1

Introduction: From the Screen to the Scene

Tonight God is a DJ. This is my Church, the place where I heal my hurts... 1 -Faithless Humanity in the late modern era is hearing the siren call of globalisation. The techno-screens have become the symbolic gates to a new world, a world in which we bring our dreams, hopes and fears, and the question that haunts many of us: will our future be human? This new world, according to Nicholas Negroponte is to be an angelic sphere of Homo Digitalis, in which each generation will become more digital than the preceding one.2 Charles Leadbeater, one of the leading thinkers behind the British government policy developments in the: Knowledge Driven Economy, regards the clash between market and community as a dead end. The goal of politics in the 21st century should be to maximise knowledge, announces Leadbeater.3 Welcome to the new economy, the magical thin-air world of: Homo Gnosis. In the search for humanity, we could draw on Sherry Turkles multipleprotean self,4 in online chatrooms where, virtual communities offer a dramatic new context in which to think about human identity in the age of the internet5, or other ritual forms of online communication and hyperreality, immersing human identity in a new techno-ontology, in which cyberspace is nothing less than the creation of a new global space of being6 Perhaps the symbolic meaning of being human can be discovered in the spirituality of popular space. Where the converging vortex of mainstream television, film, video, web portals, print media, shopping and fashion now provides our shared religious space; a global cathedral of communication, according to Lynn Schofield Clark, in which traditional religious symbols have become flattened, and popular media-culture now becomes the source and the primary language for meaning.7 Fears are continuing to surface, however, in our shared search for community, identity and religious meaning. Voices call for the humanization of our techno-spaces. Questions are raised about the loss of the plausability of Christian tradition and its rich heritage of symbolic practices. The world cries out for practices which can bond human communities again ; solidarities which can enable people to engage resolutely with injustice, debt, disease and
1 2

Faithless, God is a DJ, Sunday 8PM. Cheeky Records, 1998. Negroponte, Nicholas. 1995. Being Digital. London: Coronet Books. p. 231. 3 Leadbeater, Charles. 2000. Living on Thin Air. London: Penguin Books. p. 16. 4 Turkle, Sherry. 1997. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Phoenix. p. 258. 5 Turkle, Ibid. p. 268. 6 Wertheim, Margaret. 2000. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A history of space from Dante to the Internet. London: Virago Press. p. 302. 7 Clark Lynn Schoeld, Building Bridges Between Theology and Media Studies Plenary Presentation to the Catholic Theological Society of America, 1998. in The International Study Commission on Media, Culture & Religion Web Site. Http://www.jmcommunications.com/english/clark2.htm

the multiple poverties faced by the enslaved poor, struggling to live within the corporeality of the worlds cities, under the burning sun of a global age. A new era, in which writer and cyber-guru Erik Davis reminds us, economy is god and the enormity of the worlds ills seems matched only by our incapacity to deal with them, and in the midst of the static and sonics of our electronic world, where the hoary old questions of the human condition--Who am I? Why am I here? How do I face others? How do I face the grave?--sound distant and muffled.8 Davis, tracing the historical investigation of humanitys religious identifications with technology, has doubts about the ability of what he calls: the idiot box and the media machines to deliver these pregnant voids.9 The thirst for spirituality among a growing number of the young, bereft of roots and the old certainties of their forebears, is currently at fever pitch. Davis, near end of his book, signals to his readers that the place to look may be a new network path; somewhere between the wiring, away from the greedy eyes of our satellite media skies. He warns however, that such clearings lie off-road, off the grid, offline. They are beyond instrumentality. They are holes in the net.10 Enter Scotland, the Rave.11 In 1994, thousands of young people raced from cities, towns and villages across Northern Britain, to experience: Rezerection, a rave held in a vast auditorium, just outside Edinburgh. While these fears, hopes and questions were clustering around our shared life and communion via the sacred screen, a generation was emerging out of the despair in the black hole of meaninglessness in late 80s Britain. In urban cities and housing schemes, kids switched off their televisions, unplugged their modems and rushed off to the rave. They danced together all night, in fields, abandoned aerodromes, industrial complexes, motorway petrol stations, beaches, streets, and forest clearings. Armed with mobile phones, whistles and flyers, and fresh from an experience which has become the rite of passage, among young people living in Britain today. The baptism into shared experiences of ecstasy-fuelled love, celebration and community, evoked the perfumed and fragmented symbols of a discarded Christendom. The symbolic language, which for many of them, seemed in some way, to name the specialness of their experiences and discoveries.

Davis, Eric. 1998. Techgnosis: Myth, magic and mysticism in the age of information. London: Serpents Tail. p. 335. 9 Davis, ibid. p335. 10 Davis, ibid. p335. 11 A comprehensive history of rave dance culture as a convergence of Ecstasy (MDMA), Music technology and Club P.A. technology, erupting among a socially marginalised generation in Scotland and England, can be found in: Simon Reynolds, Energy Flash: A Journey through Rave Music and Dance Culture, London: Picador, 1998.

The 12 year journey from rave events to city nightclubs, that has pushed Britain into the centre of worldwide superclub industry, and burgeoning dance festival culture, is shot through with Christian symbols, analogies, and metaphors. A tsunami of clubs, raves, dance festivals and events, swept through towns, villages, warehouses and cities, trumpeting their names, including: The Church, Heaven, Promised Land, Faith, Joy, Salvation, Gods Kitchen, Home, Angel, Communion, Spirit, Religion, Hope, Paradise, Ministry of Sin, The Sunday Service and The Kirk. This dissertation, aims to pull back the curtains; to reveal what it is that they are feeling, hearing and seeing in their world. What is their obsession with physicality, music, beat, dancing, collectives, the world of night-time, illegal substances, boisterous crowds, friends, play and vitality in in urban cities across the country? Why is it so immersed in religious language and practice? Why do they live among a galaxy of symbols that draws, without hint of emarrassment, so heavily from the world of the institutional and evangelical Christianity? Why is it still growing after 12 years? What is it about this spectacular sonic cosmos that has inspired the young across the world, which leaves the marketing mandarins of Coca Cola and McDonalds sputtering with envy? Are they pleasuredomes offering virtual McMonasteries, McCathedrals, and McChurches? DJ priests dispensing drug-fuelled blissed-out masses and virtual salvation - in a more corporeal guise? These questions spill out of a lived involvement with this world; my own searching faith in Christ is soaked in its religiosity and grapples with its dreams and agonies. This is where I live. In a sense, I have no choice; if my faith is to live here, my theology must live here also. At this period of Scotlands history, two generations are living, for the most part, without any living connection to their Christian roots. The Kirk lies somewhere back there in the 20th century with Queen, 2nd world war, and Empire. Most of the younger people now coming of age only ever hear of church, bible or Christ when it surfaces in obscure television documentaries, and jaded television productions which endlessly trawl the 20th century for new slants and hidden histories. Generation E12 now growing up and dancing between the spires and the castle of Edinburgh are not against church; it is just that they have no idea what it is, it simply does not exist in this world. They live, breathe and vibrate with one another, among their busy, noisy, buzzing galaxies of cinemas, malls, pubs, dance festivals, cafe-bars, community projects, city streets, neighbourhood collectives, recording studios, pavements and record shops; enfleshed in the beat, soaked to the bone, incarnated in the rhythm of the nightclub.13
12

Generation E is aMedia label for newer British club cultures; a generic umbrella term for all of its local genres, activities and global scenes. E stands for Ecstasy. Channel 4s new E4 channel, features a regular documentary series called: generation E. 13 For a more detailed background of the rave and dance phenomena in Edinburgh, see: Thomson, Paul. 2000. Club Cultures: 21st Century Churches?Exploring Social, Semiotic and Religious Patterns of Club Culture. p. 1-2.

Theological Background to Research: The Altar to the Unknown God

the future of humanity depends on culture - John Paul II 14 As a preparation for further theological exploration of the incarnational aspects of club culture in Britain, the tradition of the unknown god at this stage introduces a critical theme which runs through the body of the research. This stream also fuels the ground of a communication and research approach which has been ongoing for 12 years.15 This theological stream of tradition running through club culture, can be found in Pauls visit to Athens. (Acts 17) What is interesting about the Apostle Pauls visit to Athens is his attitude toward a particular pagan altar: the unknown god (Acts 17:23). Paul does not attack the local practice of worshipping of the unknown god. After experiencing initial disgust, at the array of idols festooning Athens the Apostle begins to discern between different categories of altars. Among the indulgent, idolatrous exotica of the visual symbols and images in the market, Paul begins to feel drawn to the altar of the unknown god. Is it some prophetic resisitance to the elite religious bohemianism of Athenian Culture? A reaching out for trancendence beyond the consumerism of Greco-Roman culture. Is it a new iconoclastic protest movement against the idol-based market? The news, to those empathising with such an unknown god approach, to hear that this god may be the rightful owner of the house (the world), may have been encountered asrefreshing news indeed. What is surprising, in this story, is that the Apostle Paul does not try to convert people from worshipping their unknown god to the creator. He interprets and proclaims that this god really is God - their creator. Paul discerns this particular approach to God; as a practice and a known folk tradition which already provides a good source for the religious aspirations of its people. Paul quotes from the words of their own poets and speaks to the depths of their Athenian identity, using an image of children reaching out to their parental creator. The news from the unknown god amongst them, courtesy of the visiting Apostle, is that the post-mortem resurrection of one of her offspring has finally happened. In other words: it is possible to know and be related to the one who made you, whom many of you already know as the unknown god.
UNESCO, Paris, 2 June 1980 in Gallagher, Micheal Paul. 1997. Clashing Symbols. London: Darton, Longman and Todd. appendix. 15 Theory and communication methodology used in local video research project on clubbing in Edinburgh, are included in: Thomson, Paul. 2000. Club Culture Communication Project. New College Edinburgh.
14

The popular view of the crowd was that Paul was merely advertising some new gods, (to add to their already oversaturated market - not as a challenge to it), the bodily resurrection of one of gods offspring, however, began to create some interest.. Why would the resurrection of a physical human by the unknown god make such a connection? According to James Thwaites, Director of the Biblical Studies faculty of Hillsong, Australia, The unknown god in Athens which Paul refers to, is a god with no name; the one who was thought to have stopped the plague in the city, thus becoming established in the thinking and expectation of the people.16 Athenian historical tradition reveals, perhaps, the source of the practice within their culture, it does not explain however - why it is unknown. Why not give it a name? Why not attach it to a particular place? Why didnt some enterprising athenian coopt it as their own particular idol, now belonging to one of the ethnic quarters within the city? According to Rodney Stark, Greco-Roman cities were a pesthole of infectious disease, and lists a few of the other conditions the vast majority of city-dwellers had to face on a daily basis: urban disorder, social dislocation, heat, insects, filth, misery, fear of attack, cultural chaos, infanticide, overcrowding, bad sanitation, crime, poverty, and high mortality rates, conscription, slavery, self-abortion using rusty hooks, and female infanticide. Plagues and epidemics were, not unsurprisingly, common in the ancient world, and greatly feared.17 Mystery rites and idol worship, as client based shops of worship, were not designed to address social issues. Stark argues, that because ancient Greek cities were saturated with multiplicities of gods, their value and meaning decreased and their was little to inspire collective action.18 However, the attenuation of idol worship in its social efficacy, may have its roots in Greek philosophy. Most classical Greek philosophers regarded mercy as an irrational concept19; it was the demise of morality that was the real problem, as Charles Cochrane observes, while a deadly plague was ravaging the empire...the sophists prattled vaguely about the exhaustion of virtue in a world growing old.20 I am suggesting, therefore, that the unknown god, was nameless, simply because its function and character was unknown within their culture; religion to Greco-Romans is about worshipping. It is not about their bodies, it is not about mercy and justice, it is not about caring for the sick or the poor, and it is definitely not about resistance to the
16

Thwaites, James. 1999. The Church beyond the Congregation: The strategic role of hte church in the postmodern era. p. 158. 17 Stark, Rodney. 1997. The Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers. p. 149-161. 18 Stark, p. 161. 19 Stark, p. 212. 20 Cochrane, Charles Norris. [1940] 1957. Christianity and Classical Culture. London: Oxford. p. 155. in Stark, p. 80.

powers and dominating structures of the empire. A Greco-Roman metaphysical virus which the church in the west still finds difficult to shake off. This excessive virtuality within Greco-Roman culture, already in existence long before Paul arrives, could be described as the worshipping habits of the powerful elite - unconcerned with the scandalous social and political conditions of its locality. Their history of the intervention of the invisible god opened up the space; the ground for faith in a new future - the YHWH of exodus from slavery already stirring in their hidden history. The proclamation of the resurrection of the body became a devastating critique of the elite and their core industries, and a word of hope to those who suffer as a result of their neglect, because it also fulfils an important stream of hope within their history. In other words: only a god who intervenes for the sake of the endangered, the sick and the poor can be real - a living God. This very brief excursion emphasises, first, a research approach as: receiving the incarnation of Christ in club cultures through its core practices. Its aim is to open a route for live, intelligent critique and vibrant ways of future cultural production and resistance for practitioners, within their culture. An interpretive engagement which moves away from much of the generalisation and metaphysical speculation about religion among the young in Britain. A disembodied approach which seems to dominate theology, media, religion and culture - particularly with the widely held assumption that new emerging cultures in Britain and Europe share the same experience as those in the U.S. (e.g. Boomer, Gen-X, Gen-Y).21 The winds of globalisation are blowing in four directions: North, South, East and West, and on several levels between the global and the local, the U.S. generational identities, are only one of these flows and layers. There is however within the current mushrooming of nomadic carnival scenes, pilgrimage and protest cultures and folktechno-cultures, from Serbia to Brazil, Israel to China, India to Russia, from Africa to Britain - a new world that is global, but where their key resources are local.22 A world that looks very different, when one scratches beneath the shiny consumer surfaces of thescreen. For genuine incarnational encounter, this research weights investigation within home-grown geographies; it aims to draw from the margins of the British cultural base, and open to these wider global scenes.

21

For example: Howe, Neil and Strauss William, 2000. Millenials Rising: The Next Generation. New York: Vintage, I have already briey touched on some of these argument in: Thomson, Paul. God in 3D: Technology and Religious Imagination in Club Cultures, 2000. 22 A growing number of Club and rave websites include news updates on current growth and sctivity of club and rave scenes around the world, including: INTERNET: http://www.clubbed.com/clubbers/ http://www.hyperreal.org/raves/ http://www.ministryofsound.co.uk/news/

This investigation aims to come face to face with raw experiences of clubbers reachings out for the good; their political and spiritual aspiration to humanise, and dig for our routes and roots of shared existence. It is a rather nervous and vulnerable way, of ripping open some conversation and live critique in the chasm of silence between searching clubbers, activists, artists and institutions. It seeks to open new stepping stones between current research and scholarship and the emerging transnational club, rave and protest scene.

Fast Forward
Before entering the labyrinths of clubland in Edinburgh, some key themes within current scholarship are explored in chapter one. These global-economic themes of identity construction and religiosity through routes of: production, consumption and resistance will form a basis for club cultural construction of identity and symbolic practices in a post-traditional23 era. The research in chapter two; Exodus, explores specific geographies of clubbing and church practice within the Edinburgh area, and investigates three major routes of symbolic practice in club cultures; clubbing as: church, clubbing as: sacrament and clubbing as: exorcism. The area of exorcism introduces internal critique of club cultural practice. This initial exploration is then compared and contrasted with practices in and around the Exploring Church for Club Culture Project in chapter three; Galilee. These practices function, according to the staff team, as a network of stepping stones which connect with multiple initiatives, collectives and related projects within and around the city centre. In this chapter, the symbolic practices are explored with their religious routes of identity running in the opposite direction: Church as: clubbing, Sacrament as: clubbing and Exorcism as: clubbing. The project attracts and relates with an extremely varied mix of people, and has a wide base of networks among gay, anarchist and club cultures, through to church institutions, evangelical, alternative worship and Christian student cultures. The interviews conducted over a two year period, reflect a wide range of stances and routes of identity among people, many of whom have changed in attitude, practice and belief over this period. This chapter begins to raise issues of Christian identity and practice in the clashes, and gaps within a fluid, changeable and tense cultural matrix. Implications for the future of Christian identity among new generations in Scotland is wrestled with in these investigations and a theology of Christian identity which emerges
23

Late Modernity emerging as an order in which social life is propelled away from the hold of preestablished precepts or practices in Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. p. 20.

in response to current practices of production and resistance, opens the way for a new approach to Christian identity in a post-traditional global economy.

