Religion as Trickery: Brown (5)

On Sunday night at "Atheism for Lent," we'll be watching and then discussing "Messiah," a documentary made by Derren Brown in 2005. Its Channel4 blurb reads,

Derren Brown takes his debunking mission to America. In a country where his mind control skills are unknown, he sets out once again to demonstrate just how easy it is to dupe people in believing five impossible things (almost) before breakfast.


He tries to convince five leading figures that he has powers in their particular field of expertise: Christian evangelism, alien abduction, psychic powers, New Age theories and contacting the dead.

Can he succeed in convincing the five “experts” of his powers? And will they go further and openly endorse him as a true practitioner?

Here's the entire documentary on Channel4's YouTube Channel, but it can also be downloaded from iTunes.

Derren Brown: "Messiah"

Religion as Trickery: Brown (4)

Here are a couple of the interviews with Derren Brown that I used to write the material on Religion as Trickery for our "Atheism for Lent" Course at Journey:

"Magic and Being Human" (Derren Brown interview with Nigel Warburton)

"Appearance and Reality" (Derren Brown interview with Nigel Warburton)

I'll post Derren Brown's Channel4 documentary, "Messiah," that we're going to watch and then discuss on Sunday night at "Atheism for Lent" tomorrow.

Religion as Trickery: Brown (3)

Knowledge about what Derren Brown calls the ‘false logic’ involved in religious, spiritual, magical, psychical and other paranormal practices can help in this process of questioning.

Thus Brown’s work often hinges on exhibitions and explanations of the human ability to anticipate and manipulate the actions of others, demonstrating powers that condition and convince, transform and convert, as well as revealing luck, fate or destiny to be intricately linked to aptitudes for working with predictability and probability. The elements of illusion involved here come, therefore, from the performer’s adeptness at misdirection and misinformation, rather than from the subject’s gullibility – though what Brown sees as a ‘hard-wired’ susceptibility to make patterns and tell stories that make sense of our experiences of impossibility plays a part as well.

As far as what I do goes, I see it about playing very specifically to people’s intelligence [and not naivety]. You create a false logic. You create what appears to be an A, B, C. So, you know, in the case of a card trick, A is you pick a card, B is I make some magic thing over it, and C is it’s in my pocket, and that seems impossible.

But you miss, in fact, between A and B there was another stage, where maybe you picked a card and then maybe I took them back and gave them a little shuffle and then handed them back to you or there was something in the way that you picked the card that actually I was forcing a card on you, I was controlling your decision, but it doesn’t seem important so you don’t remember that.

And similarly between me doing the magic part [B] and it ending up in my pocket [C] maybe I did something else, maybe I asked you to put the cards in your pocket and I gestured in my pocket as I did that and that’s when I loaded the card in, but it doesn’t seem important to the story and you remember an A, B, C that’s impossible.

But if you see it in terms of that’s actually A, C, E and the real route actually goes A, then B, then C, then D, then E, then it becomes quite possible.

So to me that’s not about gullibility, that’s about a certain grammar that people will follow… We can’t function unless we form those patterns and this presumably goes back to, “if you see half a sabre-toothed tiger coming round the corner at you, you don’t wait for the other half, you run.” …In the same way, the magician creates that pattern knowing that we are hard-wired, probably, to fall for that, and fall for the easier pattern that’s presented to us. (Brown, in interview with Nigel Warburton, "Appearance and Reality")

Just as we might have missed the steps that would expose our experience of an impossible card trick to be based on a false logic that is in turn grounded in a lack of information about the knowledge and skills of a talented magician, might there be steps – that are consciously taken and thereby exposed by Brown, but perhaps unconsciously taken by those in the institutions and ‘industries’ around religious, spiritual and paranormal beliefs and practices – that we also miss (Brown, "Messiah")?

What are the steps – A, C, and E – which we use to form our beliefs and practices? To what extent do we only ‘notice what supports our beliefs’ in order to construct patterns, and ‘disregard the rest’ ("Messiah")?

What might steps B and D actually be? What aspects of our beliefs and practices don’t we consciously remember or don’t seem important?

Are we telling ourselves the story of the easier pattern?

If religious beliefs and practices operate on the unconscious false logic of a magic trick...

...what happens to my faith?

