Sacred sacrilege: Religion and popular culture in Singapore

ONE Ambiguity of the sacred: religion in a pop age 1. Beyond commonsense Commonsense knowledge has it that notions of ‘Christian rock n roll’ and ‘Islamic hip hop’ are either complete misnomers or absolute contradiction in terms. I recall a lecturer who exclaimed to me in bewilderment, “how can there be such a thing?” after I made the assertion that something called ‘Christian heavy metal’ really did exist. In Singapore, we have become all too familiar with pop music and magic peddling pastors who have consistently made news headlines. One particular controversy raged in the media over allegations that a certain pastor used church resources to boost her recently launched career in pop music. A forum letter written in to a local daily publication, voiced the writer’s displeasure over the controversy, and that “…religion and entertainment do not mix, period.” (Today, January 21, 2003) Implicit in these reactions, is an underlying assumption that religion and popular culture are separate and immutable domains. Is it not commonsense knowledge that religion and the world of entertainment do not mix? After all, when we think of religion, we think of all things sacred, holy and pure. How is it possible for all of that to be married with Hollywood, pop-idols and the proverbial world of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll? Is it not a universal truism that the sacred and profane have nothing to do with each other? Often as humans, what we take for granted simply reflects either ignorance or an inherited parochial way of thinking. The beauty of sociology is that ‘commonsense knowledge’ is precisely what we put to sword. What things 1 are, how they are defined and how they relate to each other; are what we constantly query, since social research often uncovers the reality that belies the commonsense. This is what drives me to attempt to make sense of why religion and popular culture come together. In truth, the world is constantly changing, and religion along with it. The relationship between religion and popular culture may just be an index of how religion is reacting to broader social changes. So I believe there is sufficient reason to raise an inquiry into how two social realms of religion and popular culture, largely conceived of as separate and conflicting realms seem to be engaging in an increasingly proximate “interaction of worldviews”. (Stout and Buddenbaum, 2001) This interaction of social domains, defies our ability to make sense of it, engendering a sense of bemusement toward this ambiguity of what exactly is or is not sacred. If this ambiguity is left uninterrogated, it would seem full of “contradictory meanings… simultaneously true and false”, bearing “paradoxes, ironies, and irreconcilable tensions”. (Martin, 2001: 110) Perhaps if we do interrogate this ambiguity, we would come to an understanding of the meanings, motivations and modes of rationale, that explain the collusion of religion and popular culture. Does this collusion perhaps herald a shift in the religious landscape that we have not quite made sense of? What about those who oppose such a collusion? The resulting fissures and moral tensions are significant because quite certainly, many religious people will not just stand by and watch their faith being profanized. Paradigm shifts seldom occur without warning. As it is with the social, so it is with nature- where viewing a flower in quick-time belies the reality of 2 the natural process the flower goes through to reach full bloom. If geologists measure small tectonic plate movements to forecast major earthquakes, I think it also a worthy endeavor for the social scientist to examine excursus and small movements. Taken collectively, these can be read as an anthology of sorts, that portends a seismic shift in the social landscape. 2. Anthology of a seismic shift a. Global perspective I: Iran Music is no different than opium. Music affects the human mind in a way that makes people think of nothing but music and sensual matters… music is a treason to the country, a treason to our youth, and we should cut out all this music and replace it with something instructive.1 [Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini] Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini spoke forcefully against music in 1979, after the Islamic revolution. The establishment of an Islamic republic soon followed. After the revolution, the only legal music in Iran comprised war hymns, traditional songs or anodyne instrumentals. All un-Islamic music, labeled “secular music”, was banned. This was strictly enforced through stringent checks and controls. Yet in a somewhat ironic twist, BBC2 and CNN3 carried surprising reports of a first ever officially sanctioned pop concert in 1999 marking the 20th anniversary of the revolution. Since then, there have been a deluge of media reports tracking the “reconciliation” of popular culture with Islamic Iran. New York Times reporter Thomas Friedman of The Lexus and the Olive Tree (1999) fame reported on a socio-cultural “seismic shift” (2002) taking place amongst Iran’s 18 million 1 VH1.com, November 26, 1999, www.vh1.com/artists/news/520251/11241999/hart_mickey.jhtml 2 BBC news article, February 8, 1999, news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/274610.stm 3 CNN news article, February 12, 1999, www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9902/12/iran.concert/ 3 “Third Generation” of 16 to 30 year olds who constitute approximately a third of Iran’s population. Iran’s Third Generation seeks for greater individual freedom, defined in great measure by the cultural products that they want to consume. An article in the Cincinnati Post described this condition as a “pent up desire for pop culture”. (July 26, 2002) A desire that current president Mohammad Khatami and his government seek to fulfill despite vehement opposition from the country’s religious clerics. In caveat, this example of Iran does not prove a direct overlap between popular culture and religion- i.e. there is no ‘religious popular culture’ in evidence. It is probably state sanctioned popular cultural adaptation; hence political expediency is the crucial intervening variable. This however, does give us a sense of the power and pervasiveness of popular culture in transcending cultural boundaries and religious barriers- the popular culture we are speaking about here does not refer to indigenous ‘folk’ culture. Rather, by all media accounts, the music, the movies, the fashion that Iran’s Third Generation is taking to, is mostly Western and in particular American popular culture. If this is happening in Islamic Iran, then it stands to reason that in this age of information and globalization, religious institutions will have to deal with the reality of the nearness of popular culture, and the onslaught of ‘popular culturization’. Since the separation of religion and popular culture has been sustained by religious authorities and moral communities, the process of reconciling these two realms would predictably be fraught with resistance, and hence can only be achieved through great struggle. 4 b. Global perspective II: England A case in point of religion overlapping directly with popular culture would be the Church of England. Here, the overlap is birthed from within traditional religious institutions. Sparking much controversy, a vicar from the Church of England held a “Harry Potter family service” in his church, complete with wizards, pointy hats and broomsticks. The vicar himself dressed like a wizard, and encouraged his members to do the same. In fact, a new “Harry Potter Liturgy” was drawn up for the special service, and magical props were used to illustrate biblical truths. The Church of All Saints in Guildford, Surrey, was even adorned with a banner featuring a serpent, representing the house of Slytherin in the best selling series by J.K. Rowling. Unsurprisingly, The Times of London reported that the service dismayed the Evangelical Alliance- the umbrella organization for Evangelical Christians in England, citing the risk that “children are going to be very confused by the use of symbols associated with evil”. This view opposed the church vicar’s own stance that Harry Potter stories were thematically highly moral, “about standing up for friends, about standing up for good against evil”. (The Times, September 1, 2000) Interestingly enough, in an apparently contradictory stance, the UK’s The Daily Telegraph (November 16, 2002) reported on how the Church of England gave its official blessing to “alternative” forms of worship which included rock and dance music to promote a conducive dance-cum-worship atmosphere. These “Raves in the Nave”, are part of a "national youth strategy" designed to encourage greater participation by England’s under-30s, in 5 response to declining church-going among youth and children. The article also reported on how several dioceses had appointed chaplains to minister to clubs in an effort to convert young people to Christianity. From the adaptation of Harry Potter symbolism, to organizing raves and dance parties, it seems the Church of England acknowledges the need to be relevant to modern youth culture. In doing so, it finds itself caught in the negotiation of an ambiguous terrain of popular culture adaptation- a road fraught with contradictions and ambiguities. And the fissures are showing: if the Church of England is unwilling to associate with wizardry or magic on the level of symbolism, why is there a willingness to adopt forms of music from clubbing culture that are reputed bastions of hedonism, alcohol and drugs? I find this contradiction intriguing, and so I would like explore it, to clarify this ambiguous terrain, and the process by which religion negotiates it. 6 c. Global perspective III: Malaysia and Singapore Nobody would think that lyrics like “God is great” can make music history. But that’s exactly what happened when Islamic singing group Raihan won the “best vocal group” award at the 1999 Malaysian Music Industry Awards, beating conventional pop and rock singers along the way. In fact, because of Raihan, a special category of the awards was created for Islamic music or Nasyid music. Since 1997, Raihan albums have sold in excess of 1 million copies. They have gone on to shoot a movie titled Syukur 21, (The Malay Mail, April 29, 2000) and have even performed before British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles. (The New Straits Times, June 1, 1999) Not everyone has been happy with this trail that Raihan has blazed. Raihan’s success has spawned a whole host of Nasyid groups and almost every major Malaysian record company has a Nasyid group on its books. (BBC news, May 18, 1999) Fundamentalist Muslims decry this mixing and parallel categorizing of something declaratively “Islamic” with the workings of the wider pop music industry. But this has not stopped Raihan, or the millions of consumers who have attended Raihan concerts, purchasing albums, memorabilia and even getting members’ autographs. Raihan and many Nasyid groups in their wake have truly become pop-stars of the Muslim world in South East Asia. 7 Islamic pop sensation If ‘religious pop-star’ was ever a misnomer, then Ho Yeow Sun certainly stands to be mentioned. Ho Yeow Sun pastors one of the biggest independent churches in Singapore- City Harvest Church. Together with her husband, Senior Pastor Khong Hee, they head up a church of more than 10,000 people. Pastor Sun, as she is popularly referred to, launched herself into the Chinese popular music industry with her first album in 2001 which sold more than 100,000 copies. (The Straits Times, January 27, 2003) On board with commercial music label Decca, Sun has also appeared on cosmetics and fashion advertisements. 8 She has hosted television programs, and appeared as a guest performer at the MTV Asia Awards in January 2003. Her very social identity as a “pastor” and “pop-star” in the same breath has sparked much controversy in Singapore’s Christian community. Furthermore, her presence in the music industry cannot be described as overtly religious. While she acknowledges the title Pastor, she categorically refuses to be “preachy” or “Christian”. The lyrical content of her music is not explicitly religious, with no mention of words like “God” or “Jesus”. This has caused even more controversy over her intentionsbeing a religious leadership figure in a non-sacred industry, producing nonsacred music. 3. The research question So how does religion interact with popular culture? How might we account for the evidence of the overlap of two realms that are commonsensically understood to be mutually exclusive? The examples I have raised from the Middle East, Europe and Asia are manifestations of the “interaction of worldviews” that spurred my initial interest and set me on a path to conceptualize this research project. I was not so much interested in macro-level theorizing on social structural conditions that give rise to the interaction of religion and popular culture. Rather, I was more inclined toward uncovering how social actors are making such an interaction possible. On a micro level, what rationalestrategies do religious institutions and individuals use to reconcile the seemingly conflicting realms of religion and popular culture? How do religions 9 (internally and rationally) maintain their sense of ‘sacred-self’ despite adaptation and alignment with the social context? The contents of chapter 2 are the sum of my research negotiations. Religion and popular culture are both social domains that encompass so much of social life that any meaningful discussion necessitates the proper charting of conceptual boundaries. I delineate these boundaries that frame what I mean by ‘religion’ and ‘popular culture’, and how from there I operationalized my research and how I went on to do my fieldwork. In this chapter, I also review the literature on religion and popular culture, and survey available theoretical modes of analysis. I also discuss the various available configurations of the relationship between religion and popular culture, and lay out the rationale of the particular configurations I chose. Chapters 3 and 4 are empirical chapters that present my findings in the field. All of my fieldwork was done in Singapore. These chapters are in line with my interpretive objective to reach Verstehen, (Marshall, 1998: 693) or adequacy on the level of meaning, of institutions and social actors who are proactive agents engaged in bringing together religion and popular culture. In these chapters, I will shed light on the adaptation strategies of religious institutions and their adherents, or the rationality behind the methodology of religious adaptation to popular culture. Chapter 5 moves beyond religion and popular culture per se, and examines the deeper ideological underpinnings that account for opposing factions for and against the popular culturization of religion. What can we understand from contradictory religious responses that accept and reject 10 popular culture at the same time? In this chapter, I seek to account for intrareligious pluralization and explain the divisiveness, the tensions and fissures occurring in institutional religions. I frame this as what Berger and Luckmann term a “crisis of meaning” (1995) where opposing religious paradigms engage in a holy struggle against each other to define the sacred. Most works on religion and popular culture invariably bypass this conflict. I however, do not take such luxury, and so I intend to deal theoretically with the struggle between two ideal-typical religious paradigms. In chapter 6, I conclude by extending my theoretical discussion to the future of religion, or rather, the consequence that the two ideal-typical religious paradigms discussed in chapter 5, will have for their respective institutions and individuals. Ideals and beliefs have their consequences, and so this chapter will attempt to chart out what some of these consequences are; whether they engender possibilities, problems or both. As would all sociologists of religion, I attempt to forward certain hypotheses regarding the future of religion, and the future of notions of the sacred. I also make certain conceptual appeals that I hope will aid our attempts to classify religious phenomena and analyze religion and the sacred. 11 TWO Research Negotiations 1. Conceptualization a. Conceptualizing the sacred ‘The sacred’ is widely used both in lay and academic parlance. But it is at the same time also highly problematic due to its conceptual all-inclusivity: simply that anything has the potential to be deemed and regarded as ‘sacred’. The sacred is also voiced as what is ‘holy’ and to be set apart. It is a concept that has infinite applications. Empirically, it is located in artifacts as well as in ideals and principles. For whatever it may apply to, human activity proceeds to promote and preserve the sacred where it may be found. The practice of the sacred can be both collective and individual. A group of people can come to a collective consensus of what is sacred and how that sacredness should be expressed and managed. For example, football fans regard the sport sacred, and set aside resources to support their favorite teams. But the sacred can also be exercised as private practice, in certain highly personalized rituals that an individual adheres to in his daily life routine. Fundamental to the notion of sacred, is also what is not sacred- the profane. According to Durkheim’s definition “sacred things are those which the [religious] interdictions protect and isolate; profane things, those to which these interdictions are applied and which must remain at a distance from the first”. (Durkheim, 1912) So the sacred and profane exist in a dialectical absolute relationship with each other. The sacred only has meaning by reason 12 to this opposite which is the profane; hence they mutually define each other. (Pickering, 1984: 117) Logically then, intrusion from the profane results in resistance, which may even be expressed in violence. (Appleby, 2000) The sacred is not synonymous with what lay persons typically refer to as ‘religion’: systems of beliefs that deal with transcendence, (Geertz, 1968) the existential questions of life, including the afterlife. Sacredness is not located exclusively in the religious domain. It is a property of society itself. (Paden, 2002: 18) Realms of activity like music, sport and art are also sacred realms. Hence in broadest terms, the sacred is not exclusively contained within religion. It is conceptually larger than religion and encompasses more domains than religion. In fact, Durkheim’s stipulation of how religious interdictions function to “protect and isolate, [and] must remain at a distance” from what is profane, is in theory also completely true of the social. (Durkheim, 1912) Social order is impossible without a collective consensus of what is defined by society as sacred. In the Durkheimian sense, the sacred is the social. Socialization is in sum a process by which values and norms sacred to a society are learnt and internalized by social actors in order to fit in to that particular society. Societies and individuals have a non-reflexive sense of the sacred, where beliefs, practices and way of life are preserved and guarded against violation or encroachment. Therefore, an inquiry of the sacred in the social can preclude any discussion of religion because the same human activity that produces society also produces religion; hence it has the potential to encompass every sphere 13 of meaning engendered in modern societies. (Hervieu-Léger, 2000: 42) So the concept proves slippery in the face of any attempt to analyze it, since sacredness is characteristically diffuse and can be found anywhere and in anything. Since sociological research requires that abstract concepts be operationalized to concrete reality for observation and analysis, there would be very real conceptual and methodological problems in demarcating conceptual boundaries and identifying fields for data gathering. However, the fact is that in modern societies, the sacred is institutionalized in organized religions, which are institutions of meaning production and perpetuation. These organizations are social collectives defined by hierarchical structures which function to control the production of specifically sacred meanings. These organizations also institute control over adherents by defining what constitutes sacred rituals and artifacts, and how they should be put into practice. Organized religions are concentrated domains of sacred practice, as differentiated from diffuse and privatized practice, although both are valid locales of the sacred. However, based on empirical considerations, organized religion presents greater potential for data gathering because institutions are both stable, identifiable, and coordinated in their maneuvering in the social. Furthermore, organized religion also provides the context and application principles for the private practice of religion, which is how corporate ritual practice is translated and filtered to individual practice. Operationally, the study of the sacred can be conducted to the study of organized religions. Organized religions are hence viable and valid fields to 14 study the sacred. This effectively addresses the conceptual difficulty that “anything can be sacred” by locating the sacred in institutional practice, while not denying the reality that sacredness is conceptually larger than religion, and is found in domains outside organized religion. This also does not discount the reality of the sacred in individual practice. b. Religion as sacred So while we have established that religion is one manifestation of the sacred. The concept ‘religion’ also comes with its problems. A main bone of contention is whether theism is an absolute criterion for the definition of religion. Sociologists however, define religion “by reference to the sacred rather than to a belief in a god or gods”. (Marshall, 1998: 562) So the theistic element is not crucial to what defines a system of beliefs as religion or not. Buddhism is a case in point- where certain factions have no theistic element. (Wee, 1977) Hence Martineau and Spiro’s respective definitions of religion as the belief in “an ever-living God” and “postulated superhuman beings” (Livingston, 1998: 4) are reductionist, since religions can be monotheistic, polytheistic or non-theistic. The essential constant is the existence of a system of beliefs independent of a theistic element. Yet beliefs originate from “somewhere” and are directed toward “something”, and this “thing” is the sacred. Hence, Durkheim’s classic definition of religion as “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden- beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community… all who adhere to them” proves relevant. (Durkheim, 1912) 15 A “system of beliefs and practices” expresses the cultural component of religion- beliefs being opinions or attitudes, and practices being modes of action in harmony with held beliefs and values. This demonstrates that religion is expressed through culture, and must hence be looked at culturally- in terms of its values, beliefs, norms, practices, symbols, etc. and that religions exist in a social context- one that may be defined by values, beliefs and norms that are either in harmony with, or antagonistic to religion’s cultural components. “One single moral community” neither means a church in the sense of a Christian church, nor does it necessarily refer to a physical structure, but it indicates a social organization component, as mentioned earlier. Hence religion is expressed as culture and through culture, and is belief and practice embodied in social organizations; all which revolve around the sacred. In the preliminary phase of conceptualizing this research project, I first looked at the major organized religions in Singapore, namely Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. From preliminary data gathering, Christianity and Islam were the two organized religions in Singapore that had explicit popular culture components, as I have alluded to in chapter 1. Hence for this study, Christianity and Islam in Singapore serve as the empirical field of investigation. c. Popular culture as profane Well, so what if organized religions have explicit popular culture components? Why is there a controversy, or even a need to study the ideological implications of the overlap of religion and popular culture? 16 Durkheim’s definition of religion explicates sacred things as those “set apart and forbidden”, underlining a distinction from what he and other religion theorists postulate as the profane. A basic chasm exists between the sacred and profane. According to Durkheim, the sacred and profane are so fundamentally opposed that they are irreconcilable, therefore unable to coexist in the same place and at the same time. What does it mean then, if the realm of religion, sacredness and all things holy is perceived in lay terms as incompatible with the realm of popular culture, entertainment and pleasure? The answer is that religion and popular culture are perceived as ideologically and qualitatively different realms and are assumed to be contradistinctive. So the collusion of religion and popular culture is interpreted as sacrilege precisely because religion is cast as sacred and popular culture is concomitantly interpreted as profane, hence the “commonsense” understanding that the two cannot overlap or coexist. An institution of sacred meaning production and preservation cannot be simultaneously purveying pop music and movies. Or can it? The empirical examples highlighted in chapter 1 demonstrate that this is precisely what religious individuals and organizations are doing. But on what basis is popular culture interpreted as profane in relation to religion as sacred? Before that can be addressed, let me first briefly conceptualize popular culture. 17 Popular culture like religion is recognized as a distinct and identifiable social domain. But popular culture is very much like religion in that it too has a social organization component, namely institutions of meaning production and perpetuation. “The main business of popular culture is entertainment”. (Marshall, 1998: 507) And it is precisely the entertainment industry which perpetuates meanings by production, replication, promotion and distribution of commodities. Popular culture deals with commoditized meanings- meanings which go through the process of documentation and replication into consumable formats. Music, for example is converted from an “intangible, time-bound aural experience into something that can be bought and sold”. (Frith, 2001: 26) Just as religion has adherents who engage in the private practice of their faith through ritual activity, similarly, popular culture has “adherents” who practice the “rituals” and appropriate the “artifacts” of popular culture consumption and are known as ‘consumers’. The artifacts of consumer ritual activities are centred on tangible commodities like music, food, fashion, books and magazines etc. But they also may be non-material commodities like concerts, movies, television programs and other entertainment events that are consumed visually or experientially, entertainment which can be both mediated and non-mediated. (Vorderer, 2001: 248) Popular culture is read as profane due to the qualitative difference in meanings that are engendered in the production process and are subsequently purveyed to consumers. It is cast as “profane” due to 18 characteristics of the content that are contrary to certain sacred values, which in caveat are not necessarily religious ones. In the same way that religion is not read as the only domain of the sacred, popular culture is not read as profane exclusively by organized religion. There is in fact a social spectrum of moral outcry against popular culture. Politicians, parents and teachers groups lobby against excessive violence and sex on television. Popular culture is even read as profane from agencies within itself. In Vulgarians at the Gate (2001), late entertainer Steve Allen forcefully indicted America’s entertainment industry for “destructive cultural production” which he claimed had a regressive moral impact. (Allen, 2001: 108) These examples highlight the salience of Durkheim’s conceptualization of the sacred as the social. So while it has been rightly established that popular culture is not read as profane exclusively by religious organizations, this research is specifically concerned with readings of popular culture as profane in relation to religion as sacred. Since organized religions are operationalized as the empirical field of investigation, the different ways that organized religion reads popular culture as profane becomes most crucial. As the global examples in chapter 1 have shown, the collusion between religion and popular culture has been instigated by social agents within organized religions like Christianity and Islam. Does this mean that these religious agents do not read popular culture as profane? Or are there qualitative differences within religion in how popular culture is read as profane? 19 How organized religions read popular culture as profane, must be preceded by an important clarification of what the profane is. There is a fundamental bivalence of profane- what is a) mundane as distinguished from what is b) polluted. Mundane is what is everyday, ordinary, commonplace and secular- the mundane is not assigned a positive or negative value of being either good or evil. It is not ‘sacred’ or ‘holy’, but neither is it ‘bad’ or ‘evil’, it is simply neutral. Pollution, however, carries with it the connotation of something being unconsecrated, defiled, contaminated, corrupted- or the unholy-profane. To all things that are classified as the unholy-profane, a definite negative value of ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ is necessarily assigned to it. d. Religious readings of popular culture as profane i. Essentialist reading The first religious reading essentializes popular culture as being profane. The industry, artists and products are profane in an absolute sense with no room for compromise. It is not profane in the “mundane” and morally neutral sense, but rather, it is unequivocally “unholy-profane” or polluted. A quote from a fundamentalist Christian author espouses this essentialist reading: Rock music cannot be sanctified for the Lord’s use because it is fleshly and does not minister to the spirit. I am not speaking merely of the words, but of the very rhythms. Rock music perfectly fits the bar, the dance hall, the night club, the house of prostitution. Rock music fits the tavern but it does not fit the Lord’s house. It was created by rebels who brazenly love those things which God’s word says are evil. (Cloud, 2000: 6) In other words, rock music is corrupt in both form and substance; by virtue of its beginnings, all meanings engendered from such a profane source 20 are by default profane. In fact there is no form and substance differentiation, in that the form or expressive mode cannot be separated from its origins and be appropriated and “sanctified” and input with alternative meanings. So in fact, the form is the substance. These religions are “world-rejecting” (Wallis, 1984) and are hence logically inclined to reject popular culture, industry, artists, products and all other manifestations. The deeper ideological implication of this orientation is that whatever culture is expressed outside of the religious meaning-giving framework is deemed profane. In a sense, religion is culture and all excesses are not acceptable. And for organizations and individuals to take from that “profane” meaning-giving framework makes the activity unholy no matter what the intentions are. This elucidates the ideological position that outside the religious system, there is no other “valid” culture that can produce sacred meanings. This essentialist view of popular culture reveals an underlying narrow view of culture in general. While the meaning-giving framework is very coherent and highly stable, the reading is however, highly problematic. While it may be a cognitively convenient way of dealing with the “other”, this reading implicitly assumes popular culture to be a monolithic entity. It denies the possibility that meanings can and do evolve over time, and that there are in fact a great variation of meanings produced by the entertainment industry, some of which may not fit this rigid notion of profane. This reading also denies the reality of human agency in appropriating and redefining meanings. 