PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
Can We Still Sing the Lyrics “Come Holy Spirit”? Spirit and Place in Australian Pentecostal Worship
Tanya Riches
Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California
Abstract
Australian Pentecostals, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, are speaking new tongues in their worship practices, forming new poetic languages of singing and con- versation relevant for spatially dislocated twenty-first-century life. Using Nimi Wari- boko’s three-city model offered in Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Reli- gion, this article assesses Australian pentecostal worship practice in light of his “Charis- matic City.” The article suggests that this emergent, poetic language of Spirit empow- erment situates the worshipper in a rhizomatic network that flows with pentecostal energies, forming a new commons or space that is the basis of its global civil society. It presents twolocal case studies fromHillsong Church’spneumatologicalsong repertoire (1996–2006), and yarning conversation rituals at Ganggalah Church led by Aboriginal Australian pastors. These new languages identify and attune participants to the Spirit’s work in the world, particularly useful for urban cities and cyberspace.
Keywords
worship – Hillsong music – pneumatology – Aboriginal Australian – Charismatic City – Pentecostalism – urban missiology
Introduction
As we move into a spatially displaced, radically mediated world, we encounter unprecedented challenges to the established ritual patterns and norms of wor- ship. Many pentecostal congregations produce and distribute their own cul- tural and artistic products.1 But what changes when pentecostal worship
1 Birgit Meyer, “Pentecostalism and Globalization,” inStudying Global Pentecostalism: Theories
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2016 | doi: 10.1163/15700747-03803004
1
spirit and place in australian pentecostal worship
275
becomes accessible outside of a worshipping community? As Wariboko states, “with cyberspace religion there is no there.”2 We don’t know who our con- gregation members are or who is participating. And so we must see congre- gation as process: a series of events rather than a localized collective of indi- viduals coordinated by practices, media representation, or institution. Chris- tians are forced to adapt their worship practices to unfamiliar environments. In this process, culture-bound forms are “stripped” back to allow reincultura- tion. The transnational tropes widely disseminated online now must re-embed into land. There is again need for new tongues and inspired speech. Focus- ing upon two Australian case studies, this article seeks to unearth a missi- ology capable of bridging Pentecostalism’s theologies and practices within a globalizing world. I argue that Australian Pentecostals are using the local resources at hand to forge a contextually emergent and translocal poetic lan- guage of Spirit empowerment relevant to the twenty-first century. My thesis is that these new languages identify and attune participants to the Spirit’s exist- ing work in the world and provide an adaptive praxis for urban cities and cyberspace.
Currently, pentecostal discourse on worship is divided by practice and the- ory. The word worship within the vernacular is often interchangeable with the word music and is also a shortened noun for “the worship service.”3 By way of contrast, pentecostaltheologiansseem to use “worship” differently. The most obvious example is the scholarly treatment of Pentecost, the worship event recorded in Acts 2, which forms the basis for many propositional doc- trinal statements—everything from tongues as “normative” for Spirit baptism4
and Methods, ed. Allan Anderson et al. (Berkeley,ca: University of California Press, 2010), 113–
132; “Material Mediations and Religious Practices of World-Making,” inReligion across Media:
FromEarlyAntiquitytoLateModernity, ed. Peter Lang (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 1–19;From
Imagined Communities to Aesthetic Formations: Religious Mediations, Sensational Forms and
Styles of Binding, Aesthetic Formations: Media, Religion and the Senses (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009), 1–28; M. Ingalls, C. Landau, and T. Wagner,Christian Congregational Music:
Performance, Identity and Experience(London: Ashgate, 2013).
2 N. Wariboko, The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion: A Pentecostal Social
Ethics of Cosmopolitan Urban Life(London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 185.
3 D.E. Albrecht, Rites in the Spirit: A Ritual Approach to Pentecostal/Charismatic Spirituality,
Journal of Pentecostal Theology Studies Supplement Series 17 (Sheffield, uk: Sheffield Aca-
demic Press, 1999), 155.
4 I. Howard Marshall, “The Significance of Pentecost,” Scottish Journal of Theology 30, no. 4
(1977): 347–369; Frank D. Macchia, “Tongues as a Sign: Towards a Sacramental Understanding
of Pentecostal Experience,”Pneuma15, no. 1 (1993): 61–76.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
2
276
riches
to theological foundations for racial reconciliation5 and particular models of church governance.6Mark Cartledge notes that the Pentecost event yields both “process” and “framework” for global pentecostal spirituality.7Particularly dur- ing the 1970s, correlations drawn between the Acts narrative and contemporary pentecostal worship practice served to explain the charismatic revivals as a return to, rather than deviance from, the biblical text.8 The global pentecostal worship service as we see it in most urban cities today emphasizes shared prac- tices: the semiotics of embodied postures such as raised hands, a five-piece rock band, worship leader, and flashing lights.9 The negotiation of these accepted translocal pentecostal practices into local cultures is an area of concern to scholars.