Religion as Trickery: Brown (2)

Derren Brown is a performer who ‘combines magic, suggestion, psychology, misdirection and showmanship in order to seemingly predict and control human behaviour’ (website). Behind his performances lie both an atheistic scepticism and a form of suspicion which ask questions about ‘why we believe things’ (Brown, "Messiah"). His study of religion, psychology, magic, hypnosis, psychic ability, spiritualism, and New Age beliefs such as crystal energy and alien abduction leads him to debunk as delusions and deceptions contemporary religious, spiritual, or paranormal beliefs and practices, as well as the ‘mind tricks’ of entertainment, alternative medicine, and other everyday “bad sciences” (Brown, Tricks of the Mind; see also recommended reading list on his website).

His books and TV shows therefore encourage a suspicion of appearances that presupposes the distinctions made by Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche between manifest and latent motives. Brown’s conscious manipulation of human behaviour, including performances in which he converts people to Christianity ‘with a single touch’ ("Messiah"), acts as a mirror to aid reflection upon some of the operative yet unconscious motivations involved in all systems of belief and practice.


What Brown does primarily interests him (and his audiences) not at the transcendent level at which ontological or metaphysical questions are asked about the existence of God or UFOs, the ability of psychics, or the power of crystal energy – but at the immanent level at which historical, sociological and, particularly, psychological questions are asked about how and why we come to believe and do certain things.

Talking to a psychic, there’s the cheap illusion of her psychic ability or his psychic ability that’s questionable, but what to me is more interesting is the human level, the fact that I could sit and listen to a psychic and be so convinced, what that actually says about me and us as people and the way we interact and the way that we do form those patterns, the way that we will see design where there is none, the way that we’ll come to those conclusions, at a purely psychological level is so much more interesting, ’cos that says something about us as humans, which ultimately has to be more powerful and more beautiful than nonsensical guff about the ether. (Brown, in interview with Nigel Warburton, "Magic and Being Human")

The more interesting illusions that Brown suspects are involved in religion – as well as, for example, in cold reading (whereby the reader conveys more details about another person than s/he actually does know) and slight-of-hand entertainment – are not related to degrees of either incredulity or gullibility. He does, however, stress the importance of information. He says, ‘it doesn’t really matter how much you believe in it or [don’t] believe in it;’ instead, it depends on whether you have ‘specific knowledge about specific skills’ that magicians or psychics or religious institutions and practitioners employ (in interview with Nigel Warburton, "Appearance and Reality"). For example, he notes that ‘[r]eligions tend to encourage either high-energy crowd activity or candle-lit monotony to invoke a suggestible state among the congregation.’

As ‘intelligent human beings,’ Brown suggests therefore that ‘we should be prepared to question our beliefs and [to question] the people who encourage us to make life decisions based on the information they give us’ ("Messiah").

Religion as Trickery: Brown (1)

Derren Brown, interview with Richard Dawkins for Dawkins' Channel4 programme, "The Enemies of Reason."



Richard Dawkins: Where does your scepticism come from?

Derren Brown: Well, in terms of my history, I used to be a very devout Christian when I was younger, but didn’t have a Christian family, didn’t have Christian friends… but it came from a Bible reading class when I was young; it was an unpleasant childhood indoctrination. But because I grew up without a Christian peer group, when I got to university it was relatively easy for me to kind of think my way out of it, to start to challenge it and not feel too much guilt…

At the same time I was getting into magic and, through magic, realising how things like tarot cards and psychics really work and that there’s nothing mystical about it that could therefore be seen as dangerous, but it’s just simply sort of rubbish and charlatanism and psychology at work…

I’d talked to psychics and I’d listened to their sort of circular beliefs and I remembering thinking, “I am doing exactly the same thing, but as a Christian.” The only difference is that it’s easier to laugh at them because it’s a fringe belief, whereas my belief is so much more endorsed institutionally, it’s more respectable, that I thought, “I’m just being a hypocrite.”

So I started to read some theology texts and books about how the Bible really came together and a kind of mixture of books that I hoped would at least challenge my easy, pat answers that I had as a young Christian. And I felt that if I could just undo all the easy answers, if I just had a bunch of questions, that I might actually be able to build a much stronger, more defensible faith from it.