21 ii. Non-essentialist reading The second reading of popular culture as profane does not essentialize popular culture as being profane in essence. Yes, unholy-profane meanings are constantly being produced, but this does not mean that all the meanings produced are evil, nor is the system monolithically evil. Hollywood may produce movies with excessive violence and sex, but it also produces thematically wholesome and pedagogical programs like Sesame Street and other “constructive” programs. It is neither the industry nor the medium of expression that defines whether something is “bad”, but rather the actual meanings that are engendered and expressed- the content or substance. What makes something evil is not how it is expressed, but rather, what is expressed. By implication, the form and content are distinct, separable and can be subject to reconfiguration. The form is categorically not the content. Pollution or contamination is embedded in content or substance rather than form. This non-essentialist reading of popular culture as profane is expressed in the following quote: Christians have to be actively engaged with culture: studying it, discerning positive and negative aspects... working to enrich culture and preserve life-affirming aspects. We are also called to be a light to show the way for cultural development, uncovering and disentangling forces for good and evil, and redirecting unhealthy or destructive patterns toward principles in line with loving God…. (Romanowski, 2001: 43) This reading of popular culture sees the industry as having sacred meaningmaking potential. It is a viable channel to purvey sacred messages, even though the status quo may be a void or dearth of sacred contents. Popular 22 culture holds great potential to reach the unconverted, because that is precisely where they are. Much like the world at large where many domains of life are morally neutral, popular culture too has neutral aspects. The underlying ideological implication of this reading of popular culture is the assumption that religion is situated within culture at large. It is a part of culture and not culture itself. This perspective accepts religion as being contained by culture at large, and that not all of culture is by definition “evil”. In sum, these two readings of popular culture as profane are distinguished by the one position which sees popular culture as unholyprofane: an essentially evil realm. And the other position that sees popular culture as a largely mundane realm which carries sacred meaning-making potential. Religion as sacred and popular culture as profane is the conceptual framework with which this thesis seeks to query the “Sacred Sacrilege”. 23 2. Literature review a. Existing literature on religion and popular culture I first turned to the body of literature that dealt precisely with my topic: religion and popular culture, and these I did find with ease. However, in surveying these works, I realized that there was a pattern of deficiency, which led me to conclude that it would be insufficient to look at the literature on religion and popular culture alone. Many of these works tend to be social commentaries and critiques rather than serious theoretical attempts. There is also a consistent failure to account for religion and popular culture using developed theoretical paradigms on religion. As many of these works originate from other disciplines like media studies, religious studies, and ethics, I found lacking an adequate address to the perennial sociological question why? Instead, I found consistent emphasis on the descriptive what- what people and institutions are doing in mixing religion with popular culture. (Forbes and Mahan, 2000, Stout and Buddenbaum, 2001, Robertson, 2002) In some instances, these “academic” pieces turned out to be veiled apologias to support why religion and popular culture should overlap. This was apparent in Romanowski’s Pop Culture Wars, where he asserts the possibility that religion can and should be “served by the potentials of the entertainment media” instead of being “in constant fear of being possessed by them”. (Romanowski, 1996: 338) I felt this revealed his theological predisposition toward the subject matter. This was precisely the same problem with Fishwick’s work, (1995) which exposed his negative bias, and brought to light 24 his hidden agenda to undermine the phenomenon in question, namely religious popular culture. Jindra (1994) and Prebish (1993) also present attempts to show how religion and popular culture are coming together in unexpected places. These works were expositions loosely based on Durkheim’s notion of a larger sacred in the social as manifest in how the beliefs and ritual practices of popular culture fit the criteria of religion on their own merit, with Star Trek consumers behaving like religious adherents in their devotion to the television series, and sport being practiced in similar patterning with religious devotion. These works were certainly eye-opening, and expanded the empirical horizon of the workings of the sacred in the social. However, through surveying the literature, I found no work that seriously situated their discussion within the body of concepts and theories developed in the sociology of religion. So I thought it necessary to get back to the basics and look deeper and further in my quest to find explanations for the mixing of religion and popular culture. b. Cultural wars An available explanatory framework seemed to lie with the culture wars thesis. It espouses an interpretation that religion and popular culture are contradictory realms that stem from an irresolvable tension between worldviews. The term ‘culture wars’ was popularized in the 1980s and 1990s by writers seeking a descriptive label for what they perceived as religious reaction to popular forms of communication. (Stout and Buddenbaum, 2001: 5) 25 Books like Cultural Wars (Hunter, 1991) and Hollywood vs. America (Medved, 1992) represented the epitome of culture wars literature. The paradigm has its merits in elucidating the nature of tensions between popular culture producers and religious institutions in America. But according to Wuthnow, the culture wars thesis is better at making sense of the rhetoric of interests groups, rather than with any macro level issues. (Wuthnow, 2001: 308) Hence it lacks in providing an understanding of the process of adaptiveness or non-adaptiveness. The paradigm provides an overly simplistic dichotomization of two worldviews- orthodox/ theistic and progressive/ enlightened. The paradigm explains conflict but not confluence of religion and popular culture, leaving no room for compromise as the differences in worldviews are too steep for integrative contingency. Cultural wars theorists have not offered adequate explanations of how and why members of religious sects use the media. This theoretical perspective fails to account for the dialectical nature of popular culture where religion is both friend and foe. (Stout and Buddenbaum, 2001: 9) So the concerns of the paradigm are too conceptually skewed toward predicting antagonism and irreconcilability between the two realms. c. Secularization paradigm: passé or in? The secularization paradigm has been at the heart of much theoretical debate in the sociology of religion. There is no simple monolithic secularization thesis. Earlier proponents predicted the decline and eventually demise of religion under the weight of science and rational thought. This position was 26 most famously propounded by Marx, Freud and even Comte, who ironically argued that human society was outgrowing the “theological stage” of social evolution, to be replaced by the “science” of sociology. (Stark and Finke, 2000: 58) The demise of religion thesis has been largely abandoned, even by former proponents. Peter L. Berger for one, acknowledged the fault in his own foreboding of religion’s fate. (Berger, 1997) The potency of what ‘secularization’ entails as concept and theoretical paradigm is evident in the debate surrounding its meaning and use. On the one hand, proponents argue that the secularization paradigm has been made redundant by its broadness and diversity and hence there is a lack of clarity as to what exactly secularization refers to. Shiner (1967) for example, explicated six different meanings of secularization, and he concluded that the term should be abandoned altogether. This pessimistic view of secularization theory opposed Tschannen’s (1991) argument for the coherence and conceptual unity of a range of secularization theories, and hence the usefulness of the secularization paradigm. I disagree that the secularization paradigm has to be done away with, because it does offer useful modes of analyzing religion. It also offers a wealth of conceptual building blocks that can be employed outside the secularization thesis. (Tschannen, 1991) Furthermore, progressive secularization thinkers have argued not for the decline and disappearance of religion, but rather its transformation in the face of modern contingencies. (Yamane, 1997:113) This stance is echoed in secularization theorist Steve Bruce’s most recent book God is Dead, where he speaks on behalf of progressive secularization 27 theorists and states that rather than predicting demise, “our case can be summarized as saying that religion diminishes in social significance… except where it finds work to do other than relating individuals to the supernatural”. (Bruce, 2002: 30) Consequently, I find the secularization paradigm useful in providing both conceptual and theoretical bases for understanding how religions react and respond to the challenge on its significance in society. Rather than demise, Woodhead and Heelas (2000: 307) highlight that secularization theory has branched out into more “religion-friendly” alternatives, explicated in various “sub-secularization” theories, like the differentiation thesis- which theorizes religion being pushed out of social domains but remaining significant in private realms; the de-intensification theory- where religion remains, but in a weakened, insubstantial form, and by detraditionalization loses its distinctiveness and becomes like a consumer product. The co-existence theory propounds the idea that religion in certain contexts retains its vitality and even grows. I am thus disinclined to reject the whole body of secularization theories, because the diversity of theoretical propositions affords us ways of understanding the occurrence of transformation or religious innovation. Furthermore, ignoring secularization would belie the fact that religious institutions are concerned with what they themselves perceive as secularizing forces. My point is that secularization as experienced by religionists cannot be empirically disproved hence disregarded by theorists even though we might consider the secularization argument moot. So I maintain the use of the 28 concept and its related useful sub-concepts, but abandon the meaning of secularization being a decline leading to an eventual demise of religion. A further criticism leveled at secularization theory has been its tendency to focus on quantitative research methods, analyzing comparative religious institution statistics. Wuthnow indicts this as a preoccupation with influence and decline, rather than qualitative changes in spirituality, and the different ways that people are spiritual. (Wuthnow, 2001) Secularization paradigm proponents have thus conveniently tended to equate religion with its institutions, rather than looking at the changing way people express religiosity. Although this thesis looks at certain religious institutions, it also focuses on how people are finding ways and means to express their religiosity through their own cultural framework. So while the secularization thesis does have its merits, it still does not afford me the necessary conceptual tools or methodological precedents to uncover meanings instead of imposing them on the phenomenon in question. d. Rational choice theory and religion The rational choice theory (RCT) application to analyze religion was seen as the model that had the potential to replace secularization theory as the dominant theoretical framework within the social scientific study of religion. (Young, 1997: xii) In fact, proponents of the “new” RCT paradigm or the religious economy perspective of religion strongly oppose and explicitly reject what they call the “old” secularization paradigm. (Stark and Finke, 2000: 31) They argue vehemently against the myth of religious demise, and posit that 29 “the sources of religion are shifting constantly in societies but that the amount of religion remains relatively constant.” (Stark and Bainbridge, 1985: 3) Stark and Bainbridge have attempted to provide a general theory of religion (1987) to demonstrate its regenerative efficiency. But their theory is lengthy and complex, consisting of axioms and propositions of relationships between axioms. However, this theory can broadly be divided into two aspects- firstly, a holistic attempt to explain individual social actors’ religious behavior in terms of gratification, seeking rewards and avoiding costs. And secondly, on the organizational level, to account for the pluralizing effect on traditional religious institutions, dividing or splitting into a variety of formsunderscoring the emergence and development of sects and cults. (Hamilton, 1995: 183) Religious economy The RCT perspective relies heavily on exchange theory in conceptualizing the relationship between adherents/ potential adherents and religious institutions with the economic systems model. It frames the relationship as demand in relation to supply respectively; interpreting all human interaction as a form of exchange. On the demand-side of the religious economy, adherents/ potential adherents are driven by a profit-maximizing motive either in this life or in the afterlife where salvation is currency. Adherents seek to secure rewards and to minimize costs incurred. When rewards are not obtainable, individuals seek out compensators- intangible substitutes in lieu of actual rewards. Stark and Finke define a religious economy as one that “consists of all the religious activity going on in any 30 society- a “market” of current and potential adherents, a set of one or more organizations seeking to attract or maintain adherents and the religious culture offered by the organization.” (Stark and Finke, 2000: 193) Criticism of RCT and religious economy Critics like Roy Wallis and Steve Bruce have highlighted that using exchange theory comes with problems, and that this purported “general theory” of religion is based on a faulty chain of reasoning. (Wallis, 1984; Bruce, 1999) For instance, what external and objective scale should we use to distinguish between rewards and costs? Bruce makes a general point: that it is impossible to economize religion in totality, and hence “as we cannot know what is the rational choice, we cannot make it”, (Bruce, 1999: 129) since the internal requirements for maximizing are missing from religious belief and behavior; unlike choosing between cars or cornflakes where fixed criteria for maximization can be ascertained. Bruce also finds fault with the working assumption that both producers and consumers in a religious economy will always act rationally. It fails to acknowledge the force of cultural constraints in determining choice, since as Bruce highlights, “most social environments are not yet conducive to choosing a religion”. (Bruce, 1999: 129) Religion is thus often not about personal preference, since in some socio-cultural environments, ‘choice’ is not an option in the first place. Despite the deficiencies that can be leveled against the RCT application of religious economy, I found supply-side theories useful in my attempt to find a theoretical framework. 31 Supply-side Religious economy proponents find it problematic that secularization theorists have been concerned with explaining religious decline through emphasizing a decrease in demand. Hence much of the religious economy paradigm theorizes supply-side behavior pertaining to religious institutions, or religious entrepreneurs “who constantly reinterpret, innovate and invent religious thoughts and practices in response to changing social conditions”, (Tan, 2000: 5) engaging in competition to secure ‘consumers’ or customers. However, religious economies are situated in larger institutional contexts, and hence face regulating conditions, which restricts competition by changing the incentives and opportunities for religious producers and the viable options for religious consumers. (Finke, 1997: 50) Finke elucidates two forms of regulation: suppression and subsidy. (Finke, 1997: 50) Suppression is manifest, for instance, in laws that restrict religious practice, or when state authorities ban anything deemed ‘deviant’. Sources of suppression are not exclusively external, because dominant religions can be agents of suppression too. Suppression has multiple effectsproviding institutional religions with incentive to change (or not to), and spurring manifestations of religious innovation. It also has the significant impact of influencing the long-term growth of the religious economy. Subsidy, on the other hand is the process of selectively rewarding, either by supporting religious institutions, or by reducing the costs of involvement to the individual. Finke notes however that subsidy also has the negative effect of providing a disincentive for religious producers to work hard 32 and be enterprising, because they have other supporting structures independent of popular support. To the individual, subsidy increases the cost of choosing or preferring non-subsidy religion or religious institutions. (Finke, 1997: 51-52) Finke concludes by saying that all forms of regulation- either suppression or subsidy, result in restricted competition, reducing the number and diversity of religious options available for consumers. (Finke, 1997: 52) Supply-side explanations seemed adequately suited for my purposes since I could foresee framing the collusion of religion and popular culture in these terms. Rational choice theory and secularization Significantly, rational choice theorists themselves have not thrown out the term ‘secularization’, despite disagreeing with the theoretical paradigm. Rational choice theorists acknowledge that secularization occurs, but under constraints, stating that secularization is a process that is self-limiting and that generates two countervailing processes. (Stark and Bainbridge, 1985: 2, 3) 1. Revival: a restoration of vigorous otherworldliness to a conventional faith, and which are manifested in efforts to protect and maintain deep attachments to the traditional religions. (Stark and Bainbridge, 1985: 444) In sum, revival reflects the attempts of the church to remain churched. 2. Innovation: the formation of new religious traditions, which wrestle market position from older faiths, and accounts for the appearance of new religions in society. The processes of religious revival and innovation give rise to a pluralistic environment, where different religious traditions compete for 33 members. This competition will result in an expanding base of participation. Without competition, religious economy theorists posit that religious monopolies will have no strong motivation to expand, concentrating instead on securing their monopoly position. The consequence of no competition is entropic- a decline in religious participation. Religious economy theorists conclude that religion will thrive in a competitive environment although some religious firms will decline: Our model of religious economies holds that the demise of religious monopolies and the deregulation of religious economies will result in a general increase in individual commitment as more firms (and more motivated firms) gain free access to the market. (Stark and Finke, 2000: 200) Suitability of RCT The RCT and religious economy perspective are useful for examining religions in a pluralistic social context, where there is an environment of religious alternatives in inter-faith and intra-faith competition to hold existing adherents and to appeal to potential adherents. This theoretical paradigm also provides a framework to understand how religious institutions behave, albeit unreflexively as religious economies. Also, this perspective provides a more complete explanation of reactions to secularizing forces, something that secularization theory lacks. e. Religion, culture and the construction of meaning Another identifiable theoretical perspective is broadly known as the “religion and meaning” perspective. This perspective, espousing theorists ranging from cultural anthropologists to social constructionists, interprets religion as the source from which people construct a sense of meaning in their 34 existence. (Hamilton, 1995: 157) Well known proponents include Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, who both have highly influential individual and collaborative works that deal with meaning and religion. Clifford Geertz’s classic Religion as a Cultural System which elucidates the “cultural dimension of religious analysis” also falls into this category of works. (Geertz, 1968: 3) General order of existence The unifying base upon which these theories operate is that religion provides a meta-theory of empirical reality and it is the ultimate reality that accounts for empirical reality; what Geertz refers to as a “general order of existence” or “worldview”. (Geertz, 1968: 4) Geertz elaborates this as an “unalterable shape of reality”, and expounds on how religion serves as both a model of reality (a blueprint, a structure) and a model for reality (a plan of action, for agency). Berger expresses this as “a totalizing nomos based on the authority of a sacred cosmos”, in which the “nomizing” act or the realityconstructing act intends a comprehensive order of all items in reality. (Berger, 1967: 19, 20) Geertz and Berger cohere in stating that human actions or cultural acts done from a particular religious orientation, are attempts to “live out” life based upon the authority of a perceived cosmic order. (Geertz, 1968: 4, Berger, 1967: 25) Authority and institutions This general order of existence is inadvertently enforced and perpetuated by institutions, hence part of the world-building activity of religion is the establishment of institutions that generate, manage and control meanings. Institutions are loci of power because they receive their mandate 35 from the sacred cosmos, hence their authority is legitimized, and they hold an “ultimately valid ontological status”. (Berger, 1967: 39) According to Berger and Luckmann, these institutions seek to regulate the conduct of life through a binding value system, or a superordinate configuration of values. Based on these values, religion seeks to objectify subjective meanings, (Berger and Luckmann, 1995: 13) to concretize reality and cast away ambiguities in meanings- to paint the world either black or white for cognition and action, both of which rely on symbols and a symbol system. (Geertz, 1968: 13) Religious institutions are in Berger’s conception the social base of cosmic order. This social base is called a plausibility structure, (Berger, 1967: 45) and so Christianity relies on the ‘church’ as a social institution to maintain its plausibility structure. It is this plausibility structure that taken-for-granted knowledge is based upon, which coheres with Geertz’s explication of powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations. (Geertz, 1968: 11, 12) Challenge to the taken-for-granted However, in modernity, Berger notes a weakening of the overarching system of meaning and value, hence the de-legitimation of a religious plausibility structure. Due to independent thinking, and the awareness of alternative ways to think, “firm interpretations of reality become hypotheses”. (Berger and Luckmann, 1995: 45) Religion becomes de-objectivated and deprived of its taken-for-granted status (Berger, 1967: 151) and loses its “aura of factuality”. (Geertz, 1968: 24) A crisis of credibility faced by traditional religious definitions of reality (Berger, 1976: 127) ensues from a more general crisis of meaning. (Berger and Luckmann, 1995) 36 The crisis of meaning This crisis of meaning presents multiple problems for religion, existing in an environment where it no longer has monopoly over defining the general order of existence. Firstly, religion inadvertently faces the fact of a pluralistic situation, which is above all, also a market situation. (Berger, 1967: 138) Whether they like it or not traditional religious institutions have to recognize themselves as suppliers in a market of religious options. (Berger and Luckmann, 1995: 46) Secondly, they face the challenge of dealing with deviations (Berger and Luckmann, 1995: 45): alternative sources of meaning with alternative sources of legitimation, producing meanings outside the sphere of control of traditional religious authority. Thirdly, religion is forced to deal with the issue of change and changeability, which according to Berger, is intrinsically inimical to religious traditionalism. (Berger, 1967: 145) Fourthly, and most crucially for traditional religion, the pluralistic situation is the point where chaos and the breakdown of interpretability threaten to break in- which is the failure of one’s explanatory apparatus. (Geertz, 1968: 14, 15) Usefulness of the perspective The religion and meaning perspective is highly suited for an analysis of the relationship between religion and popular culture, and the social tension that arises from the perceived collusion of the sacred and profane. As Geertz elucidates, religions are unavoidably systems of meaning, and when religion overlaps with popular culture- another system of meaning, two systems of meaning with very different origins, values and functions, collude and this consequently gives rise to a situation of crisis. 37 Some reject this collusion as “sacrilege” or “heresy”, while some not only applaud it, but propel it- a situation that Berger labels as an intersubjective crisis of meaning. Religion and popular culture in collusion is applicable to all four fronts of the crisis of meaning: pluralism, alternatives, change and the break down of interpretability. This perspective also provides a connection between the macro and micro, structure and agency aspects of the phenomenon in question. The perspective posits the existence of an environment of sacred meaning that is external, over and above social actors, and how religious institutions relate to the structure of meaning to either reinforce it or to challenge it. On the micro level, it provides a heuristic device to analyze how individuals and organizations react to the structure of the religious meaning system in place, when alternative beliefs arise. Its strength also lies in the fact that it takes into consideration the symbolic-cultural element that the RCT perspective tends to neglect in framing everything in economic terms. Religion and meaning seems to be the “umbrella” perspective that operationalizes secularization concepts as well as RCT and religious economy perspectives, as evident in Berger’s reference to secularization and the religious economy in The Sacred Canopy (1967). But most significantly, the meaning perspective conceptualizes two opposing “external forces” enacting upon both institutions and individuals, establishing a pattern of “accommodating and resisting postures”. (Berger, 1976: 153) These postures are in sum moods- a priori dispositions, and motivations- directional casts; that act against each other in the struggle to define the sacred. This thesis deals extensively with these opposing postures, 38 and I explain them as objectivation versus subjectivization: the social reality behind accommodating and resisting postures. These ideas are dealt with in detail, in chapter 5, and will constitute the main body of my theoretical discussion. Summary In this thesis, I depart from conventional ways of examining the confluence of religion and popular culture, bypassing literature on the same topic and perspectives like the culture wars thesis. Instead I have turned to established theoretical perspectives on religion for possible answers. The primary mode of analysis in this thesis is the “religion and meaning” theoretical framework, although unavoidably, rational choice theory and secularization theories and concepts will also come into analytical application. To facilitate the actual analysis, the next section of this chapter will discuss the various configurations of relationships between religion and popular culture, and explain the rationale of the configurations employed to further frame this particular study of religion and popular culture. I will also clarify the rationale of bringing in other conceptual variables. The final section of this chapter will elucidate the research methodology. 39 3. Frame of study Forbes and Mahan (2000) proposed four configurations of relationships between religion and popular culture- religion in popular culture, popular culture in religion, popular culture as religion, and religion and popular culture in dialogue. In C.K. Robertson’s Religion as Entertainment (2002), essays are differentiated by “how religion is used as entertainment” and “how religion is used in entertainment”: the former addresses actual practices of institutional religion, and the latter looks at the thematic pervasiveness of religion and spirituality in entertainment programs. While their categorizations were useful in broadly framing their own discussions, I encountered conceptual difficulties in attempting to fit my discussion into these given frameworks. Hence, my purpose here is to explore again the possible permutations, introducing conceptual variables where necessary and laying out the viability of certain modes of study over a range of possible alternatives. An important conceptual variable that I introduce at this juncture is a core sociological concept ‘agency’. When I speak of agency, I am asserting a source: individuals, organizations or industries that take the initiative to proactively bridge religion and popular culture. Social forces are precisely social forces that have a traceable point of origin, which are not merely impersonal forces “out there” and at work in mysterious ways. 40 a. Religion in popular culture i. Popular culture as agency There are two ways of looking at religion in popular culture. The first involves the way religious symbols, physical structures, holy sites and other religious signifiers are appropriated by popular culture producers. For example, in how religious artifacts and imagery are used in music videos, in spiritual based thriller movies like The Exorcist, and in a whole array of other movies. This type of industry adaptation often elicits condemnatory reaction from offended religions. It is used for a variety of purposes: to make social commentary or to critique organized religion, or as a controversy spinning publicity stunt orchestrated to draw attention to the product. While extensive semiological content analysis can be done on this kind of extraction and appropriation, I am inclined neither toward content analysis, nor the approach which places religion as object rather than subject (Neuman, 1997: 330) in relation to popular culture. Religious symbols and artifacts are treated as passive agents, and their appropriation can be, and is often ignored by religious organizations. Even if the elicited response is condemnation, popular culture producers largely function in an independent realm that is not obliged to answer religious institutional indictments of sacrilege. For example, the Vatican cannot place any legal injunction against Hollywood using crucifixes in movie productions. 