Postmodernity and culture

sociological wagers of the self in theology

Kieran Flanagan

pp. 152-173

in: Kieran Flanagan, Peter C. Jupp (eds), Postmodernity, sociology and religion, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Abstract

The Nine O"Clock Service at Ponds Forge Sports Complex in the centre of Sheffield attracted a large congregation. With the public support of the Anglican Bishop of Sheffield, the service took the form of a Planetary Mass. The atmosphere was described as "a sea of paradox". In the Mass, beat, dance, light and meditation were used to "reconnect people with God". The rite seemed filled with the unexpected. The offertory procession included the expected bread and wine, but also earth and a Big Mac, when prayers were said pointedly "for integrity". Sacraments were regarded as the "epicentre of a new Big Bang" and were illustrated with dance, clockwise and anti-clockwise. The rite catered for those wrecked by the hard end of culture. A New Age Church, in sympathy with the creation theology of an ex-Dominican, Matthew Fox, sought a site of relevance in the field of cultural change. A searching for repentance and change in attitudes to creation was incorporated in a seeking for Songs of Post-modernism. Theories of postfeminism and deconstruction were also embodied in this form of rite that might seem to express all that a sociologist could hope for, signifying all his analytical dreams, with a priestly blessing of empowerment and sacralisation.¹