Chapter One: Identity in a Scene Age

there is no such thing as society -Conservative Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher24

Identity in a Liquid Economy

Transformations in self-identity and globalisation, according to Anthony Giddens, are the two poles of the dialectic of the local and the global in conditions of high modernity.25 Modernity, in other words, has found a bigger home; its abstract systems have found new meshing points and resonances across the globe, and nation state structures are breaking down. This new phase introduces entirely new conditions of existence for individuals and the bonds they are able to make. These buffers between individuals and the wider world, which grew up with Modern times, provided their inhabitants with limits, filters, and a shared project and sense of direction.26 Nation dwellers, shared a basic operating level of, what Anthony Giddens calls ontological security.27 These included particular languages and habits of normalcy; day to day routines involving recognisable patterns of production, consumption, greeting, gestures and play, which provided, the very roots of our coherent sense of being in the world.28 Giddens relates the ability to have a basic self-identity when these conditions exist within families and societies. An identity which grows from a tacit experience of trust, depends, to a certain extent on pre-existence modes and practices.29 Furthermore, Giddens argues that this trust is largely an unconscious sociality, which exists before the I or me.30 It also provides the individual with a supportive canopy, a protective cocoon; which carries the person through the norms of daily tasks. [sic]31 This security, however is also based on the reliability of the other. The interweaving, dynamic structures of states have, to a large extent, broken down. The language of transition, late, end or post - within current scholarship and media discourse, is to a large extent, based on an intimate experience with this breakdown and transformation of human relating. Zygmunt Bauman describes this period of break-down as: fluid modernity. A new phase of modernity in whicheverything isbecoming liquidized; from the system to society, from politics to life-policies. He argues that this period of history is seeing the
24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Bauman, p. 64. Giddens, p. 32. Lyon, David. 2000. Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 40. Giddens, p. 36. Giddens, p. 37. Giddens, p. 39. Giddens, p. 38. Giddens, p. 40.

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dissolution of human bonds at the micro level; that what we are witnessing is a radical change in the arrangement of human cohabitation.32 Human bonds, according to Bauman, are now characterised by the experience of severe anxiety: insecurity, uncertainty and unsafety, and that the inability to detect its source, leaves individuals with no alternative but to focus on the: thin friable valve of bodily, domestic and environmental safety. 33 The sense of ontological security, for most people in Britain, has now gone, particularly among the young. The giveness of things; reality - its dependability, its faithfulness to some set of agreed norms, is in a state of flux - good is up for grabs. Margaret Thatchers pronouncement that there is no such thing as society, the phrase helped to spark the rave movement in Britain, as an alt. society, was, according to Bauman a declaration of intent and a self-fulfilling prophecy, a shrewd reflection on the changing nature of capitalism, in its wake, there followed the dismantling of normative and protective networks, which greatly helped the word on its road to turning into flesh. The combination of electronic instantaneity and the loss of given structures, has created a situation in which creativity means survival. 180 Human bonding in this liquid period of history, then, needs a new language and understanding of what bonding is, what it means and above all, what it feels like and what kind of bonding practices are qualitatively and substantively good. Experimentation has now become a mode of human survival, navigating the mushrooming labyrinths of media, internet communications, entertainment industries, night cultures and clubbing scenes. This is primarily how people play on internet chat -rooms and other Net spaces; it is a way of learning new social skills through the direct experience of relating to others and ones selves; experimenting with new ways of identification in new multiplicitys of time and space.34 The inability to identify the source of anxiety, however, can lead to the hunt for security in more identifiable objects and routines, as Bauman points out. In a liquid age, the ability to identify becomes even more important, in order to find some security, certainty and safety. With the loss of traditional markers, habits and boundaries, the acceleration of technological of change, the experience of information overload and the widening of the gap between the symbolic market and our localities, regaining some personal control through identity narrative construction, becomes a core feature of liquid life.
32 33 34

Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 10. Bauman, p. 161. Turkle, Sherry. 1997. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Phoenix. p 258.

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Anthony Giddens, describes this as the reflexivity of modernity which extends into the core of the self35 which provides, what David Lyon describes a way of tracing new meaning paths as a way of making sense of the world.36 Bodily, intimate, unmediated experience, therefore becomes the essential way of knowing, learning, and discerning in a liquid world. Becoming formed as a person through practices, paths, routes and ways has become the important feature of its living religiosity. Britain, perhaps one of the most tradition-bound cultures in the west, for the last 12 years has been host to one of the Wests newest cultures: Generation E, rave culture or club culture. What at first was thought of as a youth culture, or a new subculture, has expanded, much to their own surprise, to become a global flow of cultures; using a term borrowed from their 60s forebears, a whole media-religious-culture; a scene. In order to explore religiosity as core practices of identity-making, within these scenes, the following routes of meaning: production identity, consumer identity and resistance identity,37 are explored in relation to the new emerging global economic order. What other approaches and routes to identity are already being pursued within a global economy?

35 36

Giddens, p. 32. Lyon, p. 91. 37 Three basic approaches to narrative ways of establishing social identity in situations where the social narratives seem beyind our control can be found in the work of: David Lyon, Zygmunt Bauman and Manuell Castells. see: Lyon, p. 90. for overview of other types of these three basic human, religious and social routes to identity. This research initially began, however, with the search for three basic ways of being human, shared by all cultures: creating, receiving and resisting, in order to nd common ground between clubbing scenes in a global era.

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Eat the Kids: Identity in a Global Market Economy

the world is crawling with teenagers - Naomi Klein38 The increase in identifications and differentiations among cultures, pressure groups, companies, logos, brands, niche markets, genres, clubs, styles and genders, which at first may have enjoyed wombs and cocoons of security within popular culture, may now be suffering because of increasing diversity and social fragmentation. Elissa Moses, senior vice president with New York-based ad agency DMB&B, describes this floating teen demographic, recently estimated at one billion as one of the greatest marketing opportunities of all time. In order for this to happen, Klein explains, teens must identify with their new global demographic. Corporations think they have figured out their secret. Their human image is evoked in one giant, multi-ethnic, kaleidoscope we, full of: foreign street signs, tattoos, flags, Cantonese and Arabic lettering and a sprinkling of English words, scored through with the latest happy rave and dance music soundtracks.39 An emerging trans-international movement of the young, however, is beginning to rebel.40 In some of the recent anti-corporate international protest days, Reclaim the Street parties, eco-warriors, media- jammers, internet activists, indigenous local collectives and teen ravers, were road-napping town centres, organising street parties and tree planting along city pavements. The growth in internationally co-ordinated may-day protest parties, involving an increasing number of indigenous local scenes, is described by Naomi Klein as global carnival against capital. Their argument is that the global media-corporate matrix has become impregnable. The subversive logos and images of activists, are being used to sell back to the consumer as a new style. The only choice left, they believe, is to become what Klein describes as transnational as capital.41 The current rave and rage and street protest parties growing in numbers across the world is, according to Klein: both the potential and the desire for a truly global protest against the loss of public space.42 What Klein is saying is that: we may not have noticed, but the rules of the house have changed. While fragmented style and gender cultures were clashing over their
38 39 40 41 42

Klein, Naomi. 2000. No Logo. London: Flamingo. p. 118. Klein, p. 116. Klein, p. 446. Klein, p. 320. Klein, p. 321.

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right to a place in the media sunlight, capital and the new elite went absent without leave, (AWOL) and emerged into a higher plane of existence as Klein explains: in this new globalized context, the victories of identity politics have amounted to a rearrangement of the furniture while the house burned down.43 What has changed? This new electronic instantaniety, in which power, money, and information can move at the speed of light, drastically alters the mutual dependency between capital and labour, the chains, Bauman alerts us, have finally broken. New sophisticated forms of domination now depend on speed of response. What counts now, is the capacity to move as fast as possible; what becomes important now is the ability to escape or disengage at will, and shed attachments to the corporeality of places, governments, countries, traditions, laws and cultures. As Bauman explains, Solid modernity was an era of mutual engagement, fluid modernity is the epoch of disengagement; a new situation in which it is those most elusive, those free to move without notice, who rule.44 Free unregulated capitalism is not a value free state of existence. As a globalised force on the planet, its one sole aim is to create markets. The public space of the screen is now owned by a handful of corporations, who control a space in which there is no place for humans as producers or resistors, only consumers. Resistance is futile, or to be denounced as abuse of democracy, or as deviant within the sacred economic order. It is from this wider frame of new politics and economics, that we move from the screen to the scene. In a liquid age, identity construction of people, cultures, movements, nations, personalities, and corporations now moves to centre stage and into a theatre of live action. To advance the argument that the scene has become a new public space of resistance, and therefore crucial to any exploration of what it means to be human, the current conversation about religious symbolic practice within market place and within popular culture needs to be widened and critiqued in relation to the shift of trajectory toward a global economic order.

Symbolic Practice within the Marketplace

The emerging convergence of technology, media and communications, in its mythologies, stories, pop videos, chat rooms, media stars, liturgies and communities of time and space, have once again foregrounded the image, as our only star-gates of meaning, identity and identification in a global age. This wiring up and meshing of these overarching systems, has spun the western world off its axis.
43 44

Klein, p. 123. Bauman, p. 120.

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Stewart Hoover, commenting on the changing face of media and religion in America, announces that the whole cultural center of gravity has now shifted, a climactic shift which may prove to have some profound implications for religious meaning and practice.45 The forces of democratisation and the dominance of the market, for a growing majority of people, are now shaping their cosmos of meaning (symbolic canopy of American Public Religion), and therefore, the provider of a new basis or ground of options for religiosity.46 Hoover, decribes it this way: the ways of being religious are moving out of the protected sphere of religious institution and tradition, and into the open ground of the symbolic marketplace.47 This ground, as Hoover points out, has weight; it has gravity; this gravitational forcefield radically shapes the way in which people embody and understand identity and relationship. How meaning is experienced here, becomes the crucial issue, in raising critical questions about how meaning is experienced in or through Christian identity, church, symbolic practice and tradition, in these new liquid landscapes of the late modern or postmodern era. We now live in a world in which Lyn Scofield Clark, stifling all hopes of a return to the inherent authority of institutions, sacraments or traditions, reminds us that: religious symbols, like any other symbols in culture are not considered meaningful in and of themselves. We need to return to the people once again, she argues -to practices of deep listening and hearing. Practitioners need to listen and pay attention to these lived experiences, because, as Clark asserts, reception, or the peoples' practices of meaningmaking, is where theological meaning happens.48

Symbolic Practice as Sacrament within Popular Culture

Tom Beaudoin, a voyager through the Generation X terrain of spirituality and religiosity in popular culture, regards this cosmos of meaning as a culture of autonomous images; a repository of images - with sacramental potential.49 He argues that The mystery of the human experience is a rich symbol-an inexhaustible theological resource.50 This is a key concept in his approach to theological
45

Hoover, Stewart M. Religion Media and the Cultural Centre of Gravity, An Address to the Trustees of the Foundation for United Methodist Communications. May 7, 1998. in The International Study Commission on Media, Religion and Culture web site http://www.colorado.edu/Journalism/MEDIALYF/analysis/umcom.html 46 Goethals, Gregor T. 1990. The Electronic Golden Calf: Images, Religion, and the Making of Meaning. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications. p. 163. 47 Hoover, ibid. 48 Clark, Lynn, Schoeld. "Building Bridges between Theology and Media Studies". Plenary Presentation to the Catholic Theological Society of America June 12 1998. in The International Study Commission on Media, Religion and Culture website http://www.jmcommunications.com/english/clark2.htm 49 Beaudoin, Tom. 1998. Virtual Faith: The irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X. San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass Publishers. p. 47. 50 Beaudoin, p. 81.

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interpretation of personal human experience. An approach to theological interpretation, in which he cites, the work of Wade Clark Roof and her insights on Boomer religiosity, and affirms the recovery of experience among Catholic Theologians, and among those whose own personal and religious experience has historically been marginalized. Within his own sphere, he argues that, pop culture sacramentality suggests that the body and personal experience represent signs of Gods grace in the world. Sacramentals, according to Beaudoin, are visible signs of Gods invisible presence, and Xers, live a theology revolving around the incarnation... and express religiosity with sacramentals, which can, evoke the religious depth of the most common objects or experiences.51 Beaudoin, finds many of these sacramentals, particularly within Generation X experiences of suffering, sensuality and virtuality, outside the institution in the everyday lived experiences of popular culture. Although sacramentals are an officially recognised category within the Roman Catholic hierarchy; as media of Gods grace or as a virtual sacrament, Beaudoin, points, however to their important prophetic role: having an independent existence, they continue to threaten or undermine the official institutions monopoly over dissemination of religious experience and access to grace - as well as pronounce judgement on the institution itself [my italics]52 Beaudoins insight, here is matched by Foster, McDonald and Tellinis observation of the mysterious and comprehensive nature of the N.T. view of sacrament - as one of encountering a mystery; the early church was perfectly familiar with baptism and Lords supper but understood them as elements in the vast mysterion [sic] of Gods dealings with mankind in Christ rather than the two members of a particular class of rites. [my italics]53 The question of tensions and prophetic critique here relate primarily to issues of production and consumption between spaces of popular culture and institution, in relation to Christian tradition. These questions, however, can be brought to bear on the politics of symbolic practice in the cosmos of the market place itself. By asking, who owns this place? who controls the gates of production? Hoover, in his presentation, foregrounds the power of the Media in terms of a Producer/Provider; as the tent in which people make meaning. This is a place in which, The media provide the symbolic resources through which these definitions take place, and then he describes the core function of the medium, as the: power to provide the means within culture to define and to name.54 If I may take means to refer to symbolic resources, this leaves the inhabitants with some means of production, and critique within a range of symbols and optional symbolic practices.
51 52

Beaudoin, p. 74. Beaudoin, p. 76. 53 Forrester, Duncan, James I. H. McDonald and Gian Tellini. 1988 (1983). Encounter with God. Edinburgh: T & T Clark. p. 57. 54 Hoover, ibid.

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There are traces of the sacramental in: music video, images, fashion, songs, body piercing, films, stories, shopping, news, web forums, MUDS, football, concerts, theatre, street life and Virtual Reality, that do have revelatory power; that can connect us to the mystery of Christ in lived experience and in communion with others, and can re-fill and charge the religious symbols of institution and tradition for those within and without its walls. However, in 2001, a new generation would ask us to take a read of the small print, once again: within our economy; within our public spaces of options, only.

Symbolic Practice as Resistance within a Global Economy

Translate This! Image is Nothing! No Choice! Resistance is Not Futile! - popular slogans from the new iconoclasts

We are too busy analyzing the pictures being projected on the wall to notice that the wall itself had been sold. - Naomi Klein55 Another convergence is rapidly surfacing that wants to tell us an alternative story. An increasing number of ravers and club cultures, after 12 years of activity, outside of these scholarly and institutional discourses of religion and media, are finding patterns of community and ways of trying to find out what human is. As a gelling agent, among internet activists, artists, environmentalist, anti-corporate tribes and street protesters across the world; they are finding ways to create public media parties of comic protest with a sharp edge. Naomi, describes these new iconoclasts as media activists. She claims that, a radical new political culture is emerging out of what she describes as the postmodern house of mirrors, and the better mirrors strategies of generation-x. They are not out to reform the house, they are out to smash it; in what Naomi describes as a resistance movement of actions not images. The concern here has shifted. It is not what an image represents, but who gets to produce, not only its image - the whole cosmos of images; its house. Their image in this context, means: action, and public space becomes the battlezone of human identity, between human as: global consumer, or human as: global citizen, in which the site of redemption moves from the corporate screen to the more corporeal scene. Issues of identity and economy form an important backdrop for the following investigation.
55

Klein, p. 124.