41 ii. Religion as agency The second way looks at religion in popular culture with the former as agency. Popular culture products, movies and icons are viewed through a religiously colored looking glass. Setting an early precedent was Robert L. Short’s The Gospel According to Peanuts (1965), which interpreted the foibles of comic strip favorites Charlie Brown and Co. as modern day parables which yielded “eternal truths about the human predicament”.4 In recent times, Christian authors in the United States continue to milk the ‘sacred-potential’ of movies and television series, eking out moral and spiritual truths embedded in characters and storylines. As fast as one could say “box office hit”, came the book Finding God in Lord of the Rings, which interprets J. R. R. Tolkien’s fantasy series as an allegory that reveals truths “from the epic battle between good and evil, to the redemptive power of selfsacrifice”. (Bruner and Ware, 2001) This “gospel-according-to” prefix seems to be the latest Christian literary trend, evident in recent releases like The Gospel According to the Simpsons (Pinsky, 2001), and The Gospel According to Harry Potter (Neal, 2002). The former interprets “America’s most dysfunctional family” as inherently spiritual and real in their faith struggles, and the latter interprets the wizardry world of Harry Potter as having deep allegorical affinity with central tenets of Christianity. On the academic front, Romanowski’s Eyes Wide Open (2001), offers ways for Christians to “find God” through engaging with popular culture. Andrew Greeley makes largely similar assertions in God in Popular Culture 4 Gilbert, 2000, www.rochesterunitarian.org/1999-2000/20000514.html 42 (1988). His primary thesis is that popular culture is a locus theologicus: a place or a locale to experience God. No doubt analyses of how theology intervenes in the psychological process of entertainment consumption can be done with this type of phenomenon. But this query would face the problem of identifying working conceptual boundaries, since in the spirit of this logic social actors could potentially find God anywhere- even in pornography since it can be argued that there is a strong spiritual dimension in illicit sex, because “God created sex”. Although my research intention is directed toward religion as agency, this mode of study would deal exclusively with the consumption process. My research intentions are however, directed toward both the consumption and particularly the production rationale that accounts for the collusion of religion and popular culture. b. Popular culture as religion (popular culture as agency) The clearest demonstration of this configuration is typified in the phenomenon of fandom. A pertinent example would be Michael Jindra’s Star Trek Fandom as a Religious Phenomenon- which demonstrates that Star Trek fandom has strong affinities with a religious-type movement, with “an origin myth, a set of beliefs, an organization and some of the most active and creative members to be found anywhere”. (Jindra, 1994: 29, 30) A common interpretive perspective theorizes fandom as a collective “psychological symptom of a presumed social dysfunction”. (Jenson, 1992: 9) This crutch thesis, interprets fans’ deification of celebrities and engaging passionately in different forms of extra-textual consumption, as psychological compensation to 43 fulfill inadequacy in the same way as some would argue that religion does. Extending the argument, the declension of religion’s social function is a consequence of the popular culture machinery progressing to overhaul religion in meeting society’s need for myth and enchantment, hence elevating itself to be the primary opiate of the masses. This perspective positions popular culture as agency, moving to fulfill religion’s function in society. This theorizing would strengthen the case that argues for the all-pervasiveness of popular culture in social life. However, my particular research focus is not on popular culture. Rather, I seek to explore how religion, as agency, seeks to engage meaningfully with popular culture rather than being overtaken by it. Yet the issue of religion being overtaken by popular culture has overtones with a third approach which is crucial to my discussion. c. Religion against popular culture (religion as agency) The underlying assumption of this approach is that religion will always stand in bi-polar opposition to anything fun, pleasurable or to do with entertainment and leisure. Religion against popular culture is manifest in two dimensions. The first dimension is embedded in the popular perception that religion is “party-pooping”, that God is a cosmic killjoy, and being religious requires self-denial and abiding by a strict set of dos and don’ts. This presupposes antagonism and irreconcilability between religion and entertainment. From a researcher’s viewpoint I find this position untenable, because it is a perspective that is uninformed and steeped in a stereotype of 44 religion as being unchanging and statically holy. Therefore I do not seek to challenge or query this ignorance. The second dimension of the against approach is the deliberate positioning of religions, religious institutions and individuals against popular culture and entertainment. Broadly classified by Roy Wallis as “worldrejecting” (Wallis, 1984) or ‘conservative’ and ‘fundamental’ in lay terms, these religious factions oppose and shield themselves against the onslaught of popular culture and see the media as a carrier of immorality and subversive values. This is best exemplified in religious institutions which forbid their members to watch television and movies, or to listen to non-religious music. Furthermore, they stand critical of other religious groups, who take to entertainment and popular culture, and who have openly adopted “worldly” forms of music and instruments into institutional practice. So the opposition is formed on two fronts: against popular culture and entertainment per se, but also against what it perceives as other religious institutions taking the popular culture turn. A good example of this duallayered against approach is typified in two books that were given to me by a respondent from a conservative Christian denomination. The first book Rock Music vs. the God of the Bible (Cloud, 2000) sees rock music as being evil in its very essence, and thus antagonistic to the Christian faith. The second book Contemporary Christian Music Under the Spotlight (Cloud, 1998) elucidates how all popular genres of “Christianized” music are “the most dangerous things facing bible believing churches”. (Cloud, 1998: 3) The same author heads up an organization that runs a website which carries hundreds of 45 articles on its “apostasy database”, speaking against the dangers of professional sports, television viewing, and even cartoons.5 d. Religion as popular culture (religion as agency) I have subdivided religion as popular culture into two discrete categories, differentiated by whether religious contents are explicitly or implicitly manifested. In both explicit and implicit religiosity, religion is the source of agency; from where institutions and individuals initiate the collusion with popular culture. i. Explicit religiosity According to Laurence Moore, Christians in America are riding on the consumerist ethos and “Selling God” in the “marketplace of culture”. (Moore, 1994) Christian retailing is a 4 billion-dollar-a-year industry, (Weekly Standard, December 16, 2002) which includes everything from bibles, fiction books, religiously sloganed street fashion and accessories, to music, movies and cartoons. The Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) scene has several artistes who have done “crossovers” from Christian record labels to mainstream or secular labels, hence bringing the distribution of Christian artistes into the mainstream market. Even Rolling Stones Magazine described the world of CCM as a “Parallel Universe”, (The Wilson Quarterly, January 1, 2003) implying that it has similar pop-signifiers, with its own set of celebrities, popular music, movies and magazines. Similar movements are evident in Islam, though seemingly on a much smaller scale. The proliferation of Nasyid music, hinted at in the previous 5 Way of Life Literature, Apostasy database: www.wayoflife.org/fbns/fbns-index/indexfbns.htm 46 chapter, is the clearest manifestation of this movement. As I will demonstrate later, Nasyid has become very much a part of the commercial machinery, riding on its established means of distribution and marketing. Nasyid albums from Malaysia are overtly marketed by International entertainment conglomerates like EMI and Warner Music. In fact, Warner Music Malaysia, plainly advertises top Nasyid group Raihan alongside popular singers like Sheila Majid, Ramli Sarip and M. Nasir.6 An absolute criterion for explicit religiosity is that both the producer and their product are categorically and unambiguously religious: artistes overtly identify themselves as Christian or Islamic musicians/ singers and furthermore, the product and the inferred intent of the product are unmistakably religious. The importance of distinguishing the explicit from the implicit is crucial because often, the two are not discerned as distinct phenomena. Explicit religiosity is also expressed when institutions and individuals adopt forms of music in practice that are not from religious roots, but are adopted for religious purposes. On the institutional level, Chan (2002) notes that in Charismatic churches, genres of music, worship styles and even the mise en scène of worship are “identified with performances rather than religious rituals”. (Chan, 2002: 29) This is compounded by congregation behavior that is more identifiable with behavior observed at pop concertsecstatic and emotionally high charged rather than possessing the solemnity or contemplativeness expected in traditional worship. 6 Warner Music Malaysia, www.xsmusic.com/warner/malay.html 47 On the individual level, social actors express their faith through genres of music that are not rooted in religious origins. For example, in America, every genre of popular music possesses a Christianized equivalent, from adult contemporary to heavier genres like rock and even subcultural genres like punk and heavy metal. Similarly, American Muslim groups perform using “gangsta” rap music to express their faith and beliefs. (St. Petersburg Times, March 1, 2002) In all these examples, stylistic forms and means of expression from popular culture have found in-roads into religious institutional practices and personal expressions of faith by way of conscious appropriation and adaptation by social agents. ii. Implicit religiosity Another separate but distinct manifestation of religion as popular culture is defined by the term implicit. In explicit religiosity, the religious nature of production intentions, methods and product content are overtly manifested. For implicit religiosity, the opposite is true: the religious origins and intentions are often not immediately apprehensible. Implicit religiosity is ascertained by identifying its source, or the religious identity of the social actor, and not necessarily the product that the social actor produces. This is important to highlight because in understanding paradigms in conflict, implicit religiosity agents face intra-religious objection due to the ambiguous nature of their presence in popular culture. Outside the realm of popular culture, implicit religiosity is not newChristian organizations engage in various forms of social service, in conducting charity work and providing counseling services. Churches in 48 Singapore have opened kidney dialysis centres, and child-care centres. Both Christian and Islamic organizations run drug rehabilitation centres and family service centres. These social service or welfare organizations are birthed from religious institutions, but the activities of these organizations are not exclusively religious by way of religious rituals, nor are the services extended only to religious adherents. There is no direct attempt to indoctrinate, nor is there any compulsion for the people they serve to become adherents. Extend this to religion in entertainment and you find Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC) in Singapore having established a commercial company called Gateway Entertainment in 2000, which to date has produced 10 movie productions that are not overtly “Christian” in content,7 but rather, deal generally with social issues and attempt to promote “positive” values. Gateway Entertainment is also the commercial platform which advertises the magic-cum-musical production Magic of Love, of which FCBC Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong is both magician and lead actor. In the same way Pastor Ho Yeow Sun from City Harvest Church has produced albums that have no explicit religious references. A recent thesis Entertainment Evangelism by Wong (2003) focused on these two pastors, and analyzed the identity aspects of their dual-roles as entertainers cum religious leaders and the resulting social responses. Her thesis however, did not make the point that there is in fact very little in the content of their entertainment products and performances that is explicitly religious. The separation of explicit religiosity from implicit religiosity is a crucial clarification that needs to be made because they are distinct phenomena and should not be confused. 7 These movies do not make religious references like “God” or “Jesus”. 49 Explicit and implicit religion as popular culture, are the conceptual realms of collusion that I have elected to analyze in the next two chapters of this thesis. e. Elucidating paradigms and explaining paradigms in conflict Chapters 3 and 4 explore the rationale and workings of both explicit and implicit dimensions of religion as popular culture respectively. Since the object of my study is religion, it follows logically that I focus on religious agency. The case studies on explicit religiosity presented in chapter 3 centre on music, and how some religious agents employ genres of music from popular culture, and how others assimilate themselves into the popular music industry. In chapter 4, the case studies on implicit religiosity center on the workings of two organizations whose overt activities are categorically “nonreligious” by their own definition, but upon closer scrutiny, do have religious rationales that underlie these “non-religious” activities. In chapter 5, I take up two particular configurations of the relationship between religion and popular culture, and analyze them in juxtaposition to each other: religion against popular culture versus religion as popular culture (explicit and implicit). As my thesis title suggests, my research intention is to explore the “sacrilege” from within, where religious institutions or individuals, act volitionally to engage with popular culture- through appropriation and adaptation of products of popular culture, or themselves becoming part of the popular culture machinery. This engagement arouses indictments of sacrilege from factions of the religion against popular culture orientation, in critical 50 reaction to those who not only proximate themselves to the popular culture realm, but effectively become it. But before I plunge into my empirical chapters, in the final part of this chapter, I will elucidate the rationale of my research methods. 51 4. Methodology a. Justifications for chosen research methods If two “worldviews” are perceived to be coming together, a sociological perspective would attribute movements to social actors and institutions, rather than impersonal forces. It would thus be vital to understand who is doing the bridging, and what motivates them to do so. I have not come across any research that delves deeper into the production rationale of religious popular culture, from the perspective of social agents. In my approach, I consider the insider perspective to be important and individual experiences of both producers and consumers to be meaningful and therefore worthy of query. Locating the tension- those for and against the popular culturization of religion would afford me different perspectives and relevant data in trying to make sense of the phenomenon. I found it a pertinent challenge to address the questions of “how did we get here and why?” rather than bypass the social process and critique the immediacy level of the phenomenon. Eileen Barker’s seminal research on the Moonies (1984) proved influential in informing my methods considerations. In debunking the myth of the “brainwashing thesis” with regard to cult movements, Barker relied heavily on qualitative methods. She acquired a “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) of what was happening on the scene, gaining access to places and events, and making observations in the first person. This enabled her to gain the confidence of some Moonies and to subsequently interview them. Reading 52 Barker’s work, one feels a real sense of depth and completeness in understanding the workings of the Moonies. Although I did not have the luxury of a pre-defined field of research like Eileen Barker, I did however find religious and popular culture in organized religions and their institutional practice. Being a Protestant and like Howard Becker, a musician, I had the advantage of prior knowledge of organizations and places, and access to a pool of producers of religious popular culture. My theoretical approach is interpretive rather than positivist; hence my methodology is decidedly qualitative. Rather than start from presuppositions of how the relationship between religion and popular culture should be defined, my approach to the research was inductive rather than deductive. (Neuman, 1997) Therefore, I relied heavily on observations and interviews, and a close qualitative analysis of events, collecting a large amount of data and attempting to theorize from there. b. Christianity and Islam As I have explained in the conceptualization section, the study of the sacred can be operationalized to organized religions. I looked at Singapore’s four major religions (Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism) for popular culture manifestations. Christianity and Islam were the two organized religions that had explicit popular culture components. As compared to Buddhism which is both theistic and non-theistic, (Wee, 1977) and Hinduism polytheistic, (Sinha, 1987) Christianity and Islam are monotheistic religions that have similar assumptions about ultimate reality and the reality of everyday life, and how these two realities relate to each other, i.e., how the social system relates 53 to the Ultimate Being’s (which both religions assume) agenda. This agenda is manifest in authoritative religious text (the bible, the quran) from which notions of the sacred and profane find their bearing. c. Fieldwork strategy I identified three possible data sources: “persons, places, and happenings”. (Fishwick, 1995: 6) Over a fieldwork period of about one year, I applied the relevant methods to extract potential data from these sources. My priority was interviews, as I considered this the source that would provide me with useful data because I would be dealing directly with social actors’ consciousness, enabling me to locate the tension, or their motivating rationales of either for or against popular culture integration. 1. Source: individuals/ groups (social actors) Method: in-depth interviews 3-tier plan for acquiring data through in-depth interviews: To get a holistic picture, my sampling plan for interviews included religious leaders (tier 1), producers (tier 2), and lay people (tier 3) for each religion. Although there was no standard questionnaire, there were overlapping questions for different respondents. As my research intention is to theorize popular culture adaptation (the how), and not to generalize to all religions, I used non-probability purposive sampling. (Neuman, 1997) Tier 1: religious leaders Religious leaders are important because they provide an authoritativeinstitutional perspective. Interviewing religious leaders will reveal the theological orientations these institutions have toward entertainment, music 54 and popular culture in general. Being in positions of authority, religious leaders are the prime-movers and opinion shapers of religious collectives. They represent the official stance, and decide what direction their institutions should take in response to popular culture; therefore their perspective would be adequately representative of broader institutional stances. For Christianity, I interviewed religious leaders- specifically pastors, some fulltime Christian workers and theology professors from a range of Protestant denominations- specifically Charismatic, Independent, Assemblies of God, Baptist, Methodist, Bible-Presbyterian and Seventh Day Adventist. It was more difficult to contact English speaking Islamic religious leaders, but I managed to interview two Islamic teachers (or Ustaz) from PERGAS- the Singapore Islamic Scholars and Religious Teacher’s Association, and also an Ustaza (female Ustaz) from a Madrasah (Islamic school) here in Singapore. Tier 2: producers This includes people who are involved with the production of religious popular culture, including performers, entertainers, musicians, singers and those involved in the production process- songwriters, managers, those in audio-visual production, and people in marketing and sales. My criteria for selection were based on individuals or groups who are self-professed adherents of Islam and Christianity, and who acknowledge that they use or provide ‘entertainment’. I was able to interview Christian musicians playing a variety of music genres, from contemporary to heavier genres like rock and heavy metal. Producers also included disc jockeys (DJs) or turntablists, and those involved in media productions and content editing. For Islam, I was able 55 to interview seven individuals who perform in Nasyid groups, as well as one so called “manager” of a Nasyid group. Tier 3: consumers I classify lay people and consumers under the same category. Consumers are people who invest resources of time and money to cognitively and emotionally engage in the consumption of religious popular culture. From this tier the data will speak of why on the ground/ receiving level, people choose/ want/ desire to consume, and what meanings they attach to these products. For Islam, I identified people who acknowledged themselves as listeners of Nasyid music. Similarly for Christianity, I interviewed people who acknowledged themselves as consumers of Christian music and other forms of Christian popular culture. 2. Source: sites (social spaces) Method: observation and analysis What kind of places are used for entertainment events and why? Although I was looking for religious phenomena, I did not assume that they could be found at traditionally sacred places. Therefore, I searched for sites where religious entertainment would take place. Through my fieldwork, I came across sites that were used for religious purposes other than conventional sacred spaces like churches and mosques. Where do religious entertainment events take place, and how are these spaces used in terms of activities? What can be interpreted from the use of these social spaces? Thus closely tied to the sites, would be the use of the sites, for events that occur there. 56 3. Source: occasions/ performances (social events) Method: observation and analysis This included attending performances, events, religious gatherings, and other types of entertainment events. I wanted to observe if and how religious content was manifested. This was done with the intention to observe how music is used, and what form it takes, to observe the content of what is produced and performed, and how the people in attendance act, react and respond to what is being presented. I was seeking to find religious equivalents to pop concerts- events that are structured similarly in production and consumption. For Christianity, I found a field that gave me a comprehensive amount of data. I identified an organization called Sonic Edge that holds monthly sessions of “alternative worship”, which I attended regularly over a one year period. They also hold weekly cell groups that I attended occasionally to gather data and make contact with potential interviewees. At the time of my fieldwork, they were also gearing up for a major event called “Sonic Festival”, which was a one day festival that included many genres of music performances, dances, poetry recitals, monologues, skits and static art displays. Observing Sonic Festival provided a rich source of data. For Islam, my task proved more challenging, because I was only able to locate a few Islamic entertainment performances, and they were all Nasyid performances of both Singaporean and Malaysian Nasyid groups. Due to the problem of language, I recorded all Islamic performances, and later sought help to translate songs and spoken words into English, to use for data 57 analysis. It was from attending these events that I was able to interview Nasyid performers. d. Access and information gathering My research topic was made explicit to all of the people I sought interviews with. This was not problematic, and it did not hinder the openness of my respondents in anyway, since all my respondents were willing to be voice recorded. I regarded my topic as being less sensitive than some researches, where voice recording would hinder respondent openness. (Matthews, 2001) Interviews typically ranged from half-an-hour to a full hour, some stretching to two hours. All interviews were voice recorded with permission and transcriptions were done. My questions were generally open ended and queried rationale rather than probing description. Most of the sites and events that I observed were open to the public. At certain events, my research intentions were already disclosed, and often informants kept me in the know about future events. In entering sites on my own, I would reveal my research intentions but only subsequently. I did not see this as being unethical because there was no gatekeeping mechanism for all the events that I accessed, except for entrance fees. For instance, I attended the monthly Sonic Edge sessions a few times before I talked to the organizers about my research, and from there I gained interviews with them. I made every effort to take field notes at events, although it was often not convenient for me to take field notes, largely due to unsuitable lighting conditions. Thus I committed relevant data to memory, and wrote post-event field notes. I sound recorded many events to capture narratives that might be 58 useful. I also took photographs where and when it was appropriate to do so. I did this with the intention of allowing the reader to visually access what I the researcher observed. The following two chapters are largely empirical rather than theoretical, and they will bear out the fruits of my fieldwork. In these two chapters, I will give the reader a view into the practical workings of religion and popular culture in collusion. More importantly, going beyond the practical workings, I will explore the rationale that explains what drives the social actors involved in engendering this collusion. In accordance with the conceptual groundwork that I have laid in the previous part of this chapter, I will first explore explicit religion as popular culture in chapter 3, and subsequently explore implicit religion as popular culture in chapter 4. 59 THREE Case studies on explicit religion as popular culture Clarifying explicit religiosity The following case studies explore explicit religion as popular culture. While both case studies similarly focus on popular music, their respective emphases differ. The first looks at religion in relation to genres and styles of music from popular culture, while the second explores music with a focus on industry and commodity. Of course, it would be ideal to compare similar empirical phenomena across religions. However, comparing religions is not my theoretical intention. Furthermore, in analyzing my data, I realized that although the respective empirical phenomena were qualitatively different, the underlying rationales were largely the same. I will demonstrate this in part 3 of this chapter. For my first case study- Alternative Worship, I look at a Christian organization called Sonic Edge, and explore how genres or styles of music not commonly considered religious are being employed in Christian ritual worship, which is overt religious expression, and hence classifiable as explicit religiosity. My second case study- Nasyid Music, centres on how Islamic music or Nasyid music in Malaysia and Singapore, is both subsuming itself under the workings of the entertainment and popular music industry, and simultaneously impacting it. Nasyid music falls into the category of explicit religiosity because both producer and product content are overtly and declaratively Islamic. Notions of ‘rock music worship’ or ‘Islamic entertainment’ may appear to defy commonsense understanding. This chapter will show how such things 60 are possible and are being made possible, thereby elucidating the rationale and workings of explicit religion as popular culture. 1. Alternative Worship- stylistic adaptation in Christian ritual worship Ritual worship Worship is a core ritual activity of religions in general, not exclusive to Christianity. Durkheim set the precedent for the sociology of religion in studying the social meanings of the practice of ritual worship in Australian totemism, leading him to conclude that clan worship of the totemic emblem was actually self-worship. (Pickering, 1984) Ritual worship is a valid indicator of the social meanings of religion, and I have followed Durkheim’s precedent in looking at the practice of ritual worship that incorporates popular culture genres of music for its own purposes. Sonic Edge My field research site centred on a Christian organization called Sonic Edge (SE), which also calls a monthly event it holds by that same name. In simple terms, the monthly SE event is very much like a typical church service, except that it is specifically youth centred. SE is headed by a pastor who turned out to be a crucial interview respondent. I spent a substantial amount of time with SE, attending their events over a period of a year and a half. SE is an offshoot of an Anglican church in Singapore- Church of our Saviour (COOS). It is an official ministry that has been functioning since 2001. SE sessions are held monthly, usually on the last Saturday night of the month. 61 At the time of my fieldwork, their events were held in a regularized place on the church compound. Due to the relatively small size of the group, SE sessions were usually held in a smaller room of the church, and not in the main sanctuary. However, SE has moved on to other locations like hotel function rooms and theatre venues. SE is non-denominational, so even though it is a ministry of an Anglican church, SE goers are typically from various Christian denominations, there are even Catholics who attend and participate in SE events. SE attendances can range from 50 to about 200 predominantly youth and younger adults. The program format of SE is not unlike that of a typical church service, barring the performance element that is a major part of SE. Typically, the order of events proceeds accordingly: 1. Welcome and announcements 2. Performance band 1 3. Performance band 2 4. Worship session 5. Sermon 6. Closing worship song/s 7. Dismissal/ closing announcements The program usually starts in the early evening and takes no longer than two hours from start to finish. It is important to note that SE sessions do not replace weekly conventional church services. Most SE goers are Christians who are by no means churchless. Even the people who run SE attend their respective churches on a weekly basis. 62 Worship with rock music SE worship is best described as ritual worship mediated through rock music or as they describe it- “Original Xtreme PnW [extreme praise and worship] laced with potent rock riffs!”, worship that is accompanied by booming drums and electric guitars with distortion. All worship sessions are led by SE’s very own Sonic Edge Band, which is a configuration of different musicians and singers (both male and female) who take turns to play for each SE session. The Sonic Edge Band plays a mixture of its own originally written worship songs, but it also improvises contemporary worship songs and traditional hymns by reinventing them with the injection of rock music and alternative rhythms. The Sonic Edge Band 63 For all the SE events I observed, there was a patterning in the overlap of the two elements of performance and worship, with the former being a prelude to the latter. The first part is characterized as a typical ‘gig’ with either acoustic acts or bands that play heavy music. These performances are watched by the people present who consume the music as per attending a gig or rock concert. There is a clear transition to a second part, usually marked by an emcee issuing a verbal cue to the crowd like, “are you ready for worship?” Passive audiences convert into active participants in collective worship, singing along to lyrics projected on screen. My estimates are that probably 99% of people who come for SE are already Christians. SE is not a proselytizing platform; rather it assumes that those attending are already Christians. Worship sessions were invariably energetic and dynamic with the atmosphere typically highly charged with emotions. I observed worshipers weeping, singing with closed eyes and heads bowed and even shouting at the top of their voices. There is no prescribed method of worship with participants being free to sit or stand, to jump around or even kneel down. I even observed couples in arms while worshiping. From audience… 64 …to worshipers When SE first started out, attendances were estimated at around 50 or less, but at its peak, there are as many as 150-200 people in attendance. The demographic make up is usually youth and young adults ranging between the ages of 15-27, and the gender division is typically more male than female. In terms of ethnic make up, there is a surprising variety considering the small numbers. Although there is a slight majority of Chinese, all racial groups are usually present in number with the exception of Malays. SE sessions typically are held in a small room in COOS, but SE has been held in other venues like YMCA Orchard Road, and has been hosted by churches inside and outside Singapore. 