work.” That should indicate something is wrong. This kind of “worship” isn’t anything new. Maybe fog machines, synthesizers, and colored lights are new, but sensuality and eroticism in worship aren’t. It’s just that in the olden-tymie days, you had to go to a pagan temple to get that. They [presumably the Church — Al] did a remarkably bad job of incorporating the pagan culture into their worship. A few things changed with the imperialization of the Church, but the damage had already been done. Christian worship was doomed to centuries of reverence, formality, seriousness, regularity, and deliberation until the 20th century brought Aphrodite back to her rightful place as the orchestrator of our worship. [...]
The Boar’s Head Tavern » A Little Ultraviolence to go with the Old In-Out said,
April 2, 2007 @ 9:52 pm
[...] I followed with no little interest the posts dealing with the not-so-subtle sexuality of modern worship. (Michael 1, Michael 2, Pirate, Travis). One month ago, I had a brief email exchange with one of our FOBs (Friend of BHT) on exactly this topic. I was reacting to this interview with Leigh McLeroy in which she took on a challenging question about the character-forming aspect of our music. I wrote to our FOB: One factor that I would like to explore some other time, and which I think is really a part of what is going on with the aggressiveness of individual expression through music, is another of youth’s aggressions: sex. There is an orgiastic quality that I think my older sisters and brothers would be too modest to name, but which I think also gives them the sense they are either prey for the predators or irrelevant to the experience. I would like to hear some knowledgeable depth psychological analysis of the various fetishistic practices which are on display in contemporary worship. I think we’d be shocked. [...]
The Pirate on Worship « Bowl of Musing said,
April 5, 2007 @ 9:21 am
[...] Apr 2nd, 2007 by Pierre Benz Pirate, from the Boar’s Head Tavern, brilliantly summarizes modern contemporary worship as ‘erotic’ in essence: But if I remember correctly, the gist of it was that a lot of modern contemporary worship is highly erotic by nature. Step back and look at it–attractive, heavily made-up young women pant and sigh into microphones (if you’re really hip, you have dancers cavorting around, too), everyone’s passions get whipped up into a frenzy, and if you’re really in the spirit of things, your whole body is swept up in the passion. Worship in the contemporary setting could practically be defined as exciting one’s passions in preparation for a climactic spiritual experience. Of course, the same definition could be used of foreplay with the change of “spiritual” to “sexual.” [...]