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The focus here, among club cultures is: THICK CORPOREAL POLITICAL ACTION live active symbols; shared patterns of symbolic practices, in new public spaces, localities and economies. Technologies, internet and media are already woven into their lives, but the religious weighting has changed: toward live physical human bodies. The emphasis is on creating identity, community and political agency via their own local scenes at a time when all eyes are beginning to turn toward the emerging horizon and trajectory of a global economy, where Giga-corporations have become the most powerful political entities on the planet. Human identity is religious identity in a global corporate age. Investigation of practices, will therefore: 1. Zoom in to a micro context of relating, looking at these practices within a particular geography, among a local scene, in terms of production, consumption and resistance, and how they relate to symbolic identification as: church, sacrament and exorcism. 2. Look at the experience and routes of identity and how this relates to each practice. 3. Discern between humanising and dehumanising practices, by starting with its own evaluations and internal critique. 4. Ask the Question: how do these function as religious responses to the emerging economic horizon?

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Chapter Two: Exodus

Research background: Scene One
Recently, I interviewed Ruthven Roberts, Artistic Director with the Notting Hill Carnival. As we were discussing the growth of club cultures, street protest parties, and dance festivals in the UK, and their widespread identification and ownership as church by those outside the church, I invited him to identify the various features of club life that he believed contributed to this widespread habit of identification. Ruthven listed the following similarities: 1. Weekly event, where we all come together, for no other reason than just to be together. 2. Lots of club services or masses take place in old church buildings. 2. The big preparation of getting ready, dressing up, organising finance (offerings), phoning to arrange meeting points, lifts etc. 3. The congregation, community shared ritual, celebration, the warmth, excitement and joy of the crowd (worship). 4. The whole thing about loving one another, honesty, being friendly to strangers, respect, unity etc. (educating of virtues). As the list grew to a halt, I asked: what about E?56 the recognition flashed across his face, wow, that is scary!, Eucharist and Ecstasy; wafer and pill, both stamped with symbols, both eaten or swallowed. This, recognition, opened a flood gate of questions about comparisons between club and church experience of symbolic practices, in terms of production, consumption and shared rituals. Finally, the growing interpretation and articulation of difference and clash of meaning in these practices, led us to begin asking the questions about identity and roots; what is tradition, how does it work, and how does authority work in a plural, multiethnic Britain? This first chapter, then, begins this process, first, by engaging with symbols of clubbing as: church and sacrament, exploring its religiosity in what clubbers experience and how they interpret these experiences. The symbolic practice of exorcism, is where we begin to trace internal critique of its own practices and explore it further as a religious mode of resistance within a global economy.

56

Ecstasy (MDMA) 3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine - often referred to nowadays as E. history see: Appendix 4.

For brief

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Clubbing as Church?
witness the hushed anticipation before he takes to the decks there at midnight, and you can believe the oft-repeated clich that clubs are the churches of the new millenium - Sheryl Garratt57 Club magazine writer and author, Simon Reynolds, describes the scene at Cream, one of the largest nightclubs in Liverpool, minutes before DJ, Paul Oakenfold begins his session for the night. Worship, mass, awe, community, vibrancy, spectacle, shared performance, ecstasy, empathy, new music technology, powerful PA systems, atmosphere, crowds, are phrases that emanate from most dance chroniclers and writers, in their attempts to communicate their experience of this mysterious phenomena now part of the weekly patterns of church going an institution among the young and not-so-young in Britain today. Adrian Riley, in his research paper, previously made available on the internet, entitled: God in the House: UK Club Culture and Spirituality, suggests a reason for their identification with the word, church, As with any situation where a community who feel they are outcasts from society find a collective sense of belonging, the language of church - the most easily identifiable group of people who belong together - can be seen in club culture. In order to understand their approach to this symbolic practice, however, we need to ask what this symbol means to them; what are they talking about? what good does this powerful symbol resonate with? what kind of identity does it give to them or mirror to them? I have already completed several pieces of research that focus on: the communication, religious and socio-political aspects of clubbing in Britain in a more general fashion, however, this new research traces identity through the powerful symbol of church. It resonates - not so much with consumption, but creation. Clubbers create the church. In our video research behind the scenes at Sublime, a busy local nightclub in Edinburgh, we asked why people went clubbing. One of the group interviewed answered, the music, the people; being part of the Edinburgh clubbing scene is like one big happy family. Interviewing the promoters and DJs while a large number of their friends were busy rushing around - setting up PA, lights, background video screens, music equipment, environmental props, smoke machines and lazers, it became clearer, why church has
57

Garratt, Sheryl. 1998. Adventures in Wonderland: A Decade of Club Culture. London: Headline Book Publishing. p. 305.

20

captured the hearts of a generation. Clubbing as church is about the shared participation in creation and work - through the innovative production of their own unique culture. In order to understand why the production of autonomous cultural economies, has become so important among clubbing and raving scenes across the world, we need to look at the defining moment of its birth - rave, a new Bethlehem, born outside the world of television and popular culture. To many of those suddenly caught in the deluge of rave and acid house in 80s Britain, the dance track that symbolised the dreams of a generation and still triggers impromptu singing sessions in local record shops, is Joe Smooths: Promised Land: Brothers, sisters, one day we will be free, from fighting, violence, people crying in the street. When the angels from above fall down and spread their wings like doves and well walk, hand in hand sisters, brothers, well make it to the promised land - Joe Smooth58 The words, fighting, violence and crying in the street, struck a deep chord within young people in Britain in the late 80s. When this record came on, the crowd would always erupt, arms in the air, like an evangelical worship service - dancing to an electronic beat, in disused airports hangars, fields and Scottish beaches. This was the decade of: loadsa money, de-nationalisation, and de-regulation; the selling off of national industries and community assets, the dismantling of institutional structures and the widespread devastation of inner city urban areas, mining towns and steel industries of Northern England and Scotland. British youth found themselves caught in a whirlwind of social change - the resultant havoc wreaked on lives, communities, local industries, schools, families, traditions, local charities and urban projects, is an experience many still remember. While, Margaret Thatcher announced on television: there is no such thing as society, their tradition of rave mythology celebrates the great reversal of a generation: British youth went off in their thousands, and created their own society. Many of those working within youth and unemployment projects, remember the atmosphere of despair and sense of powerlessness among the young. The announcement
58

Promised Land, performed by Joe Smooth, released on SPV label, 5 January 1993.

21

was tantamount to saying: you are now completely alone as an individual, abandoned by the state, there is no protection, no support, no future; you have to make it on your own! The effects of this new market-driven non-society; however was staring them in the face: large scale unemployment, abandoned urban shopping centres and charities, projects closing due to lack of funding, and strikes among working towns and communities. As young pastoral workers and urban project workers, working with youth groups, housing estate projects and urban community support groups, we witnessed an increase in the number of suicides among the young during the late 80s, while many in the deep South were entranced by the promise of the market and their share sell-offs, among the youth of Britain there was a much darker mood; a plague of despair. A generation felt betrayed; their worlds were falling apart and on doors to their future, across the land, inscriptions read: cancelled due to lack of support. When the sound of rave arrived in the city of the late 80s in Britain, with the squelches of acid music and the pumping beats of house music, religious language was the only thing that could possibly evoke the feeling that: God had come to help his people. In the language of Exodus and Rezurrection; the names of these early rave events, the new electronic music, the strange asexual empathetic experiences shared among young working class kids, the new celebratory patterns of dancing in huge crowds, and epic worship events which seemed, for a while, to break down the old walls of gender, race and class. Even performer and audience, DJ and dancer, spectacle and spectator merged into mass play and theatre - where the ability to create their own culture, produced for many of them, a heady feeling of ecstatic redemption, pilgrimage, tribal community and eschatological possibility. The roots of British rave and clubbing is in shared participative production; it is about the collaborative creation of a whole cultural-media-religious economy, through the dancefloor - into the scene. In a sense, church, symbolised for clubbers: the focus of their romantic-expressionist interpretation of the British dream of nationhood; a unity of disparate tribes under one flag - dancing to one beat. Clubbing in 2001, has changed to become a global production, where clubbing nations have become floating platforms of face-to-face relationships, new media, DJ circuits and trading networks, cottage industries, economies and news communications, a kaleidoscope of shared languages, lifestyles and vocabularies. The creator identity, is the clubbing route of meaning, often ignored in portrayals of clubbing as: experience consumerism, however, even the consumer identity - as a way of meaning, offers possibilities of sacramental experience that defies oversimplification.

22

Clubbing as Sacrament?
Rite of Passage The first time I entered a club was in 1989. The first thing that hit me was the powerful, exciting beat, the beautiful synth sounds, the bass drilling into your chest and the incredible atmosphere - it was electric. Everybody was dancing - not in couples like they use to, just everybody together, arms in the air, packed together in a joyous, noisy, happy, sweaty crowd. I was greeted as soon as I got near the dance floor by this girl - she was going round passing out grapes to people, others were passing around sweets and bottles of orange. On the dance floor it was easy to dance - you couldnt help it. Complete strangers would come up and say hello, or hug you.59 The first time is a common story - told and retold around flats, cafes and campfires at dance festivals - recounting their initial experience, often in the language of conversion and a religious vocabulary includes: baptism as immersion into the musicdrenched crowd. Most people find it difficult to locate the source of the experience in any one particular feature; the retelling is often filmic, shifting from scene to scene, and from highlight to highlight. This particular interviewee, remembers the experience as a whole, and recounts what he describes as the after-glow: It felt like even the atmosphere of the town itself was different afte rthat night. During the week I kept bumping into people that Id met at the club...in clothes shops, record shops, pubs, walking down town - we would laugh and talk excitedly about the night - exchange names, phone numbers, news about the next club night on or other stuff that people were getting up to during the week. Suddenly I knew all of these people...the buzz was amazing60 He also recounts how it made him feel like a new person, part of something, in contrast to his previous experience of his city as a threatening, dingy, alienating and faceless place61. Note in these retellings, the link between, the initial experience of the club and its effect in mirroring a new world; in relationship to others, himself and his environment.

59

Thomson, Paul and Fiona Brooker, 1999. Club Culture in Edinburgh: A Research Paper with Recommendations for New Forms of Church within the Culture, St. Cuthberts Church of Scotland. p. 9. 60 Thomson and Brooker, p. 10. 61 Thomson and Brooker, p. 4.

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An experience, which then is reinforced by the daily experiences of being recognised and valued among a network of people, whom previously he would not have known, or would have related to them, purely as individuals. The feeling of knowing all these people, is in a sense, an unearned gift. A public baptism; a welcome into a context of belonging and communion and neighbourhood which already exists - already created by the energies and activities of others. Often, changes in clothing, patterns of living and working, jewellery, symbols, hair, body piercing and decoration and artefacts, follow conversion. Among the young, first experiences of illegal substances, sex or coming out as gay or lesbian, or the decision to join an Eco-community, becoming vegetarian or even the announcement of their decision to remain celibate, are about trying to find out who they are and where their place is in life. The need to find a community or peer group that is perceived to be bigger or better than who they are becomes an essential part of their pilgrimage. Both the birth of rave and the entrances to and through various club cultures as: rites of passage are suggested as sites of possibility, in exploring clubbing religiosity, they are not intended as deterministic or reductionist accounts of clubbing behaviour and experience. Increasing numbers of younger people, now treat British Superclubs, like Cream in Liverpool, and Home in London, as municipal institutions, global corporations and recreational industries, on a par with pubs, sports, and football memberships, festival sites abroad in Ibiza and Ayia Napa, increasingly come to symbolise and define the image of club cultures on British television programmes such as: Generation E, on Channel E4. Ben Malbon, in his recent anthropological study of clubbing practices in England, argues however, that media treatments of clubbing as leisure pursuits are unable to provide an understanding of clubbing as an experience62 adding that: young people and especially their languages, practices, spaces and cultures are poorly understood by the social sciences and to a lesser extent by the media.63 It is to these important micro-levels of experience of individuals on the dancefloor, and their own descriptions and interpretations of experience, that I now turn. Names have been altered, where requested, to protect privacy.

Altered States Organic (Non-Chemical)

62 63

Malbon, Ben. 1999. Clubbing: dancing, ecstasy and vitality. London: Routledge. p. 18 Malbon, p. 12.

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Dee: you cant put it into words, one minute you are aware of yourself dancing, thinking bout things, then wham!, timelessness, you lose it, then bump, youre back, and then you are aware it just happened, this amazing feeling comes over you Jon: Im suddenly aware of how amazing these blokes are, I look at each of us, dancing together, smiling, pulling cheeky grins at each other, weve all been through hell together Erika: half way through the night, all of us dancing away, getting into it, legs getting really tired, then the music stops suddenly, we are all swaying, waiting, then this huge horn sound cuts through the air, I felt this electricity shoot down my spine, its as if heaven came down on us, we all started cheering like mad - I couldnt feel my legs dancing, amazing! Oceanic None of the people who recounted these experiences were taking chemical stimulants. Describing it as a combination of dancing, the close physical proximity of the crowd, the powerful music and repetitive beats, moves our questions into the right arena, in order to understand what they are experiencing, and what it means to them, however, we shall have to probe a little deeper. The first experience would be recognisable to most clubbers; during an intense prolonged period of dancing to the beat and rhythm, the person describes a momentary loss of self, either immediately preceding, or simultaneous with a new awareness of self, an occurrence which leaves what one clubber describes as: an intense sensation of well being. These experiences usually last a few minutes, and range from overwhelming euphoria to feelings of inner/outer stillness. Producing after-glows of warmth or contentment, which can sometimes last for hours or days afterwards. Ben Malbon, would describe these type of accounts, where one briefly loses/gains self and its after effect as an oceanic experience in order to distinguish between, ecstasy (MDMA) fuelled and non-drug influenced experiences. 64

Empathy The second account above, relates to the experience of a sudden awareness of empathy, solidarity and thankfulness while dancing among friends, in this case by a shared history of suffering together.
64

Malbon, Ben. 1999. Clubbing: dancing, ecstasy and vitality. London: Routledge. p. 106.

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Notice, the words: I look at each one of us, the person is not objectifying them as a crowd only, but aware of them as unique individuals, bound together, and I in the present tense, suggests that the person is re-living the memory. Eschatology The third relates to an overwhelming sense of joy and anticipation triggered by the break in musical narrative, winding up the expectation of the crowd and a sense of being carried by something bigger and more beautiful than oneself, hence, the reference to heaven coming down on us, evoking epic biblical imagery. Phrases like, when the bass sounded, it was like the finger of God, angelic strings, or carried by angels, can be heard, in attempts to describe the feeling of awe, at some of these events. The eschatology is looped; it is more like a series of openings to the future anticipations that never quite reach their final climax, it is an ecstatic feeling of the future, which may account for the utopian mood in many dance clubs. Although it can be experienced as a body-emotional feeling; a virtual echatology, no one claims it is an actual future that is envisioned, but the experience does open some to wonder about a other possible futures. Tex Sample writes, on observing similar scenes among dancers at a concert: It is clear too that a kind of trancendence is at work here. One is taken out of the ordinary, routine world in these moments. It is another time and place. It has a spiritual, meditative quality about it65 Synthetic Ecstasy Baz: my mum has a glass of wine, I take a tab of E Sarah: you feel pure, clean - like a child Dean: you feel this love for everybody, from everybody Jem: Ive stopped taking it now, fed up of talking rubbish and getting paranoid These Clubbing extracts of Ecstasy (MDMA) triggered experiences varies, depending on dosage and/or purity of substance. During the coming up stage of the effect, the head can feel empty and crisp. The person often has a hightened experience of empathy, euphoria and energy., After effects can include:nausea, paranoia orimpotency. Current research warns of possible long-term memory loss for chronic users.66 Spiritual, mystical or religious connotations were recognised. Medieval forms of Christianity, Buddhism and angelic imagery were streams of tradition that many feel drawn to. Few were able to frame them as part of a religious language or system of belief
65 66

Sample, Tex. 1998. The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. See: Appendix 4.