65 Worship with dance and electronic music Just about the time that I started my research with SE, the organization had just kicked off a new addition to their monthly sessions. It was so new that there was not yet a fixed term for it, although it did eventually acquire a name ‘Electro Metro’. It is simply worship mediated through dance or techno music. Dance music or techno music are catchall terms that cover a host of sub-genres like- house, trance, progressive, drum and bass, etc. While it is not necessary to know the specifics of the range of sub-genres, I found out that all styles were used for worship. Most if not all of the records played for worship are not produced by Christian artistes, but DJs I interviewed expressed that they strictly do not play music that contains vulgarities or sounds that can be inferred as obscene or sexual. The central element of these worship sessions is the DJ consoleinvariably consisting of two or more turntables, and a mixer that enables the DJ to coordinate and blend the music playing from different turntables. Turntables are the same devices used in clubs and discos to play or “spin” dance music. DJ with turntables 66 In typical Christian worship, a specific individual known as the ‘worship leader’ organizes the worship session, including the order of songs, the music, the transition between songs, and the terms by which the congregation engages with the worship beyond verbal expression- standing, sitting, clapping hands, etc. In worship with techno or trance music, the DJ’s role is similar to that of the worship leader, explaining why some people from SE labeled this “DJ-led worship”. DJ Chris explained to me how leading technoworship is not just a matter of playing music according to aesthetic preference. In his experience, it is a spiritually inspired process: We work out what we feel the spirit is telling us to work out, on what kind of sound to work out. It’s very spirit inspired. But over a certain time you get used to the spirit… That’s how it’s done, it all figures out slowly… There’s always the element of improvisation, the Holy Spirit moves the crowd, not the DJ. [DJ Chris] The practical hows of techno worship How is worship with dance music possible? Even SE’s worship with rock music remains true to structural elements of conventional Christian worship- like having a repertoire of songs that is sung corporately, led by a worship leader. Techno-worship does not fit into this mold because DJs play pre-recorded songs instead of live music, and there is no corporate singing. In DJ-led worship, the dance floor is the designated worship space. Worship was expressed through dance- bodily movements, and it was described to me in terms of a psychological engagement with God, not just physical expression. Christian DJs explained to me their role as worship leaders was to guide worshipers in the “inner” or the “personal” worship of God. I witnessed and recorded demonstrations of this in several sessions. One DJ explained 67 that the methodology in worship leading varies- from reading bible verses to “just calling out the names of God”. The DJs speak through a microphone which sometimes passes through various sound effects. Over the continuously playing music, the DJ verbalizes what he senses God leading him to communicate to the worshipers. The following are examples of data I observed, recorded and transcribed, demonstrating various ways DJs lead worship. 1) Quoting passages or verses verbatim from the bible“[Speaking with a robotic tone] He that liveth in me and I in Him will bear much fruit… He that liveth in me and I in Him will bear much frruuuuiit. [Changes to melodic singing] bear much fruit, bear much fruit.” 2) Speaking directly to worshipers“[In a soothing tone] It’s alright …right …right [echo effect], take your time …time …time [echo effect]. Come worship Him …Him …Him [echo effect], the conquering lion …lion …lion [echo effect], come worship Him …Him …Him [echo effect].” 3) Calling out singular words“Jesus… [Low tone, low pitch, minimal echo effect] Jesus… [Louder, higher tone, higher pitch, more echo effect], JEEESUS! [Loud, ascending tone and pitch till inaudible, echo effect at frantic speed].” DJs leading and worshiping 68 The mise en scène of techno worship I observed somewhere between 5-7 DJ-led worship sessions. Apart from the musical dimension, organizers made consistent efforts to manipulate the physical environment by re-creating a similar atmosphere in dance clubs. Every DJ-led worship session was conceptualized differently, although a common strategy was to manipulate lighting. As with dance clubs, the overall lighting is usually dim, ultraviolet lights are also commonly used along with assorted colored lighting. Different kinds of flashing lights like strobe lights, crystal balls, laser lights and even the types of flashing revolving ambulance lights are also used. Ultraviolet lighting, DJ console spotted with multi-colored light bulbs A siren light next to the DJ console 69 Other creative props included candles laid on the floor, and semi-translucent acrylic sheets with holes hung from the ceiling. These acrylic sheets created a partitioning effect in the worship room- forming semi-private zones for individuals to “personalize” spaces for worship, yet allowing worshipers to conveniently slip back into the main worship/ dance area. Smoke machines were also regularly employed. Candles on the floor The commercial enterprise There is also a commercial enterprise aspect of SE that warrants mentioning. SE also actively engages in producing and selling merchandise at SE events. Merchandise includes T-shirts, caps, pins, bags and various kinds of stickers. The SE logo is typically emblazoned on all these different types of merchandise. It is quite common to see people wearing SE merchandise during the monthly events. New T-shirt designs are seen quite regularly off the counter. These types of merchandise can be interpreted as signifiers that serve a corporate identity-building function among SE goers. Typically, all SE events have a merchandise table. 70 SE merchandise and memorabilia More significant than these types of memorabilia and fashion embellishments is the fact that SE is also active in recording and producing music. In 2002, the Sonic Edge Band release a CD single entitled ‘Full Volume’ and in 2003, they released a full length worship album by the name ‘Grateful’, consisting of originally written worship songs arranged in their typical rock style. SE’s first full length worship album 71 This case study Alternative Worship shows the adaptive reflex of an organization like SE that pro-actively adopts genres of music from popular culture, and integrates them into ritual worship. It is evident that a principle tenet of SE worship is innovation and in being innovative, we see an expanding horizon of possibilities in terms of religious expression. I will discuss this point in depth later. While SE does show signs of commercial activity through its sale of merchandise and production of worship albums, it is not empirically substantial in demonstrating a relationship with the wider popular music industry. Although SE has produced music CDs, these small scale commodities cannot be categorically described as ‘’mainstream” or “popular” in terms of volume sold and of people knowing about their activities and music products. Hence, SE does not yet cover the industry aspect of explicit religion as popular culture. And it is here that I turn to Nasyid Music to explicate on the commercial industry aspect. 72 2. Nasyid Music- Islamic pop? When I was looking for Islamic equivalents of popular cultural engagement, I realized that empirically there was very little available. Even Yahoo! Singapore returned with no results when I entered “Islamic entertainment” as a search. There was however, one clear manifestation of Islamic popular culture that was very prominent both in Singapore and Malaysia, and it is in the phenomenon of Nasyid music. In an earlier chapter, I went into some details about Nasyid music and the popularity of Nasyid group Raihan, which has spawned a whole host of Nasyid groups. Many of these groups are either managed or distributed by major industry music labels such as EMI and Warner Music. This fulfils the necessary criterion that allows Nasyid to be categorized as ‘popular culture’since Nasyid music is now very much a part of the wider entertainment and music industry. Hence it is the operationalized ‘field’ of the conceptual overlapping of religion and popular culture, and as I will show, Nasyid is without doubt explicit religiosity. Furthermore, in contrast to SE’s albums, Nasyid music is a much more substantive part of the pop music industry make up, accounting for album sales that amount to millions worldwide. On a certain level, Nasyid music is quite comparable to Christian worship music, especially in terms of what Nasyid lyrics express. The lyrics explicitly mention ‘Allah’, and the lyrical themes are always religious in naturethis is what defines Nasyid music. In fact overt religiosity cannot be separated from what is known as Nasyid music. The underlying Islamic worldview is consistently transparent in all lyrics, as it is demonstrated here: 73 A happy heart that enlightens the soul Is a sign of a great bestowal from Allah Remember Allah, and be grateful to him And say 'Alhamdulillah' [praise be to Allah] Look at the expanse of the universe The bright sky that shelters the earth The heart will feel His greatness And say 'Allahuakbar' [Allah is great] - Raihan, Puji Pujian The musical content of Nasyid is by and large melodic, and relies very much on the use of harmony. Nasyid groups vary in size, ranging anywhere between three to as many as eight or nine members, from vocalists to instrumentalists. A majority of Nasyid artistes are groups as opposed to individual artistes. Nasyid music is widely consumed on a variety of media platforms, and there are a whole host of Nasyid albums on the market. Quite significantly, Nasyid music is not sold exclusively in religious establishments, but also in mainstream music stores. Nasyid is also consumed in actual physical performances or concerts. As it was with my observation of album covers, it was similarly evident in my fieldwork observations, that there is a definite homology in the style of dressing of Nasyid performers: traditional Malay dress consisting of long sleeve shirt and pants, with the traditional skullcap or Songkok. The traditional Malay dress signifies piety. In all my observations of Nasyid performances, this homology in dressing was kept to strictly. Various Nasyid albums: notice the consistent pattern of dressing 74 Although Nasyid music’s massive popularity only took off in the last decade, Nasyid music originated from Maulut, which is a corpus of songs that celebrate the birthday of the prophet. In that sense, according to one respondent, Nasyid music has existed for hundreds of years ever since Muslims began celebrating the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday. One respondent described Nasyid as “a sacred thing not commercialized until recent times”, occurring well within the last decade. This commercialization is a direct result of the popular rise of top Nasyid group Raihan and their successful first album Puji Pujian (1996) is the best selling Nasyid album at 700,000 copies sold. Winning the award for best vocal group in the 1999 Malaysia Music Industry Awards, Raihan cemented Nasyid music’s place in the Malaysian music industry, with a special award category for Islamic music being made in recognition of the mass popularity of Nasyid among Muslims. A whole host of different Nasyid groups- Rabbani, Brothers, Hijjaz, U.N.I.C., In-Team, and Nowseeheart, to name but a few, have followed in Raihan’s trail. Through the course of my fieldwork, I came to know that many Islamic schools or Madrasahs in Singapore have their very own young Nasyid groups, and it was with one of these Nasyid groups that I did observations and interviews. It appears convenient to presume that Nasyid music is an equivalent phenomenon to the previously discussed Christians worship through pop music. However, although there may be apparent similarities between Nasyid music and Christian alternative worship, it must be clearly understood that the purpose of Nasyid music is very different- Nasyid is performative in function 75 rather than for corporate ritual worship. Hence it is engaged with and consumed quite differently from worship music, which is participative rather than performative. In terms of institutional practice, in Islam there is no equivalent to how Christians worship through corporate singing in church. Muslims do not go to the mosque to sing. Muslim respondents explained that besides the recitation of the Quran which is done melodically, there is no notion of “worship through singing” in the Christian sense. “Worship” for Muslims is salat. Salat which is translated as both “worship” and “prayer” is one of the ‘Five Pillars of Islam’ (basic religious duties) which Muslims are expected to perform daily. However, it is worship through ritual prayer rather than corporate singing. (Ruthven, 2000:139) Fieldwork observations I did observations at various Nasyid performances. In December 2002, an informant told me that top groups Raihan and Hijjaz were scheduled to perform at the Esplanade for an event called Pestaraya- Malay Festival of Arts. I also attended two performances by Singapore group Nur Irsyad. Hijjaz and Raihan in concert 76 Audiences consuming Nasyid As it has been with Nasyid, I observed consistent patterns of performance, dress, conduct, and performer-audience interaction. Both Hijjaz and Raihan are four-piece groups. Through their respective performances they sang almost static on stage with minimal body movements. They were also similarly dressed in Malay traditional garb with skullcaps. Instead of live music, both groups sang to pre-recorded music, with only their voices being projected live. They would interact with the audience between songs, often expounding on the religious meanings of their songs. My audience observations also proved interesting- there were approximately 400 people in attendance at the Esplanade, and I noticed that most were in family-groups, usually consisting of parents and their young children. One very notable observation was that the least represented demographic was the age range 15 to 25. Older people and children were 77 very well represented. I figured that this audience would probably represent the actual demographic make up of Nasyid’s appeal. Most of the women in attendance were also wearing tudong, which is a recognized symbol of piety amongst Muslim women in Singapore. One significant observation was that there was no separation of the audience according to gender. This was contrary to what several respondents expressed to me as “the impermissible mixing of genders” during entertainment events. I was surprised when Raihan introduced and then sang a song in Chinese. I interpreted this as attempt by Raihan to expand their influence to non-Malay and non-Malay speaking potential audiences. Also, this Chinese song did in fact have instruments other than percussions and drums. I found this rather surprising because many Muslim respondents praised Raihan for keeping Nasyid “pure” by not using instruments other than drums and percussions. And yet here they were singing a song karaoke style with more than just drums and percussions. At the end of their performance, I noticed some fandom-type activity when Raihan was approached by several people for photographs and autographs. So we can see that Nasyid music is categorically ‘Islamic entertainment’ in every sense that the term implies. Its live music is consumed as entertainment. Songs are followed by audience applause, and Nasyid singers are esteemed as pop-stars because fans apply the same rituals of seeking photographs and autographs, to them. Nasyid music very much functions as part of the wider music industry machinery. 78 3. The rationale of explicit religion as popular culture So far in this chapter, I have merely been discussing the empirical phenomena of explicit religion as popular culture. I have elucidated how religion overlaps with popular culture in its various facets of commodity, industry and stylistic genres. So the question still remains: Why are these social agents conflating seemingly ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ realms? For the rest of this chapter, I will look at how actors conceptualize their agency role in conflating religion and popular culture, and thus demonstrate the rationale of explicit religion as popular culture. As I did qualify early in this chapter, although Christian alternative worship and Islamic Nasyid music are qualitatively different, I will show that the roots of rationale-affinity run deep and this belies the differences in manifest forms. a. The conception: the gap between religion and culture In my field research on SE and Nasyid music, I conducted comprehensive interviews with many ‘insiders’ of explicit religiosity: Christian and Muslim artistes. In asking them why they do what they do, many of these respondents spoke of a “gap” or a “need” that they felt needed to be filled. Whether it was through Christian rock worship or Nasyid pop music, these social actors through their respective agencies were working precisely to fill the “gap” or to meet the “need”. As I pondered over my data, I concluded that this gap or need can be typified as an identified disjuncture between religion and popular culture. 79 The “gap” was voiced in many ways: as the inability of youths to relate to religion, religious tradition’s inability to be relevant to modern times, or as religions’ tendency to exclude those who looked differently or listened to different music. To Ustaza Faridah, a music teacher who manages and trains a Singapore Nasyid group, the unmet need was expressed as the lack of good “alternatives” to mainstream pop music. The Nasyid group she manages- Nur Irsyad, consists of six teenage boys between the ages of 17 to 21 who studied in a Singapore based Madrasah. She said music was a very powerful medium that sadly was largely purveying negative values to Muslim youths. Hence the “gap” that she was filling, or the “need” that she was meeting through Nur Irsyad, was precisely to provide an Islamic alternative: [Nur Irsyad] is to us an alternative. Rather than for the youngsters to be singing nonsense- like things that bring them to bad way of life; isn’t it better that they sing inspirational music that makes the listeners better people? …music is important, and an alternative Islamic music is important. It’s a must…. [Ustaza Faridah] Ustaza conceives of her Nasyid group as meeting the need for an “alternative” to the non-religious mainstream forms of entertainment, that she believes negatively influence moral and religious values. For SE, there is also a similar identified conception of a gap, as well as a need to provide an alternative. In fact, enshrined in the very first line of the SE mission statement is a stated objective, To bridge the gap between the churched and the unchurched… (www.sonic-edge.org/about.htm) 80 SE also seeks to provide an “alternative” and to meet the cultural needs of the unchurched; this is further expressed as a goal “to express church in modern youth culture…” Quite implicit in SE’s mission statement is that it identifies and acknowledges the distance between religion and youth culture, and how certain expressive modes from youth culture are absent within Christianity. Hence, there are parallel imperatives to bridge a gap between religion and youths and youth culture through Nasyid music and alternative forms of Christian worship. b. Operationalization: bridging the gap As I demonstrated earlier, Nasyid music is a mainstay of the Malaysian music industry, and the Islamic groups I interviewed were proactively commoditizing and commercializing their music. In fact, this route of commoditization and commercialization was identified as both necessary and legitimate means to pursue their goal of propagating Islam. This was evident for both the Singapore Nasyid groups that I conducted fieldwork with. Ukh Wah, a Singapore based Nasyid group consisting mostly of working professionals, were looking to record and eventually release an album. Nur Irsyad already has a full length album that has sold several thousands in Singapore and Malaysia, and they are also contracted to a music label that distributes their music. Nur Irsyad has also toured Malaysia and performed extensively in Singapore. Ustaza Faridah also explained to me that their music marks a departure from convention as they have a specific audience in mind: Majority do traditional Nasyid, mostly percussion, they maintain that image and that concept. But for us… our target audience is the youth group, teenagers and early 20s. We wanted something different, which 81 links to pop and jazz, that kind of very light stuff- something that teenagers can identify with and enjoy. [Ustaza Faridah] In the same way as Ustaza expresses a daring to innovate and draw inspiration from different genres of music, to make its music accessible to youth, SE does the same in incorporating rock and techno music for Christian worship. SE expresses a similar strategy to make their worship accessible, in order to bridge the gap between religion and youth/ popular culture. We do not discriminate anyone's taste in music, culture or likes. And we accept all into our community, believers and unbelievers alike, from all backgrounds. We believe God loves everyone, and we hope to reflect a glimpse of that love to others that we come into contact with, whether it's at a gig, rave party, club or in the streets. (www.sonic-edge.org/about.htm) SE has also similarly taken this commercialization and commoditization route. As I mentioned earlier, at SE sessions, there are a whole host of commodities that are sold. In fact, Sonic Edge Band’s full length worship album was officially released in Hard Rock café in 2003. These I interpret as concerted attempts to make religion accessible and more consumable by commoditization and commercialization. In fact it can be argued that accessibility works both ways: they have access to “unchurchy” venues for their activities, and by using these places, attempt to make their organization accessible to typically unchurchy people. c. The goal: to enhance the appeal of the religion and to draw adherents Explicit religion as popular culture also has similar goals to draw people- both adherents and non-adherents. SE explicitly seeks “to love, serve, and disciple today’s postmodern generation”. From talking with the organizers, it came to light that the goal of SE was not just to draw the unchurched, but it 82 also purposed to draw Christians. More specifically, Christians who cannot identify with traditional church worship practices, and cannot express their faith the way they want to. So there are elements of both outreach (to nonChristians) as well as inreach (to Christians). I found these twin objectives evident also in Nasyid music. Nauruz, an interview respondent in his late 20s, sings with Nasyid group Ukh Wah. He described Nasyid music as a form of Da’wa- or a way of spreading the Islamic faith by propagating the message. And so it was a specific objective of his Nasyid group to spread Islamic teachings through their songs. A striking example of the effort to inreach came when Ustaza Faridah recalled a performance where Nur Irsyad did away with their traditional Malay outfit and headdress. They were wearing long sleeve t-shirt, very casual look, nice lah. So everybody was like “wow, Nasyid group like that one? Oh… ok… oh cool”. So we had a lot of people came to talk to us, telling us that we were very approachable. That’s what we want. Nasyid is not just singing, it’s not just music, it’s actually a tool for us to know and get into the crowd and the society, and the community… [Ustaza Faridah] Social agents of both Nasyid music and Christian alternative worship explicitly seek to enhance the appeal of religion and draw potential adherents. Conflating religion with popular culture is a legitimate means to that end. SE is driven by a particular goal to provide culturally relevant expressions and platforms of worship to modern youth culture, while Ustaza Faridah expresses her desire to appeal to youths and she sees Nasyid music in terms of its instrumental function for the greater goal of drawing potential adherents to the faith. 83 d. The premise: adaptability and usability Both Nasyid music and alternative worship work on a few common premises, evident in varying degrees but on the same linear path of adaptability and usability. Nasyid music has adapted itself to the entertainment industry machinery and it is commonplace to see Nasyid albums lined up alongside non-religious albums. It works on the premise that these preestablished non-religious channels of production and distribution are legitimate and going through them will not threaten the sacred status of Nasyid music. In terms of musical content, Ustaza Faridah also expressed how Nur Irsyad’s music draws inspiration from popular music genres like “jazz” and “pop”. Implicit in this is that drawing inspiration from these typically nonreligious genres of music will also not adversely affect or diminish the sacredness of Nasyid. Adaptability and usability as premises came forth even more prominently in my fieldwork with SE. Glenn Lim, rock guitarist and “SE Pastor”, regularly preaches at the monthly SE events. He explained to me SE’s fundamental working premise that “all cultures and therefore all music can be redeemed, reversed and restored for good, and to accomplish the purposes of God”. Through our interview, he elucidated just how seemingly “profane” genres of music, despite their social and cultural origins, can be adapted and used for religious purposes. 84 Pastor Glenn Lim I have extracted data from various parts of my interview with Pastor Glenn Lim, and consolidated them to show how the sacred-potential is made possible by the premises of adaptability and usability. In Pastor Glenn Lim’s own words, all genres of music can go through a process of conversion and be “redeemed”: Pastor Glenn Lim on the ‘sacred-potential’ of various music genres: Punk Its roots: anarchism and rebellion Punk, where are its roots? In anarchism, rebellion. And so a lot of punk attitude and ethics stem from that rebellion. It’s natural to sing political lyrics or be “anti-anything”. Its “redeemed” form: fighting spirit, tenacity I believe all that kind of energy and the rebellious spirit can… accomplish the purposes of God. I believe that God actually put within some of these people a little seed of a rebellious spirit also, to be able to stand up against certain challenges, and say “no, I’m not going to take that sitting down…I’m gonna stand up and fight for God”, and there’s this fighting spirit, this tenacity that can be channeled for God’s use. Hardcore Its roots: anger, angst The hardcore spirit is an angry spirit, there’s a lot of angst. They are angry at god knows what. They let that take over in their music and their whole messaging. They’re angry at the government, at the police, they’re angry at all forms of authority. 85 Its “redeemed” form: holy, righteous anger against sin and the devil I believe there’s a place for Holy anger. It can be redeemed, and hard core Christian bands, and what you call “spirit filled hardcore” can turn that into righteous anger: you can get angry at sin, and with the devil and his works. Emo Its roots: negative emotions- depression, hopelessness Where does it stem from? Emotion, Depression! … All stems out from emotional lyrics, depressing lyrics, about suicide, about killing yourself, and the spirit behind it is terrible. Because of late… there’s a rise in depression, suicide rates, people are turning a lot of anti-depressants and all that. Its “redeemed” form: positive emotions- joy, hope What can be redeemed? This emotional aspect! If you look at the psalms, King David was full of emotions, he was expressing, he was crying out his heart you know? But there was also hope at the end of each psalm. Dance/ trance/ techno Its roots: hedonism, immorality, narcissism The indicative spiritual driving forces behind dance and clubbing culture are hedonism, vices like drug taking, sex, looking good, pleasure. It’s a clear reflection that people are craving for more, they are hungering, there’s a need that’s not getting satisfied. The drugs are getting harder, they are getting more tolerant to it, the pleasures and the sex is not satisfying them. Its “redeemed” form: worship and spiritual fulfillment We try to put the God element into dance. God is more than sufficient to satisfy the deepest needs. He meets needs, our hunger and our cravings. We put that in, coupled with the whole worship concept, music and turntable skills, techniques and all that being gifts of expression. And so with the right people producing that, managing that and expressing that, it can be worship. A dance hall or club can be turn into a worship experience… So we can see that with this kind of ideological premise, SE, led by Pastor Glenn Lim, sees the sacred-potential in different genres of music, this despite their seeming profaneness. Not only genres of music, but by extension God can be in everything. In light of the conceptualization, Pastor Glenn’s 86 reference to “God” is part of a larger sacred and not just the theistic sense of “God”. Although Nasyid music has not reached the level of adaptation that alternative worship in SE has, they are both none-the-less grounded on similar premises of adaptability and usability. Whether Nasyid music will reach Christian alternative worship’s level of adaptation to forms of popular and subcultural genres of music remains to be seen, but in this next section, we can catch of a glimpse of the direction that Nasyid music is heading. e. The effect: breaking new ground Both SE alternative worship and Nasyid music are breaking new ground in their own ways and in their respective spheres. According to many Muslim respondents, in recent years, Nasyid music has been going through a decisive paradigm shift. Controversies have been sparked by groups introducing non-traditional musical instruments and styles into Nasyid, which respondents highlighted was a departure from guidelines set by religious authorities. Respondents highlighted Nasyid group Hijjaz, as an example of a group who adheres to these guidelines. They reportedly use only percussion instruments in the belief that stringed instruments are prohibited in Islam, and would violate the sacredness of Nasyid music. (The Malay Mail, December 11, 1999) The most pertinent example of “sacrilege” was the case of Nasyid group Rabbani- whose ground-breaking ‘Intifada’ album sparked a huge controversy in the Nasyid music scene. Due to their collaboration with Malaysian pop-group KRU, and because the album had a dance feel, Rabbani were accused of polluting the genre of Nasyid music. (The Malay Mail, March 87 19, 2001) Their new musical direction was deemed “inappropriate for a group preaching about Islamic holiness”.8 In the face of such controversy, Rabbani even had to organize a forum to justify their actions, explaining their intention and desire to give Nasyid a more modern feel and to “go global with the new approach”. (The Malay Mail, March 19, 2001) Despite ongoing voices of dissent, other Nasyid artistes have followed in the footsteps of Rabbani’s “sacrilege”. Popular group Nowseeheart included a guitar, a piano and even a stringed-section for their latest album for a more “contemporary” sound with “experimental arrangements”. (The Malay Mail, August 20, 2001) (New Straits Times, May 20, 2002) Furthermore, their image marked a departure from tradition as they ditched traditional skullcaps for berets, and shed their traditional garb- synonymous with Nasyid groups, and donned multi-colored western styled surf-wear shirts. Nasyid has also been moving in the direction of rap music. It seems that in both form and content, more Nasyid groups are defying convention and pushing the creative envelope, all in the name of Islam. Detraditionalizing form and content Similarly as we have seen from my case study on alternative Christian worship, SE’s modus operandi is to constantly break new ground and expand 8 KRU fan site: www.geocities.com/krurealm/kmg.htm#rabbani 88 the horizon of expressive possibilities. Besides adapting rock music and dance music to ritual worship, SE has been breaking new ground in other ways. SE organizes an annually held major event called Sonic Festival (SF). It is in the mold of established Christian music festivals- like the Cornerstone festival in America and the Parachute festival in New Zealand that are attended by tens of thousands annually. I attended SF 2002 in December for fieldwork. It was a full day event held on the premises of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in the heart of the City. SF was a massive project requiring 3 separate performance platforms, huge tents, mobile stages, and equipment for sound, effects and stage lighting. The festival started at 11am, with a pick-and-choose environment for festival goers since programs and performances ran concurrently on different performance platforms. I had previously also attended the very first SF held in December 2001. It was a full day event with two stages for music performances and dance items. The festival culminated in a mass worship at night in typical SE style. One year on, it was noticeable that true to their spirit, the people from SE broke now ground with SF 2002 and outdid SF 2001 quite significantly in scale and artistic repertoire. SF 2002 involved not only music and dance, but also different types of expressive arts like drama, poetry, monologues and other miscellaneous improvised performances- all of which were absent in SF 2001. 