And then that sort of just didn’t happen. It just all seemed silly and I realised that there was no going back, and once you realise that the Bible isn’t an historical account of things that have happened, then, you’re sort of left with no basis for it at all.

From that, then, I wanted to defend my non-belief as strongly as I felt that I should’ve been able to defend it as a believer, so that’s something that’s been left with me.

Emerging Church Article

My Expository Times article, "'I Hate Your Church; What I Want is My Kingdom': Emerging Spiritualities in the UK Emerging Church Milieu" gets a mention over at The Immanent Frame, a communal interdisciplinary blog that posts about secularism, religion and the public sphere.

"I Hate Your Church..." Published

My Expository Times article on the emerging church ("'I Hate Your Church; What I Want is My Kingdom': Emerging Spiritualities in the UK Emerging Church Milieu") is now available online. You can access the abstract for free here, but you'll have to subscribe to The Expository Times, purchase short-term access, or log-in using an Athens account or university homepage.

I'm not allowed to distribute the article either.


The article briefly assesses current ways of defining "the emerging church" and suggests the value of the notion of a "milieu." Borrowing from Gordon Lynch's work on progressive spirituality, the concept of a global "emerging church milieu" (with regional milieus within it, e.g. "US emerging church milieu" or "UK emerging church milieu" etc) allows the emerging church to be portrayed as a coherent religious phenomenon without ignoring local differences and divergences.


I then enumerate what I see as the six commitments of emerging church discourse. These are commitments to:

1. "glocal" contextualisation,
2. "ancient-future" traditions,
3. organisational experimentation,
4. exploring postmodern thought,
5. (re)thinking theology, and
6. socially, politically and environmentally just living.

Not having much space in which to present these commitments in this article, I go into much more detail in my doctoral thesis, but these commitments (which obviously overlap with other Christian and non-Christian milieus beyond the emerging church milieu) are variously understood and put into practice multifariously.


Then I identify two spiritualities which emerge from this milieu: Deep Church spirituality and A/Theistic spirituality. These two spiritualities were primarily presented as hermeneutics in my thesis, but they can also be thought of as spiritualities. In my postdoctoral research, I hope to explore them as social imaginaries. Again, I didn't have the room to go into much detail in this article, but I hope to publish a few academic journal articles and a monograph that will bring my library basement destined thesis to the masses!

My Expository Times article then concludes by reflecting upon the missional orientation of these two emerging church spiritualities. Following a question that John Hull asked of fresh expressions of church in Mission-Shaped Church and Mission-Shaped Questions, I wonder whether Deep Church and A/Theistic spiritualities are kingdom-shaped or church-shaped in their missiologies.

Back from Paris

So Sim and I got back from Paris, after a very hot few days wandering around looking at pretty things. We loved the Louvre and Musee Rodin, and watched the sunset from the Eiffel Tower. But my French is incredibly rusty and what I've picked back up from reading deconstructive theology isn't exactly helpful. Only the first half of Je ne sais pas, il faut croire is actually useful!!!


I heard back from Sexualities, to whom I had submitted my "Queerying The Spiritual Revolution: Religious Mediation among LGBT Christians" article (see here), and the editor and reviewers asked me to revise a few things. As I'm madly trying to complete my thesis, however, I'm quite uncertain as to whether or not to spend time on it and resubmit it. The revisions they asked for really would transform the piece into something much more socially scientific, with methodology sections and tonnes of data, whereas the piece is more theoretical than that, dealing with broader implications rather than the specifics of my study. My supervisor suggested Theology and Sexuality, but I'm not sure that's quite right either, possibly still too specialist. There are important implications to draw from this piece beyond the boundaries of sexuality studies. I was thinking of aiming high and going for the Journal of Contemporary Religion, which is a broader journal in which more people will be engaged in the mapping of the contemporary religious and spiritual landscape that will bring them in contact with Paul Heelas and Linda Woodhead's The Spiritual Revolution in the first place. This means they might be more my audience, than a sexualities journal. JCR deals with

• "classical topics in the study of religion, such as secularisation and the vitality of religion or traditional sectarian movements;
• "more recent developments in the study of religion, including religion and social problems, religion and the environment, religion and education, the transmission of religion, the materialisation and visualisation of religion in various forms, new forms of religious pluralism, the rise of new forms of religion and spirituality, religion and the Internet, religion and science, religion and globalisation, religion and the economy, etc.
• "theoretical approaches to the study of religion;
• "discussions of method in relation to empirical research;
• "qualitative and quantitative research and related issues."