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- the communal dance experience, very much embodies their search for a whole spirituality - a wholly immersive untranslateable, unrecordable and unmediated encounter, which cannot be hyped or reduced to buying or selling - physically accessible within the white noise of the electronic-media-techno life-system of the city. While the debates about the legislation, and the social and health effects of this substance rage, the attitudes towards its use in club cultures varies widely. These attitudes we will turn to later in the section, Clubbing as: Exorcism. Shame and Play The image of people becoming immersed in an impersonal crowd, can be misleading, one of those present at a recent club night, explains: lots of things can happen when in a club over five hours. Groups of clubbers: talking to mates, talking to anyone... struggling to get off the dancefloor to find my friend... suddenly forgetting how to dance and getting paranoid about it... chatting in the toilets with everybody... getting carried away by the crowd and completely losing it for a while.. gelling with people dancing around you, grinning and winking at each other... enjoying a delicious wee private place in the crowd for a bit... getting a sip of a cold drink from somebody... feeling your legs going numb again... relaxing and squashing up with everybody in the chill-out room... This oscillation between, individual letting gos and intense communal experience, actively sharing resources, and performance, in the midst of a powerful multi-sensory drama, is part of its attraction; what it really is about is play. But not meaningless play, as Ben Malbon, explains: Far from being the mindless and meaningless hedonism, then, as often portrayed in popular misrepresentations of clubbing,..., this experience of identity [as opposed to a self/cultural created one] is perceived as their real identity - how they truly are (and/or want to be)...67 Malbon, describes these flow times of letting go and being swept off ones feet, among the crowd as: EXSTASIS; the dance experience of being swept up, or carried by something outside oneself, (going with/getting into the flow). The simultaneous

67

Malbon, p. 164.

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experience of losing self and finding a new awareness of self, which can be sacramental.68 Unlike the use of chemicals, they are impossible to produce at will, it is a complex form of consumption that cries out for further investigation and interpretation. Evidence, perhaps of a richer, spectrum of consumption than the shopping for a self, or the postmodern trying on of identities, approach to consumption.Interpretations which Lyon regards as too attenuated and over-generalised.69. Bauman maybe a little closer to the mark, in investigation of the relationship between: identity and shame. Shame is a universal experience shared among among a wide range of age groups and cultures in late moderity; Bauman argues, that experience of shame; the loss of identity and ontological security, has come to the fore, rather than guilt in the late modern world. According to Bauman: shame eats at the roots of trust more corrosively than guilt.70 Clubbing or dancing as consumption, may have far more to do with the discovering childlike-trust among dance crowds, operating within strictly bounded family like settings. It takes the pressure off; in being allowed to let go for a while. To take a holiday from having to continually construct an identity - a full time occupation in the 24 hour drama of the post-modern city. Nightclubs and festivals, for many, can become a place of contemplation as well as escape, that lead some to call it: my church - the place where I heal my hurts; urban support systems, echoing Bauman, in which the trancending of shame leads to a secure identity - for a while anyway. Probably the most least understood route of identity, living at the intersection between clubbers and poverty - at the crossroads of city life is: clubbing as resistance. A way of identification which cuts deep into the numbing atmosphere of unreality promoted by particular clubbing and Christian practices - in using worship experience as a - drug to avoid reality.

Clubbing as Exorcism?
We were angry, we were rejects, we were fucked off, and we wanted to release our demons, all the stress of that time, into the music - Goldie, DJ, Producer, Artist71

68 69

Malbon, p. 164. Lyon, David. 2000. Jesus in Disneyland. p. 96. 70 Bauman, p. 65. 71 Garratt, Sheryl. 1998. Adventures in Wonderland: A Decade of Club Culture. London: Headline Book Publishing. p. 281.

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This music was Jungle and Drumnbass. Incorporating: syncopated rhythms, earthshaking bass, metallic, alien sounding voices, shot through with the sounds of the city: buzzes, hums, clunks and beeps, punctuating string symphonies, jazz horns, and flutes, courtesy of artists like Goldie, L.T.Bukem and Roni Size. After the honeymoon of ecstasy (MDMA), raves splintered into a myriad of scenes. If ecstasy (MDMA) failed to deliver, acceptance, love, joy, peace and community, Goldie was out to give the kids back: reality. Enstranged from his parents while young, and placed in childrens homes in the West Midlands, Goldie developed a love for graffiti art and breakdancing classic traditions among the tribes of Hip-pop. After spending several years drifting in and out of crime, Goldie discovered the rave scene and ecstasy. After signing to a major label, he produced his, widely acclaimed, double-album epic: Timeless. Matthew Collin describes Timeless as an aural diary of Goldies life from his infancy to the age of 29; an attempt to map the fall out from the rave dream of the early 90s- tracing the: euphoria and the psychosis, the unconditional love and the rage of alienation.72 He goes on to describe Goldies sense of mission, which evokes the image of his role in Popular culture as: generational exorcist; a resonant role model or shaman sent to: dramatise the hopes and fears of his generation that has lived through rave culture, hip pop and the recession years; to bring them into the light, to stand naked before his reflection His music, through record or clubnight, screams: housing estate, childrens home, poverty, street, pain and rage, as well as beauty, harshness, sweetness and hardness; time to face the painful reality of your life, is his message.73 Collin continues his exposition of Goldie; He dares to imagine the time that we live in and the lives we lead and to lay it all down on wax and be praised or damned or whatever, his music is - exorcism - emotional catharsis; a way of confronting the fears and, if not defeating them at least accepting them.74 Goldie, in the interview, reveals a tough empathy and pastoral insight in confronting his peers: A lot of people want to escape, he remarks, but when they go home and theyre alone, they still have to face things, and get through it - so I try to bring these things to the surface75 Goldie wants to face reality in two ways, firstly, his music is a place of mourning the loss of the past and public expression of rage among his community and his peers. His rock is his family; his collective. His shelter in the storm is a group of close friends and musicians. His scene- is the drum n bass family - a local-global community, where
72 73 74 75

Colin, Matthew. a personal vendetta, an interview with Goldie, in Mixmag, September 1997. Colin, ibid. Colin, ibid. Colin, ibid.

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for urban dwellers, this music sings their song. Secondly, as a public media figure, he struggles to find a way through his music to fight for some control over the production of his identity. Goldie is his own brand, his own name, which he protects from the gaze of the media. An moving image which he constantly shifts and morphs, through his music and public appearances. He describes himself as, a chameleon76; a survival strategy adopted by many in an identity-moulding corporate age. His name however, stays - it is the thread which holds his fragile narrative as a human person together. This may seem to be an unusual, connection at first glance; personal identity and exorcism; between the intimate experience of an individual, the collective and the street, the live 3D environments, public global surfaces and screen-ing of corporate media. I will argue, however, that this way of survival in the world, explored in this third area: clubbing as exorcism, is perhaps its most precious cultural gift and challenge to the theology and symbolic practices of church, in a Scotland, struggling to re-find identity and vocation, in the gap between the modern and the postmodern -in the economic heathaze of 21st century Britain. Using Goldies basic pattern of exorcism, we will explore its dynamics of: resistance and mourning, in some emerging aspects of the clubbing world (names and minor details have changed to protect their identities). Jez, the Community Worker As we enter a local Drumn Bass club, Jez, strips off his T-shirt, and makes for the dancefloor. The boom and thud of the bass, offset by the shimmering sounds and street noises in the music, is felt by every bone in your body. An hour later, and Jez, is still dancing, he is a huge man, and the sweat from his body sprays in every direction as he moves his body wildly, grinning across at me, as I turn to give him a smile. Jez does not drink or use chemicals, but once he arrives, the dancefloor is his home for the night. Jez works in a housing estate in Edinburgh among young adults - many of them struggle daily, with the desperate, bone crushing experience of multiple poverty, unemployment, debt, fear, violence or neglect.. He helps them to write down their experiences and feelings in poetry, art; anything that helps to get their rage and beauty out into public expression, a way of beginning to combat the helplessness and shame that many of them feel about themselves, the systems and environments, their pasts and their futures. The experiences of burn out, depression or switching off, on those working in these environments are widespread, in the U.K. Few manage to retain long-term personal
76

Colin, ibid.

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involvement, Jez, however, finds that dancing to this kind of music; the dark, harsh sounds vibrating in his bones, resonates with the grief, and rage, lifting a despair, that is almost impossible not to internalise, when one engages with in his work. Dancing is a way of getting the demons out, as Goldie colourfully describes, but not in a dualistic sense, which we find echoing in some streams of the theological, superrational forms of religious imagination. It is more of a this-worldly sonic demonology. To many of them, it feels like inner forces that connect in some way to surrounding physical realities, corporate bodies, media images and voices, and the atmosphere of the town or street, the social, political environment of a housing estate, legislation, collectives, technological artefacts and the economic and political systems that surround them. This is worked on in a multisensory practice, immersed in the core indigenous practice of dance, music and beat. A collective performance, rhythm and movement among physical bodies. They enact and re-enact narratives of forming and reforming identities that involve a complex dynamic inter-change of: play, mourning, rage and theatre. If something is expelled, when people get their demons out, what comes to inhabit them? Tex Sample notes that: sound/beat enters us.77 It fills our body through vibration, you can actually feel the vibration against skin, muscle, and bone. Soul music which is the music which belongs to a people or culture; their unique signature in the world. Sample alerts us to the importance of soul music in understanding communication. It is: profoundly bound up with ones very being this electronic soul music, a universal language flowing from club cultures roots in African rhythms and black gospel music, global tribes experience electronic music at the utter depths of being; it has all the hallmarks of a new kind of sensual interiority among urbanites; a very Old testament vibrating-music-body ontology.78 Clubbing Identity and identification, then, is something which can be produced, received, and resisted. Its growth is embodied and made flesh, however, through dance, which forms the core of its epistemology; to know and to relate to something or someone, is a knowing through dancing. A dance of: creating, receiving and resisting. The language of music and vibes has taken on a central role, not only in providing the soundtrack for peoples lives, but in the work of art, music and dancing producing their own story, thus wresting the control of authorship away from other dominating forces and allowing individuals some way of regaining and reimagining their lives and identities. Another worker through dancing to this music, no longer reads about who he is, from a crushing feeling of shame or worthlessness; his wild bodily expression and rhythms
77 78

Sample, Tex. 1998. The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. p. 64. Sample, p. 66.

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of sacramental bliss - re-affirms a truer reality. Catching a glimpse of ones humanitymade in the image of God the script is rewritten, for now, the old story is seen for what it is - an object. It is that which crushes these young, it is that which destroys all life - it is not going to rule me. Without the existence of the club, however, how would Jez and others continue with this strategy? Are there other groups and approaches, in the city, that attempt to construct exorcising practices among the marginalised? Frank: Local Graffiti Artist, Rapper, Poet, Community worker Another local worker, Frank, who often uses the dancefloor in this way, recently introduced young children, who play around boarded up houses of an estate, and who are getting into Nazi-symbols and identities, to the possibilities of graffiti art. The choices open to these young people, for ways of exploring and testing out who they are and where they belong, are extremely limited. An experienced graffiti artist, he intuitively felt that what they needed, was a way of being able to re-create a new identity for themselves. They, desperately needed better options than that which was provided and reflected to them within their current environment. Each of them were encouraged to spray their name, or a new name of their choosing, which would act as a way of, again, exorcising those feelings of alienation - by getting them out on to the wall or paintboard. The public display of their names, being seen and identified with others, a feature of Hip pop culture, opens the door to an alternative identification. This work is extremely fragile, and through these ways of peer involvement and community art as catharsis, this graffiti artist, working among Scotlands marginalised youth, puts his finger on the pulse of identity, as the crisis of our time. His work also calls for a new ways of imagining our multi-cultural Scottish identity in a Global age. The silence about Scotland among local churches, scholars, theologians and artists is deafening. The need for a re-appraisal of our God-gifted vocation, as part of a global era, not merely part of fortress Europe, or as sleepy consumer in a global market, is urgent - the new parliament seems to aware only of these 2 options. The first is dehumanising in that it channels the resistance of the poor towards the immigrant, the second because it reinforces the enslavement of the poor as: consumer only. Frank is aware of a third: a commonwealth of the local poor - creating their own cultures. Scottish young people from estates meeting with others from forgotten tenements in Eastern Europe and sweatshops-kids in Brazil, can have a powerful effect on their image of themselves and others as - made in the likeness of God. These face to face relationships built from the grassroots can be violently resisted, however, because they

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offer a taste of reality; their potential as creators, who learn resistance by targeting away from fellow humans to the spirit of the global economy. Edinburgh: The Grassmarket Theatre Project The Grassmarket Theatre Project, works similarly with marginalised groups in Edinburgh, and is currently facilitating indigenous theatre work in childrens projects on Shanty Towns in South America. By helping them to write and act out their own scripts, these patterns of catharsis and resistance, seem to follow. What begins as painful release, is followed through - and a new language begins to emerge. Many young girls forced into prostitution, who are treated violently as objects, are through re-enactment, able to separate themselves from the acts perpetrated by adults. As one of the local workers, playing with the girls observes: this gives them back their childhood. One of the workers who decided to move into the rubbish dump and live with them, regarded this form of play-theatre - in restoring childhood identities as the most valuable gift experienced by little humans, living daily with multiple poverty and injustice. What do they hear? Is this not their wisdom, their insight, that what the marginalised in our cities and estates need, is not to be told from the heights of popular media: just say no!, or you are: consumer only, but that you are participator-creator, this is part of your unique inheritance, which has been stolen from you. Creation is the beginning of resistance. To create their own vibrant culture, their own identity. This is what clubbers call: a scene, a whole world-public, within the global arena.

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Chapter 3: Galilee
Research Background: Scene Two
People come to us and say the church where they were baptised or married is now a nightclub...and it offends them - Alan Cowe General Secretary to the Church of Scotlands General Trustees79 The Exploring Church for Club Culture Project80, set up in November 1999, is an attempt to foster long-term engagement with the clubbing constituency of Edinburgh. There are 3 part-time workers, myself, Fiona Brooker and Matt Rees. A development team led by Rev. Peter Neilson, various members of the congregation at St. Cuthberts Church of Scotland and emerging support networks from a number of churches and organisations around the city centre provide a widening support base for the team who live and work outside the institution. Without a building or premises as a focus to their activities, a weekly check-in with Peter provides the team with their main point of contact for regular feedback and mutual support. In their recognition of club culture as a gateway into the mainstream of British Society, whereby two generations were effectively, missing from the radius of church life, their aim was to build a bridge in the gap between the institution and the nightlife culture of Edinburgh, by exploring with this culture, how church might live within its world. The emphasis of the project is on long-term, relational grassroots communitybuilding; deep listening, dialogue and theological reflection; long term reception, rather than short-term transmission events.81 82 The initial starting point, was described by Matt, as a kind of Christian Underground; exploring club culture for church, as a path of reformation within an evangelical tradition, whilst Fiona regarded the project as exploring church/Christian spirituality for and by club culture, through the building of links and city-wide support networks of friendship, spirituality, art, social action around a shared experience of humanity. The question of how Christian identity is nourished and supported among a team of individuals with very different religious histories and spiritual journeys, now became the crucial question.
79 80

Cowe, Alan, Last Orders called on bid to stop pubs in churches, in The Scotsman, 13 March 2001. Thomson, Paul & Brooker, Fiona, 1999. Club Culture in Edinburgh: Research Paper With Recommendations For New Forms Of Church Within The Culture. St. Cuthberts Church of Scotland. 81 Thomson, Paul, 2000. Club Cultures: 21st Century Churches? Exploring Social, Semiotic and Religious patterns of Club Culture. New College, Edinburgh. p. 4. 82 Thomson, Paul, 2000. Club Culture Communication Project. New College Edinburgh

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The issue of identity and the symbolic canopy which supports it, lies at the very heart of the crossroads of this city. The context of the following events, which left one shocked church worker gasping: its not a gap - its a chasm. The clash of symbols and identities, for this group moving into this creation, however, opened up for them, a new way of understanding and doing church. Instead of one group attempting one bridge, they decided to experiment with the idea of stepping stones; multiple groups, projects and networks operating simultaneously. A way of facilitating emerging groups in different ways, to create their own spaces, times and ways to tackle their own questions, in the midst of a bustling, urban clubbing scene. This in a sense is their Galilee; a place of risk and surprising hope - crackling with electricity from the clash of angels and identities.