Globalization has increased both cultural homogenization and fragmen- tation, and this is also true of religious practice.10 Arjun Appadurai explains its cultural dimensions through interacting “imaginary landscapes.”11 His the- ory avoids “reification” or stasis of culture by emphasizing five differentiated flows. These are migrating peoples, media currents, shared technology, mov- ing capital, and streams of ideas.12 To this, Thomas Tweed from the University of Notre Dame adds “sacroscapes” or translocal religious movements.13 And indeed, Andrew Walls’s findings show that the demographic of the Christian
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12 13
Sherilyn Rae Benvenuti, “The Reconstruction of a Pentecostal Social Ethic of Racial Rec- onciliation: The Work of Cecil Robeck Jr, H. Vinson Synan and Leonard Lovett” (PhD diss., University of Southern California, August 2000); Frank D. Macchia, “From Azusa to Mem- phis: Evaluating the Racial Reconciliation Dialogue among Pentecostals,”Pneuma17, no. 2 (Fall 1995): 203–218.
Charles H. Barfoot and Gerald T. Sheppard, “Prophetic Vs. Priestly Religion: The Changing Role of Women Clergy in Classical Pentecostal Churches,” Review of Religious Research (1980): 2–17.
Mark Cartledge, Encountering the Spirit: The Charismatic Tradition (Maryknoll, ny: Orbis Books, 2006), 20.
Charles Hummel, Fire in the Fireplace: Contemporary Charismatic Renewal (InterVarsity Press, 1978), 17.
S. Coleman, The Globalisation of Charismatic Christianity (Cambridge University Press, 2000), 67.
Joel Robbins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity,” Annual Review of Anthropology33 (October 2004): 117–143.
Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture and Society7, no. 2 (1990), 5.
Ibid.
Thomas Tweed, Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (Harvard University Press, 2009), 64.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
3
spirit and place in australian pentecostal worship
277
church has moved, with a “Southern shift” now accounting for 65 percent of global Christians.14
Pentecostalism has been cited as useful for globalizing peoples, but partic- ularly in facilitating “rupture” with indigenous rituals.15 Amos Yong notes that these worship practices are sometimes considered emblematic of western cul- tural hegemony.16Others, however, emphasize the contributions of indigenous cultures to pentecostal practice—not only its forms but also its processes, such as in Nigeria, where indigenous religions directly contribute to a pentecostal epistemological “quest.”17 What these authors agree on, however, is that pen- tecostalism’s ritual practices contribute to its energy and expansion.18 Many theologians attempting to decolonize theology and renew a displaced and dis- embodied European Christianity are thus turning to engage better with ritual in order to bridge western and non-western contexts.19 For example, Amos Yong’s diverse “pneumatological imagination” uses a common experience of
14
15
16
17
18
19
A.F. Walls, The Cross-Cultural Process in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission and Appropriation of Faith (Maryknoll, ny: Orbis Books, 2002); Andrew Walls, The Missionary Movement in Christian History (London: t & t Clark Ltd, 2004); Lamin Sanneh, Disciples of All Nations: Pillars of World Christianity, Oxford Studies in World Christinaity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Charles E. Farhadian, Christian Worship Worldwide: Expanding Horizons, Deepening Prac- tices (Grand Rapids, mi: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2007), 172; Joel Robbins, “Anthropology, Pen- tecostalism, and the New Paul: Conversion, Event, and Social Transformation,” South Atlantic Quarterly 109, no. 4 (2010): 633–652; K. Dombrowski, Against Culture: Develop- ment, Politics, and Religion in Indian Alaska (Lincoln, ne: University of Nebraska Press, 2001); Kirk Dombrowski, “The Praxis of Indigenism and Alaska Native Timber Politics,” American Anthropologist 104, no. 4 (2002): 1062–1073; Christine A. Kray, “The Pentecostal Re-Formation of Self: Opting for Orthodoxy in Yucatan,”Ethos 29, no. 4 (December 2001): 395–429.
Amos Yong, “Improvisation, Indigenization, and Inspiration: Theological Reflections on the Sound and Spirit of Global Renewal,” inTheSpiritofPraise:MusicandWorshipinGlobal Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity, ed. Monique M. Ingalls and Amos Yong (University Park,pa: Penn State University Press, 2015), 26.
Nimi Wariboko, Nigerian Pentecostalism (Rochester, ny: University of Rochester Press, 2014), 17.
Donald E. Miller and Tetsunao Yamamori, Global Pentecostalism: The New Face of Chris- tian Social Engagement (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), 142.
W.J. Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010); T. Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009).
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
4
278
riches
the Spirit inaugurated in the Acts 2 event as our foundation for a global the- ology.20 The sounds of Pentecost (a rushing wind of fire and diverse tongues) become motive “icons” or windows into the Spirit’s activity on the earth today,21 practiced within the worship service in various ways. There are many “diverse but unified” points of incongruity and congruity between Pentecostalism’s con- temporary worship practice, its theologies, and the biblical text. But many Pentecostals deem two aspects of their worship experience to be of crucial importance. First, their ritual engagement with the Spirit is considered to have occurred largely in real time, in a specific place with a particular group of peo- ple whose bodies become “entrained,” moving dynamically to shout or whisper in synchronicity together.22Second, its results are considered to be greater par- ticipation in the Missio Dei, or God’s mission as described by Lesslie Newbigin as “[acting] out in the whole life of the whole world the confession that Jesus is Lord of all.”23These two features are explored in relation to the role of worship practice in urban Australian pentecostal missiology today.