89 There was also an added instructional dimension to the festival in Creative Arts Workshops on drama, painting and pottery. One interesting installations of SF 2002 was a “Christian art” gallery. The art gallery was a makeshift gallery under a well lit tent. A series of art works was displayed on white panels. This gave off an authentic art gallery feel, allowing people to walk through and browse the works. Around 20 or more paintings, drawings and sketches were displayed. A brief synopsis and price tag were attached to each work. All of them were “Christian art” in that they were expressions of a certain dimension of the artists’ Christian beliefs. A monologue at the theatre venue SF art gallery 90 “Christian” art This concerted push to induct the arts into SF 2002 was by contrast conspicuously absent from SF 2001. I interpret this as a strategic attempt on SE’s part to expand its influence beyond popular culture and into more high culture forms of expressive arts- breaking new ground by bringing both popular culture and high culture under a common umbrella event. In fact, for SE’s monthly events in the early part of 2004, they have been attempting a collusion of art with pop, through something called “Art worship”, which is a collaboration of musicians playing music while artists paint and draw simultaneously. Art worship 91 SF also featured Christian artistes from other countries like Malaysia, Hong Kong and New Zealand. This was yet another signal of SF breaking new ground since SF 2001 consisted of bands only from Singapore and Malaysia. There is certainly a concerted attempt to make SF the biggest Christian music festival in Asia. SF ended with a series of bands playing on the main stage, and this was the most visually spectacular part of the festival with lighting effects making up a big part of the visual spectacle. The same format of performance preceding worship was also evident again in this final segment of SF. Sonic Festival 2002 culminating in worship 92 Summary of explicit religion as popular culture In this chapter, I have sought to shed light on the rationale and workings of explicit religion as popular culture by looking at Nasyid music and alternative Christian ritual worship. My analysis and findings for this chapter can be summarized in the following statement: Explicit religion as popular culture conceives of a gap between culture and religion, hence operationalizes itself to bridge that gap, seeking to enhance the appeal of religion and to draw potential adherents. Working on the premise of adaptability and usability of popular culture and its manifest forms and institutions, explicit religion as popular culture is propelled to constantly break new ground in expanding its expressive repertoire and extending its social influence. It goes without saying that there have been many opposing voices that disagree with the goals and means employed by these agents of explicit religion as popular culture. I have only given a hint of this existing tension, but will explore it in-depth in chapter 5. But first, the next chapter moves on to expound on the phenomenon of implicit religion as popular culture, which as I have explained, is conceptually different from explicit religion as popular culture. 93 FOUR Case studies on implicit religion as popular culture Clarifying Implicit religiosity In Singapore, because religion and public media seldom intersect, religious programs airing on television are virtually unheard of. Americans however, are familiar with televangelists and faith-based television programs as part of the daily television diet. In fact, America’s biggest Christian media broadcaster Trinity Broadcasting Network, a multi-million dollar television empire, broadcasts non-stop worship services and an array of religious programs. Like Christian alternative worship and Nasyid music, faith-based television and televangelism clearly fall into the same category of explicit religiosity since both the production intent and the product per se are explicitly of a particular religious orientation. Implicit religiosity, the subject of this chapter, is however conceptually different: while the source or the producers are identifiably religious, there is often nothing about the text or commodity that can be described as being overtly religious. The following case studies explore implicit religion as popular culture. The first looks at the entertainment careers of two Christian pastors. I will not explore these two pastors in depth for two reasons, firstly because they have been researched on extensively by Wong (2003), in her work Entertainment Evangelism: Christianity and the Social Identity of Pastors in Singapore, and secondly because the kind of data that I was looking for was hard to come by, namely, first person interviews. The second case study follows on as a 94 continuation from the first, looking at two organizations that represent implicit religion as popular culture. As I will demonstrate in my analysis, these Christian organizations have religiously oriented goals and objectives, but they categorically typify their activities as non-religious, which is why a respondent described the organization he worked for as a “non-religious Christian organization”. 1. Religious leaders in the entertainment industry Pastors in prominence Pastors are recognized as leaders of Christian collectives, who usually top the authority structure of churches. Pastors, have an organizational leadership role, but most also fulfill an instructional/ teaching role. These two Christian pastors are leaders of two of the biggest churches in Singapore, typically called mega churches in Singapore’s context. Pastor Lawrence Khong is founding pastor of Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC), and Pastor Ho Yeow Sun is Worship Pastor of City Harvest Church (CHC) of which her husband Kong Hee is Senior Pastor. Both churches are independent charismatic churches with memberships of more than 10,000. Both pastors are also well known public figures. Besides leading his church, Pastor Lawrence Khong is a certified professional magician. His Magic of Love (MOL) musical cum magic show has been running across Asia for several years now. Pastor Khong, executive producer, creative director and lead actor for the MOL production, also established an entertainment company called TOUCH Entertainment in April 2000, which was an offshoot of FCBC’s social-services organization TOUCH 95 Community Services. TOUCH Entertainment officially changed its name to Gateway Entertainment in 2002. Gateway Entertainment manages the MOL musical as well as the production and distribution of a range of self-produced entertainment commodities, namely movies, some of which Pastor Lawrence Khong himself has acted in. Lawrence Khong: pastor, magician and actor Pastor Ho Yeow Sun on the other hand, launched a career in the Chinese pop music industry with the release of her ‘Sun with love’ album in 2002. She also signed a deal with commercial music label Decca. She has branched out into being an advertisement personality, and she has also hosted programs on Singapore television. Pop-star Pastor Ho Yeow Sun 96 Magic and pop music are both established forms of popular entertainment. Pastor Khong and Pastor Sun have both established themselves in the entertainment industry, possessing both the credentials and recognition from industry peers. There is no disputing that they are categorically producers of popular culture. Furthermore, their social roles and identities as pastors-leaders in their respective churches are on-going, in tandem with their entertainment industry commitments. The implication is that the overlap of religion and popular culture is conceptually personified in these two individuals, since their identities as religious leaders and entertainers run concurrently. Furthermore, in examining the very texts or the media commodities that Pastor Khong and Pastor Ho have produced, and in fieldwork observations, I established a similar pattern of non-religiosity of product content. Pastor Ho’s Chinese pop music efforts are clearly youth-oriented. Her lyrics have been described as “positive”, with a thematic focus on love and relationships. Her music also deals with topics like self-acceptance, joy and hope. But nowhere in any of her songs is there an explicit mention of ‘God’ or ‘Jesus’. In attending Pastor Lawrence Khong’s MOL musical which combines magic, song, drama and dance, I made similar observations again that there were no overt religious themes. The musical thematically affirmed the importance of family ties, while bearing out the consequences of pride and child-neglect. I found this lack of explicit religiosity recurring in the various field observations sites as well as over the analysis of textual content of various media commodities, including music albums, music videos and movies. 97 Controversies and discontents Both pop-pastor and magician-pastor have received substantial media attention due to their presence in the entertainment industry. For my analysis of the controversies that surround Pastor Sun, I distinguished the controversies surrounding her into two broad categories: the first category, which I will not address, deals with issues of ethics and tactics by which she achieved album sales figures and popularity- public allegations surfaced that CHC members were under compulsion to purchase albums and to boost her music-award votes. The second category is conceptually different because the issue deals with the sacred-value of Pastor Sun’s very presence in the entertainment industry, as epitomized by one respondent who expressed vehemently: I have difficulty with Ho Yew Sun, she sings secular songs, gyrating on stage, wearing dresses that would be accepted by some and not by others, you can see her making gestures that in the pop world that would be regarded as a normal thing. But the whole effect of it is to draw the audience to yourself and so using the flesh, the body, as a form of appeal. Now I don’t know how she can stand in the pulpit and preach, and tell the people, “ok I’m not using my body as a form of appeal, I now want you to focus on what I’m preaching”. The perception level is there, that she is perceived to be in a certain image, in the pop world, on the stage, how can she use that image and baptize that into Christ? [Pastor Q] In talking to lay-Christians about Pastor Sun, many expressed disdain over her dressing and the use of her body in performances and in music videos. When interviewing Christian religious leaders, more institution oriented issues surfaced regarding Pastor Sun’s impact on the overall reputation of Christianity. Since she bore the very public title Pastor, her actions, and her very presence in the pop scene would injure or make unholy the sacred vocation of a pastor. 98 Impropriety or hip? Pastor Lawrence Khong and his magic have also stirred similar controversy. Sources within FCBC revealed that there were distinct voices of objection from within his church, when Pastor Khong decided to venture into magic and the entertainment industry. To briefly address the issues at hand, I classified my interview data on Pastor Khong into three broad points of contention. The first issue was with regard to the theological role of a pastor. Many respondents expressed the view that being an entertainer was out of harmony with the role of a pastor: 99 The biblical model for the pastor is that of a shepherd. There is also the expectation of a good pastor to be someone who is a servant-leader as well. In this sense, the pastor got it wrong when he/she considers himself/herself as an entertainer, a magician, a technocrat, or even a CEO. [E-mail transcript, religious leader DK] We, who are pastors, are called to be servants of God. We are not called to be entertainers, so certainly I don’t think a pastor should be involved in trying to be an entertainer. If that is so his calling would be different. I think the pastor’s calling is clear- to preach and to teach, not to be an entertainer. That would be not right lah. [Pastor A] The second point of contention refers to the incompatible affiliation of the faith with a particular industry. Hence directing resources like church finances and the pastor’s own time into the entertainment industry, is deemed a gross mismanagement of resources: What does a pastor have to do with magic? I don’t think that is right lah, I don’t think that’s appropriate at all… and not only that and spending… a large sum of money to perform magic, and I don’t think that’s good stewardship of money given. [Pastor A] The third point of contention centres on the theological incompatibility of mixing religion and magic. This was elucidated succinctly by a respondent in Wong’s thesis Entertainment Evangelism (2003): Magic is an act of deception, of lying. The way I see it, magicians are lying to the audiences and thereby inviting them into the realm of the Great Deceiver. (Source unnamed, Wong, 2003: 52) The problem here is not so much affiliating religion to a particular industry. What is deeply problematic is mixing magic with religion because of the perceived numinous content embedded in magic, and the source from which these magical “powers” are postulated to originate from. It is not so much about injuring a particular faith. Rather, it is more a problem of role conflict: that one cannot be both an earthly representative of God, and at the same 100 time draw inspiration from the powers of “evil” in practicing what is perceived as a dark art. The role conflict exists because of the perception that magic is a true manifestation of “evil”. To Pastor Khong, it is merely a technical skill based on scientific principles and completely void of any spiritual dimension. According to my respondent, Pastor Khong himself declares that “it’s all bluff one”. He makes no claim to have any power, just the technical know-how to perform clever tricks. Hence if magic is delinked from evil, the role conflict would be resolved. Practitioner of dark arts? Both Pastor Khong and Pastor Ho’s forays into their respective fields of entertainment have no doubt produced some measure of success by industry standards. But this success has come at quite a social cost. What aggravates the situation is that on face value, everything accomplished by these two pastors in the entertainment industry is not being done in the name of Christianity. Why do these pastors carry their identities into the entertainment world at such great cost both socially and financially? And why are they not openly promoting Christian beliefs? So it begs the question: what exactly are these two pastors doing in the entertainment business? 101 In seeking to uncover the logic and rationale of pastors in entertainment, the most ideal method would be to go directly to the source: the actors themselves. I was initially granted an interview with Pastor Ho’s husband Pastor Kong Hee. But after more than a six month wait and persistently seeking the fulfillment of the appointment, I assumed he was passively no longer agreeable to the interview since my request coincided with the height of the controversy over the alleged misuse of funds. In seeking alternatives and attempting to interview other staff of CHC, I was told plainly that I could speak to no one else except Pastor Kong regarding Pastor Ho Yeow Sun’s entertainment commitments. I also was not able to interview Pastor Lawrence Khong. Despite this impasse, I was however successful in gaining an interview with another pastor from FCBC, Pastor Eugene Seow, who is Deputy Senior Pastor of FCBC and heads FCBC’s TOUCH Community Services. I also interviewed a few Gateway Entertainment (GE) staff. Formerly known as TOUCH Entertainment, GE is an offshoot of FCBC’s Community services wing TOUCH Community Services. I concluded that looking at GE’s rationale for operation would adequately represent Pastor Khong’s involvement in the entertainment industry. Since GE is Pastor Khong’s initiative and it manages his MOL production, it stands to reason that GE is the organization that operationalizes Pastor Khong’s intentions in the entertainment industry. Delving into the workings of GE would definitely provide valid data to understand implicit religion as popular culture. 102 I also did my research with another organization called Awakening Productions (AP). In comparing data, I found that this organization’s working and rationale paralleled very closely with GE, and it too falls under the category of implicit religion as popular culture. 2. Gateway Entertainment and Awakening Productions: non-religious Christian organizations “We are a 100% non-religious Christian organization” we don’t make you sit down pray a prayer as we serve you. [Pastor Eugene Seow] GE and AP are categorically organizations of implicit religion as popular culture. I will show through my analysis that both organizations have similar ideological underpinnings and goals. What differentiates the two, is how they are each oriented toward different target markets. My purpose here is to give brief synopses of the organizational function of both GE and AP, and move on to a more substantive comparative analysis in the latter half of this chapter. Gateway Entertainment Despite GE being a brain child of Pastor Lawrence Khong, GE functions as a Private Limited entertainment company which produces and distributes movies, stages and manages entertainment events. Since its inception in 2000, GE has produced eleven movies, covering social issues like drug addiction, gangs, prostitutions, AIDS, etc. A review of these movies reveals a payroll of distinguished Singapore actors like Moses Lim, Zhu Houren, Chen Tian Wen, Chun Yu Shan-shan, and a host of other Chinese drama serial actors and actresses. Established industry professionals from 103 local and overseas media and entertainment companies also make up the production team.9 But as a GE staff explained to me, all the films are “totally non-religious, you don’t see a single cross, you don’t see a single word mentioned about God”. GE’s most recent production Twilight Kitchen stars Moses Lim from long running local comedy Under One Roof. The Gala Premier for the movie was held in July 2003 and was attended by Mrs Goh Chok Tong, wife of Singapore Prime Minister, as Guest of Honor. According to a GE employee, the rights to GE movies were typically purchased by government bodies and grassroots level organizations for public screenings. These movies are not for typical cinema consumption. He described the typical audience for GE movies as “heart landers”, typical middle income Chinese speaking Singaporeans. These movies however, have also been bought over by foreign countries and translated for local screenings. Showcase of GE movies In fact, GE has spent millions of dollars on these movie productions. Besides the host of local “big names”, the filmography, editing, and plot content are very professionally done. According to GE and FCBC staff I interviewed, the company has not yet seen profits despite the millions invested. 9 TOUCH Entertainment website: www.te.com.sg/products/index.html 104 In consonance with what critics of FCBC’s entertainment industry venture are saying, it is true that GE was set up and runs on church funds. GE also manages Lawrence Khong’s MOL production. The MOL production has also expanded into other consumption formats. When I observed the MOL production in FCBC’s very own Touch Community Theatre in July 2002, there was a range of specially packaged and merchandised ‘Magic of Lawrence’ magic tricks that were being sold at $6.90 each. There were also MOL VCDs and DVDs. An older magic production called From Illusion to Reality, and a full range of other GE productions were on sale in various media platforms. According to the GE website, their entertainment productions have been viewed in Australia, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and the United States. Although Richard expressed that the “bread and butter” of GE was movies and magic, he explained to me that GE also does a range of other services: from selling magic classes, to special events, to screening movies as well as organizing music festivals. Awakening Productions (AP) Awakening Productions (AP) is a non-profit organization that has been functioning since 1998. It has organised subcultural events, including gigs like rock concerts, hip-hop gigs and dance and rave parties. AP has worked closely with music and entertainment industry establishments like Zouk, Venom, Insomnia, Sentosa Development Corporation, Esplanade- Theatres on the Bay, Tower Records, HMV, and Borders etc. They also have a recording and distribution label called WAKE ME UP MUSIC (WMUM), with a 105 number of bands on their label producing records. On their official website, AP offers their services for events consultation, artiste management and for music equipment rental. In April 2003, WMUM set up its own music shop, a mini- “youth hub” that includes a store that sells electric guitars, amplifiers, and all kinds of music gear. It also includes a fashion outlet that sells vintage and underground clothing, novelty items of all kinds and other fashion merchandise. It also sells an assortment of underground genres and nonmainstream music CDs. Having visited the music shop, I realized that the majority of music on offer was not religious music. Most significantly, WMUM shop also has a jamming studio with a full complement of sound equipment, which provides a venue for bands to practice their music by paying an hourly fee. Prior to my research, I have been acquainted with the activities of AP, and I have attended several of these events. None of them can even remotely be described as being religious. A synopsis of some of their series events is as follows10: Sub-C A regular musical Sub-Culture event where bands play non-mainstream genres of underground music, like hardcore, punk, emo-core, grind, nu-skool metal etc. which include local as well as foreign acts. It is an event which is “open to every race, religion and musical interest- punks, metalheads, skins, mat rockers etc...” But it is also against violence and substance abuse. SUB-C seeks to be “a home for the underground”, to nurture musical talent in a positive environment. SLUICE Dance parties organized in unused or unconventional venues, even art galleries. “No two SLUICE parties are alike”- they vary in their visual concepts, 10 Awakening Productions website: www.awake.com.sg/updates/sevents.htm 106 decoration & party location. Sub-genres like drum & bass, jungle, techno, trance, progressive breaks, house, dubs are some of the music features. All SLUICE parties are "Anti-E" (anti Ecstasy): against rave & party drugs, seeking to promote awareness to party/club-goers on the dangers of drugabuse. HYPE! This was an event that was birthed to showcase local youth culture which was commissioned by the National Arts Council to produce a fringe arts event in 2000. Apart from showcasing bands, the hip hop culture was featured through the likes of Emcee groups (rappers), Turntablists (Scratch DJs), Bboy Groups (breakdancers) & Graf Artists (graffiti aerosol artistes). HYPE also hosts Graf & Emcee competitions, and regular hip-hop events. LiterARTi This is a series event that fuses literary and artistic expressions together in a single event. Set in informal, cafe settings, with bohemian décor, like candles and rustic carpets, the stage is open to anyone, to express themselves through poetry readings, acoustic songs, impromptu dance, acting, storytelling, playing weird instruments, performance arts. Sometimes there are even short-film screenings. The organizers work with, and support The Substation (Singapore) to nurture home-grown artistes & acts. Parallels between Gateway Entertainment and Awakening Productions On the surface, these two organizations seem to be doing very different things, but a closer look reveals otherwise. Although both organizations are doing categorically non-religious productions and events, in fact, both organizations have definite religious origins and Christian-doctrinal foundations. Both organizations were founded and are supported by Protestant Christian Churches in Singapore. As mentioned earlier, GE was conceived and birthed by FCBC Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong, and is supported and funded by FCBC- the largest independent Charismatic Church in Singapore. AP on the other hand, was birthed as an official ministry of Church of Our Saviour (COOS). It is in fact a sister-organization of Sonic Edge, because AP is also an initiative of COOS- the same church that sponsors Sonic Edge (chapter 3). 107 Both organizations are run with a definite religious ideology, although they both maintain a neutral, non-religious public face, otherwise known as a secular front. AP, for example, is listed on COOS’ website11 as “Awakening Ministry”, with a clearly spelt out religious agenda. However, there is also a link that directs people to AP’s “secular” website,12 where there are absolutely no religious references. It is very much the same with GE, whose movies and MOL productions are featured on FCBC’s website under “TOUCH media ministry”, with a spelt out mission to “raise the banner of Christian excellence and integrity in the media and entertainment scene”.13 There is however, no mention made to its secular front,14 which portrays GE as a secular entertainment and events management company. Neither AP nor GE’s secular front had any reference or hyperlink to either of the churches’ official websites. One can possibly construe this as a concerted attempt to conceal the mother organization that supports organizations like AP and GE, thereby obscuring the religious origins and their underlying agendas. Through the course of my fieldwork, another interesting parallel was the significant number of non-Christians staff who worked for both GE and AP. According to an inside source, 20-30% of GE staff are non-Christians. In close comparison, AP is headed by a full time church staff of COOS, but is also run by people outside the church, some of whom are Malays, and presumably Muslims given the religious context in Singapore. A respondent characterized 11 www.coos.org.sg www.awake.com.sg 13 www.fcbc.org.sg/min_touch_media.htm 14 www.gateway-e.com 12 108 this situation as “non-Christians but doing God’s work”, and as oxymoronic as it sounds, this characterization aptly applies to both GE and AP. 3. The rationale of implicit religion as popular culture This part of the chapter is a comparative analysis of GE and AP, and through it I want to shed light on the rationale and workings of implicit religion as popular culture. a. The conception: cultural needs ‘Conception’ here, can be read as how these organizations perceive of a “problem” with society that needs to be addressed. AP and GE have notions of what a certain problem in society is, and this perspective is religiously inspired. It is the ideological foundation upon which their inception and organizational functions are built upon. For both AP and GE, there is a definite element of a Christian “calling”, or what I call an agency imperative in secular society. This calling is often expressed by terms such as ‘mission’ or ‘vision’ in Christian circles. I did an in-depth interview with AP founder Glenn Lim, who is on staff with COOS. Glenn founded AP in 1998, and he explained to me that: There was a need to reach out to the modern youth culture, the emerging cultures, especially the musical subculture that was constantly evolving, and it was moving very quickly. The only way to do that was to condescend as Jesus did. His principle was always to come down to their level and to speak that language. [Pastor Glenn Lim] Glenn explained to me that the heart of AP was ultimately to impact youth culture for the better, because in his view, most of these subcultures stemmed from negative values and principles. In the same way, GE conceives of a need in the mass media and entertainment arena. GE staff Richard Tan explained 109 GE’s original purpose as conceived by Pastor Lawrence Khong when he set up TOUCH Entertainment in 2000: [Pastor Lawrence Khong] believes that the entertainment industry has been very crowded by a lot of the more secular cultures, pop cultures and all that, where you see a lot of sleaze… a lot of vulgarities. In the movies a lot of unwholesome things are shown. Basically... all your sins and all that became entertainment. He wants to break in and recreate the whole atmosphere back to God. [Richard Tan on Pastor Khong] Both AP and GE are organizations that were conceived to meet certain identified ‘cultural needs’. Both identify the problem of negative values and are similarly concerned with counteracting these negative values. For AP, the specific conception is the need to reach out and relate to youth culture and subculture, and to counter negative values embedded in these youth and subcultures. For GE, the conceived need is similarly oriented toward countering negative values, but in this case, the source of negative values is the mass media and entertainment industry. b. Operationalization: addressing the need ‘Operationalization’ here refers to what these organizations seek to do about the conceived problem in practical terms. As I found out, what these organizations do stem from the perception of the self (organizationally) in relation to culture at large- they feel they have a responsibility to fulfill a role in culture. GE’s functioning is closely related to its home church’s (FCBC) belief in a “role” they have to play in secular society: ... We were called to be in the community to fulfill a role, out of that came the vision to impact the community by serving its needs. That is part and parcel of what we call “fulfilling that role in the culture” [Pastor Eugene Seow] 110 So GE frames “service” to the community in terms of the need to counteract negative influences from the media. To implicit religiosity organizations like AP and GE, the needs they conceive of in popular culture and youth culture are as legitimate as conventionally addressed social needs like poverty, health, family dysfunction, youth delinquency, etc. In Singapore’s context, the conception of these social needs accounts for a whole host of religious schools, hospitals, drug rehabilitation centres, orphanages, old-folks homes, family counseling centres and kidney dialysis centres. AP and GE view themselves as another form of community service, except that their specific focus is directed toward meeting ‘cultural needs’, by providing either platforms for cultural production (AP), or material for consumer consumption (GE). For GE, it addresses perceived needs in the popular culture and mass media arena, and for AP, it does so in more demographically specific arenas of youth culture and subculture. So on the basis of having conceived of a certain cultural need, both AP and GE attempt to operationalize the meeting of these needs through what they do organizationally- be it producing films or holding dance competitions. These activities have been covered in the previous part on the respective organization synopses of AP and GE. A significant point that came out of my fieldwork is that both these organizations similarly do not identify