Megachurch Materiality in a Post-Truth Era: Bodily Dis/Orientation and Belief

Examining the role of materiality in belief formation, this interdisciplinary, practice-based project seeks to understand the orienting appeal of Evangelicalism within a 'post-truth' political climate.

The rising socio-political influence of faith-based groups - radical Islam in the Middle East and Evangelical conservatism in the US - is evidence of the global significance of religious belief. Yet the material culture surrounding religious belief lacks 'serious empirical, let alone theoretical interest' (Meyer & Houtman, 2012:1). Despite a range of sociological and anthropological research into Evangelicalism, there has been no in-depth, interdisciplinary study of the visual and material culture of the Evangelical megachurch (2,000+ congregants), a world-wide and rapidly spreading movement; meanwhile, religious culture and belief remains underrepresented within Western contemporary art. This project seeks to redress this lack, utilising a situated and performative art writing practice to explore how megachurch culture produces a sense of bodily dis/orientation that is central to belief formation.

Sociological research suggests Evangelical self-identification as one of boundaried distinctness (Strhan,2015). The 'total institution' of the conservative megachurch (Wade,2016) appears at odds with art world pluralism and secularism. Mirroring this polarity, recent events in the US and Europe (Brexit, the election of Trump, a rise in nationalism) point to an increasing entrenchment of opinion between conservative and progressive ideologies. Situated amidst these cultural and political divides, I draw on my own bodily experiences of involvement in Evangelical megachurches, as well as my knowledge of contemporary art culture, to expose the complexity and orienting appeal of religious belief within the largely secular arenas of art and theory. Beginning with the supposition that belief is produced by cognitive processes, I draw on new materialist theory and mobilise a situated and performative art writing practice to explore how belief is also created through the orientation of the body, focusing on megachurches in the UK and the US. Within the immersive space of the megachurch, bodily experiences range along a spectrum from fixity to vertiginous freedom. Stadium worship services are visually spectacular. Charismatic preachers on vast projection screens enthral thousands of worshippers. Repetition and reinforcement of a compelling narrative, intensified through scale, spectacle, and emotive music, creates embodied affect in the crowd. Bodily and cognitive processes comingle to create a feeling of certainty, experienced as bodily dis/orientation, through the perception of being grounded through an authorised narrative, being enchanted into a collective fabulation. This will be examined within a contemporary art context and in relation to the divisions of a post-truth political context, adding knowledge of the role of materiality in belief formation while contributing to post-truth discourse and fostering dialogue between seemingly opposed positions.

Taking bodily orientation as key to belief formation, I examine how a body is oriented within the megachurch by the materialities of: site (architecture, staging), spectacle (crowd, performance, screen) and narrative (voice, fabulation, myth). This analysis informs and is extended by my situated and performative art writing practice. Written and staged for the secular sites and audiences of contemporary art, this writing performs the entanglements of materiality, embodiment and belief. Three new art writing works in the form of participatory scripts address the audience as a diverse 'crowd' to foreground belief formation as contingent on material context and bodily orientation. In this way, the complexity of belief is materialized and a dialogic space opened to produce new, situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988) contributing to contemporary art as well as visual and material cultures.