Structure
Before turning to ways in which these poetic languages are practiced, it will be useful to refer to Nimi Wariboko’s proposal in his bookTheCharismaticCityand the Public Resurgence of Religion, in which he presents three distinct philoso- phies of pneumatologically oriented social engagement. These, he suggests, exist simultaneously but also offer a progression that is particularly relevant for this missiological analysis. I will then progress to two case studies drawn from the Australian environment. The first will draw upon relevant observations from research at Hillsong Church outlining changes in text content regard- ing the Spirit between 1996 and 2006 and a movement toward a more poetic theology.24 My second case draws upon ethnographic research with Aborigi-
20
21
22
23
24
Amos Yong, “Discerning the Spirit(S): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Chris- tian Theology of Religions,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series no. 20 (2000): 179.
NimiWariboko,ThePentecostalPrinciple:EthicalMethodologyinNewSpirit(GrandRapids, mi: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2011), 22.
G. Marti,WorshipacrosstheRacialDivide:ReligiousMusicandtheMultiracialCongregation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 98.
L. Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids, mi: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1995), 17.
Tanya Riches, “The Evolving Theological Emphasis of Hillsong Worship (1996–2007),”
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
5
spirit and place in australian pentecostal worship
279
nal Australian-led pentecostal congregations. Through “counterglobalization,” Indigenous leaders can be observed using the architecture of globalization, but somewhat differently from the usage in the West.25 Rather than the emphasis upon material production, many are revitalizing “premodern” spiritualities and relational positionalities. In Ganggalah Church in Australia, Pentecostals are integrating “yarning” conversational rituals into the worship liturgy. These two examples highlight Wariboko’s “Charismatic City” proposal as a rhizomatic net- work, “both ametropolis(mother city) and aheteropolis(other, alternative city) that is operating in, through, and energizing global cities.”26 The poetic lan- guages of transnational worship serve both to reinforce the “Charismatic City” as a New Jerusalem representative of the global and universal (and therefore useful in the emergence of the global civil society) and to embed Australian Pentecostalism into the local continent’s land and customs. A short conclusion will discuss how these practices may reframe pentecostal understandings of the Spirit inside and outside space and place.
Nimi Wariboko’s Charismatic City Proposal
Harvey Cox describes Pentecostalism as a “mood,” or an “[oceanic] feeling in the pit of the cultural gut that a very big change is under way.”27 This was a nod to earlier religious research; Emile Durkheim had first noted a “collec- tive effervescence” generated within Australian Aboriginal religion.28Without undertaking any ethnography in Australia, his use of Dreaming rituals was merely fortuitous to his theory.29 Yet, despite tenuous ethnographic connec-
25
26
27
28
29
Australasian Pentecostal Theology 13 (2010): 87–133; “Shout to the Lord: Music and Change at Hillsong 1996–2007” (Thesis, Australian Catholic University, 2010, available at http:// dlibrary.acu.edu.au/digitaltheses/public/adt-acuvp299.12092011/).
Stuart Kirsch, “Indigenous Movements”American Ethnologist34, no. 2 (2007): 303; M. Cas- tells, The Power of Identity: The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture (Hoboken, nj: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).
Nimi Wariboko, The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion: A Pentecostal Social Ethics of Cosmopolitan Urban Life (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), Kindle Loc 138.
Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the 21st Century (New York: Avalon, 2013), 11; Wariboko, The Charismatic City, 91.
Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (New York: Free Press, 1912), 171.
M. Charlesworth,Religious Inventions: Four Essays(Cambridge,uk: Cambridge University
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
6
280
riches
tions, scholars draw upon his and Randall Collins’s later theories to describe successfully the affective energies that power pentecostal ritual and form its institutions.30Waribokostates,“emotionalenergy…isthedynamics,thepower that keeps a social practice alive and growing.”31 While rational decision mak- ing tends to be lauded in the West, pentecostal worship can be thought of as a post-rationalist or “emotive topography.”32 Corroborating this, Wariboko also claims that a practice, in becoming a site of intense human activity, con- nects ritualists in a type of “commons” or new place.33 A practice represents the (often unconscious) bodily entrainment and shared “emotional energy” achieved through ritual focus and links an individual to the body politic, as “to participate in or enact a practice is to exercise power, the power of being, the power to perform.”34 In some instances the origins of the particular power or spirit (or noumenon) can be discerned as either good or evil, while in other cases it is less clear. The structural potential, however, can be seen in his par- alleling of the Holy Spirit’s random, wind-like movement to our world’s flows of capital and technology.35Wariboko’s central question is, “what is the nature of the church’s social engagement in this changing environment?” His answer is to highlight a convergence of Christianity’s two main historical traditions: the sacramental or Catholic, and the Protestant resistance or reformation. This
30
31 32
33 34
35
Press, 1997), 60; Malcolm David Prentis,Science,RaceandFaith:ALifeofJohnMathew1849– 1929, ed. Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity (Sydney: Centre for the Study of Australian Christianity, 1998).
R. Collins, Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton University Press, 2004); Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life(Oxford,uk: Oxford University Press, 2001); Rob- bins, “The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity”: 117–143; Wariboko, Nigerian Pentecostalism.
Wariboko, Nigerian Pentecostalism, 127.
Kay Anderson and Susan Smith, “Editorial: Emotional Geographies,” Transactions of the Institute of British geographers26, no. 1 (2001): 3.
Wariboko,The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion, 18.