themselves as “Christian ministries” in the conventional sense. Somewhere during our interview, when I referred to AP as a Christian ministry, Pastor Glenn Lim corrected me: Awakening Productions is not ministry I would say… I think we’ve made that quite clear now. It’s an events organization, yeah with a youth 111 outreach objective. So it’s community service, affiliated with the National Youth Council, National Arts Council- very service oriented. Yeah. So it’s not a Christian entity at all. [Pastor Glenn Lim] GE is also not run as a Christian entity- it does not produce religious programs, and it is not advertised as a Christian organization. Both AP and GE have in common the intentional non-religious identification of their respective organizations. Both organizations work on the principle that addressing needs does not necessitate an overt “Christian” label being attached to their organizations. In both these organizations’ conception, the most effective method of meeting social needs is to do so covertly, which explains why they see themselves and project themselves as “non-religious Christian organizations”. Despite how they attempt to categorize themselves, the reality belies the label with which they identify themselves. These “non-religious” organizations are obviously religious in that they have a sacred agenda to insert “good moral values” into society. They are indeed religious in Durkheimian terms due to their obvious pursuit of a ‘social ideal’ which demonstrates their ‘social conscience’. Their disassociation with the label “religion” and “religious” is merely formal, and is not true to what they are in essence. This of course raises the question of ethics, since it can be argued that these organizations are misrepresenting their intentions and deceiving consumers, having a hidden religious agenda with a public non-religious facade. This issue will be addressed in my subsequent chapter. Some people might find it peculiar that these organizations take it upon themselves to “save” culture. Should not religious organizations just stick to saving souls? After all, 112 popular culture and the entertainment realm cannot be said to originate from religion. So what exactly are they trying to achieve? c. The goal: to engage, impact and transform culture As I’ve demonstrated in the previous sections, while both organizations are ideologically based on Christian principles, they do not see themselves or present themselves as Christian organizations doing religious activities. The ‘goal’ here, refers to the outcome envisioned in response to the problem. As I have mentioned, both organizations seek to impact society or secular culture positively. This was expressed by Pastor Khong as well as Pastor Eugene Seow: The mass media is very influential… if the church does not penetrate into the media, it would be… giving up this strategic area to Satan. Things of the media would not be morally correct… it would have a reverse effect on the community. [Pastor Lawrence Khong, statement from his biography video production, Ordinary Man Extraordinary Life] We can see the theologically based rationale in Pastor Khong’s comments, framing it very much as a battle against evil to “save” culture. However, this rationale is translated into something that is more conceptually tangible minus its theological jargon, and this is the public face of GE: …we are going into the media, with a specific desire to influence good values into the community. [Pastor Eugene Seow] While GE seeks to impact culture positively by the infusion of good moral values into the media and entertainment industry, AP also has its agenda to “positively” impact youth and subculture, and the events they organize are done with that goal in mind: They do have a voice, this generation. It’s just they turn to alternative, maybe even vices to make that statement… and they do have talents, 113 it’s just that those talents are harnessed wrongly. So we try to make a difference in that. So most of the events and gigs… would have a positive or at least a healthy environment created by utilizing these same gifts and talents these kids have, but harnessing it for positive use lah. So most of the events… have a worthwhile cause behind it, some social civic mindedness attached to it- anti-drug events, SPCA awareness, AIDS awareness. This hopefully will make a difference. That means music can still be channeled, and harnessed for good. So that’s one of the key things that Awakening hopes to do lah, in the secular culture. [Pastor Glenn Lim] AP seeks to harness the energies and talents of youth in their particular youth and subcultures, and divert these energies to “positive” channels of expression, for “good” causes instead of “bad” ones. Both organizations have identified a “negative” aspect of culture and seek to turn it into a “positive”. But the desire to impact and transform culture is preceded by the need to first engage successfully with culture, a necessary first hurdle that many Christians fail at: The church is ignorant of what goes on beyond our walls. We have lived sheltered lives and have detached ourselves from the 'world'. And when we do come out once in a while, we impose on them our ideologies and set standards for them on our terms, not realizing that they have real needs that need to be attended first before they can comprehend the love of Christ. (www.coos.org.sg) This statement by Pastor Glenn Lim, underlines his perception of a basic dissonance or cultural lag between “the church” and non-Christians, and the failure of “the church” to engage culture, in particular youth culture and subculture. He also indicts “the church” for alienating non-Christians by imposing “ideologies and set standards”. To Pastor Glenn, engagement denotes accepting people as they are. Pastor Glenn emphasized this engagement imperative in other ways as well: 114 2nd Corinthians 5:18 says that God gave us the ministry of reconciliation and committed to us that message of reconciliation and we are ambassadors of reconciliation, we are to go and reconnect and be associated, and not disassociated. [Pastor Glenn Lim] In seeking to engage culture, AP is driven by a communication cum relational imperative, while for GE the engagement rationale also holds. The goal as we know, is to infuse society with “good” moral values. To do so, Pastor Eugene Seow explained that the key variable was credibility. In order to speak credibly and influence an arena, you cannot deal with it outside the situation. You cannot turn to a singer or performer, and say “you need to give your life [to Jesus]” [Pastor Khong’s] purpose is precisely for that- to sense the industry from the inside out. [Pastor Eugene Seow] Since credibility is deemed necessary to influence an arena, being an insider to the industry becomes a pre-condition. And if we look back at our earlier examples of the two pastors, we can see that both of them have become insiders to the industry. Pastor Khong for example, was given the Master Magician Award in August 2002 from Las Vegas- the American capital of magic. In the same year he performed at the prestigious Shanghai International Arts Festival. In her pop music career, Pastor Sun sold over 100,000 copies of her ‘Sun with Love’ album and she was even nominated in 2002 for the MTV Asia “Favorite Music Artiste Singapore” award. She has also collaborated with top Chinese pop artistes like Taiwanese singer Jacky Wu. She even represented Singapore in vying for the “Top Outstanding Young Person of the World Award” in late 2002. (The Straits Times, October 6, 2002) Both Pastor Khong and Pastor Sun have been successfully establishing themselves in their respective entertainment 115 fields. In caveat, while this may enhance their credibility in the entertainment industry, it does not imply a correlating enhancement in their standing with the religious community, as the very public controversies have demonstrated. While Pastor Khong and Pastor Ho establish their credentials in the entertainment industry, AP does so too in its respective cultural spheresnamely youth and subculture, making explicit its affiliations to organizations like Teen Challenge Singapore, Singapore Anti-Narcotics Association (SANA), National Arts Council (NAC) and the National Youth Council (NYC), as well as its working relationship with music and entertainment industry establishments like Zouk, Venom, Insomnia, Sentosa Development Corporation, Esplanade Theatres on the Bay, Tower Records, HMV, Borders etc. The sum of these accolades, achievements and institutional alliances serve the function of credibility-building in their respective spheres of cultural influence. Hence industrial credibility lays the necessary foundation for acquiring authority to impact the industry and effect transformation. Though GE has not yet made profits as an entertainment company, according to Pastor Seow the company was gaining credibility, both within and without the entertainment industry. We are beginning to see the impact… right now, one of our new movies, is supported sponsored by a major government related organization [in Singapore]. We are seeing change and seeing response, we’ve got TV stations in Indonesia wanting to buy our products. [Pastor Eugene Seow] Engaging with culture at such close proximity produces anomalies and what some would call contradictions or misnomers, just like how AP and GE 116 are “non-religious Christian organizations”. I found that another apparent anomaly or seeming contradiction came in the following: In GE, about 20-30% are not Christians working in the company, full time. A lot of them are non-Christians but doing God’s work. [Richard Tan] A peculiar situation arises which Richard describes as “non-Christians but doing God’s work”. GE is not a religious ministry run by Christians and producing overtly religious products. Rather, it is a ministry with a secular front, run by both Christians and non-Christians, producing entertainment commodities with no religious content, but with religiously inspired values. Establishing credibility and authority also means engaging and employing the best in the industry, and thus non-Christians are co-opted into this “Christian ministry”: We feel that we want to go into the marketplace to get the best people as well. Let’s say we have the best set constructor who is Taoist, go there start up the show must offer pig one, that kind ah? We will still hire him, but we’ll tell him “No. No pig-offering, we pray, we bless this place”. So he will join, he will see us do it, and he will set up his props. So we believe in getting the best in the marketplace as well, to help us achieve that target. [Richard Tan] The rationale of implicit religiosity is to engage with culture, and engagement depends on positionality. The ability to influence realms correlates positively with the amount of credibility and authority that one has in these specific realms; this can be conceptualized in social scientific terms as the accumulation of cultural-capital on an organization level. AP, GE, Pastor Khong and Pastor Ho are effectively and intentionally insiders to their respective cultural and entertainment spheres. In this conception of engagement of culture, the anti-thesis would be non-engagement, where “the 117 church” stands in relation to the world as an outsider, a condemnatory and critical one, looking through proverbial “rose colored stained glass windows”, excluding itself from other social domains and keeping within the cognitive safety of familiar institutional structures. d. The premise: non-imposition of religiosity The fundamental premise of implicit religiosity is that it is not an overt religious crusade to directly seek out adherents. Pastor Eugene Seow, who heads the TOUCH Community Services (TCS), explained to me that the rationale behind GE was similar to the rationale behind the running of TCS: Our fundamental philosophy is that we bless people. You can never win a convert through an argument, so we serve with no strings attached- “In yet while we were still sinners, Christ died for us”… in the same way, you start with that regardless of whether the guy is going to be a Christian or not… [Pastor Eugene Seow] Similarly, the Christian rationale behind the functioning of AP reveals this orientation of non-imposition of religiosity: AWAKENING was birthed out of a burden to reach this lost generation with the love of Christ. We seek to break out and bless, to build relationships, to meet their physical, emotional and spiritual needs. In short, we want to love, serve and bless them, with no strings attached, just as the way Jesus would… The obvious trend is the consonant emphasis that they function “with no strings attached”, which indicates that they do not approach meeting the cultural needs of their respective target communities with an obligation for them to convert. In other words, it is not an exchange relationship in which “I meet your cultural needs, you listen to my preaching”. According to my data, these organizations do not impose religiosity in their product content, nor do 118 they impose religiosity in the relationship between producer and consumer. The purpose for this approach is spelt out in the continuation of the above quote: …And through this demonstration of genuine love, we break down barriers and walls of mistrust and build bridges into their lives. (www.coos.org.sg) The goal of implicit religiosity is to engage successfully with people through meeting their cultural needs, rather than to preach religious content to them at the initial point of contact. Doing the latter in fact, may be counter-productive to the former. Implicit religiosity organizations like AP and GE typically do not pull surprises on its audiences. Part of this non-imposition of religiosity rationale is to do the right thing at the right time, and so they do not preach religious content if the audience is not expecting it, or unless the particular event is put together by a Christian organization. Having attended AP events, I know first hand of Christian bands who were reprimanded for attempting to “preach” during their performance slot to the audience that was largely non-Christian, in what was a secular event organized by AP. Similarly for GE, I was told that Pastor Lawrence Khong only preaches after an MOL production if the event is held in a religious setting. e. The effect: implicit religiosity as precondition for explicit religiosity While these organizations exercise the tenet of not imposing religiosity, this is not to say that there is altruism on all levels of implicit religion as popular culture. Because there certainly is a linkage to explicit religious goals and purposes, and this was apparent on both micro and macro levels. On the micro level, in working with these industry professionals, influencing and 119 proselytizing comes as a natural process of the working relationship. Coopting industry people into GE makes possible opportunities for proselytizing: Every Tuesday morning staff worship, [the non-Christian staff] are there, every time before we start a meeting, we pray- they are there. …slowly we let them see the culture, and let them subsume themselves into the Christian environment. [Richard Tan] It is certainly untrue that these organizations do not seek to convert nonadherents; after all proselytizing is a fundamental aspect of the Christian calling. AP founder Glenn Lim explained to me however, conversion and seeking out adherents comes in progressive stages of a relationship that first starts with engagement and establishing relationships: Awakening would serve as that first level evangelism- that place of connection and contact, so there is hardly any blatant messaging; it’s purely a serving mentality. The second level is a neutral place, from a contact place we move on to a neutral place… and third of course is what we call the safe place. That’s where there’s a lot of Christian implementation, messaging, and that’s Sonic Edge. [Pastor Glenn Lim] If proselytizing is a goal, the ideal procedure is for it to develop in stages. But it starts first with providing the “service”, which hopefully will lead to meaningful relationships and eventually result in conversion. In that sense, implicit religiosity serves a “trailblazing” function for explicit religiosity, doing the ground work of “opening up” target markets, people groups, and individuals to future efforts of direct proselytizing, not just on a micro level, but also on a more macro level. Richard: We see the results of how God has blessed us through the project- We have gone to China, that is quite a big achievement, and we are the first Singapore act to perform in the Shanghai International Arts Festival. That is also another big achievement. Interviewer: You would consider that an achievement even though there is no preaching? 120 Richard: Correct, it is not direct “life-saving”, but we are opening ways into China, into the unreached people groups… this Shanghai trip has been so successful that people are saying “no problem, next year you come back.” It’s that kind of effect… it creates that gateway for us… thus the name. The “gateway” referred to, is the opportunity created for future direct proselytizing efforts. This data paralleled information that I received from an informant from City Harvest Church, who expressed that Pastor Ho Yeow Sun’s Chinese pop music career was a project that sought to eventually see her entering into China for performances, ultimately to create opportunities for the gospel to penetrate into China, i.e. future proselytizing efforts. For both Pastor Khong and Pastor Ho, implicit religiosity is like a universal “key” that can “open” up a common target-market (China) for explicitly religious projects in the future. In trailblazing, religious and particularly proselytizing goals are the foundations upon with these implicit religiosity projects rest upon. My respondent Richard from GE drew out this parallel that for both Pastor Ho Yeow Sun and Pastor Lawrence Khong, “the ideology behind the whole thing is very similar”. Thus we see that there is a very tangible connection between implicit and explicit religiosity, although the fundamental premise is still the non-imposition of religiosity at the implicit level. Summary of implicit religion as popular culture In this chapter, I have sought to shed light on the rationale and workings of the collusion of religion and popular culture in analyzing these individual and organizational cases of implicit religion as popular culture in various spheres of the entertainment industry as well as in youth and subcultures. Both organizations studied in this chapter have religious agendas, 121 but pose non-religious secular fronts. As I mentioned earlier, this raises a serious question of ethics, since it can be argued that real intentions are hidden, and these organizations are operating in the covert. This boils down to a question of ends and justifiable means. I will address this issue in a section of my next chapter. My findings for this chapter are summarized in the following: Implicit religion as popular culture identifies cultural needs, and operationalizes itself to meet those needs to engage, positively impact and transform culture. Functioning on the premise of non-imposition of religiosity, the goals of implicit religion as popular culture set the conditions for the future fulfillment of explicitly religious goals. This statement is specifically applicable to my topic religion and popular culture, hence the conception of ‘cultural needs’. However my analysis here can act as a heuristic device to understand other forms of implicit religiosity in other social domains where the religious intent may not be immediately apprehensible. Implicit forms of religiosity reveals the layered agendas of religious institutions, their goals and how the religious calling is conceived and worked out in relation to specific social domains. In these last two chapters, I have sought to bring the reader to a level of Verstehen, or adequacy on the level of meaning, of explicit and implicit religion as popular culture. My next chapter factors in the element of opposition to these attempts to reconcile religion with popular culture. 122 FIVE Subjectivization versus objectivation: religious paradigms in conflict 1. The struggle to define the sacred In the last two chapters, I have elucidated the rationale and workings of both implicit and explicit religion as popular culture. My discussion now moves on to a more theoretical plane. It is here that I factor in religion against popular culture, and attempt to posit a sociological explanation for the intra-religious tensions that result from the collusion of popular culture and religion. I see religion as popular culture and religion against popular culture, as religious paradigms engaging in a conflict to define the sacred. It is here that I will also factor in my chosen theoretical framework: the “religion and meaning” perspective (Hamilton, 1995) to argue my case. An important work from the “religion and meaning” perspective is also one of the most influential works on the sociology of religion. Peter Berger’s The Sacred Canopy (1967) has stood the test of time and remains as one of the classics of sociological theories of religion. Berger applies the social constructionist heuristic paradigm and applies it to an analysis of religion. In resonance with Durkheim, Berger discusses the essentially social character of religion, in that religious ideas are human creations which take on an aura of facticity in posing as the “taken-for-granted” status of reality- or nomos, as Berger terms it. (Berger, 1967) Berger discusses the fragility of the nomos, and how alternative ideas pose real problems to the authority of religious institutions in defining the world (plausibility), and by implication forcing religions to constantly prove their authority (legitimation). Hence Berger 123 discusses the problem of secularization due to historical conditions of competing ideas- what he calls a pluralistic situation. Peter Berger advances the argument that an ideologically pluralistic situation presents religion and religious institutions with two ideal-typical options with which to function. These two options are accommodation and entrenchment. According to Berger, [Religions] can either accommodate themselves to the situation, play the pluralistic game of religious free enterprise, and come to terms as best as they can with the plausibility problem by modifying their product in accordance with consumer demands. Or They can refuse to accommodate themselves, entrench themselves behind whatever socio-religious structures they can maintain or construct, and continue to profess the old objectivities as much as possible…” (Berger, 1967: 153) In this chapter, I apply Berger’s two ideal-typical options of accommodation and entrenchment, and develop them in my theoretical discussion. To advance my argument, I frame religion as popular culture to be accommodation, and religion against popular culture to be entrenchment. The tension between the two positionalities accommodation and entrenchment is an inter-subjective crisis of meaning. (Berger and Luckmann, 1995: 13) This “crisis” occurs when different factions have competing notions of how the sacred should be managed and expressed. I purpose to demonstrate the texture and depth of how this crisis between religious paradigms plays out. According to Berger, accommodation entails religions pro-actively “modifying” their product. This poses a problem to religion because in the Durkheimian sense, religious rituals and artifacts not only provide coherence 124 but also function as sources of consensus and solidarity. But all three are threatened in the process of modification because it entails old rituals and artifacts being shed, and new ones adopted. This principle of change or changeability is as Berger states “intrinsically inimical to religious traditionalism”. (Berger, 1967: 145) This of course, implies that there is a prior objective and stable notion of what religion is and is not. When modification occurs, according to Berger, religious contents are “de-objectivated” or deprived of their taken for grantedfor-granted status of objective reality. (Berger, 1967: 151) For Berger, this process of “de-objectivation” is conceptualized by the rather difficult term “subjectivization”. (1967: 157, 168) So an organization like Sonic Edge subjectivizes the taken-for-granted, objective notion of religious worship being incompatible with rock and dance music by bringing the two together. The objective notion of religion is challenged, and the sacred-profane distinction made ambiguous. The antithesis to this, as Berger expresses, is entrenchment: which is essentially religion attempting to maintain the status quo of old objectivities, given the contextual conditions of ideological pluralism. This recourse to old objectivities is conceptualized by the term ‘objectivation’. Objectivation is the resistance against subjectivization; it is digging in and purposively entrenching in existing beliefs and ritual practices. To those who oppose the mixing of religion and popular culture, objectivation conceptualizes the rejection of the two realms coming together. The 125 interdiction between religion and popular culture is the absolute “unalterable shape of reality”. Under no circumstance should the boundary between the sacred and profane be crossed. At this point an important clarification of the term “objectivation” needs to be made. Berger and Luckmann conceptualize objectivation as “the process by which the externalized products of human activity attain the character of objectivity”. (1966: 60) Geertz also notes how religion objectivizes preferences “by depicting them as the imposed condition of life… as mere commonsense given the unalterable shape of reality”. (Geertz, 1968: 3, 4) The central idea is that objectivation is the process where individuals’ or institutions’ conception of action enter the social realm as a concrete “given”- a reified reality. So in a sense, even when religion accommodates through selfmodification and “subjectivizes” taken-for-granted notions of religion, objectivation is the consecutive process manifest in their attempt to impose their definition of religion as the concrete given reality over traditional definitions of religion. For want of a better term and to nuance the theoretical discussion, between religion as popular culture and religion against popular culture, “objectivation” is applied to the latter, although it can be applied to both. In the framework of the discussion, religion against popular culture is a position that attempts to reinforce the existing idea of religion by resisting change. It is recourse to what is already established as the given order of things. While 126 religion as popular culture is the destabilization of the idea of religion being incompatible and separate form popular culture, hence “subjectivization”. To encapsulate this difficult idea, subjectivization and objectivation are concepts that denote processes referring respectively to the destabilization and reinforcement of the taken-for-granted. Lay concepts like ‘liberal’, ‘fundamental’ or ‘conservative’ might give some sense to the meaning of subjectivization and objectivation. However, these concepts denote an orientation or an ideological position, rather than social process. I prefer to do away with these concepts so as not to hinder my theoretical argument. In the preceding discussion, social groups or individuals classified into either paradigm will be termed “subjectivists” and “objectivists” respectively. My previous two chapters have discussed the agency aspect of why religions engage with popular culture. Not only are individuals and institutions subject to external or social forces of subjectivization and objectivation, but at the same time these individuals and institutions become agents in either process of objectivation or subjectivization. Through every action and institutional positioning toward culture, they become enforcers and perpetuators of either religious paradigm: either reinforcing what is taken-forgranted, or challenging its legitimacy. In this chapter, I will use my research data on religion and popular culture to show the structural dimensions of these religious paradigms in conflict: subjectivization versus objectivation. I will explain the ideological conflict between these two religious paradigms in terms of their respective cultural orientations, cultural imperatives, and in the concluding chapter, I will 127 hypothesize possible consequences that these orientations and imperatives carry. As with Berger, I do note as a caveat that between these two idealtypical options there will be varying degrees of “in between”, intermediate possibilities. (Berger, 1967: 153) However for theoretical clarity and for my purposes of underlining the tensions between religion as popular culture and religion against popular culture, I will develop my theoretical discussion solely within the categories of these two ideal-typical positions. From dozens of hours of interviews, I have selected specific data to be presented here so as to pose religious paradigms in sort of a dialoguejuxtaposed against each other where possible. This task was extremely tedious, but I felt the effort was worth it because it fulfilled my intended purpose to bring the conflict “to life”, so that through the data, the clash of paradigms will be clearly apparent. 