Church as Clubbing?
The Monastery of Sound Core Team: 55 musicians, DJs, video artists, choir, promoters. Venue: Bongo Club Numbers: 150 Launched: March 2001 Aim: To revitalise the clubbing scene by intentionally creating a community vibe of inclusive creativity and spirituality; inviting artists, musicians and performers to create their own grassroots scene, and write their own original music. They seek to promote caring, supportive, non-elitist creativity which encourages and inspires local talent and high degree of fun and participation by all. Launch Night Entering the Bongo Club, through the dancing crowd, rather than the usual D.J. behind a set of record decks, one encounters, a crowd of musicians; saxophone players, trumpet players, D.Js, keyboard players, guitar and bass players and a mixed gender/race gospel choir. Frank, a local poet/rap artist, who has just finished hanging sheets with Graffiti artwork; bright, colourful, illustration renderings of the words: soul and space, which, now beam at the crowd from both walls, begins to speak with energy. His lyrical poetry which he composed earlier in the day, recounting the highs and lows of his struggle with life, and search for meaning? and God?, now begins to punch the air with phrases and rhyming metaphors, over a bed of shimmering string chords and percussion. The crowd of musicians join in and progress through two, one hour long mixes of newly composed material and spontaneous jamming. Mistakes did not seem to be an issue, and there was a lot of laughing and cheering throughout the night. On the walls,

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home made video loops of space shots, film clips, footage of the club, video clips of flowers opening and freshly shot slide images. Most people questioned at the end of the night and after event, described the evening with phrases evoking images of family and community, for example: warm family, friendly, open to newcomers, its good to see artists and musicians not taking themselves too seriously, refreshing, welcoming, amazing atmosphere, exciting, it feels real, authentic, the most common remark was about the uplifting feeling of a gospel choir singing in a nightclub, boisterous friendly atmosphere, the amazing number many people who were involved and the feeling that it belonged to us - that we could be involved in building it for ourselves. There were some initial tensions about who might dominate -would it turn into a Christian thing, was a fear raised at one point. Some were fearful about it being unfaithful to Christ, that the Monastery of Sound was not about Christ. Both the fear of it not being about Christ and the fear that it would be taken over by the Christians, did cause some friction. In this case, however, people did not run away from this fear and tension, they stayed. why? Fiona, one of the team members, suggested the reason: neither side dominates the space, and they have connected in some way with each other through making music together and are primarily relating to each other on a level in which we can all share; our human-ness. Monastery at the clubbing end, was about revival of the club symbol of church; shared creation, from the Christian end of the spectrum, it was about music and reaching out. However the experience of shared creation across the gap was its own powerful message, that some may have registered, we ARE ALL made in the image of God. There was no question about whether this was church or not, except in some vague way. However, this experience challenged notions of reality, cultural boundary as purity and the location of authority and power - in cultural spaces. The experience is valuable in opening up trust in Christs incarnation - here, however, language and vocabulary about such an incarnation among many of the church-goers seemed to be non-existent. The idea that Christ could live among people outside the institution - was foreign to many of them, a factor seriously undermining and corroding the faith and trust, which open humans to the very roots of the Christian and hebrew tradition; loyalty to a Christian sub-culture which undermines and closes these roots, not only for themselves but for the wider community is quite shocking. The same quarters of the church who rave about the loss of the wider community to the way of faith are the very ones who have closed the doors, by teaching their people to deny the foundation of the Jewish, apostolic and Celtic faith, which flowered briefly in these lands: the incarnation, birthed in a sheep stall outside the institution, trumpeted by angels from a town under foreign occupation, despised by the

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religious and cultural elite at the backside of the Roman Empire - without this, his life, death and resurrection are meaningless. Surrounding cultures are detached from Christian tradition - but the church in its love affair with Modernity, was the one to cut the cords: reducing the young to grope around with the theological and political illiteracy of slogans, the abandonment of the old testament, the turning of churches into centres for institution addicts, the promotion of salvation via data and the copyrighting of sacraments and metaphors. A new language and vocabulary coming out of an experience of the incarnation - here in flesh, blood and bodily practice, then becomes crucial, if practices in club and church are to re-find their home and source in a fresh breaking in of an ancient Christian faith; How can the city see its ancient faith tradition - if the church doesnt believe in it?

Sacrament as Clubbing?
Urban Soul 1 Venue: Function Room at the Blind Poet, Pub People: 20, ( Majority Church Background) Description: 3D interactive communion liturgy Is it right for non-Christians to be allowed to take communion? -Question raised among the group planning Urban Soul 1 Its been a long time since I felt this scared - its a good scaryness though - Veteran clubber, queuing for Urban Soul 1 The scared feeling, that my friend, a regular clubgoer for many years, is something which he had not experienced since his early days going clubbing. The fact that the doorway into the music filled, Christian liturgical space, resembled a gateway into Solomons Temple, with those in front of the queue, taking off their shoes to tie sets of 3 coloured strings around their ankles and crawling through low, sheet covered doors, along tunnels full of symbols, foot washing bowls, incense and dangling headphones - may also have had something to do with it. Another, reported a curious feeling of childlikeness, and contentment, in having to bow down: crawling through enclosed, womblike spaces, following instructions, in using body - type prayers, signing in the shape of the cross, and foot washing. Entering the main liturgy space, which at first glance, resembles an airport runway at night, candles trace a pathway into the shape of a huge Celtic Trinity symbol, spiralling into a central area, in which a monk lies prostrate on the floor.

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People are moving around the path, or getting to grips with one of the 6 liturgy areas, called stations. One of the Stations; the wailing wall, consisted of a board filled with current clippings of news items, in which people hold a prayer stone. Each smooth stone displays a verse of the Lords Prayer which they either grip tightly or touch an image or news item with. People who found it difficult to pray, were surprised at the intensity of feeling, remarking that it may be: something to do with being able to physically touch something. The tactile nature of experience, was a commonly reported, as something that made, absolution (smell/sensual, using perfume oils and incense), confession (touch/visual/kinetic, using rice paper which dissolves in red liquid) and other items which involved cutting and pasting text using lightboxes, to create creeds. On the left of the room, was an individual worship tent. The purpose behind this station, was to help people encounter the giveness of individuality in the context of community and cosmos; worship as encounter with something already happening 24/7, rather than something we initiate, alone. The group gathering in the centre, waited until everyone was ready, then a women and a man, together offered prayers and spoken words over bread and wine, and passed them around the group. Many of those in this group, still wear the 3 stranded cord around their ankles, 6 months after the event. One of them explains: I couldnt bring myself to take it off. The stations, the space, the drama, the whole acted like a mirror, which gave those present a glimpse of who they were; it resourced their human identity as created in the image of God. The whole is the rave and club way of communication - its musical gestalt. The whole thing speaks to us, the whole community experience tells or reminds us who we are by doing something together; its vibe. As a community, the musical signature becomes our sound, which we produce and consume and at times struggle with together. For Generation E, to find its challenge and home in the history of Christian tradition in the west, chemical stimulation, sexuality, and virtual reality are the important issues that desperately needs to be brought to bear on questions about consumption of real religious experience; if Goldie, asked the question of both Eucharist and church worship, Ecstasy and club worship: does it face reality? Or is it something to drug the insiders to help them escape from reality? How are those in housing estates able to relate their crucifixion of debt, criminalisation, abuse and neglect to Christs abandonment to crucifixion if it is locked in the Greco-Roman metaphysical creeds of a dead Christendom? This brings me to the third route of Christian identity: Exorcism

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Exorcism as clubbing?
Soulspace Network Aim: to build a city-wide spirituality support network across the divide between church and local communities around clubland; encouraging new and existing groups Pub 1: Summer 2000 Pub 2: over a weekend in 1999. Fiona Brooker, one of the Exploring Church for Club Culture staff team, is keen to develop links, networks and what she calls breathing spaces among her friends, local project workers, sexual health and drug education groups, artists, musicians, collectives, writers, film-makers, anarchists, gay and lesbian groups, political activists, ecologists, Christian groups and club promoters. Aided by a friend, a local community worker, a group of them gathered at a pub to discuss her ideas, and find out about more about the launch event. Pub 1 She and another friend prepared a small flyer, listing a similar group to those mentioned above, printed it on the front, with the title: soulspace network. Most of the people began arriving, and ordered drinks, while Fiona laid out some of the flyers on the table, they included a cross-section of anarchists, gay culture, feminist, music and community workers, most of whom Fiona or I knew or have worked with in the past. Noticing the flyers, they began to pick them up to read. Suddenly, in complete unison, all gasped in disgust - Christians - aagh!, threw the flyers across the table, and quickly traced signs of the cross in the air - as if to protect themselves from some great evil. Of course, they hadnt noticed that my wife, Fiona, had placed the flyers on the table. So she courageously admitted, I put them there. After, about 5 seconds of complete silence, the group were thrown into complete dis-array, caught between their disgust and their embarrassment at having reacted to their friends flyers in that way. Some, rather sheepishly un-crumpled the flyers to read again, others apologised, one of our closest friends sat, shocked by his friends bizarre performance. All except for one: a young gay man at the edge of the table, shaped the flyer into the shape of a phallus and stuck it angrily into the centre of the table. He failed to get the response he wanted from those around the table, however, and the gay friends he came with, who were also my friends - were rather unimpressed. He began to get very agitated. He couldnt understand what was happening around him; the rules had been broken: Christian? and gay? Christian? and anarchist? something

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is wrong, they shouldnt be friends - this does not compute. Eventually he left, we carried on talking with each other, laughing and telling stories to one another. Pub 2 One day, heading up Leith walk to meet with some local Christians I bump into a friend, wheeling along the road in his wheelchair, he is gay, he has AIDS. He greets me as usual, with a kiss or a hug, we talk for a while, then I continue towards my destination. Further up the street, I bump into Jerry, a teenager, he is desperately trying to escape from poverty and has taken up prostitution, he is shy and laughs nervously a lot, we talk, then I move on. Further up the street, I bump into a friend, a veteran clubber, who remembers the first raves in Scotland, he has spent 10 years creating music, helping to run events, pouring his life into creating the club scene in Edinburgh, he doesnt care much about money, he is about to be thrown out of his flat. He says that: Im getting a bit too old for clubbing, Ive poured my life into it - into putting some life and community into this city, Im left with nothing though, we talk for a while, then as I walk off, my mobile phone rings. Its news about a youth worker friend, he has just killed himself. I walk past homeless people, and enter the church. As I enter the place where the Christians are, I begin to tell them about my gay friend and the others. They look embarrassed and wish to change the subject, one of them tells me, rather vaguely, that as Christians we shouldnt show approval. They then turn back to discussing their ideas for their city-wide student worship service, to be held that night at their church. The purpose of this section is to look at exorcism in the context of identity through resistance. What are people here really resisting? Both groups reacted to the mention of another group existing in Edinburgh. The local activists in the pub resisting the Christian identity, (on grounds of dominance/cultural hostility - for sake of respect) the Christians in the pub resisting the gay identity (on grounds of sexual morality - for the sake of Christ). What is interesting is that both groups regard each others image or identity as evil. The words Christian and gay, are powerful symbols, the mere mention of these words in either company produces emotional- physical reactions of disgust, fear, pity or hate. However, when individuals from either of these groups meet one another face to face, and the question of their cultural or religious identity is brought into the light, as in the case of Fiona and myself in the pub, the symbols have an opportunity to become objects, the human beings can become real subjects. In the middle of a pub surrounded by people drawn from a cross-section, regarded (wrongly) as some of the most hostile groups to Christianity in Edinburgh, suddenly the

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church is no longer out there, but in here; the church is sitting having a drink, and eating nachos with them. The years of solidarity and friendship, that we already had experienced with these people, could have been renounced by them in the face of our identification with the enemy: the sacred trinity of church, government and law. Thankfully, they did not. Instead, a pregnant void opened up for them to talk, based around their own concerns, dreams and passion: poverty and God, AIDS and Jesus, church and power, prophets and profits, suicide and community, critiques of capital market domination and the toxic consumer habits of our city-life. This same pattern has recurred again and again over the last 12 years, among people for whom Church and Christianity is completely alien, or regarded as hostile to their core identity.

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Conclusion: Angels in Clubland

YHWH in Clubland
Ravers and clubbers are the first truly post-traditional generation in the West. Paradoxically, they may also become the first generation to re-traditionalise the West. They live between Egypt and the promised land. In multicoloured tribes, each imagining themselves a floating oasis in a hot global desert; each has a sound or a vibe, which offers a shared name, and ways of creating that clothe themselves with new identities. They have taken the treasures of the technologies, media, symbols and potions of the modern Egyptians and are busy re-working, re-creating, sampling and mixing them with their new found neighbours and tribes on a world stage. As the years wore on, new sounds, new genres, new scenes, new clubs, new dance festivals - began to multiply. Amidst a patchwork of floating scenes and tribes, one of them recently penned these words, which he set to the music of the second verse of the British national anthem: Techno-Emergency Virtual reality Were running out of new ideas Who is the Queen? 83 - Jip As questions about human identity are raised, there can be no way back now for these emerging generations in Britain. 20th century Britain has collapsed into a thin attenuation of itself; relinquishing its autonomy into the hands of a chaotic new world economy; a horizon ruled by a few invisible giga-angels with their brands and logos, the super-light ones who can snuff out factories, buy whole countries and eat kids for breakfast. This generation sees their McTrinity of: McQueen, a McChurch, and a McGovernment and wonders - what was their history all about? There is nothing solid and dependable, and they are running out of the ability to create an experience that is untranslatable, an identity which is unrecordable, unrepeatable and not for sale. Britain as a modern construct has collapsed much of its vocation or identity into mainly one main way of being human: Consumer. That is essentially what was proclaimed when Margaret Thatcher announced: there is no such thing as society;84 it was a prophetic statement, and the young heard it; they cried out and YHWH heard them.
83 84

Jip in Justin Kerrigans superbly directed lm Human Trafc. Fruit Salad Films. 1999. Bauman, p. 64.

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The one whom the Apostle Paul, recognised in the unknown god at the corner of the Athenian market place, we hear in the sacramental experiences of empathy, ecstasy and eschatology among clubbers and ravers. The something which they cannot name, gifted them with their own culture, at a time of great loss and agony in Britain, and is still at work among them today. In Amos 9:7, the prophet reminds Israel that YHWH, is not their sole property: Israel I am the LORD God, and the Ethiopians are no less important to me than you are. I brought you up out of Egypt, but I also brought the Philistines from Crete and the Arameans from Kir. ...and rave from Britain Walter Brueggemann, argues that, YHWH hears all groans and cries of cultures, tribes and peoples, whether they are Yahwists or not; God is oddly and characteristically attentive to the cry of the bondaged who find enough voice to risk self-announcement, that is, who become agents of their own history, [my italics]a voice to which YHWH is drawn like an insect to the light.85 It is within this trajectory of exodus in Britain during the 90s that ways of new identity formation, have come to proliferate. Where once subcultures like disco, rock, punk and gay learned to create their own new cultures, in a globalised liquid world, identity creation has become an important skill for the majority. It has become a religious mode of survival in the west, pursued on the dancefloors of Britain, in tribes hungering for humanity away from the mono screen and corporate way of human exchange based on the market . Incarnation need not be a vague concept. The journey from this exodus history runs through the cities and towns of Scotland; around the clubs, cafes, pubs, estates, streets and projects, featured in this on-going research. The encounter in the nightclub, described at the beginning of this paper, is essentially a dogma, that I have learned to dance with. It has pulled me into this desert to walk with these people these last 12 years - it is only when I re-entered the gap between institution and night cultures, that the sparks started to fly. It is helpful to imagine the gospel accounts around Galilee as Edinburgh City centre and the surrounding housing estates; a multi-cultural busy scene of surprising happenings, violent clashes, jaw-dropping encounters, unpredictability, tragic death and breath-taking
85

Brueggemann, Walter. 1999. Texts that Linger Words that Explode: Listening to the prophetic voices. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. p. 97.

