The Counter Sermon

Lying in bed this morning (Well what has turned out to be the whole day). I considered the idea of many people leaping out of bed to attend church. Once a very long time ago that would have been a regular practice for me, admittedly it was as a child and had no choice. Every so often I wake on Sundays and experience that lack and wonder at it's loss.

I think Sunday's are for sleeping, staying in your pyjamas until some essential food item has to be bought, in which case you make your way to the nearest pub for a roast. It has to be stated that my Scottish and Cornish experiences of Sunday's are quite different but then it could be my early twenties and late twenties/early thirties are quite different experiences. What I mean by that is that in my early twenties when I lived in Scotland, my Sundays were prescribed to me as an arena in which to find a hangover cure which would be the All Day Breakfast. In my late twenties/early thirties my Sundays were a day to find a nutritious food source without having to cook it, i.e. a Sunday Roast. However I hasten to add that in addition to the Sunday Roast being available in a large assortment of Cornish pubs, the Sunday Roast was something that you would hear an inordinate amount of English persons banging on about with such statements as “I love a good roast”, so there it is. Meanwhile a Scots person's response to a fry up, would simply be the acknowledgment of the reduction of nausea. Also English people tend to feel the need to 'experience the day', go for a walk to 'take in the outdoors'. Whilst the Scots would bungle their ways home and to bed via a route that was compliant with their hangover needs. The Cornish I can't really comment on except to say a pasty fixes everything, though the chances of finding a freshly baked one on a Sunday are remote. Maybe the Cornish are keeping the home baked pasty sacred and who could argue with that? However stating that I did spend some time with a Cornish boy who used to get a plated-up roast with tin foil cover for pick-up from his mothers every Sunday.

Now I'm in South Africa, where everything is a little devout well except of course for murder and rape. (Why isn't' Thy shalt not rape' part of the ten commandments? (That could well be part of the problem you know) ). Anyways so you can't buy take-out alcohol after 8pm on any night of the week and finding an off-license open at eight is a bit of a challenge in itself, buying take-out alcohol on a Sunday is almost forbidden. I live in the suburbs where greasy spoons and the idea of a local are a distant dreamy memory. My community hub gone, with no one to take my money and offer the comfort of a velvety padded seat and a sympathetic look. My need for a lovingly prepared sugary cup of tea all but gone.

So what's in it's place? In short, church. That's what everyones up to and it worries me. This does not mean to say that I am anti-religious, probably quite the opposite in terms of spiritual engagement, I support all forms of spiritual development, though sometimes I wonder about the role of religious dogma in all of this. Not just Christian but Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and Muslim too. Equally well I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from the religions I particularly like the Muslim instruction of praying five times a day, the Buddhists for their meditation and yoga practises; that also relate to 'Moksa' Hindu liberation. The Jews I applaud for their survival instincts and yet feel that some serious psychotherapy may be required for their nation state Israel.

Why does church worry me? Well is doesn't worry me per say it's more that it worries me in the geographic location, South Africa. If you drive around Pretoria long enough you get know some of the landmarks. Mainly identikit malls, then you drive past some gigantic construction site and wonder relentless capitalist ideology in a third world country. Then you are informed it's a church. Saying church seems to underplay it slightly. When I say church what I mean is that I've been to cathedrals that look like they came out of a kinder eggs in comparison. They are huge and they scare. I've been to one South African sermon and I singularly I can say it was the most ungracious sermon I've ever heard. The minister spent most of it's time slating another minister and church in Pretoria. Why would a minister do that? Insecurity?

Churches are big business. Many of you will rock back in your chairs and say 'You've only just figured that out?'. The answer is no and simultaneously yes. We only have to look as the Vatican to know that the Catholic church has raked it in for what is now millennia, when they should be solving or have solved the worlds problems by providing both fund and spiritual nurture to the poor. When instead the Vatican hoards wealth and sits as quite possibly the best decorated city-state in the world. 1.2 billion people are members of the Catholic church which probably includes myself having been baptised as one.

However there is something even more unnerving in the construction of these megalith churches when you think they don't have any global credentials or are even part of a greater christian doctrine. What do they stand for? Are they Methodist, Evangelists or just some strange collection of righteous individual attempting to do their bit for themselves, there community and society. I'm sceptical to say the least. Why such a big church? And who quite literally 'in God's name' is following you and what are they gaining other than a bloody great church, for use on Sundays. It scares the sweet bejesus out of me to the point where something very sinister must be afoot. When I think that it is possible that fifteen hundred people flood through those doors and out again, in the name of faith or more importantly hope.

So is it just an abusive relationship? Offering hope in one breath and degradation in another? I can't help but wonder when I listen to people hark on about rewards in heaven, and deriding people who believe that heaven doesn't exist. Heaven is not a known, much like everlasting life or even transmutation. It's a wonder the Protestant population didn't remain Catholic and somehow I worry about the greater denominations of the Christian church. They are a new religion driven by work ethic that seems to run parallel to the ideals of the industrial revolution. Work for redemption in some menial job and you will get your reward in heaven doesn't sound much different to the seventy virgins offered to suicide bomber. So I'm frightened for them, all of God's children being railroaded into a future that doesn't exist. Bare in mind that 86% of the population are literate and possibly bilingual. So what's going on? Dogma, Doctrine or the conservative backbone that held apartheid in place all those years? When you go to the townships, it's the same phenomenon. Churches instead of community centres and schools. Then one has to wonder what's the pull? When most western populations are pulling away from organised religion why are South Africans embarrassing it with such vigour? I don't know the answer but I do know that once again what I've encountered in Pretoria is a closed religious stand point were magazine such as 'Joy' consider meditation to be nothing more than a direct invitation to the devil and lesser demons to occupy your soul. I didn't think such literature existed much past the 1930's.

Lets face it overall South Africa is not a rich country. Which is a contradiction because in fact South Africa has some of the greatest mineral wealth in the world and yet at almost every street corner in this affluent city you will find a cluster of homeless people (clearly this does not apply to the very rich suburbs as they are all gated off by private security firms). When I say that Pretoria is affluent I mean, nice cars, swimming pools and a service industry that most British citizens would balk at, it's pretty uncomfortable to have to allow someone to pump your petrol for you. In fact you'd be amazed they even have training schools to become a petrol pump service agent, they check your oil, clean your windows and check your tires. Yet you are not even obligated to tip them, petrol pumping is a good deal at the equivalent of 50p and hour. Many may be left with the belief pumping oil is the best way to service God. Doesn't take much to see how fucked up it is.

Yet paradise is right here on earth. We forget sometimes and we when we glimpse it we are awe struck and mesmerised by something so indescribable it must come from beyond ourselves and yet it is within us. And as I sat in my car yesterday getting my petrol pumped by some guy who I was going to have give a measly tip to, as I didn't have any change. I was gazing at a beautiful giant tree in full bloom the same colour of cherry blossom. There was a time when I would look at such trees and feel sad for them to have found such an awkward place in the human landscape to grow. Now I look at them and are grateful of the contrast they bring to what would other wise be an unremarkable concrete spot and in that, that they only reveal there secret beauty once a year and you've got to wide awake to notice it. In the meantime the religious are stuck in churches with their noses in books trying not to be heard singing out of key or praying unrythimcally and basically avoiding life unaware of the open oceans and the true beauty that is that can be experienced and grasped.