Wariboko, Nigerian Pentecostalism, 128. Although Wariboko highlights the collective “spirit” as potentially evil, this is a counterintuitive thought in Australian pentecostal con- texts (Indigenous and non-Indigenous), in which the Spirit-led community is deemed to hold discerning wisdom to actively move a meeting toward truth. Perhaps I struggle because I find no examples of public exorcism to draw upon but instead only practices of rebuke and silencing of demonic voices. Rather than conjecture further on the reasons for this, I will note that more research is required to understand better how evil is dis- cerned in a corporate Australian spiritual event, and how it relates to influential African understandings of the demonic.
Wariboko,The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion, 37.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
7
spirit and place in australian pentecostal worship
281
results in a third, emerging creative pentecostal force adaptive to the issues of modernity.36 Christianity’s three streams can be separated into three distinct metaphorical “cities”: the Sacred, the Secular and the Charismatic.37
To form his argument, Wariboko draws both upon Western and Nigerian lit- erature and rituals.38 In both medieval Europe and Indigenous Africa, a king’s body and land were entwined, forming the religious system. Drawing simi- larities between these contexts, he notes that in Augustine’s City of God, the European lands known as “Christendom” became a place of intensified divine presence. All were conscious that “God is here.”39 From this city, Wariboko notes, “the task of believers’ public engagement … [was] to sing their song well enough that the society at large [was] brought to their truth claim.” There is an obvious connection here with the role of Christian music in contemporary worship practices.
Cox, however, wrote of a pentecostal religiosity emerging from a second, Secular City in which God was proclaimed dead.40 Wariboko asks, did the Spirit in fact move humanity toward the Secular City? If so, what was God’s mission?41 The controversial answer is the decentralization of religion, which ended an elite system of priests dissuading converts from participation and responsibility. In the Secular City, all space was open as even “God comes from elsewhere.”42 David Martin conceives of pentecostalism as a “religious mobi- lization of the culturally despised.”43 This reconfiguration of faith drew on a common shamanistic underlay of religious commitment, repackaging it as Christian.44Thus, tongues overturned traditionalism.45But the overall project
36 37
38
39 40 41 42 43
44 45
Ibid., 122.
Even as Evangelicals and Catholics move toward unity in the West (M.A. Noll and C. Nys- trom,IstheReformationOver?:AnEvangelicalAssessmentofContemporaryRomanCatholi- cism[Grand Rapids,mi: Baker Academic, 2008]), distinctions between groups do remain. Paulo Freire, “Cultural Action for Freedom,”Boston: Harvard Educational Review (2000): 476–522; P. Gifford, Christianity, Development and Modernity in Africa (London: C. Hurst, 2015).
J.K. Olupona,City of 201 Gods: Ilé-Ifè in Time, Space, and the Imagination(Berkeley: Univer- sity of California Press, 2011).
Wariboko,The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion, 99.
Cox, Fire from Heaven, xv.
Wariboko,The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion, 94.
Ibid., 100.
D. Martin, Pentecostalism: The World Their Parish (Hoboken, nj: Wiley-Blackwell, 2002), 167.
Ibid.
Wariboko,The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion, 63.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
8
282
riches
of the “Secular City” paradigm is to deconstruct rather than reconstruct, and its treatment of human brokenness is merely theoretical. Therefore, “Secular- ism” per se does not provide a sufficient basis for a pentecostal philosophy of mission.
Within the third, the Charismatic City, divine presence permeates all space and all time. There is no absence of God. As Wariboko says, “God is in you, but God overflows and connects you to the elsewhere and to the other.”46 The New Jerusalem is a “network of networks” flowing between “London to Buenos Aires, from New York to New Delhi, and Rome to Lagos.”47 This city has no border. It intersects real and technological worlds.48 All are authorized and empowered.49 New identities are carved out of the many nations, tribes, and tongues. This marks new litourgeia or work of the people. In this city, worship is clearly political. It is done in public, in the shared “in-between space,”50 a new commons of sorts that forms the basis of global civil society.51 This intersects with development theory, as the Charismatic City acts to promote freedom and to remove unfreedom, allowing every citizen’s potential to be actualized.52 Within the public square, Christians speak with their “others,” embracing and celebrating each contribution in pursuit of common good and peace building.53
Wariboko argues that these three cities in fact form a “process” seen in the Bible.54 Worship is the site of this process, as space “enfolds,” then “unfolds” and “refolds” everything.55 For example, Israel worships in Jerusalem’s sacred temple space. But when driven into exile they must learn to sing again, in a for- eign land. Acceptance of this underpins the formation of the synagogue, which facilitates debate with strangers and reorients Israel to urban space. As Israel worships, foreign and terrifying space provides new possibilities for commu- nity building. During the colonial mission era, possibilities were “enfolded” or
46 47 48 49 50 51 52
53 54 55
Ibid., 100.
Ibid., 1.
Ibid., 87.
Ibid., 59.
Ibid., 45.
Ibid., 53, 49.
Amartya Sen, “Well-Being, Agency and Freedom: The Dewey Lectures 1984,” The Journal of Philosophy 82, no. 4 (1985): 169–221; Ingrid Robeyns, “The Capability Approach: A Theoretical Survey,” Journal of Human Development 6, no. 1 (2005): 93–117.
Wariboko,The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion, 97.
Ibid., 177.
