Hyperreality and the Church
I’m currently working my way through Mark Sayers‘ book The Trouble about Paris (well worth reading), which has been causing me to think a lot about this concept of hyperreality and the effect it has on our lives and our spirituality.
Hyper-reality is this idea that our culture is constantly causing us to buy into a “larger than” life – the dream life which we see epitomised by our images of celebrity and success, and ultimately happiness. This hyperreality claims to provide us with happiness and fulfilment, but leaves us living in a kind-of denial of the actual reality we live in.
The main, most obvious way we can see the effects of this “larger than” life is in consumerism and the effect it has had on our culture and our spirituality. The hyperreal myth that “just one more” will bring happiness leads us to become both material and spiritual consumers. Hence the Church finds itself having to attract and cater for a generation of Christian consumers – who are after maximum result (perceived value) for minimum investment (cost), and are always looking for the best deal.
Today, we find consumers who are willing to travel out of town to the supermarket to get a better selection of better value-for-money food. And in the same way, we find spiritual consumers who are willing to travel out of town (and in some cases to the next town or further) to get a better service with better return-for-investment.
So we find ourselves living today in a spiritual economy.
Don’t get me wrong – I understand why we do this, and I don’t stand immediately in judgment. The church I grew up in brings in church-goers from across maybe even a 50 mile radius. I do think, however, we need to be aware of this spiritual economy we find ourselves living in – and to be reflecting on it form a theological viewpoint.
(On a tangental note – I wonder if we could even find ourselves using advanced economic analysis to monitor and understand our church economy. I have a feeling that church growth specialists are probably already using methods which aren’t far off.)
It’s amazing just how parallel the supermarket/superstore model is to what we now see in terms of churches. Two more clear parallels:
- We find out-of-town stores able to provide variety in ways that smaller stores cannot. We find larger churches able to “offer” a larger quantity of programming and activities that smaller churches don’t have the resources for.
- A large turnover and quantity of customers allows superstores to sell items and services – even previously very specialised services (mobile phones, insurance, DVDs/music/books etc.) – at a lower price than smaller stores. Larger churches with a larger congregation can provide services with a lower perceived cost (in the form of time commitment, money, service) than smaller ones.
When we find the local church scene resembling the local economy, we need to begin to ask more pointed questions about the relationship between our form of Christianity and culture. When we find churches competing in a similar way to businesses – is this healthy? Competition is obviously healthy to avoid the monopoly of one company – there’s a Christendom-Reformation parallel there. However, when I look at the bible I don’t see any mention of churches competing with one another – only mention of The Church as the body of Christ.
Whatever our evaluation of this emergence of a spiritual economy – it is obvious that there are no easy solutions. What we find is a mindset which is deeply rooted in our current culture, society and in the very psyche of Western humanity. Solutions to issues such as this are going to involve some deep and painful inward observations and are not going to offer a quick fix.
I believe it is these questions which a post-post-modern church will find itself asking. As the Church deals with real, systemic issues such as these, we will find ourselves moving past the old polarising barriers of liberal and conservative/evangelical theology.
It will be the underlying, systemic problems caused by hyperreality and our Western culture which will become most important to deal with rather than finding ourselves caught up with the symptomatic, surface issues which the Church finds itself currently caught up in.