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life. It has turned from a long desert journey into a bustling bazaar; suddenly the silent gap between club and church is a busy place. It is in this landscape, that things become sharply exposed, identities clash, attitudes surface, Christians from the edge of church feel as if their faith is evaporating, conservatives turn into radicals and deviants turn into conservatives. People feel threatened and drawn at the same time; these are not comfortable places to be - they are great places to do theology. Coming to grips with Christian identity and practice in a liquid scenic context, (Galilee), needs to recognise that Christian options for identity and practice do not exist in a post-traditional world. Courage is needed to order to imagine and embody a new one, by exploring why the existing ways of Christian identity modelled by churches, among the young, in the 20th century, have become so attenuated in their spirituality and politically, economically and theologically illiterate in their language and practice. Do clubbing ways of creation/consumption identity and activist/artist ways of resistance identity, open up ways and clothing for new forms of Christian identification - that move beyond the liberal v conservative dichotomy; can these help church-as movement, to re-find its vocation in a local-global context?

Galilee Re-Visited
Moving from the incarnational sources of identity in Ch1 Exodus to the clashes of identities and their support systems in a particular geography: Edinburgh city centre, in Ch2 Galilee, two main critiques emerge from this research, placed under the following headings: 1. Creation Route: the mono-ising way - the temple system 2. Resistance Route: the demonising way - the worship system Critique of the above will be followed by arguing for alternatives based on the Production way of identity of the Trinity and resistance identity way of Christ. Creation Identity: The Mono Way The gap or chasm cannot simply be reduced to Christian culture v club culture. It is not about a clash between Christians with solid, given identities and clubbers, gay cultures and activists with liquid routes of self-constructed, multiple identities. This can be seen in how those from either end of the spectrum; both from the Christian end and clubbing end, worked so well together in the Monastery of Sound, and Urban Soul. Unfortunately, a framing which also collapses in the dramas of the Christian v gay shoot-out, revealed in their shared cultural habit of: resistance as attack

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on identity. Evidence that meaning routes of identity learned in a liquid era has radically shifted ways of embodiment among Christians whether they are aware of it or not. A growing problem among many the Christian crisis of faith in the west, with the church haemorrhaging the young at an alarming rate, could be in part due, to the assumption that Christian identity is unitary and solid - when in lived, everyday experience - it is not. The excessive distress, anxiety and fear experienced by the young at the edge of church, and those who have left, could be the result of being forced to hold together, what Brueggemann calls, a mono-ideology,86 of God and church, when their daily experience is one of increasing plurality, liquidisation, simultaneity and decentralisation. Leaving many bereft of practices which seem real in the 24/7 post-traditional, techno-matrix of city life. Many who those who have left, report an experience of diminishing fragmentation in their identity(s), although feelings of mourning and a haunting, blurry sense of disconnection to Christ ensues - with nowhere else to go, no new patterns of practice, role models, communities or support, many abandon the possibility of any future for the church and get on with life and survival in a new world. The experience of loss of a faith-connection to Christ is widespread among many of those at the edge and an increasing number living outside the radius of institution, the struggle to relate the agony experienced in the shifting ground of faith to institution and Christian tradition, continues - new ways of being church and faithful outside in the real world could be the vocation of the church in the 21st century. This is hardly breaking any new ground among scholars and practitioners - what may be new, however, in the context of these new emerging cultural streams in Britain, is in the concrete and hard-core approach of examining exactly what we mean by new practices and identity, struggled and explored with in a particular incarnational geographic site: Edinburgh Scotland - 2000-2001. The baby in Bethlehem was not a generalisation - in was an earth-changing specific, timely, shocking and particular event. What are the implications, then, of these liquid ways of identity formation, coming out of this particular Galilean drama? The lived experience of embodiment has shifted, particularly among the young to the creative construction of plural routes of identification in daily life, while core church symbolic practices and belief structures have remained hard and brittle. By retaining its central control of the sacred channels of production, options for Christian identity are severely reduced to consumption only within one centralised symbolic space. Hence many community activists, protesters and clubbers on a spiritual search, smell the enslaving spirit of the age in churches, and avoid them; without shared, multiple
86

Brueggemann, p. 89.

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access points to the creation and resistance of the socio-economic culture of Christianity in Scotland, they are effectively barred entry to its tradition, clubbing religiosity as church, sacrament and resistance is their only other option. Brueggemann, warns that the Church, as a socio-economic entity, making itself the only-ness and only-people of God, betray the ideology of power and privilege which led to Israels complacency about the poor and YHWHs messages of condemnation through the prophet Amos.87 The sharing of power in production at the Bongo club (ch.2) along with the freedom of movement among three separate spaces, allowed a colourful crowd to come together across the gap between church, nightclub and estate. The idea of allowing freedom in multiple spaces without onecentral control or response narrative, is not new, in Greek Orthodox liturgies people can come and go when they feel like it. To many clubbers, witnessing the control of a community space by one narrator, after years of clubbing can be a profoundly disturbing experience. Many of them equate central public control, by the few, with cult. They are often amazed that Christians are unaware of the dynamics of their community spaces; many of them regard churches as hideouts for a fearful section of the middle class, who crave institutionalisation in order to avoid reality - if there is redemption in the story of Christ, it is lost to those outside. Is there an alternative route for our creator identities other than a mono-identity mirrored in a mono-church? Creation Identity: The Trinity-Way In the gospels, Christ is never really alone: Father and Spirit pursue direct action among his relations with: fishermen, prostitutes, activists, angels, tax collectors, demons, Moses and Elijah, brothers, mother, priests, centurions, Samaritans, children, the sick and the dead, even in the wilderness, when Satan makes an appearance, the Spirit has led him there and fills him on his return. Where is the mono-Christ? Where is the mono-church? the only mono-anything appears to be located in a temple in Jerusalem, and someone called Caesar. The Father and Spirit seem to move around a lot, like the wind, (John 3) involving themselves with: bodies, mouths, mud, hands, fish, bread, wine, clothes, the poor bag, sheep and show up at parties, barbecues, meals and tombs. If anything, Jesus seems to be running around showing people how to do things; everything from: how to multiply bread and wine, heal each other, share belongings, ways of standing up to Roman bullies and unjust law courts, non-violent ways of resisting passive subservience through creative response; he is obsessed with showing his friends
87

Brueggemann, p. 90.

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how to live - not by having his name, logo or brand enshrined in the centre of a worship space or imprisoned within a sacred religious-political system. How can a new Christian imagination and identity embrace this ancient production/creation way of Christ? Hispanic Theologian, Justo L. Gonzlez, cites Tanzanian Roman Catholic Bishop Christopher Mwolekas defense of Ujamaa, a Tanzanian form of socialism, and argues that Christians in the west have made the basic mistake of approaching the Trinity as a puzzle to be solved, rather than as an example to be imitated.88 Trinity in the west is regarded as a mystery that can only be understood in metaphysical terms, whereas Mwoleka and his people believe that the Trinity is a mystery that can only be understood by imitating them. The way of Trinity, then, is primarily the way God creates by sharing - this - is how to live! Christ as human creator (son of man) shows us that we as creators, are made in the image of God, and are given the power of creation (creating) in trust. Trust that we will share what we have with one another on the basis of free exchange. The Trinity owns the whole house (the whole planet/systems/economy), the children share. The three-way dynamic of Christ, the Spirit and the Father, who share so freely with each other, that they live as one, builds momentum within a specific geography, most of it among Galilean folks and around the Decapolis area. A group of happenings which we are encouraged to see as activating people and their creative powers towards a clash of trajectory, with the spiritual, economic and political rule of a dominant Roman Empire. In the midst of a busy production of empire and the temple, a mini-empire of symbolic religious systems and practices of law, sacrifice and purity emanating out of Jerusalem, the true meaning of human creator is revealed among a posse of fisherman, anarchists, tax collectors and prostitutes touring the Galilee area - creating a new culture, and a new shared economy. The sound of this Galilean posse, erupting from the heavenly music and beat of the trinity - all three living among them - was their training ground in how to produce this way from its living, extravagant, source; this heaven, near them - around them. Walking this scary way, is a particular way Christ calls faith; an experience which my friend, the community worker called agood scariness (ch3. Urban Soul) The continual frustration and surprise that Christ experienced at their lack of faith, was their difficulty with trusting creating-together; this risky way, when the whole atmosphere of Judea, and Jerusalem, with its huge building programmes and worship economy, was buzzing with the opposite way. The dominant route in which the heavenly fanfare of Rome trumpets: you are consumer - so get used to it - you are part of the big us now - there is no other way.
88

Gonzlez, Justo. 1990. Maana. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. p. 113.

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To do the opposite would have seemed impossible; financial and social suicide doomed to failure from the start. To believe and practice this Trinitarian way of creating together, even if only person makes a start, Christ assured however, would grow. It cannot do otherwise because it opens the gates to a pregnant heaven-around-us; to YHWH drawn like an insect to the light, because it is faith in this way - it is a mustard seed kind of faith - in this way of living; this is what he means when he repeats over and over and over again in all of the gospels: believe! Do not be afraid! (Mark 5:31) Christ was saying: Im a punter (son of man) just like you, If I can do it - you can, all of you together, the way we (Trinity) are showing you, the might and beauty of heaven is around you, not in the Roman economy or the temple economy - if you only knew it. The ideal of Ujamaa, Mwoleka explains, invites everyone, in down to earth practical ways, to imitate the life of the Trinity which is a life of sharing. The symbol of church for clubbers, in their ideal of sharing the production and creation of a new culture; in its symbols, its free exchange of energies, talents, money and powers to create something new together , is one way of sharing in the breaking through of the trinity in Edinburgh among those least likely to gain access to production, this is: good news to the poor. Resistance Identity: The Worship System Exorcism, and the resistance identity image among clubbers, erupts in the language of: facing reality; both through art, acting, and music as public catharsis, which interpenetrates personal individual identity; it is the ground zero of resistance and exorcism, which cries out for: the public restoration of sharing, human community and the exposure of evil. Exorcising the city in a global age cuts both ways. In Spacevillage Earth we hear Goldies thundering bass, cutting through the bone to confront drugged passivity with reality. We see Brazilian children used in prostitution and living in rubbish tips, who through their own production and resistance come screaming and raging into an embrace of reality, Frank, the graffiti artist in Edinburgh gets kids to spray the walls with the colours of their new reality. The community workers who go shower clubbing to wash away the shame - are bodily anointed with the joy of reality. However, if we look at the socio-economic-media picture, the bigger horizon, shows the spiritual connections between intimate and corporate. The background music playing 24/7 in corporate owned Britain is: you are consumer, accept it, eat TV, drink electronica, eat ecstasy - as long as you can pay for it.

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Rubbish tips in Brazil are places of production; where the poorest often work 7 days a week. The majority of them are children and old people, currently producing 60-70% of the energy supply of the neighbouring mega-city. The housing estate, a short walk from Edinburghs booming city centre, with its police cameras, broken windows and disused tenements, speak through the smiling screens: you are unworthy consumer; stay out until you can pay to get in. The community worker, crossing the divide between Edinburgh city centre and its peripheral internment camps for refugees, undesirables and those with poverty disease, rages at the astounding complacency and denial of this powerful city. Of the three different ways or routes of symbolic practice, the resistance identity, is least understood and practised humanely among the expanding fracturing cultures and scenes across Britain, including Christian and gay. This is what fuels our popular hysteria, lynch mobbing and ritual scapegoating in Britain. The young gay man in the pub attacking Christians, and the group of Christians in the pub denouncing gays - contrast these resistance practices with the ones above. Contrast these resistance practices with the Christs treatment of Mary Magdelene, tax collectors, criminals, Samaritans and terrorists. Contrast them with Christ the criminal begging the Father to forgive his tormentors. Both are reacting out of fear to a perceived threat. The gay person, because church is seen as part of the establishment, and the establishment can hurt him. The Christians, because they believe that their very self-being and their pure-mono culture will be contaminated if they talk about a gay person, a gay subculture cannot hurt them. So what are they afraid of? and why do they label and stereotype each other? Is it not the fear of subjection; the fear of loss of security, power and identity? If so, then the power of naming and defining the other is a way of dominating the threatening one - an excuse for casting them out, and blocking them from relationship with and a share of our cultural creation. In a period of globalisation and de-traditionalisation, a time in which Baumans unholy trinity of uncertainty, insecurity and unsafety,89 prowls the 21st century cities of Britain, the likemindedness and shared religious and cultural identity that many crave, may be laced with a toxicity that few are willing to face. Richard Sennet writes: The we feeling, which expresses the desire to be similar, is a way for men to avoid the necessity of looking deeper into each other.90 Then what are we to resist and how do we resist, how are we to relate to other humans, who are different, religiously, culturally or morally? what kind of bonds and community relationships nurture compassion and mercy, rather than cosy cultural identities which we
89 90

Bauman, Zygmunt. 2000. Liquid Modernity. Cambridge: Polity Press. p. 181. Bauman, p. 180.

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become tempted to defend by attacking those who threaten us? Should church not be an uncomfortable place of challenging merciful human community - that stands against this tide? Should it not be a place which nurtures and models new kinds of individual and collective resistance in a global homogenising age? What is this tide that continues to seduce British Christianity and religiosity into such dangerous passivity? Resistance Identity: The love System First of all, (part of the good news to the poor) subservience is evil, a distortion of the new human in Christ. Gonzlez notes in Genesis 3 that the power of naming was not to be used between humans, humans are bone-of-bone flesh-of-flesh, they are one, made in the image of the trinity, they fulfil one another, and lead and work with creation which is given in trust to them. This is what God called good, man alone is not good - man cannot reflect the image of God alone; man is being-for.91 Gonzlez notes that it was after the fall that Adam named his partner Eve, previously he shared his name with her - in an identity of for-otherness, and argues that this is how the society of domination was born.92 If stereotyping and labelling are ways of divorcing ourselves from other humans, a route which leads in the opposite direction to the life of Trinity-sharing, what route leads us towards Christs way of resistance? What was it that he resisted? While Jesus sat in the wilderness; Satan said: if you are the son of God... , inviting Jesus do that which he had come to do anyway: to help people create, to help people receive, to help people break open the system to the future promised reign. It is not particularly obvious what Jesus is really being tempted with here - unless doing your job is the temptation, until one asks who or what is naming him. (Luke 4). A naming that Christ always seems to be overly careful about - particularly when it comes from those in power (Pilate: John 18), a naming that has the power to define, control and dehumanise if responded to according to the power-namers agenda. Jesus resisted the visual brand and its hidden terms, i.e. the son of God is a solitary being, not a being-for. The temptation, here is to make up for not really being a son, a creator, receiver and resistor, one who lives in utter interdependence with Trinity and others, this may not have been completely clear, with the first two layers of temptation, unfortunately for Satan, the last one backfired. Adam faced the same temptation: that something is missing from his identity - he needed to make up for it, fill it with something out there-a person/group/system, something threatens to destroy my identity - I must resist it out there- a person/group/system.
91 92

Gonzlez, p. 133. Gonzlez, p. 134.