Ibid., 104.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
9
spirit and place in australian pentecostal worship
283
concentrated as alternatives were removed in countries such as Nigeria or Aus- tralia. Colonial forms of the faith required flexibility from the recipient, who was required “to take the fold, not to give it. To be docile [and] to not explode.”56 However, as a self resists this action, the spaces “unfold” to reveal alternatives. This “refolding” process is the transformation by which “each [penetrates] the other in a way that defines being and becoming.”57 It is mutuality of relation- ship. Wariboko states:
Relation is the supreme capacity of humans. In the unfurling of their humanity and making places out of space they open relation up, cut it open again and again, redesign, redirect, or repair its fluid dynamics as it carries them deeper and deeper into its depth. Every fresh relation comes from an initial relation that maps upon the new alternative pathways of excluded possibilities and novel immediacy. This is a notion of space as an encompassing relationality.58
The process of “refolding” allows for a global pentecostal Christianity with many contemporaneous contributing local expressions that interact upon and influence each other. I will now turn to two forms of Australian Pentecostal- ism to outline ways in which, within this context, they are refolding what they know to speak in new tongues. Ian Lilley outlines how in the Australian con- text, Anglo-Celtic settlers see themselves as victims of colonial displacement,59 which often prevents reconciliation. Australian pentecostal cultural produc- tion intentionally resists marginalization in the global sacroscapes. Simulta- neously, Indigenous pentecostal cultural production resists white “blindfold” views of local Australian history.60 Although the two are isolated from each other, they share common aims. This shows how, even as Australian “rec- onciliation” is arguably a failed project as Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups do not interact in the Australian environment, each group actively par- ticipates in Wariboko’s Charismatic City and in the formation of a transna- tional, glocal pentecostal civil society. The evidence of this, I posit, is new poetic languages that identify and attune participants to the Spirit’s existing
56
57 58 59
60
C. Malabou, ed.,What Should We Do with Our Brain?(New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 12; Wariboko,The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion, 104. Wariboko,The Charismatic City and the Public Resurgence of Religion, 104.
Ibid.
Ian Lilley, “Archaeology, Diaspora and Decolonization,” Journal of Social Archaeology 6, no. 1 (2006): 35.
Ibid., 40.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
10
284
riches
work in the land of Australia, based from both a “metropolis (mother city) and a heteropolis (other, alternative city)” that is separated by racial segrega- tion.
Case Study 1: Hillsong Music Repertoire
Sydney’s Hillsong Church gathers over fifty thousand worshippers in ten Aus- tralian campuses.61 It began as “Hills Christian Life Centre,” a small church plant in the suburban outskirts of Sydney. Instead of a liturgical cycle, their calendar is dictated by conferences, events, and the release of cds and books. Although Pentecost Sunday may pass unacknowledged in its Sydney congre- gation, Hillsong is almost the definitional pentecostal church for most Aus- tralians. Here I will outline a progression from Wariboko’s proposed “Sacred” to “Secular” to “Charismatic” metaphorical cities, in relation to Hillsong’s con- gregational music.
From its inauguration in 1983, Senior Pastor Brian Houston invested into the church’s music by employing worship leader Geoff Bullock, actively encour- aging the creation of original songs that expressed the Australian renewal this church hoped to embody. By the time that Bullock left the church in 1995, many charismatic (and not so charismatic) congregations were using these con- temporary choruses,62 which had become iconic of changes in church music, including changes in lyric structure and instrumentation. Hillsong songwriters adapted popular-style choruses. and their popularity quickly surpassed inter- national music distributors.63As musicologist Mark Evans states:
There would be few churches in Australia, of any denomination or persua- sion, unaffected by the music of Hillsong Music Australia (hma). Though some Christians told me they would never set foot in Hillsong Church due
61
62
63
John Connell, “Hillsong: A Megachurch in the Sydney Suburbs,”Australian Geographer36, no. 3 (2005): 315–332; E.H. McIntyre, “Brand of Choice: Why Hillsong Is Winning Sales and Souls,” Journal for the Academic Study of Religion20, no. 2 (2007): 175–194.
By this time Hillsong’s repertoire had spread into the Uniting, Anglican, Salvation Army, and Baptist churches, and was appearing within the top 10 ccli (Christian Copyright Licensing Information) charts.
Mark Evans, Open Up the Doors: Music in the Modern Church (London: Equinox 2006), 2. Such choruses are popularly attributed with North American origins, but in Hillsong’s case were more likely adapted from New Zealand’s popular “Scripture in Song” movement from Bobbie Houston’s church, Queenstown Assemblies of God.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
11
spirit and place in australian pentecostal worship
285
to theological differences, they were more than happy to sing music writ- ten and produced there.64
The repertoire created by Hills Christian Life Centre (the original name of the church) was so successful in the city of Sydney, and ultimately also internation- ally, that the church rebranded itself to “Hillsong,” iconically entrenching its geographicorigins(theHillsDistrictofSydney)and“song”asitstwoimmutable symbols.65This was in itself a form of cultural spontaneity and transformation.
Hillsong Church was intentional in the significant role its songs played in its renewal mission in Sydney. In the early years, the Hillsong congregation often called upon the Spirit to “descend” upon them, sacralizing their hearts, bodies, and the space they inhabited.66For example, the congregation enthusiastically sang Geoff Bullock’s “Holy Spirit Come” with the lyrics:
Holy Spirit come,
Heal our hearts our lives Cleanse our thoughts our minds Holy Spirit come, oh come to us.67
These early songs were recorded primarily for use in Sydney’s churches. How- ever, the Hillsong music and videos became immensely popular in uk and North American churches, which led to the music “resource” department dis- tributing products from the church building. For many in the congregation, the music was a good story and evidence that God was moving even in the “uttermost parts of the earth” (Acts 1:8kjv). It acted as a symbol of reverse mis- sion back to the very center of Christendom. North American Gospel Artists such as Alvin Slaughter rerecorded Hillsong tracks such as “Holy Spirit Rain Down”:
64 65
66 67
Evans,Open up the Doors, 77.