My article seems to fit well here. Here's the abstract (again):

This article uses small-scale studies among LGBT Christians to “queery” the dualistic framework of Heelas and Woodhead’s The Spiritual Revolution. Theories of mediation are required to explain the practices and beliefs of those negotiating both subjective-life and life-as modes of living. Identity integration strategies among LGBT Christians suggest ways in which individuals and communities might navigate these categories of religious significance and authority. Data confirms that different forms of life-as religions-cum-spiritualities are making the subjective turn; that participants nevertheless alternate between rather than ‘fuse’ internal and (albeit reconstructed) external authorities; and that Heelas’ more recent God without/“god” within distinction is a clearer marker of whether practitioners are already affiliated to either transcendent theism or inner-life spirituality and of when a transition from one to the other has been or is being undertaken.

Key words:

• Christianity;
• Heelas and Woodhead;
• LGBT;
• inner-life spirituality;
• spiritual revolution.

Religious Mediation among LGBT Christians

After blogging twice (here, and here) about trying to write up my MA research into an article, and in response to the call for papers from late last year, I've finally submitted my entry to the journal Sexualities' special edition on religion and spirituality. It's entitled "Queerying The Spiritual Revolution: Religious Mediation among LGBT Christians." It has morphed significantly both from my MA dissertation (now also including data from my other MA studies, including a congregational study of the spirituality of an MCC in the North of England, and an exploration of LGB identity as portrayed in the LGCM archives) and from my previous attempts to get the 25,000 words down to under 6,000! It's become much less about LGBT Christians and much more about how sociologists of religion and spirituality approach their phenomena, particularly how the methodological categories used by Heelas and Woodhead in their (2005) The Spiritual Revolution are problematized in my small scale studies. This might mean that it isn't "sexual" enough for Sexualities, but we'll see. If it doesn't get accepted, at least I've (finally) got it to say what I want it to say and to do it in under 6,000 words.

Here's the final version of the abstract:

This article uses small-scale studies among LGBT Christians to “queery” the dualistic framework of Heelas and Woodhead’s The Spiritual Revolution. Theories of mediation are required to explain the practices and beliefs of those negotiating both subjective-life and life-as modes of living. Identity integration strategies among LGBT Christians suggest ways in which individuals and communities might navigate these categories of religious significance and authority. Data confirms that different forms of life-as religions-cum-spiritualities are making the subjective turn; that participants nevertheless alternate between rather than ‘fuse’ internal and (albeit reconstructed) external authorities; and that Heelas’ more recent God without/“god” within distinction is a clearer marker of whether practitioners are already affiliated to either transcendent theism or inner-life spirituality and of when a transition from one to the other has been or is being undertaken.

Key words:

• Christianity;
• Heelas and Woodhead;
• LGBT;
• inner-life spirituality;
• spiritual revolution.

Sexualities Special Issue

The journal Sexualities: Studies in Culture and Society is planning a "Sexuality and Religion/Spirituality" Special Issue for next year. I'm going to (finally) try and finish translating my MA thesis (25,000 words) into an article (6,000 words) and submit it. The call for papers from Andrew Yip reads:

Sex and religion are often considered incompatible. Western culture is often perceived as being increasingly secular and sexualised; and religions, sex-constraining (if not sex-negative), normalising heterosexual marriage. Thus, social scientific study of religion/spirituality which for a long time focuses on macro and meso issues such as secularisation and religious authority structures tends to marginalise the study of religiosity/spirituality on a micro level. Thus, ‘lived’ sexuality – particularly non-heterosexualities – is grossly under-researched within this approach.

On the other hand, the proliferation of social scientific literature on sexuality, including non-heterosexualities, has been encouraging in past decades. Yet, this literature often does not engage with the issue of religion/spirituality. This is particularly evident in literature on lesbian, gay, and bisexual – or more generally queer – sexualities. Indeed, queer identity is often constructed as anti-religion and anti-family (of origin), as religion and family are considered the last bastions of institutionalised heteronormativity and heterosexism.