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Temptation is always begins with undermining the human that he/she is not made in the image of God, by focusing on the human as being-alone. Christ begins to see through these: creation and resistance strategies/trajectories to their true invisible source, by being tempted with the feeling that there was something lacking in his true identity as: son, which would annul his immense responsibility as being-for-another. The temptation is to go off-line, from his true invisible identity at the heart of trinity relational sharing, and hook up with the comforting visibility of the worship system. This decides whether his ministry is to become a revolutionary way from among the Galileans or a renovation of the temple-system. In the temptation to fulfil his vocation-temple style, Christ faces reality and the truth of how his ministry is to proceed - he is to destroy the dominating worship economy and replace it from the grassroots with his broken body: the love economy. Christ then moves in the completely opposite direction from the Roman Empire-Jewish Temple system, towards the love feast of the trinity, tearing itself open to invite humans to discover together who they are, inviting through this way an opening to all nations, tribes, cultures and scenes, beginning in Israel. Why? What triggered Christs revulsion when feeling attracted and drawn to worship? If the image of Christ resisting temptation is the foreground of the scene - in scripture, history and present day Christian identification, reality can be perceived more fully in the background of the scene. When northern/western church reads of Christ resisting evil, it sees the bread, the angelic protection, the worship of Satan, it does not hear the background. That technoempire and the media-temple system have become one flesh: the source of life, protection and worth-ship in Israel; its hidden metanarrative. Only the ones who could buy religious-cultural purity were allowed in; the sick, the lepers, the deviant, the scapegoats and the impure were left outside. With Jesus insides hungering for the comfort of provision, protection of the religious system and the communal worshipping experience of the synagogue - only in this comprehensive fast, was he able to see the horrific reality; that the worship system of temple and empire - were one and the same; it all leads towards: Satan, the high priest of all worship systems. Perhaps this is why Christ rarely mentions worship in the gospels, perhaps this is why Christ suddenly reacts only at the third temptation- when Christ discerns Satan behind the call to worship. Instead of joining the priests at Jerusalem, he turned to go in the opposite direction; against the tide of worship toward the outskirts of Galilee, and began to wash some feet, in Spirit and in truth.

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No longer fooled that temple worshipping is really about YHWH, he now knows he has to destroy the symbolic worship system, and replace it with his own torn body. There will be no excuse for humans to be fooled into placing worshipping God at the heart of life; that system has been forever exposed and judged when Christ was murdered by it. It was a way of violence, scapegoating and death - now, replaced by the Trinity-sharing way of love, and the poorest, the last are welcomed first in through the torn veil of his body (Mark 15:38). Serious Self-righteousness is replaced by the fun and thrill of faith understandable only to children, who have nothing to prove. The bread and wine and the Jesus washing of Simons feet (a less popular sacrament) in the upper room before his death, can be contrasted with its opposite system which Christ saw from the wilderness. Nearing the end of his earthly ministry, we find the music of Gods new government; this love economy - here among the disciples. After three years it has become one flesh: the source of life, protection and worth-ship coming through networks and structures via the Trinity-sharing way, open to everyone, in a metanarrative trumpeted by angels from the rooftops: this is good news to all creation (John 13). A way that survives even death.

New Angels, New Wineskins

Behold I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19) Christian identity in the West is in crisis. It often clings unthinkingly to knee-jerk practices of naming and scapegoating other humans made in Gods image, and has replaced the command to love with the command to worship; it has inherited identities built on worship systems of royalty and temple, designed to operate in similar way as the temple in Jerusalem during the Roman Empire; systems that continue to violate and torture Christs body, leaving it puzzled about its vocation and identity, mumbling on about being counter-cultural (rather like the disciples beating up on Samaritans in the midst of the domination of the Roman worship economy), but blind and unable to resist the spirit of a global economic age. Both the Roman economy and our current global economy, in a more positive sense, expose what has been hidden and ignored within the North/West church-temple structures for centuries. As it emerges out of the sea of humanity, we can begin to trace its background features spotlighted in the glare of a new economy. The global capitalist enterprise comes out of the belly of the western church-spirit and structure. We see its Gnostic, metaphysicality in the internet, the trajectory of power and greed in the

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economy, and worship cut loose from the demands of YHWH, the prophets and Jesus fuelling the emerging global media&drug economy and the never-ending hunger for ecstasy without responsibility. Learning to listen to the background, rather than focus on the foreground was a central feature of Christs way of discernment, and he knew his name and image, like YHWH before him would be used in a deceptive manner. In our global era, the poles between those who love-share among the outcast and poor first and those who place worship-experience first will begin to look like a separation between the sheep and the goats. The sheep did not know that they were sharing creation, that is doing for Christ, by giving the hungry-Christ food, quenching the thirsty-Christ with drink, inviting the stranger-Christ in, and visiting the imprisoned and sick Christ. They did not know that risking themselves by protesting against Giga corporations and world trade organisational greed in the face of the worlds poor nations, was for Christ. They had no idea that helping housing estate kids to shout and create to catch a glimpse of their God-given human image was for Christ, that holding the hand of their friend who has AIDS was for Christ, that creating community with young people at risk in the city centre, in their family-type nightclubs and peer projects, which struggle to get by on shoe-string budgets was for Christ, that risking oneself to reconcile enemies between warring factions and cultures in and between cities was for Christ, that a wrecked child spending hours every day drawing faces with crayons, trying to hang on to their last shred of humanity was for Christ (Matt 25:31-46). The goats thought they did know that they were doing for Christ, that is worship services, taking care of us and looking after the needs of the symbolic temple-system; the church. They had a severe blind spot about the above, caused by the divorce in the western Christian imagination between Christ and the least, a plank very much obvious to a growing number of theologians in the Southern and Eastern hemispheres. This is the real source of the gap; the chasm - the black hole of clash and meaning, explored in chapter 3; the chasm that exists in the mind of the Western Christian imagination. Church is about sharing creation and it begins with the poorest; all things; powers, governments and corporations, in every generation, every culture, every nation has already been given to those at the back, those at the bottom, the last - are the first, not the only ones, but the first ones to receive and share a new way of being human that is free and open to all. The global economy runs in completely the opposite direction - the mono-direction, where eventually there can be only one, a figure. This same direction has drawn the

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west into changing Christ into a figure, impaled and domesticated within a middle-class system; a sacrament to be protected, not a scary way of sharing through creation. The resurrection of Christ and Gods vindication of his way - all things given to the last - first; warns of judgement on every generation, every organisation or nation, which denies or ignores: the prime directive; the core vocation of every creature and corporation - to move in reverse to the world system - and calls denial by its real name: theft. To be told that your housing estate and your poverty are not entirely your own fault, that its time to stand up - something has been stolen from you. That this world is Gods house, all of it has been given to Christ now, he has decided to give it to you; so ask, learn and share, and pass it on. Such a simple message; such a clear message to all creators (creation). How did the West lose this?, how can it find it again? How can existing Christian identities find its way home to the Trinity-way; the lovesystem, among a live untamed heaven bent on activating new economies of life within cities and scenes? Aloysius Pieris, Asiatic Theologian from Sri Lanka, speaks to the church in the West about her need to be baptised among the religious poor, like Christ who was baptised among John the Baptists movement among the religious poor in the river Jordan.93 A number of us who have been practising this way, call this process culture travel, interestingly Pieris and clubbers use the word baptism as immersion into religiousculture and immersion into the club scene. This is one particular way of moving from the worship first-system of 20th century patterns of Christian identification to the risky Trinity way of love first. A way in which we find the hidden Emmanuel, God-with-us on-route. Into this baptism we are born into a new way of identification with the Trinity and his work among these new generations. All of these three routes/roots working together, can build an indigenous, monastic-style rhythm of life. It is a way of movement, growth and health in a scene-age. This way of humanity is a richer-thicker Trinitarian alternative to the attenuated homo digitalis or homo-genous of the screen-age and temple-age. These routes, would enable groups to re-find radical purpose, networks of hope and energy for Christian community and lifestyle in ways which can weave together shared local stories and adventures on pilgrimage with the Christ; this could become the new monastic adventure: local gospels in a global age. In the production networks of clubland, its cluster of sacramentals, in its routes of creative exorcism in the city and in the new trans-international movements of rave and anti-corporate protest, there are golden rivers of tradition running through its veins: YHWH and Exodus, the unknown god of the Athenians, African tribal and Black Gospel
93

Wessels, Anton. 1990. Images of Jesus. London: SCM Press. p. 168.

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in its music and dance, the praxis of Celtic Christianity, and the trembling hot lava of the O.T. psalmists and prophets. Only by immersing itself into the living scenes of Scotland, will western Christianity be able to move from the 20th Century no-mans-land; the intertestamental gapof monotemple Christianity, into the fiery wilderness of John the Baptist and fall into the arms of Jesus in the Gospels. If this is the place to begin new ways of Christian identity, then it needs to be entered into courageously, among multiple routes and city-wide networks of lively collectives, forums and communities, where they can learn: God desires mercy, not sacrifice (worship), and shake the dust of Athenian docetism and gnosticism, from their feet. Over the last 12 years, working as a: community worker, nightclub event designer, internet designer, multimedia/CD design trainer, magazine designer, in-house visual artist, dance music producer, song writer, Christian community leader, worship event producer, media production trainer with housing estate young people, homeless, and the unemployed - these have been my baptismal fonts and apprenticeship schools with Christ; this has been my Galilee. The intention of this dissertation is not to take anything away from the emerging theological interest in media, religion and communication or the brave attempts of the Alt. Worship movement to relate liturgy and community to the post-modern city. It is suggesting, however, that for those who can, it may be time to move house incarnationally into Galilee. Into ways of building local, monastic-style city-wide networks of corpo-real action, presence and pilgrimage; where religious identity can move out of the post-modern picture frame, into the eschatological, Trinitarian, political and economic creation of a public arena. Where the city becomes the theatre of action for role-playing and acting out together, as learners and apprentices of Christ: ways of production, consumption and resistance; feasting, faithing and fasting. After baptismal learning- receiving, and the Christs wilderness system-fast, apprentices may begin to catch glimpses of their identity in formation, through the experience of letting go and allowing themselves to be carried, like a child. They are drawn into Christs new way of fasting; fasting from the whole system - its provision, security and worship. The future becomes open and plural, life becomes a way, between the times, in which practices of work, art, family, child rearing and business knit and bond us into one flesh eating God. Vocation, Gods will, - another word to suffer badly from the word-killing metaphysical habits of the west, has been revealed, as a trajectory, the prime directive for all groups, corporates, nations and collectives, towards the last-first, and an invitation to: eat at the table of the Trinity through new ways of working together.

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In Scotland, around its club and night cultures, these can come through a multiplicity of Trinity-friendly structures: coops, collectives, community run- cafe-bars, exorcism arts teams, public owned installations, town-centre forums on hot local issues, incensed prayer-meditation spaces and festival tents. It could include: investment structures for funding a city-wide local equity economy, local support for collective businesses and markets, food and skills banks, internet linked theology lab and street theology unit, local music studio and recording companies, all night music cafes, and information points with first aid and recovery rooms around club scenes. Cooperatives could help the homeless to build their own homes, coordinate direct public action, movements linked to these and church groups could set up ravers monastic schools for the 21st century, club-style mentoring in Christian spirituality practices, healing practices of Christ for new emerging cultures.94 A Scottish version of the way of Ujamaa, could be based on early Celtic Christian traditions of the Trinity. As an alternative to the Kite-mark, why not award communities and groups with a T-mark: the mark of the Trinity. SoulSpace Network and Urban Soul, reviewed in chapter three, both independently chose three interconnecting circles as their logos. Is there a way of opening up these networks to the socio-economic aspects of the Trinity way of sharing work, premises, cars, food, skills, and resources? This is how those drawn to Christ already GO!, whether they realise it or not. This is the future of Christian identity: lifelong learning with Christ, active in Creation through public action in our cities, helping each other to participate with the ancient, green and fresh organic economy of the Trinity. Together, with many who would not characterise themselves as Christian (i.e. the 20th century-mono version), we become the live 3D epistles, parables and gospels of the future, open to all. A way in a liquid era, in which we can learn to let go; where ontological anxiety is replaced by shalom at the core of ones being - when we know that we are finally doing what we were always made for. In thick new bonds of relationship and loyalty to the trinity in our locales, shame is covered by a growing awareness of our identity - that our names are written in HEAVEN-here among us. (Luke 10:20) That means, that through this involvement we come to know this truth: OUR TRUE IDENTITY IS OUT OF REACH - IT IS KEPT SAFE BY ANOTHER All of our identities are a mystery, deep in the heart of the Trinity, who promises to hold it in safe-keeping for the future. Therefore followers dont have to take their cultural, vocational and religious identities too seriously, because this is not where their real

94

See Appendix 1 for further routes and city projects.

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identity lies. If it is true that even death cannot snuff out their identity, then they can afford to go out, give away power, let go and love freely, without fear. To the Angel of the church in Pergamum, Christ promises believers a clear, smooth stone inscribed with your new name, your secret new name - known only to you. This is promised if they conquer; resist the temptation to deny identification with Christs way (a denial of their own resistance identity). (Rev. 2:17) and I am coming soon; hold fast what you have, so that no one may seize your crown ... and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, ... and my own new name. (resist the temptation to give up your creator identity). (Rev. 3: 11-13) All of these instances of conquering were about resistance to the same temptations that Christ suffered in the wilderness - to deny his humanity- our new humanity - our dignity as creators and resistors as well as consumers. Christian identification through group identity, worship extravaganzas, Christian reputations, approval, disapproval or spiritual phenomena, alone will count for nothing, it is walking this way; a route of mustard-hot faith - a journey of scary-actionresponses, by travelling through creation. Followers of this way, are finally identified by God at the end of our age as those who resist the spirit of our age (No!) and participate in creating the love feast (Go!) - to Galilee. Didnt the angel at the tomb say, 2000 years ago? Do not be afraid, for I know you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said... go quickly and tell the disciples... he has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him. (Matt. 28:7) And Christ repeats the same message, just to make sure we hear him... Do not be afraid. Go... to Galilee; there you will see me. (Matt. 28:10) Now that the global market has become omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent, we know now that the Trinity - the protector of our true identities, is not some global metaphysical blob. The kingdom -the heaven breaking open around the most unlikely people and places, is completely different... you have to Go! and look for him - in the hot desert wind (John 3), not in the tombs and temples of a dead Christendom, but out among the myrrh and fig trees of Galilee where he awaits us, resurrected and grinning at us in a new guise... to take us on the adventure of our lives. Where Jesus Emmanuel (God-with-us) comes to us as the E in generation E. The D.J. who can make angels dance, the Brazilian child caught in breathless wonder, the clubber screaming for Gods House, the young follower caught up in prayer-clubbing,

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the graffiti artist spraying colour and hope on empty walls, the choir singing in a nightclub, the community worker going wild on smoke-filled dance floors. Rapping prophets and clubbing psalmists stalking the land, the lone protester standing against angels in global corporate guise, the mouths of ravers filled with the dreams of a promised land, - the flower of Scotland standing among kids in housing schemes - who catch the fire in his eyes. The mighty rushing wind of YHWH in raves flooding the land, is the awakening which many have prayed for. Expecting another Hebridean, Welsh or North-Eastern revival - the church got rave instead. With the collapse of Christendom, there was no way that it could take a Christian shape - its symbols have come adrift are now carried along by the spiritual energies of its newest generations - hungering for celebration, community and vibrant identities. This is not a moral or ethical statement, it is an incarnational statement of faith which cries out for further engagement and interpretation - and preparation: with new indigenous fuelled imagination, language and practices. New angels need new wine skins. The multicultural tribal grandchildren of the Kirk live in the world of Galilee. The angels and spiritualities of their communities and scenes need new clothes; new ways of following Christ - by being able to recognise that these ways have already been activated within their world - in the incarnation: the good news (new wine) always announces that it is happening now. In these globally aware generations - the Christ they reach out for in the unknown god - is the Christ of the global age who is intimately involved in the life of their scene and their city. These new routes of Christian identity in a global era - where people live under the threat and challenge of a global corporate economy - thrusts Generation E into both the micro- historical world of the Galilean Jesus, an approach majored on within this dissertation, and the future of Jesus in a Global international age (global-local: scene). This dissertation, at its end can only touch on an eschatological direction of Christian identity - a future paper will have to carry it further; this ending along with its appendices intends merely a suggestion of a musical soundtrack that might carry the immediate future of this Trinitarian way of Christian identity some fresh new hope-filled paths, in a post-traditional age.

