"I had a somewhat religious upbringing," he says. "Not strict, but it was there and I’m kind of thankful for that. If you grow up just watching MTV, that’s its own form of religion and it’s not even based on happiness or communal responsibility. I mean, try to construct a worldview out of that."
It sounds, I say, both from his conversation and his recent songs, like he still misses that faith-based sense of community. "Yes. I guess I do," he says, after some thought. "I’m not practising, I don’t go to church, but what I got from it was a sense of belonging to something bigger. What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren’t the same as you. Then, you really have to work through the ways that you’re different. I think that’s important and it’s missing in youth culture. I guess some of the songs are a reaction against the tyranny of youth culture, where you only hang around with people who dress like you, think like you and listen to the same music as you. Even though we are seen as the quintessential indie band, I feel very far from that culture a lot of the time."
The above quotes are from Sean O’Hagan’s fascinating piece with Arcade Fire in this weekend’s Observer. What is it about the Mormonism that has brought faith back onto the artistic palette of good recent rock records; I am thinking of The Killers as well as Arcade Fire? Whatever, you don’t expect journalists to have a conversation with a British band and have them speak about Church communities!
Win Butler’s comments about the benefits of Church community comes in the light of the fact that the band’s latest album Suburbs is a critique of youth culture. As so many people, even believers, suggest that growing up in Church has been detrimental to their lives, Butler suggests the opposite. His phrase, “What I really miss is being forced to be in a community with people that aren’t the same as you”, is most prophetic. Perhaps the MTV world that has created the homogeneous and spoiled generation he critiques so strongly are so pampered that the give and take of real community is too much for them. Even Churches have become little communities, with great vocal emphasis on community, that are just a group of refugees who couldn’t take the friction and self sacrifice of building real community so they withdrew into an easier option. It is easy to create community with those who all agree with your style of worship, theological opinion and iPod playlists. Easy and pretty much useless to any sense of spiritual growth.
The community that Jesus birthed and that we read about at the end of Acts 2 was a menagerie of quirks and freaks and ages and backgrounds. It was a sign of his transformational power that they could be held together. It was a part of their lifetime discipleship course that they should be forced to shape and hone each other in their differences and disagreements. It is why I love our Sunday evening worship where eighty year olds weigh in with our teenagers. The more mature are benefitting from hearing the story of the prodigal son through the music of Brandon Flowers on video storyboard and the young are being given a real sense of long term security within their souls as people old enough to be their grandparents allow them to release their imaginations and then endorse the results. It is not always easy to keep them in the same room or have them benefit from the same songs. There will be delicate conversations and both sides will have to listen to the other and settle for not having everything their own way. Yet in that room, there will be potential for real love, and for God to work out shalom.
Church communities where God is not needed seem pointless and indeed perhaps Godless. They are certainly no advert for God, just another club that could be about golf or yachts! Oh for many communities like the one Butler misses...and oh for mine to be like that one.
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