This Special Issue aims to generate exciting insights into how religion/spirituality informs the ‘doing’ of sexuality, and vice versa, in diverse ways. With the return of religion to the social and geopolitical agenda, it is important that the study of sexuality – its diverse forms, meanings, practices, and significance – should seriously consider the role of institutionalised religion and non-institutionalised spirituality in this process. This will offer us a more nuanced way of understanding contemporary
sexual as well as social identities and lives.

Thus, this Special Issue seeks high-quality theoretical and empirical articles of between 5,500 and 6,000 words. Deadline: Monday 2 March 2009

So the deadline's a way aways, but I'm thinking about this now (procrastination!!!). Here's my (revised) abstract for the piece (you can read the original here) -

Working Title:
'Life-as’ and ‘Subjective-life’ Being and Believing among Lesbian Christians

Abstract:
This article examines Heelas and Woodhead’s (2005) The Spiritual Revolution in the context of non-heterosexual religiosity. It argues that the essentially dualistic nature of the theoretical framework used in the Kendal Project, whilst necessary for testing the subjectivization thesis, rests on the problematic anthropology of ‘life-as’ conformity and ‘subjective-life’ authenticity. I use the voices of a small, localised group of lesbian Christians to queer The Spiritual Revolution’s polarised construction of Western spiritual and religious practitioners’ modes of being and believing. Countering the mutual exclusivity presented in that volume, the women who participated in this study undertake one of several moves available to those in-between Heelas and Woodhead’s poles of internal (‘subjective-life’) and external (‘life-as’) sources of significance and authority. I argue that Heelas’ recent (2008) translation of these classificatory categories into those of transcendent theism (God without) and monistic spirituality (“god” within) is more useful for an analysis of the contemporary religious landscape. This research begins the process of spectrum analysis, suggesting that exploration of LGBT Christian identity integration and reflection upon the work of cognitive dissonance theorists can illuminate ways in which individuals and communities might move even between the dualism of God without and “god” within.

Inner-Life Spirituality Workshop - Colin's Paper

After heading off to Ambleside for fish and chips, we returned for a paper by Colin Campbell, 'Inner-Life Spirituality: World-Affirming or World-Rejecting? Ascetic or Mystic?'

• Colin hoped to address a possibile criticism of his recent publication The Easternization of the West, in which he advances his easternization thesis - though I have not read it yet! He began by characterizing Western civilization as having an active value orientation and Eastern civilization as having a contemplative value orientation. The West seeks to change the world through activism, whilst the East accepts the world as it is and seeks to discover the 'real' nature of the world through contemplation. Colin then posed the possible criticism of TEOFW: if easternization is taking place, then asceticism should be more prominent than is suggested by data about the religious landscape of the West.

Colin used Roy Wallis' distinction between world-affirming and world-rejecting, noting that Wallis' categorisation of the New Age Movement as world-affirming depends upon an analysis of how the movement advertises itself. Colin argued that a world-affirming orientation is used by Western new religious movements to advertise themselves because this is the way in which all religious movements recruit followers. Very few religious movements appeal to the benefits it brings in the after life (i.e. very few are world-rejecting in their self-presentation), and those that do have to simultaneously convince people that this world is about to end (e.g. various forms of millenarianism).

There is within new religious movements a strand of world-rejecting, despite their self-presentation as world-affirming, but there is also a difference here between Western and Eastern reasons for rejecting the world: Western world-rejection is based upon the world being constructed as evil; Eastern world-rejection is based upon the world being constructed as material. In the latter, there is not exactly an opposition between materiality and spirituality (the 'true' nature of existence needs to be understood). Here, experience of the world is rejected (rather than the world itself). Experience of the world is rejected because it is not what an enlightened people should be experiencing. It is illusion, maya. Only by rejecting the world as it is experienced can enlightenment be achieved through which the 'proper' experience of reality is gained.

So, back to the possible criticism of Colin's book. If the easternization thesis is correct, there should be an increase in the rejection of the world as it is experienced and a decrease in the Western value orientation of 'instrumental activism' (Talcott Parsons). An active mastery of the world, of doing, of getting things done, of what Cora du Bois calls 'effort optimism,' should be on the decrease... but is there evidence of this?

