I can only remember one occasion on which I had what might be called a truly religious experience. It was my First Communion and I think I actually believed I was ingesting the Corpus Christi. [1] It was in St. Monica’s church, which had a Gothic feel to it and it had a very good church organ. We were filing down the nave in a smog of incense after the ceremony, the organist was nearly blasting the stained glass out of the windows, playing “Holy God, we praise thy Name” and I was singing my little lungs out, and I felt h o l y! Metaphysically, for me, it was all downhill after that, into the abyss of doubt and cynicism.
Religions can do this to you, even if you’re an apostate like me. It’s all in the show . The crucifixion is a great show; just ask Mel Gibson. It’s been done straight dozens of times, as a musicale, as a fantasy, even as a comedy, and it still sells. And, of course, it is reprised every day in the RC Church’s sacrifice of the mass. Ceremony, ritual, mystery, magic, and downright entertainment, a religion has to know show business if it is going to grow and prosper. The RC Church did some of its best art, architecture, and music after the competition of the Reformation came about. For a long to the Protestants (“Prods”) were a dreary bunch. But look at them today. You have those Black Baptist churches that rock with hallelujah gospel music, mega-churches of various denominations with crowds of believers swaying to expensive production numbers. Keep cranking up the production values or the suckers will be heading off to someone else’s show. It’s the Woodstock generation, man. Admittedly, Prod architecture is generally total schlock; take a look at the Crystal Cathedral, in which that pompous Schuler guy pontificates, or anything erected by Mormons.
People will choose their church, their religion, based on the sort of show that they like. I remember Catholics who wanted their church to keep the mumbo-jumbo of the Latin Mass, and the good old Gregorian chant. They hated the vernacular mass and some kids up on the altar with guitars singing some Bob Dylan or Beatles number. (Frankly, I prefer a nice dirgey Dies Irae, to “He’s got the whole world in His hand”.) People seem to choose their religions and churches the way they choose their other entertainment. It matters whether the pastor can do a rollicking homily or the vicar’s wife is a hot number.
What prompted these thoughts is a really big show—Islam’s annual haj. The haj is in the category of the pilgrimage to the seven churches of Rome, visiting the Western Wall, the Mormon pageant in Palmyra, or The Church of Christ the Redneck Redeemer’s annual NASCAR outing and tailgate party. Actually, it’s like all of them out together. Recently, there was a British production on television of four Muslims from the UK enthusing over their first haj. They at times were lost in the huge throngs that must circumnavigate the huge Kaaba stone seven times without being crushed to death by their fellow hajis. Then they must climb a mountain and spend the night praying (that there is someplace where they can relieve themselves), make their way out into the desert and camp and pray for forgiveness (and that there is someplace where they can relieve themselves), and nor forget to collect 49 stones to “stone the devil” at another site. This is participatory theater with a colossal cast. When a good Muslim accomplishes it—it is one of the pillars or requirements of Islam—he (she) is a haji, and your sins up to that point have been “washed away,” and I think you might get to wear some sort of funny hat.
If you live through it. Three hundred and forty-five hajis were crushed to death by their fellow pilgrims when some luggage fell of a truck and tripped them. [2] They were in one of the massive throngs going from one holy site to another. Since 1987 some 3,418 people have been killed at the haj in Mecca, trampled, bombed, shot by police, falling off of overpasses, stampeded, or crushed by collapsed buildings. Thousands more have been injured. And you thought people did goofy, dangerous stunts on Survivor.
One has to wonder about a religion in which people will crush their own co-religionists to death in a supposed act of piety. [3]
I’m not picking on Islam here; have you ever seen pilgrims coming to see the painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe on their bleeding knees, or flagellants in Sicily, people playing with rattlesnakes in those Southern church where the practitioners seem to have done a lot of inbreeding, or Indian fakirs sticking needles in themselves, or heard of those saints who have emasculated themselves or inflicted other “mortifications of the flesh” upon various parts of their anatomy?
Why this strong connection of the proof of one’s faith by some sort of trial, some test, some self-abasement? People just want to be part of the show, or to put on a little show themselves; they want to testify, to jump up in the revival tent and tell the world about their infidelities, drunkenness or tumors, they want to carry a full-sized cross through the streets of Jerusalem. Many of these people are in serious need of psychological counseling, but that’s what makes “the show” a winner over the ages— drama. Drama is about conflict, in this case, the battle of good and evil, or the angels and the devil, between us and our sinful desires. Temptation, sin, guilt, punishment or redemption, rapture, salvation, that’s what keeps the Bible as the world’s all-time bestseller, and its what makes a religion work, its great drama, a great show. Pope John-Paul II understood that which is why he took his show on the road to so many countries.
Which returns me to my childhood mystical experience. A good show is an emotionally moving experience, especially when you are part of it. I was primed by the nuns for how transformative an experience my first holy communion was to be; sent to confession to cleanse my filthy seven-year-old soul, tutored in the mysteries of trans-substantiation (see footnote 1 if you didn’t the first time), and then paraded in front of the entire congregation through clouds of incense and building-trembling organ music to the holy “Eucharistic” initiation—the little wafer of bread that sticks to the roof of your mouth like a suckerfish on a shark’s belly. [4]
Irreverently, some of us used to call the “holy sacrifice of the mass” the “magic show.” But that’s really what it is. That’s what it must have been way back when people first discovered the power of drama and the way mystery in the unseen forces can influence us.
Life itself is a drama; it has a beginning, middle parts, and an end, struggles and victories, highs and lows, and, religion tells us, all the acting that takes place within that great personal drama, it has consequences. The Great Reviewer decides in the end. We are each the star in our own little drama, and therein perhaps lies the real secret of religion’s hold and appeal, the installation of the belief that our mortality matters, that there is that one “person (deity)” in the audience of our brief and petty little play that cares about our performance. And, if we so choose, there are those who have a script already written for us, if you really have the need to feel h o l y.
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©2006, James A. Clapp (UrbisMedia Ltd. Pub. 2.5.2006)
[1] This is a good example of how the Church can screw up a kid’s mind. We were taught that the little wafer of bread is actually the body of Christ, by way of a process called transubstantiation that the priest performs at the altar. Ergo, communion is really a silly act of cannibalism—right, that’s hardly as great a stretch as to tell a kid that something that looks and tastes like a flattened piece of Wonderbread, is a piece of the body of a guy who died over 2000 years ago. This is how the Church gets you ready to believe just about anything they tell you.
[2] By the way, they were on their way to “Stone the Devil,” who might have pulled that luggage trick because he’s had a little too much of the stoning thing and wanted some “payback.”
[3] Tragically, over 800 more Muslim pilgrims drowned in the Red Sea a couple of days ago when their ferry went down.
[4] I was afraid even to stick a finger in my mouth and pry the wafer off so I could swallow it, but I thought it so holy that I couldn’t touch it. Today, they actually hand people the wafer and let them pop it into their mouths like a corn chip. What’s next, cheese dip?