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Appendix 1: ID Summary
Symbolic Practice Organic way Getting real>whole way of Trinity love-System human= being-for creator identity participation of the many 1. Church = Touring carnival shared-creating GALILEE love celebration consumer identity trusting incarnation 2. Sacramental = Baptism among poor healthy receiving JORDAN Friend-sharer resistance identity embracing reality 3. Exorcism = Standing up to path of risk-scary-faith the bad teacher banish evil / masochism DESERT >learning to love all Identity Route Synthetic way Getting virtual>toxic way of Mono worship-system human=being-alone Elite of the few controlled-domination love power/fame drugging discarnation unhealthy receiving User-taker embracing the lie path of cowardice banish human beings >learning to hate all

Note: These three key ways of being human can fill out and concretise more vague languages of incarnation, humanisation, and transformation. A set of human keys which can help to open doors of communication and practice across the city. For example: Judaism/ Catholic production/create consumption/eat resistance/resist work family marriage Corporation/nightclub cooperative ownership urban life support system bound to eco-ethos School/Univ participative learning inspiring mentoring bound to wisdom

1.

ID Identity=Incarnated Discipleship

Christ reveals the truth about all human identity; the Son of man shows us (reality) - who we really are NOW! 2. Church = road trip carnival Christ reveals the truth about all human community and work, past, present and future: church NOW! The Son of man shows humans how to create, resist and receive together nightclubs, projects, families and corporations.... this is doing church. 3. Vocation of churches in Scotland= humanise the city Humanise the Global Matrix and all its systems - check in with the Trinity breaking in at a city near you NOW! 4. Gospel= The Prime directive All things in heaven and earth have been given to Christ, who gives it to the last-first (Trinity-sharing) breaking in at a city near you NOW! The church is to lead the city in announcing and celebrating the Son of man in the poor, the despised, the scapegoated, and marginalised FIRST. This is great news! We are the first corporation to put its life ON(the) LINE for the humanising of the city. 5. Scotland=The flower, growing at the far edge of Europe, welcomer of refugees, its youthful multi- cultural voice speaking and acting courageously on a world stage - standing with the global lepers. 6. Scottish Theology and incarnational practice in new emerging cultures= Turn 180 degrees and start doing everything IN REVERSE.

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Appendix 2: Humanising the City

Some Practical Routes for Christian Identity in a Post-Traditional Scottish City In Edinburgh, the three ways or ramps into the work of Christ around the local clubbing scene, already activating are: 1. Production; the way of creating: nightclubs, media studios, shops, cafes, clubbing, DJ circuits, neighbourhoods, music/art collectives, yoga, theatre, film, poetry, writing, drugs and sexual health information drop-ins, overseas tour/networks, graffiti, internet/magazines/flyer design, shared performance and play on dancefloors, parties, workshops and club night - fundraising, and community projects. 2. Consumption; the way of receiving: dancefloor sacramentals, ecstasy, empathy and eschatology. Community: Pre-club and after-club families and friends, cafes, shared flats, shared pilgrimages to dance festivals - here and abroad, and chill-out spaces. 3. Resistance; the way of facing reality: cultural art/music role models and mentors helping the young at risk in the city, shower-clubbing, illegal raving - anywhere outside, housing estate young people, anti-corporate street protest, political campaigns, cultural & media, jammers, anarchists, artist/activists, and eco-protesters. 4. Baptism of John and Wilderness fast Route for Existing Christian Cultures Older forms of Christian identity can enter the waters of Johns baptism, by becoming immersed in the religious-culture of the local scene; its clubs, its estates, its projects and its local people. A period of culture shock/fasting from previous sustenance, security and worship supports, will happen naturally - a sense of loss and grief does not mean loss of God, but a new journey is beginning, it does not last forever - expect a complete loss of bearings and sense of disconnection from Christ, that ends with a massive hunger for reading the Gospels; hunting for the human-Jesus, creating with his Father and Spirit in his world. Encouragement from an existing community in the same boat is very rare in Britain among these new cultures, they are like solid gold, they help to ease the pain of transition for those moving into these waters. Warning: Dont hide! The longer one takes to jump in the more excruciating the pain, all of these experiences are well known to overseas missionaries. It then embarks on a long-term pilgrimage into specific zones of creating/creation95 which are happening now among people/groups within the city. Rather than the fixed mono-identity within a mono-church space, which tends towards a Christian identity as: elite producer (worship leader e.g.) or passive consumer, the initiate will have to learn to begin from scratch, receiving scraps of the incarnation of Christ in his/her local area; that means finding Christ in their hotplaces of sacrament, shared production, times of mourning, rage and exorcism. This should not be an unusual road for any Christian - it is merely learning to become an adult in the faith - one thing you will notice is an enormous sense of peace among all kinds of people, you will feel the pleasure and immense security in being part of the wildness of the trinity (in Christ) - the wells will have been dug deeper. Three Main Network - Project Routes First of all, new ways of Christian identity seem to work in reverse to the old mono-identity, and upside down; you do it first, to understand it later, the direction is into the city away from the existing church, you begin at the edges, not the centre, loving enemies creates the worship - not the reverse. Hospitality is accepted before given, leaders are hidden at the bottom, deep listening occurs first before giving and doing. In a global age, we are first counter-economic, not-countercultural ( this would be rather like Jesus beating up Samaritans while their sick are bowed down

95

The theme of moving into and lling creation is traced throughout Thwaites book: Thwaites, James. 1999. The Church beyond the Congregation: The strategic role of the church in the postmodern era. London: Paternoster Press.

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under the shadow of the Roman empire) - economic discipleship, in the ancient tradition of YHWH, Jesus and the prophets, is far more challenging! Context: City-Wide Local Scene Colours for routes are based loosely on Celtic discipleship-martyrdom pattern. All three routes accessible within a city-wide network, held at various points by supportive institutional churches. Institutional Church type I act as pillars which offer supporting scaffolding for, Church type II as: network/movement into Creation.96 Angel motif is used as a way of stimulating discussion about corporate and collective spirituality. Collectives, networks and projects can be developed from basic volunteer teams and cooperatives to team-based businesses and charity status funded organisations. Church Type II routes: 1. Green Angel Creation Counter-Economies 2. White Angel Consumption Monastic Networks 3. Red Angel Exorcism Resistance Movements All Routes Based on Trinity-Sharing, Green and White open to all, regardless of identity, Red is possibly best initiated by invitation. GREEN ANGEL ROUTE - Counter Economies Among the projects and stepping stones of the Exploring Church for Club Culture project; a hugely diverse spectrum of people are coming in at different places and angles to various parts of these projects and networks. Many want to be involved in making the city a more humane place, or building community or sharing production. The Green Angel route is an invitation to copy the trinity in her sharing; collective-run music studios, coops, independent shop markets and forums, food banks, small green businesses, shared club night productions, an after-club drop-in music/cafe garden among the city nightlife - with first aid, safe rooms for those in trouble, and transport provided by the White Angel crew. WHITE ANGEL ROUTE - Monastic Networks The White Angel route, could offer those drawn to contemplation, healing, club ambient and Latin chant written by the green angel mob, and quiet well designed, sacred spaces, similar to the Urban Soul liturgy idea - again close to the nightlife of Edinburgh and perhaps utilising a spirittent at the Edinburgh festival. They could also provide a rhythm of life practice for would be soulfriends, mentors and monks or for those needing to get their lives together even if they are not interested in overt forms of Christian spirituality - they can still practice (this is how most clubbers believe, wear it first for a while - see how it feels). It can also provide some who are already drawn to take on periodic vows: poverty/healing/prayer. Many are exhausted by community work and volunteer work and are looking for healing and energy, some are deeply scarred, homeless, sick or suffer from addictions/sexual disease, some are just worn out by the city, the mere knowledge that these angels exist would bring an increased sense of security to youth at risk in the city. RED ANGEL ROUTE - Resistance Movements Lastly the Red Angel route. This is an apprenticeship/discipleship school. They have been given a mission: to take apart the Gospels and live it. They struggle with the hard realities: theology, injustice, death, sexuality, drugs, ecstasy, systems & powers, Christology, (by listening involvement with the those in the other two routes), and go down the exorcism route, facing the hard issues of the gospel creatively among the poorest, the imprisoned, the mentally ill, the abused, the powerful, the wealthy. Various developments could include: theology lab and peer discipleship school, challenging on-site workshops and comic prophetic protest-work. In the future they may be able to organise tours, on-site training and some could mentor and pass on what/how the economy of Christ
96

The distinction between Church as: pillar and Church as: movement is a mojor theme in: Thwaites, James. 1999. The Church beyond the Congregation: The strategic role of the church in the postmodern era. London: Paternoster Press.

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works among new generations in Scotland works, so they can pass it on. However, the chasm, this unprecedented transition in the west means that a lot of work has to be done before there are indigenous electronic Gospels according to clubbers and ravers spinning back and forth between Japan and Russia. Most of all their mission will include: serious theological work on Christology and theology for new emerging global-local scenes, clubbing, raving and protest movements in urban centres across the world. Media collaborations with the green angels and other groups around the city could work at city-centre installations that allow the public to explore interactive 3D walk though gospels, which involve local stories and people from around the city. They will work to establish live links with all corners of the globe, a trans-international network with theologians among these scenes who can step-stone to theological communities in Africa, Asia, South America, U.S., Eastern Europe and the Middle East. These descriptive approaches as ways to furnish and inspire theological and Christian imagination are just a beginning, and as part of the ongoing practice and theologising of the Exploring Church for Club Culture Project, will be submitted for use its collective exploration.

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Appendix 3: Research Information

UK Clubs numbers, range between: intimate 150 (underground-family) to epic 2000 (Superclub-industry) to enormous (60 000) Dance Festivals across the UK over Summer Edinburgh Clubs Present number, including pre-clubs 200+, Most clubs open 10-3am, fortnightly or monthly, There are clubs open 7 nights per week, 52 weeks per year. Background Research: Edinburgh Clubs, places, groups include: Club Night: Sublime Nightclub Club Night: Manga Night Club Night: The Monastery of Sound Collective: Urban Soul Network: SoulSpace Network Drugs/Sexual Health Projects: Crewe 2000, Tangents & Others Pub Discussion Night: Essential Mix Various DJs, Artists, Community Workers, video artists, activists, graffiti artists, musicians, drug education workers, local housing estate project workers and those who just love dancing.

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Appendix 4: A Brief History of Ecstasy MDMA

Ecstasy (MDMA) 3, 4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine, often referred to nowadays as E, was, according to Sheryl Garratt, first synthesised by Merck, a German pharmaceutical company in 1912. Californian Chemist Alexander Shulgin, consultant to the Drug Enforcement Agency, developed it further by synthesising the preparation, and after testing it on himself and a control group, announced it as, penicillin for the soul. Garratt, describes the reaction of one of the initial test group, a paen to the drug, immediately recogniseable to most clubgoers, I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria...I feel I have come home, I am complete...everyone must get to experience a profound state like this. Its therapuetic potential was eventually recognised in the States among doctors and therapists in the 70s, Garratt records an estimate of around half a million doses administered in the 80s, to those suffering: post-traumatic stress disorders, phobias and marital problems. In the early 80s, MDMA was discovered by early gay and black nightclub cultures and Garratt notes that, despite the protests of therapists - MDMA was the first drug ever to have a team of lawyers to defend it - it was made illegal in the US in July 1995. 97 In 2001 in Britain, E is an institution among the young, a social habit, which Noel Gallagher describes, as normal as drinking tea. Garratt reports that the Ecstasy trade is worth 1 billion a year, and in the current British climate, with chemical stimulation, now a major recreational industry in Britain, among all sectors of society. With the democratisation of recreational drugs during the 90s, it was left to Keith Hellawell, the Governments drugs tsar to point out that, the war on drugs is a war on ourselves, having a go at our own people.98 Although, most E apologists point out the political motivations, popular hysteria and ignorance about differentiations between substances like heroin and E, and hypocrisy about drugs of choice, by quoting statistics, for example: 40,000 alcohol related deaths per year to 6 deaths per year (xxviii simon reynolds) from E, peer drug education projects around the country, are keen to point out other dangers, however. They report an increase in, bingeing; the combining of a mixture of substances, for example: MDMA, Cocaine, Ketamine, and sometimes even alcohol, to produce varying effects. Crewe 2000, a drugs education project in Edinburgh are also concerned about the ignorance surrounding the expanding complexity of the drugs trade, and the increasing difficulty in tracking dangerous batches of synthetic drugs, in a situation where it is usually impossible for young people to know what they are taking. This brief background is intended to give some snapshots of Generation E and illustrate why it is important to include its drug useas forming a widely accepted part of its custom, aside from its Class A illegality, which puts many of them regularly in danger of criminalisation and potential long term health risk to memory function and emotional life. It forms a core part of its cultural history and furnishes much of its religious imagination, many of its central themes fuel its langauge and vocabulary of embodiment. Many find, however, that the experience of the music and dancing is enough, and do not seek to enhance it by using drugs of any kind; the majority of local clubbers here in Edinburgh, those taking part in some of these studies, for example, do not see the need for, or are wary of the contents of E tabs, or the threat of criminalisation or as is common among previous generations, they just grew out of it. Furthermore, it is quite common among DJs and musicians to hear, the music is the real ecstasy. Chemical technologies, synthetic drugs and stimulants, are a growing widespread phenomena, perhaps even the religious techne of Modern capitalist democracy. The popularity of Ecstasy (MDMA), within club cultures is due to its ability to trigger, enhance or amplify the altered states of empathy, euphoria, mentioned above, and can
97

Based on: Garratt, Sheryl. 1998. Adventures in Wonderland: A Decade of Club Culture. London: Headline Book Publishing. 98 Garratt, p. 315.

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prolong the individuals energy and hightened experience within the beats/music/crowd, an effect which begins to wear off, after regular use. The increasing dosage, intended to compensate, is where its use can become dangerous, and is usually the point where many older clubbers give up or move to other types of drugs. While the debates about the legislation and the social and health effects of this substance rage, the attitudes towards its use in club cultures varies widely. Again, whatever strategies are employed, the night is deemed to be successful, primarily, in terms of its social bonding effects.

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Sample, Tex. 1998. The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press. Stark, Rodney. 1997. The Rise of Christianity. San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers. Taylor, Charles. 1989. Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thomson, Paul and Fiona Brooker, 1999.Club Culture in Edinburgh: A Research Paper with Recommendations for New Forms of Church within the Culture, St. Cuthberts Church of Scotland. Thomson, Paul. 2000.Club Culture Communication Project. New College Edinburgh. Thomson, Paul. 2000.God in 3D: Technology and Religious Imagination in Club Cultures, New College Edinburgh. Thomson, Paul. 2000, Club Cultures: 21st Century Churches?Exploring Social, Semiotic and Religious Patterns of Club Culture, New College Edinburgh. Thornton, Sarah. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polity Press. Thwaites, James. 1999. The Church beyond the Congregation: The strategic role of the church in the postmodern era. London: Paternoster Press. Turkle, Sherry. 1997. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. London: Phoenix. Wertheim, Margaret. 2000. The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A history of space from Dante to the Internet. London: Virago Press. Wessels, Anton. 1990. Images of Jesus. London: SCM Press. Newspaper and Magazine Articles Cowe, Alan, Last Orders called on bid to stop pubs in churches, in The Scotsman, 13 March 2001. Neilson, Peter, Reaching out from a church with no walls, in The Scotsman, 14 March 2001. Colin, Matthew a personal vendetta, interview with Goldie, in Mixmag, September 1997.

Films and CDs Faithless, God is a DJ, Sunday 8PM. Cheeky Records, 1998. Kerrigan, Julian, director. Human Traffic. Fruit Salad Films. 1999. Smooth, Joe. Promised Land. SPV label. 1993.

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Internet Sites Clark, Lynn Schofield, Building Bridges Between Theology and Media Studies Plenary Presentation to the Catholic Theological Society of America, 1998. in The International Study Commission on Media, Culture & Religion Web Site. http://www.jmcommunica tions.com/english/clark2.htm Hoover, Stewart M. Religion Media and the Cultural Centre of Gravity, An Address to the Trustees of the Foundation for United Methodist Communications. May 7, 1998. in The International Study Commission on Media, Relig ion and Culture web site http://www.colorado.edu/Journalism/MEDIALYF/analysis/umcom.html World rave and Clubbing News-Sites: http://www.clubbed.com/clubbers/ http://www.hyperreal.org/raves/ http://www.ministryofsound.co.uk/news/