Colin notes the growing disatisfaction with the production ethic, a movement away from maximizing production capacity, a drawing back from the aggressive intervention in nature, and a greater stress upon non-intervention. He notes that an interesting linguistic movement has occured in which if you are an activist today you are more likely to be acting in the interests of non-action, of human non-intervention - for example, acting for the preservation of rainforests and other natural habitats.

Colin therefore adds to the activism and contemplation modes of action a third: being in becoming, in which there is activity coupled with the development of the self as an integrated whole. Success isn't measured by changes made to the world, but by changes made to the self. Activism is still observable in the West, and humans are understood as agents of change, but due to easternization a shift has occured through which humans are no longer agents changing an external world but agents changing themselves. It is a mentalized or psychologized activism. I thought Colin would add (but he didn't at this particular point) that it is an easternized activism.

The ascetic response to the tension between your hopes of experiencing the world and your actual experienc of the world is to change the world, but the mystic response is to change the self. A shift has occured from 1) activism > 2) having the right attitude helps achieve activist goals > 3) attitude is sufficient to effect the change sought. So the West has become easternized in this sense: there is still an activist value orientation (classic West), it is still about the self and what the self achieves (modernism), but it is an internal change rather than an external change that will achieve it (classic East).

Inner-Life Spirituality Publication Workshop - Eileen's Paper

Professors Paul Heelas (Lancaster University) and Dick Houtman (Erasmus University, Rotterdam) are editing a collection of work surrounding inner-life spirituality, and are this week holding an invitation-only publication workshop in the Lake District. As the Research Student representative at Lancaster, Paul asked me to organise a convoy of interested students who would like to attend the opening evening. So off we went to the beautiful setting of the Langdale Chase Hotel (a choice which Prof. Eileen Barker (LSE) later commented on as a 'spiritual' site for a conference, in contrast to something like a 'religious' Methodist Central Hall).

The workshop was also in honour of Ninian Smart, who established the first department of Religious Studies (at Lancaster University, of course!), and his widow Lubushka attended. Dr. Deborah F. Sawyer welcomed everyone, and handed over to Marion McClintock, who worked as Lancaster University's academic registrar (and honorary historian and archivist) from 1968 to 2006 and who reflected warmly on Ninian Smart.

The title of Eileen Barker's presentation "The God Within" was a little misleading, as we had been hoping she would shed more light on this common distinction between religion (the God without) and spirituality (the God within), but instead she gave an interesting overview of what she referred to as the 'diversification' of the religious and secular spheres. She had this diagram on a flipchart:

Apathetic secularism: where religion and/or spirituality is a matter of indifference. People just don't feel the need to think about it; they are disinterested in religion. In the discussion after the paper, a few other phrases were used: 'don't give a damn,' 'can't be arsed.' Soft secularism: where religions are turned to in times of personal or national crisis, and are used to mark rites of passage without evidence of sustained committment. Hard secularism: really a religion in itself, e.g. Richard Dawkins. Conservative fundamentalist religions and Traditional religions were not really touched upon as areas of Eileen's research interest, but there influence on other forms of religiosity and secularism are important. New Religious Movements: there are several definitions 'out there' in the sociology of religion, and Eileen didn't spend much time here either, because her focus is on Spiritualities.

Negative spiritualists: Those who are spiritual primarily because of an anti-religion (i.e. institutionalised religion) stance. Here there are a range of beliefs which Eileen characterised as primarily superstitious (in technical sense). She noted negative views not only towards members of established or traditional religions, but also of ethnic minorities and minority faiths.

Postive spiritualists: Those that are characteristically ecologically aware, liberal in their general outlook, and have a more systematic world view (according to whichever form of spirituality) rather than the particular superstitions of the negative spiritualists.

