FESTIVAL!
by Mary Barnett, M.Div. ‘16
Open, diverse, articulate, progressive, energetic: these adjectives describe both the church and the three-person team from St. Paul and the Redeemer Episcopal Church in Hyde Park, Chicago, the youngest team participating in the 2014 Congregations Project. Their on-going project reflects this congregation’s mission: to embody the radical welcome of Jesus. Three times a year, they gather the larger community in out-of-the box festivals of worship and fellowship that incorporate a deep experience of music not commonly heard in church.
St. Paul and the Redeemer is a neighborhood church with a metropolitan congregation. It is “a lively worshipping community,” the proposal reported, “led, and perhaps populated by, a majority of people who live mostly in their heads (e.g., introverts, academics).” The congregation is integrated, with a sizable percentage of African American members. The liturgy is “flexible yet traditional” and inclusive of all generations, and “all of our furniture is movable.” Worship at SPR is consistently lively and creative, although multi-tasking, affluent congregants are pressed for time and many can’t always attend regularly.
The congregation’s creative vision extends beyond its doors. The leaders who came to New Haven spoke sympathetically of the un-churched (or the de-churched, as lay leader Rachel Watson aptly expressed it, movingly describing her own experience as an African American woman raised in but ultimately leaving behind a beloved but politically and theologically conservative church. She had no intention of returning to church at all until she wandered into SPR after hearing the organ playing through an open door.) “ How willing have we really been to speak to a world that is interfaith? My own theology can’t exist without the testimony of people of other religions,” Watson said passionately. “What does church look like in a post-Christian society when we can no longer assume a Christian majority?” asked Rector Peter Lane. How do we celebrate and embrace this fact instead of rail against it?
Festivals are times when radical welcome can be danced; they are both eagerly anticipated by members and times of special outreach to newcomers. Recent offerings have included
· Arvo Part’s challenging Berliner Messe on All Saints Sunday 2012
· An entire weekend of Gullah Music with the Magnolia Singers of South Carolina (including an in-depth event at the public elementary school across the street) at Pentecost 2013
· A Saturday night concert and Sunday morning worship service that flowed into an eat, sing and dance party in the nave with the Fat Babies, a classic Chicago jazz band, for Pentecost 2014
Festivals are by definition uncommon times—rules can be stretched, songs can be louder, and power relationships can be reordered (for example, as the regular church musician cedes time and leadership to guests). People come to a festival not for what they already know and expect but to be surprised and to be changed. Festivals challenge “the shriveled anthropology falsely called Christian that has led our whole culture to seek elsewhere than in the church for the meaning of life and (humanity)” as Professor Tom Troeger (quoting Keith Bridston) proclaimed in his latchnote presentation. Troeger went on to celebrate the individual efforts of all the summer seminar congregations to buck “cognitive imperialist” tendencies and acknowledge the body of Christ in the actual bodies in church.
Festival is also a historic Christian practice, convener Dorothy Bass noted. Festivals are times out of time when strictly utilitarian values are subverted and the bare goodness of the universe is celebrated. “After all, if you think it is absurd to be born, what kind of birthday party can you have?” True festival, the twentieth-century Roman Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper argued, expresses a state of being “in tune with the world” that affirms the goodness of God and creation. Pieper quoted Nietszche when showing how radical festival can be in modern western culture: “The trick is not so much to arrange a festival but to find people who can enjoy it.” Bass noted that worshiping God—not only on these special Sundays but throughout the church year, including at SPR’s lively celebrations of Christmas and Easter—prepares people to enjoy festival in this deep sense, that is, to be in tune with God and God’s world.
Festivals also serve to set right popular misconceptions of Christianity that may be keeping people away as participants step out of accustomed roles and fears to proclaim and embody radical welcome for a post-modern world. And festivals are fun! In a sense SPR is willing to turn church inside out, wearing the radical welcome that insiders know resonates deep within the Christian tradition on their sleeves.
This congregation’s embrace of festivals also raises questions, and SPR leaders were eager to explore these with summer seminar colleagues. How can a smart, open and affluent congregation interested in justice think deeply and theologically about what it really means to incorporate different expressions of music and culture into its common life? How can we celebrate diverse music honorably, this team asked, instead of dabbling in superficial multiculturalism? Faculty member James Abington, noting the diversity that already exists in this congregation, urged the SPR team to continue boldly in expanding their repertoire, while faculty member John Ferguson pointed out that singing another culture’s music in your own accent does not demean that music or culture. Pushing back against another strong cultural tendency, the team was also eager to ensure that the festivals do not become merely performances to be consumed. Faculty member and liturgy expert Rita Ferrone responded to this concern by noting that festival is often paired with fasting in Christian tradition.. “How does your congregation model vulnerability?” she asked. “Can festival also embody or acknowledge dark times?” The idea of including a period of fasting and self-reflection before the festivals was explored and embraced as a fertile possibility.
Honest conversation about these deep questions demonstrated this team’s willingness to show up authentically with and for each other, for their congregation, and for other participants in this summer’s seminar. The theme of this week’s work together was embodiment. As a student reporter with an overview of an inspiring week my view is: embodiment is not just using your body more in church or using your head to find new ways to worship with your body. It’s showing up and telling the truth, with your whole self, in the moment, “within the permanent stresses and tensions of the world” as faculty Don Saliers put it. Articulate and thoughtful, vulnerable and celebrating, questioning and confident, courageous and tender - in a word, embodied - that’s SPR.