128 2. Cultural orientation …the importance of religion lies in its capacity to serve, for an individual or for a group, as a source of general, yet distinctive conceptions of the world, the self, and the relations between them, on the one hand- its model of aspect- and of rooted, no less distinctive ‘mental’ dispositionsits model for aspect- on the other. (Geertz, 1968: 40) Cultural orientation refers to the theological lens through which religions interpret culture in general. It is the interpretive framework with which religious adherents make sense of the world and evaluate non-religious meaning systems. Cultural orientation refers to the “model of” aspect of culture while my second part on cultural imperative refers to the “model for” aspect of how to engage the world in practice, according to either religious paradigm. The parameters: the case of “sacred” music Cultural orientation is about the sacred parameters in which religions see themselves being able to legitimately operate in the world. It carries the base assumptions that set the ideological foundations for action in the world. The most telling data that elucidated the difference in parameters between subjectivization and objectivation paradigms was in my line of questioning that queried respondents’ definition of “sacred” music. Music, the organization and manipulation of sound, is a universal feature of human culture. Pastor Glenn Lim elucidated a subjectivist perspective of music: Since music is an expression, it expresses from its source. So if I wanted to find out if this particular music is spiritual or sacred, then I would need to go beyond just the sounds and the music produced. I would go to the producer, to the band or the musicians… now if he’s leading a God-fearing Christ-like life, then I know whatever he produces, be it music or whatever he puts his hands to, will reflect that. I think we 129 have to go beyond music, to find out what sacred or spiritualized music is. [Pastor Glenn Lim] To Pastor Glenn, what defines any music as “sacred” has nothing to do with the music per se. There is no such thing as a corrupt or profane culture or cultural form. What is crux to the definition of sacred music is the inner spiritual condition of the actor producing the music- the internal, materially intangible quality. The parameter for subjectivists is individuated and embedded in intentionality and consciousness, rather than manifest cultural forms. This is in sharp contrast to an objectivist perspective of sacred music. Pastor Jesse Sng, an articulate Chinese male in his late 30s, pastors a conservative Christian church. I showed him Pastor Glenn’s definition of sacred music. His response was telling of the difference in working parameters: There is a fallacy here that doesn’t work. What he’s saying, if I follow the logic, is if this guy fears God and is Christ-like, by extension, whatever he does automatically is sanctified, by extension it transfers over. That is true of things that God has made holy, but that may not necessarily be true of man. You see holiness and what is acceptable to God, cannot be transferred that way. Scripture clearly says that the reverse is true: That which is unclean, you do not sanctify, but rather it corrupts you… Just because I’m putting it in the church context, and I have a good vibrant strong Christian life, does not make that music any holier or sanctified. If I apply the principle, there is a reverse effect. And I believe this is a common fallacious assumption- that because we change the context, we Christianize something, therefore, it becomes sacred. [Pastor Jesse Sng] In the objectivist view, cultural forms which are corrupt are essentially corrupt. Social origins are inexorably tied to what defines a certain culture or cultural form as being profane or corrupt. Furthermore, the religiosity of a person does 130 not anoint all of his or her activities in whatever it is applied to. Pastor Jesse’s statement of the “reverse effect” means that what is profane corrupts or makes unholy what is sacred; there is therefore no guarantee that a religious person will be above corruption, and remain unaffected by what is unholy. The interdiction between the sacred and profane exists where according to the subjectivization paradigm there is none. I use this example of music to demonstrate how the two paradigms frame vastly different legal working parameters. Subjectivists have a cultural orientation that legitimizes the disassociation of cultural forms from their social histories- punk music may originate from the rebellion of the 60s, but punk music can still be “redeemed” and sacredized. This explains how the people from Sonic Edge unproblematically use different popular and subcultural genres of music for ritual worship. Their subjectivist orientation legitimizes this course of action. Objectivists on the other hand, would already be predisposed to regarding these genres of music as profane and hence inadaptable for sacred purposes. Even in something like music, the sacredization potential of culture is much greater for subjectivists because of the established parameters. This was clearly illustrated in an interview with Ustaz Bani, a Malay Islamic teacher with PERGAS. I sought his reaction to Nasyid group Raihan receiving a music award in 1999 from the Malaysia music industry. He elucidated an objectivist viewpoint: That is the thing they should avoid from being involved in, they should not be involved in getting awards. Now they are categorizing their music with music that doesn’t benefit, which bring decadence in morality. They should stay away from this. Because this system is the 131 general system: MTV, Grammy, Oscars…“who’s better than who”. They should not because the purity of Nasyid should be maintained. [Ustaz Bani] For objectivists, it is not just adoption and assimilation into religious practice that is sacrilegious, even associations become highly problematic since the sacred has to be maintained at a safe distance from the “general system”. Whereas for subjectivists, associations in themselves are unproblematic since sacredness is individuated and embedded in consciousness. Mere association cannot corrupt what is sacred in essence. My previous chapter on implicit religiosity (chapter 4) demonstrates the proactive association of religious personas and institutions with different systems- entertainment, subculture and youth culture. Associating with the “general system” is a matter of imperative: God gave us the ministry of reconciliation and committed to us that message of reconciliation and we are ambassadors of reconciliation, we are to go and reconnect and be associated, and not disassociated. [Pastor Glenn Lim] “Reclaiming” the entertainment industry? The differing “models of” culture further demonstrated itself when I approached the issue of entertainment. I asked Pastor Eugene Seow why the word “reclaim” was used in describing Gateway Entertainment’s stated vision to reclaim the media and entertainment industry for God. His response espoused a subjectivist position: All things belong to God... the media industry is not a modern term, if you look back historically, the town crier, is your media industry, in the traditional form, the communication platform of the town. Why “reclaim”? Because, the church in times past… shy-ed away from believing that this is a platform that can be used. We are trying to bring forth the idea that the media is not a foreign ground or taboo even. It is just part and parcel of life and culture. [Pastor Eugene Seow] 132 Pastor Eugene Seow reveals the ultimate source of legitimization- simply that, “all things belong to God”. I found this statement consistent ad verbatim with many categorical subjectivists. By logical extension nothing should be void of sacred-potential, which is why the range of cultural institutions and cultural forms can be and need to be “reclaimed”. Based on the justification “all things belong to God”, the media and entertainment industry are interpreted as simply being part and parcel of life- created by God in the first place. I sought a response to GE’s vision to reclaim the entertainment industry, from Dr E.N. Poulsen, Pastor Emeritus of Grace Baptist Church (GBC) and former theology professor. Incidentally, GBC was the church Pastor Lawrence Khong split from in establishing FCBC: How can we reclaim [entertainment] when it’s never been ours? This never has been the church. This has always been the world. To “reclaim”, means something distinctively Christian, that somehow the world took it over. But it can’t be said in the areas of entertainment. Historically it can’t be demonstrated. The church didn’t make extensive use of these media, as theirs. [Dr Poulsen] Dr Poulsen’s response reveals a differing view: that the media and entertainment industry was never “the church” in that its origins were unholy to begin with. There is hence no basis for the church to “reclaim” the media and entertainment industry in the way that Pastor Eugene Seow expressed. This realm has always “been the world”- a phrase that Dr Poulsen used constantly in the pejorative unholy-profane sense since as he expressed “we hate the system of the world”. Entertainment and media in his interpretation were birthed from profane human ideals for profane purposes. 133 We can see two distinct reference points- according to the subjectivization paradigm, there is no culture apart from God, and therefore all of culture has sacred-potential, even what has been subject to corruption. This contrasts the objectivation paradigm, which sees human culture as profane by virtue of its essential humanness and should be left untouched. So it is quite clear that for objectivists, the scope of what can be sacredized is much narrower by virtue of their conception of culture in general. This is consonant with Berger’s conclusion that “the concentration of religious activities and symbols in one institutional sphere, defines the rest of society as “the world”, as a profane realm relatively removed from the jurisdiction of the sacred”. (Berger, 1967: 123) While in the contrasting framework of the subjectivization paradigm, the sacred is all transcending because “the world” is understood as being “embedded in a cosmic order that embraces the entire universe… an order that posits continuity between the empirical and the supra-empirical.” (Berger, 1967: 113) This of course, echoes the highly problematic notion that “all things belong to God”. (Pastor Eugene Seow) If there is continuity between the empirical and supra-empirical, and if “all things belong to God”, why then is all of culture not already sacred? Berger explains this as the problem of human agency- of “misdeeds” on the part of man (Berger, 1967: 114) which result from the exercise of his volition. Indeed it is because of volition that conversely “all things are fair game for the devil” since man is fallible and can be tempted. This is why the notion of “reclaim” has salience with subjectivists, who see that the cosmic order has been “wronged”- and must again be “righted” by the appropriate ritual and moral acts. (Berger, 1967: 114) 134 Symbolic reality What is involved in the problem of evil is not the adequacy of our symbolic resources to govern our affective life, but the adequacy of our symbolic resources to provide a workable set of ethical criteria, normative guides to govern our action. The vexation here is the gap between things as they are and as they ought to be. (Geertz, 1968: 21) Objectivation and subjectivization paradigms also have very different orientations to the relationship between the symbolic world and the real world. My respondent Burhan highlighted to me examples of how objectivation affects the interpretation of the meaning in various entertainment events, through criticism that was received by what he described as more conservative minded Muslims. Firstly, in the portrayal of divorce in a television drama serial: Some of [the conservative Muslims] go to the extent that if let’s say the actors are real life husband and wife, then that is considered a real divorce. That is how severe people view religion, it’s not something that you can, in a trivial manner, replicate in the entertainment world, you see? That is not easy. [Burhan] Secondly, in the example of a stage drama that he watched: …there were a few actors who were Muslims who were portraying Christian nuns… (Expressing the criticism) “No you shouldn’t be wearing the crucifix and all that, once you do that you’re out of your faith already.” So it’s like, whether you want to portray reality, or you want to stick to your dos and don’ts… It’s always been a tall order for Muslims who want to see themselves as religious, but at the same time want to be active in the field of arts and music. [Burhan] To objectivists, there is very little distance between the portrayal of reality and reality itself- symbolic reality is rigid and inflexible, things “as they ought to be” are clearly defined and cannot be encroached upon. According to a fundamentalist Christian weekly email that I subscribed to for data, when Christians refer to James Caviezel (lead actor in Mel Gibson’s The Passion of 135 the Christ) as “Jesus”, that is tantamount to idolatry: James Caviezel becomes Jesus to Christians who call him “Jesus”. Fiction and non-fiction have little or no boundary. There is limited room for the expression of allegory and symbolic representation due to the narrow interpretability framework that characterizes the objectivation paradigm. Burhan’s examples of the problems that these Muslim actors faced, brought to mind observations of a music video of Pastor Ho Yeow Sun called ‘the sky won’t turn dark’. In this video, Pastor Sun was portrayed being physically intimate with a male actor who was clearly not her real life husband: Pastor Khong Hee. Though there was nothing explicitly sexual, the scenes of physical affection included Pastor Sun leaning her head on the actor’s chest and him caressing her face and arms. To do all of that unproblematically exemplifies the subjectivization paradigm and the possibilities that it affords actors to negotiate symbolic reality without consequence to real realityportraying intimacy does not indicate or determine that Pastor Sun is in relationship with this actor in real life. This is in contrast to the earlier mentioned fictional portrayal of divorce being taken as a real divorce by objectivists. Of course, this begs the question: if the portrayal of characters in popular culture is just purely symbolic with no ill-consequence to the religious actor, why is there even a need to “sacredize” the industry or attempt conversion if the unconverted are concomitantly merely playing in the symbolic world of evil? This would be explained by subjectivists’ view that since sacredness (and hence profane-ness) is embedded in intentionality and 136 consciousness, whether the unconverted are merely “playing” symbolically or with genuine ideological commitment to evil, the proselytizing imperative must be applied to all the unconverted since there is no manifest external criteria to distinguish one from the other. The differing orientations toward symbolic reality manifested in other issues. I asked several Muslim respondents whether they could foresee the future development of “Islamic heavy metal”. Siti Khalida, a graduate in her mid-twenties and school teacher, did not think it possible. Her stance was decidedly objectivist: Heavy metal, death metal… it’s always associated with anger, rage that kind of stuff, so I find it… I don’t find it reconcilable. You can’t reconcile spirituality and beautiful things with anger and rage. How? It’s two different worlds I think. [Siti Khalida] In Siti’s conception, the heavy metal genre’s association with anger and rage negates its sacred-potential and cannot be spiritualized. The symbolic meaning of heavy metal beyond its sound has been systematized and is nonnegotiable. My respondent Symon, a Christian vocalist-guitarist who plays in a band called Blyss, expressed an opposing orientation: …and why some songs are angry? Sometimes you think about it, it’s God’s wrath. It’s a positive message: God can be angry too. When we shout, when we sing, we are actually shouting things that are positive. I don’t see anything wrong lah. [Symon] For Symon, heavy metal unproblematically has sacred-potential because anger expressed in music can suitably express God’s anger and wrath. In this subjectivist orientation, spirituality can be reconciled with anger and rage. 137 Summary of cultural orientation Because the objectivation paradigm systemizes and rigidifies sociohistorical origins of meaning, associations and symbolic systems, it establishes a non-negotiable distance between profane human culture and sacred culture. Subjectivization orientates social actors toward the very opposite- since socio-historical origins and associations are not crucial to the sacred-potential of cultural forms. Furthermore, the relationship between symbolic reality and real reality is arbitrary and hence manipulable. The sum effect is that much more can come under the projected jurisdiction of the sacred. Since “God created all things”, all of culture originates from a sacred source. Nothing that has been made profane cannot be de-profanized and subsequently sacredized. The clash of paradigms occurs because objectivists and subjectivists have fundamentally different kinds of theological bases from which to interpret culture in general and distinguish what is usable from what is not. This clash of paradigms I felt was best encapsulated by two respondents who spoke of music as a “vehicle”, the first expressing an objectivist perspective, the second expressing a subjectivist perspective: If you want to do something good, it cannot be through a bad vehicle. A bad vehicle meaning rock music, it’s unacceptable. [Burhan] I mainly believe that music is a sort of vehicle lah, whether the driver uses it to knock people down or bring people to hospital is a different thing you see? So it’s mainly an element… a tool of use lah. [Ah Tan] The objectivist sees the vehicle as inherently corrupt, while the subjectivist sees the vehicle as a neutral medium, dependent rather on the intention that drives the vehicle. To reiterate, cultural orientation sets the parameters for 138 religions to engage with culture. In this part, I have attempted to strike a contrast of sacred paradigms in the “the general, yet distinctive conceptions of the world…” (Geertz, 1968: 40) My next part looks at the “model for” aspect, which implicates the conception of “the self and the relations between them” (Geertz, 1968: 40) and elucidates the resulting cultural imperative that takes shape from the cultural orientation. 139 3. Cultural imperative Cultural imperative is in sum the methodology of expressing religious faith in a given cultural context that stems from the foundation of viewing the world through a particular religious lens. Hence it is inevitable that sacred paradigms differ in their methodology, although subjectivization and objectivation both have similar goals of advancing the faith. The method of proselytizing Proselytizing is a fundamental goal in both Christianity and Islam. I conducted an interview with Sara Indot, a keyboard player from a Christian music ministry called Forerunner, which employs music and entertainment for direct proselytizing efforts. Her position reflects a subjectivist position toward exploring and exploiting the creativity spectrum in order to be relevant and communicate Christianity effectively to potential adherents: Yeah, our purpose for existence is evangelism. Our calling verse [from the bible] is 1st Corinthians 1:19-23, to “be all things to all men”. We take that to mean, in order to communicate and persuade, you need to relate to them also socially and emotionally. The idea is that you have to be mindful of your audience. We want to be as effective with as many audiences as possible. Music is the most malleable tool for that. Our objective is the communication of the gospel that is relevant to our audience. [Sara Indot] Because subjectivists have free access to a whole host of cultural repertoires, they have the legitimate means to be “effective with as many audiences as possible”. In contrast, objectivists have a narrower view of culture, and hence do not have the liberty to use expressive genres and tools from cultures outside of itself. Two respondents, Ustaz Bani and Pastor Jesse Sng, gave objectivist responses to subjectivists’ calling to be as culturally relevant as possible: 140 There is no compulsion in matters of faith, because the truth is clear from false, you don’t have to force someone because they can see what is black and white. Because after one attains understanding, the natural step is to take a right choice. So a Muslim should know it’s God who guides whom he pleases. Any Muslim in mission work understands this: “I am not in charge of guiding them. I can try to open windows for them, when God wishes to guide them.” So in Islam… our creativity has limits, we cannot exploit to the extent of causing more harm than good. [Ustaz Bani] At the end of the day God doesn’t need a helping hand from us, he needs us to obey and to be his willing instruments… we are to yield ourselves as instruments, but it’s not our way or method, but how God’s gonna use them. But when we start going round with the idea that we have to give God a helping hand, we’re way off track. [Pastor Jesse Sng] The objectivist cultural orientation determines that adherents in this religious paradigm indeed face very real limitations to the creative means employable for proselytizing. Objectivists do not deny the host of expressive repertoires or the pluralistic situation that religion is situated in, but pluralism is not a problem that has to be proactively addressed since “the truth” will be apparent and God will guide “whom he pleases”. Hence there is no concerted attempt to make religion culturally accessible. Subjectivists however, place a high priority on accessibility. They seek to bridge the cultural lag between their particular faith and potential adherents. Hence, repackaging sacred contents becomes a necessity: “To bring an unchanging gospel to a changing generation”, so there is this unchanging part, but it is packaged, and communicated in such a way that changing audiences understand. In their culture and their setting, they understand it. It’s not packaged with a baggage of culture that they have to convert to, on top of the gospel. [Mark Surendran] However, to objectivists, cultural repackaging in essence constitutes a theological compromise: 141 “Let’s talk to them on their terms”- I don’t see that in the bible, I always see, “talk to them on God’s terms and we tell them where they stand in respect to that…” I need to get the message to someone but I cannot… I’m not to change the message by redefining it based on the other party’s terms so that they can understand that. But if I redefine the message, then I change the message, and so this is being very seeker oriented, being very market driven in a sense. [Pastor Jesse Sng] Pastor Jesse Sng voices a response echoed by other categorically objectivists who decry a proselytizing methodology that will mean the capitulation to profane culture. Any intention to reach the lost is always noble but perhaps some areas do seem like it is easier to join the world. In other scenarios, we would try to bring them to the best as we can to the comfort of our turf. [Pastor Daniel Chua] Objectivists place a premium on purity and world separation. Pastor Chua’s position- to bring potential adherents to their own “turf” reveals the objectivist approach towards proselytizing. This approach is to extract potential adherents from their profane culture. Subjectivists on the other hand, place a premium on identification and relevance to culture as it is. To subjectivists, attempting to bring potential adherents to religion’s own turf constitutes cultural hegemony and indoctrination- something my earlier respondent Mark refers to as the “baggage of culture they have to convert to” in order to become adherents. Means and ends Another pattern of tension between sacred paradigms was revealed in the issue of means employed toward achieving particular ends. My chapter on implicit religion as popular culture reveals a methodology of this-worldly engagement, where religious goals though not explicitly spelt out, account for 142 institutions and individuals exerting their influence on various cultural spheres. Whether it is pastors in entertainment, or organizations that promote subcultural music events, the various religious agendas remained relatively invisible to the public eye. Objectivists see this lack of transparency in agendas as problematic because it is tantamount to deception, making it “an unethical way of doing good”- which is a contradiction in terms. The clarity of intention is a requisite of the objectivation paradigm: Content and form becomes an issue in Islam. Make the content clearwhen you talk about God say it’s God, when you don’t want to talk about God, don’t! Then it’s protected lah! If not you open up so much room for mismanagement, and people use it for other ends you see? That’s what they don’t want… You may call it conservative, but I think it’s more like trying to be safe lah. [Khairrudin] Another Muslim respondent echoed a similar concern in addressing the increase in Nasyid groups: The motivation should be right lah… they must have a clear aim, because that will affect on how others receive them. And if they really want to do it, then they have to do it all the way. [Mardiana] What is done with religious intent must always have this intention clearly spelt out to both insiders and outsiders of the faith. Transparency of intention and purpose is an inbuilt safeguard against the loss of taken-for-grantedness, and ensures that religious expression remains within an institutionally sanctioned framework. Compare this to a subjectivist expression of means toward accomplishing religious ends. Ken Tan, an undergraduate and Christian DJ from Sonic Edge explained to me how subtlety is essential in proselytizing: It’s about delivering the message with a hidden knife lah… It’s a poison pen kind of letter. The moment you open it there’s anthrax inside, but it’s “Jesus-anthrax” lah, *laugh* It’s about being subtle lah. I mean the world is full of subtle stuff anyway what, right? - Secular artistes just screwing up your minds with all these subtle hints and stuff? 143 We can do the same what. It’s all about tit for tat… but we do it better because we’ve got God beside us, definitely. [Ken Tan] Not only do subjectivists have a whole range of cultural repertoires to work with, they also have the liberty to maneuver covertly. Having layered agendas, subjectivists are more able to maneuver in secular culture- Pastor Sun does not have to sing Christian songs, and neither does Awakening Productions have to organize Christian music events. While the Christian mission objectives are in some cases clearly spelt out on these religious institution websites, these objectives remain invisible to those who are not in the know. Objectivists however, not only have a limited cultural repertoire, but they have to work within the constraint of operating overtly in both form and content. Insiders and outsiders Subjectivists also see the need to be insiders to cultures. This explains the rationale behind why Pastor Sun, Pastor Lawrence Khong, Gateway Entertainment and Awakening Productions engage in credibility-enhancing activities in order to speak authoritatively within the various spheres of relevance. Ah Tan, an undergraduate who plays in a Christian punk band Pension State underscored the insider rationale. He explained why his band plays punk, despite punk music’s association with rebellion and anarchy: I guess there’s a lack of Christian perspective in this form of music loh. So we reach out to listeners… who love punk rock and hard music, but offering them a Christian perspective. And we hope to break stereotypes that Christians have to be in churches and singing hymns. But rather to show that you know? We can have fun... [Ah Tan] Ah Tan speaks from a subjectivized cultural orientation where punk music’s socio-historical origins do not hinder the sacred-potential of expressing 144 Christian beliefs through punk music. He sees a need for a Christian presence in punk culture and his band fulfils that need. His stated hope to “break stereotypes” underlines the proactive challenge to taken-for-granted notions of what punk music can and cannot express. His motivation is also to demonstrate that Christianity is not culturally straight-jacketed to being “in church and singing hymns”. As an insider to punk culture, Ah Tan seeks to make Christianity more accessible to punks. The objectivation paradigm however determines that the best course of action is from the positionality of an outsider to different cultures. If we are trying to imitate that culture just to get in… we are not being real lah. I would be a hypocrite- what [Christians] are accused of most of the time, to try to go into a culture that I’m not. …that shouldn’t stop me from reaching out with the way I am to them. I would say we don’t have to copy the culture to reach out, or to adapt. I would say we can be ourselves. [John Rajan] John, a full time staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, places a premium on “being real”, rather than on copying or adapting to cultures. Being an outsider safeguards the objectivists’ self-identity. Furthermore in his conception, Christian culture will remain safely interdicted from punk culture as it should be. Objectivists place a premium on cultural distinctiveness: There is a place for us to stand out as lights, and from there, there is that pull. “You’ve got something that’s different from what I have, I want to know more.” But when we start to live and become more and more like everyone else, then “whatever you have is nothing different from what I have…” [Pastor Jesse Sng] Compared to subjectivists who seek to be culturally relevant, integrated, recognized and credible in secular spheres, objectivists see integration and 145 hence “popularity” as an indicator of a compromising method that lacks integrity: If we are trying to be popular with the world, that is the most unbiblical position. Scripture warns us that if the world loves you the word of God is not in you. We love the people of the world, but we hate the system of the world, and what we want to do is give them what meets the true needs. Some will take it, some won’t. Fewer and fewer have the opportunity to make that kind of decision because of the way that the church is going. [Dr Poulsen] Subjectivists and objectivists both have a conception of the imperative to present themselves as alternatives to profane culture. However, subjectivists conceive of this imperative being operationalized within cultureto be engaged with it. Objectivists however, conceive of their responsibility to be a true alternative standing outside and apart from culture. The former takes the approach of cultural infiltration- to redeem people from inside “the system”, while the latter takes the approach of purposive self-exclusion in order to be a viable sacred alternative- to call people out of “the system”. Summary of cultural imperative Both objectivists and subjectivists seek to engage and impact culture, and have a proselytizing imperative. However, because of their differing orientations toward culture that set the parameters for engagement, their operationalizations differ. Subjectivists by virtue of their orientation can exploit the full range of cultural repertoires while objectivists cannot. Subjectivists have the liberty to approach their this-worldly agenda covertly, while objectivists are bound by the principles of transparency in form and function. The former conceives of its this-worldly responsibility as one that must be carried out from the safety of one’s own cultural parameters- the sacred 146 self must never be compromised at all costs, hence Berger’s use of the term entrenchment. (Berger, 1967: 153) In contrast, the subjectivist conceives his calling as an imperative to accommodate, to be an insider and to be as relevant at all costs to make a tangible impact. Since sacredness is individuated and embedded in consciousness, the sacred self cannot be easily profanized, unless there is a capitulation of the will. Differing paradigms give rise to vastly opposing notions of their respective this-worldly callings. 4. Paradigms in mutual resistance Objectivation and subjectivization are religious paradigms that provide the model of social and cultural reality, and the “model for” engagement with culture. Since these two concepts denote ideological positions referring to either the reinforcement or destabilization of the taken-for-granted, they are not just different paradigms, but they are also unavoidably paradigms in mutual resistance. Proponents of the objectivation paradigm decry the perceived mixing of the sacred and profane, which they interpret as subjectivists promoting secularization through cultural conformity which results in engagement to the loss of distinctiveness: a state where religion and popular culture cannot be identified as sacred and profane in contradistinction. Objectivists also see that subjectivists run the risk of being contaminated by profane culture. Subjectivists see “the other” as emphasizing distinctiveness to the loss of engagement, where objectivated religion promotes secularization through stubbornly holding on to tradition, remaining completely identifiable as culturally distinct from popular culture. By doing so, it is not just being 147 irrelevant, but counter-relevant to unredeemed culture by the alienating and exclusivist posture they project due to the systematic rejection of nonreligiously originated culture. The risk hence is that unredeemed culture remains precisely that- unredeemed. To objectivists, accommodation is tantamount to compromise: profane expressive repertoires infiltrate the faith in the proverbial Trojan-horse-like way, weakening religion from the very core. To subjectivists, non-accommodation equals null engagement: objectivist faiths deter potential adherents by not giving them the chance to come “as they are” with their prior cultural baggage. Objectivists decry the lack of gate-keeping in subjectivist faiths, which results in a loosening of entry-requirement standards. This is an indictment of making conversion too convenient for potential adherents, such that genuine converts are hard to discern apart from poseurs. While subjectivists take issue with the draconian gate-keeping that objectivists place on potential adherents- an indictment of making the faith inaccessible to possible converts. By virtue of the pluralistic situation religion finds itself in, objectivists face what Berger and Luckmann conceptualize as “gaps in the fence”, (1995: 59) where the protective fences around stocks of meaning cannot be completely maintained, and hence taken-for-grantedness cannot be sustained. Objectivists also face an agency opponent in the stripping of the taken-forgranted by subjectivization paradigm religions of ostensibly the same faith. Hence there is a layered pressure on objectivation paradigm religions. This pressure comes from both structure (the pluralistic situation) and agency (subjectivized religion) forces that collapse the plausibility of traditional 148 religious definitions of reality- resulting in something that Berger labels as a crisis of credibility. (1967: 127) Subjectivists acknowledge the pluralistic situation and address it head on. They recognize religion in general is no longer the “sole bearers of superordinate orders of value and meaning”, and they coexist and cooperate with different communities of meaning, “without imposing on them a common order of values”. (Berger and Luckmann, 1995: 54-56) Subjectivized religion is a willing player in the pluralistic game. Its institutions seek to be “suppliers in a market of religious options” and prove themselves in the free market situation. (1995: 46) Manifestations of subjectivized religion, like SE and AP fit the mold of what Berger and Luckmann identify as “intermediary institutions”. Instead of authoritatively giving and prescribing meanings (read objectivation paradigm religion), these institutions allow individuals from a variety of cultural backgrounds to “actively contribute to the production and processing of the social stock of meaning”, and sacred culture becomes a repertoire of possibilities, open to future changes. (Berger and Luckmann, 1995: 53) Subjectivists break down taken-for-grantedness where objectivists seek to reinforce its definition of the situation. By its orientation to culture, it breaks stereotypes of what religion can be, what religion can look like, and how religiosity can be practiced. This challenges the taken-for-grantedness of not just religious adherents, but also of non-adherents who hold the notion that piety and religiosity are interdicted from popular cultural expressive forms. 