In Light of the Gospel

I recently read James K. A. Smith’s book, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (a book I would recommend), and he has a powerful description of some of the areas of religious expression in our culture. Doug Wilson brought this to my mind with this helpful collection of quotes:

He calls the mall “one of the most important religious sites in our metropolitan area” (p. 19). The site is “throbbing with pilgrims” (p. 19). As we enter, we are “ushered into a narthex of sorts” (p. 20). “The layout of this temple has architectural echoes that hark back to medieval cathedrals — mammoth religious spaces that can absorb all kinds of different religious activities all at one time” (p. 21). He points to the product posters, exemplifying the “catholicity of this iconography” (p. 21). When we have found our holy object, that which we have been seeking, lo, these many days, “we proceed to the altar” (p. 22). Afterwards we are released “by the priest with a benediction” (p. 22). I don’t know about Smith, but in my neck of the woods, that benediction is usually “have a nice day!” delivered by a cute coed priestess. And if you think that Smith is simply being clever with some similarities, he pushes back against the charge. “But I want to adamantly contend that describing the mall as a religious site is not merely a metaphor or an analogy” (p. 23).

Wilson goes on to point out that Smith forgot about the Sunday School classes: the 8-theater cineplex that you find in every religious site. People cram into these instruction halls, cry together, eat together, and learn the narrative of this culture together. This reminded me of two quotes that showed up recently on Evangel. No explanation needed:

I meet people occasionally who think motion pictures, the product Hollywood makes, is merely entertainment, has nothing to do with education. That’s one of the darndest fool fantasies that is current . . . . Anything that brings you to tears by way of drama does something to the deepest roots of our personality. All movies, good or bad, are educational and Hollywood is the foremost educational institution on earth. What, Hollywood more important Harvard? The answer is not as clean as Harvard, but nevertheless farther reaching.

–Carl Sandburg, poet laureate

I believe cinema is now the most powerful secular religion and people gather in cinemas to experience things collectively the way they once did in church. The cinema storytellers have become the new priests. They’re doing a lot of the work of our religious institutions, which have so concretized the metaphors in their stories, taken so much of the poetry, mystery and mysticism out of religious belief, that people look for other places to question their spirituality.

–George Miller, filmmaker