Tanya Riches and Tom Wagner, “The Evolution of Hillsong Music: From Australian Pen- tecostal Congregation into Global Brand,” Australian Journal of Communication 39, no. 1 (2012): 17–34.
Riches, “Shout to the Lord: Music and Change at Hillsong 1996–2007,” 13.
Geoff Bullock, Holy Spirit, Come, Stone’s Been Rolled Awaycd (Castle Hill: Hillsong Music Australia, 1993). At the time it is possible that Geoff Bullock, by background a Presbyterian, intended to modernize classic Christian texts such as “Veni, Creator Spiritus” or “Veni, Sancte Spiritus.” Thanks to John Witvliet for this insight and connections to liturgical repertoire that invokes the Spirit.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
12
286
riches
Holy Spirit, rain down, rain down Oh comforter and friend How we need your touch again.68
The main purpose of Hillsong’s music making was to build the local church as a central institution in order to infuse the glocal city with life. As a con- tinuation of this quest, charismatic and largely uneducated leaders preached to thousands in Western Sydney—evidence of a decentralization of Sydney’s religious authority. The congregation was highly participative, actively discern- ing of God’s supernatural anointing upon aspects of the worship service and in energizing its expressions. This was measured by the church in two ways: phys- ical participation in the worship event, and product sales.69 Nevertheless, the desire was without doubt for a “fresh” touch or outpouring of God’s Spirit to be unleashed upon Sydney, sacralizing the land and people as an extension of Christendom. Retaining the same level of desire for the Spirit was significant. Hillsong recorded videos of congregation members singing pentecostal cho- ruses with outstretching arms, petitioning God for Spirit empowerment. These images have become almost trademark tropes of the Hillsong experience.
As poetic theology, songs could penetrate and renew even the denomina- tions most resistant to the Spirit. This intent is seen within Hillsong’s repertoire. In the immediate years after Geoff Bullock’s departure (1996–1998) a quarter of the songs (eleven of forty-four songs or 25 percent) included the word Spirit. Many were in a fast tempo, thus embodying themes related to pentecostal spirituality—dancing, clapping, and shouting. As Darlene Zschech settled into her role as Worship Pastor, however, after 1999 songs addressing or concern- ing the Holy Spirit were reduced to only one tenth of the repertoire (nine in ninety-nine songs). The production of Hillsongcds intensified, matching (and exceeding) secular models. Instrumentation and business practice changed significantly, resulting in industry recognition in aria Billboard awards since 1999.70 Hillsong’s pneumatological songs largely dispensed with the petition “Holy Spirit, come.” Instead songwriters reinforced that God in the “Secular City” was present even when seemingly absent.71
68
69 70
71
Russell Fragar, Holy Spirit Rain Down, Touching Heaven Changing Earth (vhs) (Sydney: Hills Christian Life Centre, 1997).
Riches, “Shout to the Lord: Music and Change at Hillsong 1996–2007,” 50.
Mark Evans, “Hillsong Abroad: Tracing the Songlines of Contemporary Pentecostal Music,” inSpirit of Praise, ed. Monique M. Ingalls and Amos Yong (University Park,pa: Penn State University Press, 2015), 183.
Riches, “The Evolving Theological Emphasis of Hillsong Worship (1996–2007),” 92.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
13
spirit and place in australian pentecostal worship
287
You are my light and salvation, whom shall I fear? You are the strength of all my days, of whom shall I be afraid? Though war may rise against me, of this will I be sure That I will bless the Lord forever, I’ll bless Your holy Name.72
This song, an adaptation of Psalm 27, illustrates ways in which songwriters began to narrate life in a post–9/11 world. Songs were now not just for the renewal of the church. The word revival dropped entirely from the reper- toire, with one exception, New Zealander Brooke Fraser’s popular anthem “Hosanna.”73There was a clear shift in the church’s imagination that extended now beyond Sydney’s Hills District toward the world.74 Global distribution of products became even more important, broadcasting a message of hope despite God’s absence in the Secular City.
At the time of writing, much of Hillsong’s repertoire is now christologi- cal rather than pneumatological. Hillsong still adapts global pentecostal song forms for ecumenical purposes, particularly in its interaction with an ultra- conservative (and cessationist) Sydney Anglican diocese. This ensures that it retains legitimacy as a producer of Christian congregational music, despite critical evangelical media. For example, the “This I Believe (The Creed)” song75 adapted the Nicene Creed into Hillsong’s popular song format follow- ing a Twitter request from Anglican minister John Dickson.76 Mark Evans believes that pentecostal doctrines have been de-emphasized for greater ap- peal—in other words, for marketing purposes.77 Admittedly, denomina- tional distinctives are commonly deemphasized in popular megachurches,78 and commerciality affects many artistic decisions.79But in the aforementioned
72
73 74 75
76
77 78 79
Darlene Zschech and Jenny Vaa, You Are/ You Are Lord, Hopecd (Sydney: Hillsong Music Australia, 2003).