Further, a hand out charted the ideal-typical distinctions Eileen sees between Scriptural religiosity (religions [primarily of The Book]) and spirituality:

Religiosity (of The Book)
The Divine: Transcendent and Particular
Source: Without
Origins: Creation
Source of Knowledge: Scripture / Revelation
Authority: Dogma / Priest / Tradition
Theodicy: Evil / Sin / Satan
Life after death: Salvation / Resurrection / Damnation
Time: Temporal / Historical
Change: Lineal: past / present / future
Perspective: Analytical
Anthropology: Man in God’s image
Distinctions: Dichotomous: Them / Us
Sex/gender: Male / (female)
Relations: Controlling
Social Identity: Group (membership of tradition)
Control: External authority
Organisational unit: Institution / Family
Place of worship: Synagogue; church; mosque
Communication: Vertical hierarchy

Spirituality
The Divine: Immanent and cosmic
Source: Within
Origins: Creating
Source of Knowledge: Experience / mysticism
Authority: Personal experience
Theodicy: Lack of attunement, balance and / or awareness
Life after death: Reincarnation / Transmigration / Moksa
Time: Eternal / a-historical
Change: Cyclical: then / now / then
Perspective: Holistic / syncretistic
Anthropology: Humans as part of Nature
Distinctions: Complementarity: Us (them = them/us)
Sex/gender: Feminine-(masculine)
Relations: Relating (‘sharing’)
Social Identity: The inner ‘me’ / the ‘true self’
Control: Internal responsibility
Organisational unit: Individual (in relation)
Place of worship: Informal building; temple; shrine; open air
Communication: Horizontal networking

Eileen was clear that her ideal-types are dichotomies from which to begin, knowing that you will never find 'pure' examples of them, where a concrete example fits exactly with your model. She said that 'I don't believe what I've done... I'm denying that they exist in the pure form.'

I think that this is the problem with Paul and Linda's distinction between 'life-as' religion and 'subjective-life' spirituality. Rather than beginning with a dichotomy that is modified as you conduct fieldwork, I think that their fieldwork was made to fit a mould which doesn't exist in reality. I don't there are many (if any) concrete examples of purely 'life-as' religion - nor many concrete examples of purely 'subjective-life' spirituality... because as soon as you start talking to real people clean, neat dichotomies become blurred. I haven't blogged much about the Kendal Project and Paul and Linda's The Spiritual Revolution (here, a little), but I hope to publish my Masters thesis which uses non-heterosexual religiosity to queer their thesis, particularly their dichotomy of 'life-as' and 'subjective-life.'

I think that Eileen is right to reflect on the nature of ideal-types and their function within the sociology of religion.

The Values of Metal?

I recently helped out a former Religious Studies student of mine by filling out a questionnaire about the values of metal music and I thought I’d post some thoughts about it here. Christian Goths have long been among my interests for future research, so it was a really interesting questionnaire for me.

For a bit of background, here’s some of the bands I listen to: Nine Inch Nails are my favourite, closely followed by Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, Tool and Korn. There’s also My Ruin, Disturbed, Apocalyptica, Within Temptation, Nightwish, and Lacuna Coil – the last four of which could be called rock opera or orchestral metal rather than industrial rock like MM. I also like Switchblade Symphony who are (a now-split) goth/electro pop group (NIN are also pretty poppy). Then there’s stuff like Lycia, Faith and the Muse, This Ascension, and Love Spirals Downwards, which are more like ethereal goth, and the Cocteau Twins, of course. The Mission and Siouxsie and the Banshees can’t be left out, and neither can a few others that harbour a love of eighties goth electro/pop, like London After Midnight and The Cruxshadows.

Anyway, here are my thoughts, distilled through the process of justifying my musical tastes to my partner – he is now at the point where he can have a great time at Marilyn Manson, NIN and Korn concerts! – and as articulated in a questionnaire about the values of metal.

In a nutshell, I think that the values of the music I listen to revolve around three things:

• politics,
• religion,
• and sex.
  
  

Politically, RATM [Rage Against the Machine] are one of the most obvious band to mention in this respect. But I think that artists like Marilyn Manson, Trent Reznor [NIN] and Jonathon Davies [Korn] are particularly adept at tuning into a level of discontent with current social trends (capitalism and consumerism, for example) and current events (for example, the war in Iraq) and expressing this discontent creatively through music and lyrics.

When Marilyn Manson sings about fascism, he isn’t espousing that as an appropriate model for society; rather, he is trying to point to the fact that capitalism, liberal democracy, etc, is no more an appropriate model for society than fascism – it’s doing just as much damage to people as fascism does. These artists deconstruct the accepted meta-narratives of society, through which the status quo is justified and maintained, thereby trying to destabilise it through, among other things, word play, parody and anger.