149 Subjectivization paradigm religion also conceptually fits into the mold of what Peter Berger elucidates as the “new liberalism” in The Sacred Canopy: The new liberalism ”subjectivizes” religion in a radical fashion… with the progressive loss of objectivity or reality-loss of the traditional religious definitions of the world, religion becomes increasingly a matter of free subjective choice, that is, it loses its intersubjectively obligatory character. (Berger, 1967: 166, 167) The significance is the loss of the “intersubjectively obligatory character” of religion, which is precisely the conflict and mutual resistance that I have demonstrated between objectivation and subjectivization paradigm religions in their attempts to manage and to put the sacred into practice. 150 SIX Conclusion: the transcendent sacred 1. Sacred Sacrilege My thesis title presents a puzzling misnomer- ‘Sacred Sacrilege’ cannot really be. Something cannot be simultaneously sacred and sacrilegious, except when different perspectives converge on the same phenomenon. One’s “sacred” calling can very well be interpreted by another as violating sacred boundaries, hence being deemed “sacrilege”. The case studies of implicit and explicit religion as popular culture presented in chapters 3 and 4 elucidate how individuals and organizations interpret their sacred calling as an imperative to marry religion and popular culture. They do this despite strong voices of opposition that see this course of action clearly violating the sanctity of religion in mixing the sacred with the profane. For those who oppose, it becomes their sacred duty to protect the faith from such sacrilege. In sociological terms, Berger and Luckmann describe this situation of impasse as an inter-subjective crisis of meaning. (1995: 13) In chapter 5, I account for this inter-subjective crisis of meaning, by applying the social constructionist perspective in examining the foundations of diametrically opposing religious ideals- what I call subjectivization versus objectivation. This is the social reality behind the differing postures of religion as popular culture and religion against popular culture. I have classified my data and theorized into ideal types these two opposing postures, with the result being the dialectic of paradigms in conflict manifest in opposing factions. 151 Of course, these ideal types are not absolutely discrete, but ideal types are none-the-less useful for analytical purposes. In the following summary of subjectivization and objectivation, I would like to extrapolate on the consequences and problems that either paradigm would pose for its manifest institutions and individuals. 2. Summary of paradigms in conflict Subjectivization As my data has shown, religious institutions and adherents who subscribe to the subjectivization paradigm adopt and adapt to varying storehouses of expressive cultural repertoires. In his foresight, Robert Bellah identified this as religion providing “ideals and models for new lines of social development” as a response to “the growing symbolic, individual, and social differentiation”. (Bellah, 1970: 16) For subjectivization paradigm religions, the relationship between cultural forms and religious content is fluid, configurable and reconfigurable with no perceived injury to the quality of the sacred. Subjectivization implies a greater degree of mundane-maneuverability, which is a byproduct of expressive repertoires being neutralized from negative associations and preconceived numinous content. As much as it engenders possibilities, subjectivization also causes problems. One problem is conceptualized by the term chameleonization, which describes the agency response of religious faiths that have no fixed cultural identity. Subjectivized religion may find itself constantly playing the proverbial “catch up” with culture. This is what secularization theorists argue as religion being subject to trends. The modus operandi becomes morphing- 152 the initiative is taken away from religion and it becomes a trend-chaser, needing cultural experts in every realm of intended missionary outreach, to cater to and replicate every new found expressive repertoire. The second problematic is associational. Reconciling popular culture and subculture to religion has the consequence of making problematic associations that arise out of this confluence. The associational problem is linked to the problem of proximity- subjectivized faiths will find themselves constantly needing to prove that though they are associated and proximate with profane culture, there is nonetheless no theological compromise. This is a foreboding task since association and proximity are taken as indicators of compromise. Subjectivized religions have the onerous task of getting across to their own that they are treading with caution the fine line of being “in the world but not of it”. Despite the form fluidity of subjectivized faiths, these instigators of change have to convince detractors that sacred contents remain unchanged and there is no reverse impact, or crossover to the side of “evil”. Which seems especially so in the case of Pastor Ho Yeow Sun who purportedly recanted her title as “Pastor” in the Taiwanese media. Given that I was indirectly refused an interview with her husband Pastor, these indicators intensify the possible reading that she has indeed “crossed over to the side of evil”. Taken to its extremity, subjectivization paradigm religions may subject the sacred to such erratic diffusion that it may be beyond the interpretability of those both within and without the faith. These radical faiths break down any 153 sense of a general meaning-giving framework by challenging sacred-profane boundaries, contributing to the meaning-giving framework’s overall fragility. This is precisely the problem with the empirical examples of implicit religion as popular culture discussed in chapter 4. There is a certain elasticity of the sacred that is being stretched beyond the interpretability framework of what constitutes religion. In other words, there is seemingly no conceptual “outside” to what religion can adopt and be. By and large the justification of their crossing over into popular culture has been based on pure motivations, and this connotes the opening of a floodgate of possibilities to which no gatekeeping mechanisms or means of accountability apply. The danger of course is that any action can be justified in the name of “intentions”, and this is perhaps the justification rationale of religious extremists in the problem of global terrorism and the slaying of civilians “in the name of god”. The individuated ideal of religion overrides the social ideal. With the absence or the arbitrary self-constitution of boundaries, the possibilities for abuse will be immense. In this sense, there is valid reason for religion to be held by contextual social and moral obligations. It is not difficult to seek out phenomena that characterize subjectivist faiths. ‘Christian porn’ sounds like a worse misnomer than ‘Christian rock’. But a Christian organization in America called XXXChurch slogans itself as precisely that: the “#1 Christian porn site” in America.15 XXXChurch is not a pornography site; it is actually an anti-porn lobby that advertises against the illeffects of pornography. Its organizers have even set up booths at pornography 15 XXXChurch website: www.xxxchurch.com 154 conventions to pass out bibles. (The Orange County Register, October 24, 2002) However, this organization set up by two pastors known widely as the “Porn-Pastors”, has stirred so much controversy and objection by its name and slogan, that they have elicited hate mail from Christians and nonChristians alike.16 It is not difficult to sympathize with people who fail to see the operational logic of organizations like Sonic Edge, Awakening Productions and XXXChurch, and how they justify being so closely associated to seemingly profane cultures. The inter-subjective crisis of meaning, if unresolved will quite predictably result in splintering and intra-religious pluralization, or institutional atomization. Objectivation The Objectivation paradigm is just the antithesis. Cultural forms cannot be (or are not) easily separated from their preconceived numinous contents. A norm, symbol, artifact or expression is never sui generis; it cannot be isolated from its socio-historical background. So using drums for any purpose or in any context cannot belie its “African voodoo and shamanism” roots. (Cloud, 2000: 17) There is no way to separate the form from the content. Hence there is very little degree of mundane-maneuverability. Similarly, objectivation also engenders certain problems. Religions that adhere to this paradigm will face cultural stagnation and cultural disjuncture, sticking to their traditions, signs and symbols, even though these will have no meaning or significance to the outside world. Also, in religious economy terms, 16 www.xxxchurch.com/gettoknow/hatemail.asp 155 objectivated faiths cannot help but engage in monopolizing behavior, systematically excluding alternative expressive repertoires. Objectivated religion remains as a narrow meaning system intolerant of redefinitions of how religiosity can be expressed. This intolerance occurs as a natural consequence of their cultural orientation. Again in religious economy terms, the cultural costs incurred to potential religious consumers may be too high: they would have to give up their familiar symbols and expressive forms in order to convert- something that few potential consumers will be willing to do in an environment of choice. In realm restriction, the objectivation paradigm is also recourse against chaos, so that the sacred remains identifiable and predictable. When objectivists do not budge, they fall into the danger of cultural disjuncture, failing to engage with potential adherents and by implication failing to be relevant to the cultural context it finds itself situated in- “too far away” and therefore irrelevant. (Bar-Haim, 1997: 137) A most striking example of the consequence of objectivation came during an interview with a Muslim respondent. This data exemplifies the problems created by objectivation when meanings rigidify. Here, it applies to “the mosque” as a sacred space: Mardiana: It started as a gathering centre for the Muslims, it’s not a prayer place, it’s not just that. It’s actually a central business district … everything is there. During the Prophets time, they had meetings there… if there’s any crime it’ll be judged there. The leader of the country would be there, it’s a centre for all sorts of activities… even the schools. Even universities started as mosque. The mosque was not supposed to be a prayer place, but now it is… Interviewer: So the mosque wasn’t just a place of prayer? 156 Mardiana: Yeah… it was actually a centre for learning, for the exchange of ideas. Intellectual debates- they had that. The conception of the mosque now… it’s sad lah actually. Some younger generation, they try to revive that kind of setting. But the older generation… they have difficulty… still accepting that [voicing the older generation’s stance] “this mosque you shouldn’t touch for anything, it’s only for prayer”. It’s very sad… Objectivists may fail to see the constructedness of their own religious practice, that their sacred traditions are manmade rather than timelessly ordained. In preserving the mosque purely as a place of prayer, in rigidifying the meanings attached to it and negating potential redefinitions, not only will objectivated religion alienate potential adherents, but as my fieldwork strongly suggests, objectivated religion is highly likely to alienate its own: The tension is that I feel that I’m expressing my religiosity to a certain extent through music- it’s not exactly what’s being accepted by mainstream Islam. It is difficult; on the one hand, you are trying to show the religious equivalents that what you’re doing is the musical equivalent of pushing a positive message. But sometimes, they don’t accept what you do. [Burhan- Muslim, vocalist and musician with Urban Karma] However, on the flipside objectivated religion is not all bad. In contrast to the subjectivization paradigm where potentially anything can be justified in the name of religion, objectivation provides the necessary safeguard against extreme permissibility. This ensures that religion will be held in consensus with contextual social ideals. This is necessary given that religion is such a powerful and potentially destructive ideological force. Objectivation and subjectivization As I have asserted, either position produces problems for religion, its institutions, religious individuals and potential adherents. Many sociologists of religion have similarly echoed Berger’s ideas of how religions react to the 157 pluralistic situation through either accommodation or entrenchment. (Berger, 1967: 153) French religion theorist Hervieu-Léger distinguishes these two differing positions as adaptation and non-adaptation. She too, extrapolates on the problems that adaptors and non-adaptors will face, and concludes that non-adaptors will flourish, while adaptors will become increasingly compromised. Hervieu-Léger’s solution for “successful” churches is for them to both “accept and resist modernity”. (Davie, 1996: 108) This evaluation is consonant with sociologist David Lyon’s assertion that religions “engage in a process of adaptation and resistance in respect to contemporary conditions”. (Lyon, 2000: 138) While I feel that such a conclusion has been fairly overstated, what have been overlooked theoretically are the ideological conditions that determine why religions will either adapt or resist. And so the theoretical discussion espoused in this thesis attempts to address this very deficiency. Subjectivization versus objectivation is the social reality that explains how religions will behave based on their orientations toward culture, which determines how they see the world and themselves in terms of their sacred purpose- their agency imperative in culture. 3. The unfolding irony Geertz described religion as a cultural system that guides man’s meaning-seeking process and serves as a general meaning-giving framework. My interpretation of subjectivization and objectivation paradigms is that they are both structure and agency forces that impact the overall meaning-giving framework- imposing external structure over individuals and institutions hence 158 shaping religion, but also providing paradigms for agency: ways for religious adherents to live out their this-worldly calling. Through every action and position taken, religious institutions themselves inadvertently become enactors and enforcers of either paradigm, subjecting the meaning-giving framework to constant tension. In all this, I see two ironies: the first is the theoretical implication of the likelihood of objectivated religion to become subculture- in being culturally rigid, it becomes a “freak” of the social, isolated in its own practices since it does not change or adapt, and lacking reality with respect to the outside world. In this case, traditionalism is a process that leads to subculturization. Perhaps the Amish community, Islamic fundamentalism and the Christian right wing in America are salient examples of objectivated religion par excellence, where tradition rigidifies over an extended period of time and becomes subculture. The second irony is that both paradigms are actually two sides of the same coin- they are both processes of revitalizing and resisting secularization. The reality is that proponents of either paradigm have similar objectives to continue the faith’s existence, and to draw adherents. But the respective methods of how to fulfill that objective vastly differ, and are seemingly irreconcilable. This makes Hervieu-Léger’s response even more crucial- that success and survival for religion comes with a particular combination of both accepting and resisting. (Grace Davie, 1996: 108) She clearly echoes Berger and Luckmann’s assertion that religion “must steer a middle way between the dogmatic collectivism of the “fundamentalists” and the labile solipsism of “postmodernity”.” (1995: 63) 159 4. Subjectivization manifest: postmodern religion Subjectivized religion taken to its fullest potential seems to fit the frame of what many religion theorists describe as postmodern religion. The postmodern condition denotes a vacuum of meta-narratives due to the breakdown of overarching authority and meaning structures. Applied to religion, the absence of a standard how in expressing religiosity, makes it possible for culturally relevant alternatives to come into being. As Weinstein observed, religiosity found in rock music indicates that in the postmodern condition “piety floats free, ready to attach itself through specific forms to a succession of transient contents.” (Weinstein, 1995) The rock music and techno music worship of Sonic Edge covered in chapter 3 is by no means peculiar to Singapore. Similar movements of what is labeled as the “emerging church” have been occurring in places like the United Kingdom and New Zealand. (Riddell, Pierson and Kirkpatrick, 2001) This “emerging church” denotes the triumph of the subjectivized consciencewhich believes that it can worship God anywhere, anytime, and anyhow, even in a nightclub with disco music. Although others on the dance floor may look like they are doing the same thing, the crucial distinguishing factor between pagan and Christian cruxes on the intent and the inner act of worship. External indicators count for naught in determining what is appropriate sacred expression. Berger’s prescient forecast of a future-religion that is “rooted within the consciousness of the individual rather than in any facticities of the outside world… to individual Existenz or psychology” (Berger, 1967: 152) seems to perfectly describe the reality of subjectivized, postmodern religion. 160 Subjectivized religion in its fullest potential will mean the increase of more “finite provinces of meaning” (Berger and Luckmann, 1966) that will be disconnected from traditional religious authority. Each province of meaning becomes an authoritative body unto itself, which of course then becomes highly problematic since the whole notion of boundaries becomes redundant and religion frees itself from social obligation. Subjectivized faiths envision a multiplicity of cultural practices expressing similar religious beliefs and theologies. Hervieu-Léger refers to this as “the atomization of systems of meaning” which is “in direct proportion to the breach in the stable link between beliefs and practices”. (Hervieu-Léger, 2000: 29) The implication of subjectivized religions is that beliefs will be progressively liberated from established institutions of believing, and find grounding in other autonomous collectives, or in pure individuated conscience. What subjectivists seek to achieve is a meaningful and sacred normlessness, in that no one group should claim monopoly over sacred expression, or even the physical location of sacred expression. According to Robert E. Webber’s The Young Evangelicals, the “emerging generation” of evangelical Christians are dislocating from traditionally sacred spaces, settling instead in “homes, warehouses, churches, and modified cathedrals.” (Webber, 2002: 201) Pubs, discotheques and cafes are other locales that have been “colonized” for use by Christians in Singapore. Hervieu-Léger’s pronouncement of the “breach in the stable link between beliefs and practices” is voiced by Gabriel Bar-Haim as an ongoing “crisis of ritual” in postmodern society. (Bar-Haim, 1997) For objectivated 161 religion, the crisis occurs when ritual becomes “vacuous nostalgia, devoid of any meaningful inspiration for the majority who cannot relate to it”. (Bar-Haim, 1997: 139) For subjectivized religion, the crisis occurs where rituals “become excessively spectacle-oriented” because “artistic and aesthetic elements have developed from being auxiliary props to becoming the focus” (Bar-Haim 1997: 140): a consequence of trend chasing and constant morphing. Religions of either paradigm will face their respective situations of crises. The crisis extends beyond ritual, and also portends to religion per se, not just to its factions. The strengthening positions of opposing objectivated and subjectivized factions means a mutual disengagement from dialogue and accountability- since to the latter, objections raised are preferentially grounded rather than being based on any objective theological criteria. While objectivists unequivocally maintain that cultural adaptation is doctrinal compromise. My prediction is that objectivated and subjectivized religions will increasingly go their separate ways, and religion as popular culture is a site of contention that will manifest this split. I believe we can expect greater degrees of intra-religious fragmentation, under free market conditions where both objectivated and subjectivized faiths cannot apply coercion in opposing the other’s position. In Singapore’s religious context, Christianity is in that free market situation, whereas Islam is in my opinion still largely objectivated. My data has shown that subjectivists do exist in Islam, though as a discontented minority. For this minority, the social forces of conformity and the structures of authority continue to be strong. This minority may possess a degree of subjectivized consciousness, but finds itself having to conform to the dominant 162 paradigm because of social enforcement rather than personal convictionagency capitulates to the force of structure. 5. Strategies for postmodernity In Spiritual Marketplace (1999) Wade Clark Roof discussed extensively the notion that religion in broad terms will attempt to be simultaneously fluid and grounded, where beliefs “mix freely with ideologies, experiential language, and cultural and identity themes.” And while objectivists may interpret this as adulterating religion, Roof asserts that this is simply “how lived religion functions in any cultural context and is, to some extent, a source of its ongoing vitality and meaningfulness”. (Roof, 1999: 133) Roof also asserts that when religion engages in improvisation, this enhances its vitality and amounts to a creative refocusing of religious resources, allowing it to respond appropriately to new challenges. (Roof, 1999: 133) Drawing an analogy from jazz music, improvisation is not the breakdown of order, since there are rules to improvisation- primarily that it does not deviate from an agreed rhythmic base. Improvisation in religion too, involves a base, or a theological foundation upon which improvisation is grounded. Improvisation in expanding the expressive repertoire is contained within this base, fluidity does not violate grounding, and improvisation maneuvers within the limits. However, objectivists will likely insist that to improvise is to essentially compromise and lose grounding. On an institutional level, being fluid and grounded, is articulated in organizational practice, by attempts to detraditionalize but not disestablish itself, although objectivists would perceive the former process as being inseparable from the latter. My case study on Sonic Edge is an example of 163 how a mainline religious institution improvises to detraditionalize without disestablishing- allowing new forms of worship to coexist alongside established ones,17 catering to newer markets without relinquishing existing ones. I see this as institutional self-imposed but contained fragmentation, allowing adaptation to be monitored and providing the environment for improvisation, keeping change proverbially “in the family”. Anthony Giddens appropriately expresses the benefits of such an approach as this would provide an escape from compulsive repetitiveness and bring religion to where there is a chance of “developing authentic forms of human life that own little to the formulaic truths of tradition, but where the defense of tradition also has an important role”, (Flanagan, 1996: 156) since new forms of religiosity are successfully incorporated into religious tradition, and are taken ownership of by culturally diverse adherents. Whether it is getting “tattooed for Christ” or worshiping with gothic music, (Flory and Miller, 2000) the possibilities for new forms of religiosity and sacred expression are seemingly endless. 6. The sacred and profane As opposed to what secularization theorists would argue, I am a strong believer in the resilience of the sacred, that the sacred will find its way in postmodern conditions, as it has through the age of rationalization. If faith finds new forms, and spirituality finds new modes of expression, (Lyon, 2000: 148) it will be insufficient for the researcher to study institutionalized religion since the sacred is just as much “out there” as it is contained and mediated by 17 At different times and different physical locations within the church. 164 religious institutions. Although my study looks at sacred activity in the popular culture realm instigated by actors within religious institutions, future research agendas might consider expressions of religiosity in everyday life apart from what is institutionalized, like an in-depth phenomenological study of individuated worship mediated by techno music, and how individuals practice their religiosity in typically unreligious locations like pubs, dance clubs, etc. My own view is not as pessimistic as Phillip Hammond’s which posits the extravasation of the sacred as a negative development where “holy things have escaped from their proper vessel”, constituting a crisis in American liberal Protestantism. (Hammond, 2000: 3) Indeed it is when religious institutions attempt to impose themselves as the “proper” vessel that they consequently exclude the very people they seek to save. But in fact, if the sacred is extravasated, it means that it is “out there” and accessible to potential adherents, and this is precisely the motivating rationale behind the case studies of implicit religion as popular culture that I have presented, where magician and pop-star pastors personify the extravasated sacred, and seek to influence and reform the entertainment industry and positively influence society. 7. Conceptual appeal: separation of the sacred from the religious Here I extend a conceptual appeal regarding institutionalized faiths. This appeal calls for religions to recognize the conceptual separation of the sacred from the religious. According to Otto, (1970) what is ‘religious’ pertains to the sacred with moral and rational injunctions conferred upon it. Simply put, what is ‘religious’ is the sacred being put into practice, or the expressive 165 method applied to the sacred. In fact, religion has no more monopoly over the sacred, than politics has over power. Humans have notions of sacred in all domains of life, evident in how the family, democracy, the environment, and aesthetic conventions are considered sacred to some groups of people in certain variations. When religions are unable to conceptually distinguish the sacred from the religious, when actors and institutions see their religious practice as the essence of the sacred itself, then there is no basis for tolerance of other cultural interpretations of the sacred. Monopolizing the sacred becomes a matter of default that stems from a narrow interpretation of culture. Separating the sacred from the religious would require acknowledgement on the part of religious institutions that ways of practicing the sacred are not sacred in themselves, and that there is in fact “enormous empirical variousness” in dispositions like “reverential” and “worshipful”, (Geertz, 1968: 11) just as anger can be expressed through passive silence or through all out rage. Selfreflexivity would be required, which can sometimes be painful. This here is not a simplistic call for religious institutions to shed all traditions- because indeed some traditions are worth holding on to and perpetuating. Rather, it is a call for religious institutions to apply self-reflexivity in light of their situated cultural context: preserving, relinquishing or birthing new traditions where the situation calls for. Dealing with the crisis of ritual in the short term would be better than dealing with a crisis of existence in the long term, if traditional religions devolve into an isolated subculture of a “cognitive minority”. (Berger, 1967: 153) 166 8. A final note: Christianity and Islam Although this thesis has looked at Christianity and Islam in Singapore as its empirical field, there has been no attempt at a comprehensive comparative analysis between the two faiths in their relationship to popular culture. This is in part due to the fact that there are much fewer visible manifestations of Islamic popular culture than there are Christian manifestations. In my field work, both explicit and implicit manifestations of Christianized popular culture were evident. However, while there are explicit manifestations of Islamicized popular culture (Nasyid music), there were no corresponding implicit manifestations in the vein of magic and pop-star pastors, or covertly religious entertainment organizations like Awakening Productions and Gateway Entertainment (Chapter 4). A possible explanation is that it is simply a matter of differential development: that compared to Christianity, Islam has not developed as many forms of religious popular culture and it is merely a matter of time before it will. But a much more plausible hypothesis is that there are fundamental differences in the two faiths that determine Islam will not be “popular culturized” in the radical way that Christianity has. Perhaps there are some characteristics of Islam as belief and practice that have structural affinity with the objectivation paradigm. Perhaps Islam is much more ritual specific, and prescribes set behavior and not thinking alone. Hence piety is inscribed in ritual practice, so the Quran for instance is recited “not for the sake of contents but as a pious act.” (Hodgson, 2003: 373) In other words, form or ritual practice is piety, how then can there be room for form fluidity, since form is content and practice is piety? This contrasts to Christianity, more specifically 167 Reformation Protestantism and Luther’s notion of individuated faith, and a personalized relationship with God rather than adherence to particular ritual forms. Hence form is not synonymous with content and practice is not piety, rather ritual is the expression of piety and not piety per se. This implies that the way to express piety can differ from individual to individual since the “heart” of one individual may say different things from the “heart” of another. (Berger, 1967: 158) This too, is evidence of the structural affinity that Christianity has with the subjectivization paradigm. Form rigidity and particularity may also explain why Islam cannot operate in the covert and disguise or leave ambiguous intentions, and justify action based purely on internal motivations without adherence to external criteria. This contrasts the way implicit Christian organizations and individuals act and justify their actions. This too requires a separate and more concentrated inquiry. Of course, we cannot speak of either faith as monolithic entities. So it would be both premature and spurious to credibly generalize objectivation and subjectivization to all of Islam and all of Christianity respectively. None the less, this thesis leaves open to future researches to perhaps comprehensively compare the two faiths, or to compare different factions within ostensibly the same faith to determine which faiths or factions have more affinity to either paradigm in terms of the structures of their beliefs. Subjectivization and objectivation may perhaps be the conceptual platforms from which we may better understand the likelihood of religious change and inter/intra religious conflict that is so salient in this post September 11th era. 168 169