Brooke Fraser, Hosanna,Saviour Kingdvd(Sydney: Hillsong Publishing, 2007). Riches and Wagner, “The Evolution of Hillsong Music”; Evans, “Hillsong Abroad.” Ben Fielding and Matt Crocker, “This I Believe (the Creed),” in No Other Name (Sydney: Hillsong Music Australia, 2014).
Hillsong Worship, “This I Believe (the Creed) Song Story,” inHillsongCollected, ed. Hillsong Church (2014).
Evans,Open up the Doors, 152.
McIntyre, “Brand of Choice: Why Hillsong Is Winning Sales and Souls,” 181.
For u.s. readers this may evoke recent memory of artists removing the name of Jesus in order to cross over into the secular market (James Long, “Who’s the Leader of This Band,” Christianity Today, May 20, 1996, available at http://christianitytoday.com/ct/1996/ may20/6t6022b.html). Hillsong United has more control over the writing process and its music is intended for radio play. However, songs that did include the Spirit appeared
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
14
288
riches
case, the church intended negotiation with its “others” present in Australian urban space.
During the third phase of my research (2004–2007), despite further produc- tion increases, songs referring to the Holy Spirit dropped to only 5 percent of the repertoire. These songs are often spatially mixed; for example, the phrase “You are here with us” is followed by “Lord let your presence fall.”80 Although Hillsong’s congregation still invokes the Spirit, they do so with decreasing reg- ularity. Hillsong Conference advertising in 2014 proclaimed “This is Revival” before the event had even occurred, reinforcing Spirit presence within the con- text of the gathered congregation (as seen in the Sacred City). Increasingly, songs now assist worshippers in discerning the Spirit as actively present in the secular world through multivalent metaphors. The best example of this is the world-famous “Oceans” release from Hillsong United, which draws upon images of Australian coastal life, juxtaposed with Jesus walking on water (Matt 14):
You call me out upon the waters The great unknown where feet may fail And there I find You in the mystery In oceans deep my faith will stand
Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders Let me walk upon the waters
Wherever You would call me
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander And my faith will be made stronger In the presence of my Saviour81
The song “Captain” from the same recording displays a similar writing style.82 Hillsong’s repertoire now promotes the notion that Spirit infuses life into real matter—oceans and rivers, and even cityscapes—a point previously underem-
80
81
82
on their recordings, problematizing the idea that profitability is driving the removal of theological content.
Ben Fielding, Where the Spirit of the Lord Is Glorious Ruins cd (Sydney: Hillsong Music Australia, 2013).
Matt Crocker, Joel Houston, and Salomon Ligthelm, Oceans, Zion cd (Sydney Hillsong, 2013).
Benjamin Hastings and Seth Simmons, “Captain,” in Empirescd (Sydney: Hillsong Music Australia, 2015).
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
15
spirit and place in australian pentecostal worship
289
phasized in Australian pentecostal pneumatology. The missiological call is to “lean in” to see the Spirit’s presence or existing work in the world.83Talk of God has shifted toward language appropriate for the commons, or urban polis. This is a redefinition of Australian Pentecostalism as notions of Spirit absence are replaced with immanence: God is everywhere, even outside the church. As the pentecostal church changes its language to adopt ancient creeds and hymns, is it “refolding” its locally available resources to speak of God in entirely new ways, even while retaining expectation for him to move and act in the “sudden- lies” of the worship event? Is this is a demonstration of the Charismatic City? Or the charismaticized Secular City?
Case Study 2: Aboriginal Pentecostals and Yarning Rituals
At the same time, in a very different Australian context were Hillsong Church’s Aboriginal Australian counterparts, similarly reaffirming Spirit as present in the world. In their case, however, redefinition draws upon the ancient resources of Dreamtime cultural and religious practice, as well as conversation practices that draw “chaotic” virtual life back into real time and place. Pastor William Dumas and his wife Sandra Dumas oversee Ganggalah Church just below Aus- tralia’s Gold Coast. From Birripi lands, Will grew up in Sydney’s notorious Red- fern area, but Sandra is a local Bundjalung woman. Their diverse congregation draws on leadership principles and wisdoms of both pentecostal and Indige- nous cultures. Significant to this discussion, they integrate practices of “yarn- ing” into the very center of their worship service.
To “yarn” or “yarning” is a pan-Aboriginal word referring to a traditional form of conversing, an “informal and relaxed discussion.”84 In Indigenous life, yarning creates rapport and accountability within a transformative relation- ship. Aboriginal Australian counselor Judy Atkinson situates yarning within The Dreaming as spiritual endeavor. She describes it this way:
83 84
Bobbie Houston,The Sisterhood (Sydney: HarperCollins, 2016), 41.
Dawn Bessarab and Bridget Ng’andu, “Yarning About Yarning as a Legitimate Method in Indigenous Research,”InternationalJournalofCriticalIndigenousStudies3, no. 1 (2010), 37– 50. Aboriginal scholars present “yarning” as a decolonizing action-research methodology (Bronwyn L. Fredericks et al., “Engaging the Practice of Yarning in Action Research,” Action Learning and Action Research Journal17, no. 2 [2010]: 7–19; Lynore K. Geia, Barbara Hayes, and Kim Usher, “Yarning/ Aboriginal Storytelling: Towards an Understanding of an Indigenous Perspective and Its Implications for Research Practice,” Contemporary Nurse 46, no. 1 [2013]: 13–17).