A good example is the reaction I see in music to the position the UK and US took on the invasion of Afghanistan and the war in Iraq. It’s clear in Nine Inch Nails’ last album Year Zero, and even Muse are singing about it in their track Take a Bow! I don’t think that anyone can miss the anti-war sentiments in a lot of music today.

In terms of religion, the music I listen to does two things. Firstly, it critiques “traditional,” institutionalized, authoritarian, exclusivistic, patriarchal, homophobic Religion. This is most clearly seen in the kind of deconstructive lyrics I mentioned above, particularly in the music of NIN and MM, but another good example is Jonny Cash’s Personal Jesus which parodies televangelism and other aspects of American evangelical culture.

But, secondly, music enables spiritual experience and therefore constructs a much more positive (though definitely not institutional) religiosity that is probably more accurately called a spirituality. So, rather than having to contain any overt spiritual message in and of itself, metal is also a vehicle for me to have spiritual experiences.

And then, of course, there’s sex. Often, the lyrics themselves espouse particular approaches to sexuality – liberal, subversive, and explicit – for example, Nine Inch Nail’s Closer. However, other tracks are either less explicit in their lyrics or the music itself is sexual, with particular rhythms and bluesy chords which evoke the sexuality of metal’s musical roots. Also metal is often very poetic and mythological. Love and tragedy are a very common theme among lyricists – Marilyn Manson’s last album Eat Me, Drink Me is a good example of this!!!

In relation to these three things I think that metal deconstructs the normative value systems which uphold the status quo. Metal attempts to expose the power plays in contemporary society which privilege some of its elements whilst oppressing others. So its values are that of equalising power imbalances through espousing the values of marginalised groups.

I share many of these values, especially anti-war sentiments, socialist and anarchic political leanings, spiritual movements away from institutionalised religion towards what could be called an a/theism, and fluid sexual identity.

Some of my favourite lyrics, some rock, some not (‘xcuse the French):

“Well did you hear, there’s a natural order? Those most deserving will end up with the most? That the cream cannot help but always rise up to the top? Well I say, sh*t floats. Bluntly put, in the fewest of words, c*nts are still running the world,” Jarvis Cocker, Running the World.

“This is Evolution, the monkey, the man, then the gun,” Marilyn Manson, Cruci-Fiction in Space.

“I pushed a button and elected him to office, he pushed a button and dropped a bomb, you pushed a button and can watch it on the television, those m*th*rf*ck*rs didn’t last too long,” Nine Inch Nails, Capital G.

“I never really hated the one true God, but the god of the people I hated,” Marilyn Manson, Disposable Teens.

“Lift up the receiver, I’ll make you believer, I will deliver, you know I’m a forgiver,” Johnny Cash, Personal Jesus.

“And it give us sight, and you’ll see the light, and it burns so bright, now we know we’re right. When his kingdom comes, and thy will be done, we’ve just begun, we’re the chosen ones. You cannot win, with the colour of your skin, you won’t be getting into the Promised Land. It’s just another case, you people still don’t know your place, step aside, out the way, wipe that look off your face, cause we are the divine separated from the swine, come on, sing along, everybody now, God-given,” Nine Inch Nails, God Given.

“Cast a spell, cast a spell on the country you run. And risk, you will risk, you will risk all their lives and their souls. Death, you bring death, and destruction to all that you touch. Yeah hex, feed the hex, feed the hex on the country you love. What we’ve become, is contrary to what we want. Now burn, you will burn, you will burn in hell, yeah you’ll burn in hell for your sins,” Muse, Take a Bow.

“Return to me, return to me, return to me, turn to me, leave me no one. Return to me, return to me, return to me, turn to me, case aside. Return to me, return to me, return to me, turn to me, leave me no one. Turn to me, return to me, return to me, you’ve made me turn away,” Disturbed, Prayer.

“I cross the oceans, I cross the seas, I cross the mountains, like a new disease. Take a look at the Earth from a plane, you’ll see the Earth cut up and in pain. I’m the scum of the Earth, I am a cancer, I am humanity,” Filter, Cancer.

“Some of those that work forces, are the same that burn crosses,” RATM, Killing in the Name of.

“San Quentin, may you rot and burn in hell. May your walls fall and may I live to tell. May all the world forget you ever stood. And may all the world regret you did no good,” Johnny Cash, San Quentin.