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
16
290
riches
I will listen to you, share with you, as you listen to, share with me … Our shared experiences are different, but in the inner deep listening to, and quiet, still awareness of each other, we learn and grow together. In this we create community, and our shared knowledge(s) and wisdom are expanded from our communication with each other.85
Yarning becomes a tool for meaning-making, particularly for Indigenous par- ticipants who share knowledge(s) from precolonial life and gain solidarity in shared urban experiences.86 It is also used for self-development as elders bestow wisdom, and it creates a space of healing as those who suffer deep trau- mas learn to re-narrate their lives.87
The Ganggalah service begins at 9 am, outside the school hall in Tweed Heads in northern New South Wales. For half an hour, worshippers are invited into a circle of prayer in which each seeks to contribute through a prayer, a Scripture, or a prophetic word. The group is sometimes moved to shout together in praise, at other times they practice “listening to country,” sens- ing the Spirit’s movement within the land, perhaps in the wind, sunshine, or singing birds. Together they form a narrative that temporally “weaves” from one element to the next, until the pastor summarizes proceedings at around 9:30 am. At this point, worshippers break for coffee and conversation. During the yarning time congregation members catch up on everyday life, but also dis- cern God at work. This discrete “fellowship” time goes for about thirty minutes until musical worship begins in the hall. The second service is reminiscent of that of Hillsong or any other Australian church. Often, white Australian wor- shipers miss the yarning rituals, and simply turn up in time for the music. But yarning time allows Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander worshippers to dia- logue, marking conversation as the liturgical work of the people of God. In this way, participants together discern the Spirit in their world, creating narratives together that amplify Indigenous values and concerns even within Western institutions.88 The practice of yarning at church serves to re-embed worship into the urban space through dialogue that functions similarly to the synagogue within the biblical text. It also serves to embed worship practices in Indige-
85
86 87 88
Judy Atkinson, Trauma Trails, Recreating Song Lines: The Transgenerational Effects of Trauma in Indigenous Australia(North Melbourne, Australia: Spinifex Press, 2002). “Yarning About Yarning as a Legitimate Method in Indigenous Research,” 41. Atkinson,Trauma Trails, 4.
Melissa Walker et al., “‘Yarning’ as a Method for Community-Based Health Research with Indigenous Women: The Indigenous Women’s Wellness Research Project,”Health Care for Women International (2013): 8.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
17
spirit and place in australian pentecostal worship
291
nous belonging to land. Within the “Charismatic City” are Aboriginal leaders “refolding” their available resources, both ancient and modern, to create a new language in the context of Australia’s Gold Coast? By any measure, the Gang- galah community is declaring its citizenship of “both worlds” constructed by practice and thus extending the Charismatic City beyond a stereotypical sub- urban mainstream location.
Conclusion: Reflections and Pastoral Recommendations
I believe that the two poetic languages outlined here serve to confirm the usefulness of Wariboko’s concept of the “Charismatic City” for assessment of our pentecostal worship rituals, and are particularly helpful for illuminating a pneumatological contribution seen within urban Australian pentecostal wor- ship practice. William Dyrness suggests an interactive flow between culture and hermeneutics in which the Holy Spirit empowers the Christian to interpret everyday aesthetics and languages and form a poetic theology relevant to their world.89 This is evident in the Australian context, as worshippers discern the Spirit’s work within the environment, ancient creeds, and in conversations with “the other.” As communities refold locally available resources, they are forming theologies that assist them to partner with the Spirit as they engage both the local and the translocal context. Although theologians emphasize global pen- tecostal theological doctrinal distinctives, these are less immediate within the consciousness of worshippers. Worship practice serves to translate pentecostal Christianity into a new era and into new spaces. Sometimes the motivation for revision is born from leadership and out of a deep pastoral concern regarding Christianity and its engagement with “others” in the online and urban envi- ronment. And in this sense, for practical theologians to foster the transition is highly useful. But if we are to be honest, the transformative progression of Australian Pentecostalism seems simply to have arisen from a collective work of local artists, pastors, theologians, and business people seeking to worship faithfully and witness to the realities of Christ in their cities and towns. The energy so evident within Pentecostalism is not in its formal theology (which is hugely diverse). Instead, the resources that seem most useful for understand- ing its task are those previously sidelined by the theological guild; the marginal voices representative of the “other” and the liturgy itself; the artists, songwrit-
89
W.A. Dyrness,Poetic Theology: God and the Poetics of Everyday Life(Grand Rapids,mi: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2011), 115.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
18
292
riches
ers, and forms of the self (particularly emotional and feminine) that are often denied by the theological guild in pursuit of propositional statements. The benefits of locating theological research in the work of actual pentecostal peo- ple in our churches is a new emerging poetic theology of spirit empowerment that provides fresh metaphors for conceiving the Spirit’s work today. Engaging this language (whether in music production or in conversation) provides wor- shipers with a nonliturgical liturgy for the common space, which, I believe, will better empower them for glocal mission within a globalizing world. The Charis- matic City emerges as a consolidated reality around communities of practice and, whether through “Worship” (with a capital w) or yarning, converges on a common global discourse. And this language is useful, even in virtual space, for “[acting] out in the whole life of the whole world the confession that Jesus is Lord of all.”90
90
Newbigin,The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission, 17.
PNEUMA 38 (2016) 274–292
19
Leave a Reply