![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(The theft, disclosed from the top, is from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bill_sheehan, a nearly-ordained now-atheist who graces us with his thoughts every week. You should read them.)
It's hell in the writers' room. (Also, rather stinky, since so many of the showrunners have been dead for going on 2000 years.) Ratings have been way down and are heading even further south, as recently confirmed by their equivalent of Neilsen. The moment may be coming- may indeed have passed- where this long-running series will resort to some kind of stunt to turn things around. Most millennials, even some of us older folks, know the term for this, deriving from the classic 70s comedy Happy Days which, faced with declining numbers, decided to put the Fonz on water skis. The resulting scene sent him over a shark and the show's reputation over a barrel:
When will, or did, the Church do this? Perhaps, as Bill speculates today, it was as early as the third century, when the Christian religion and politics first mixed in a bad way and we got stuck with the "mystery" of the Holy Trinity. Maybe it was more recently, when "prosperity gospel" enabled the likes of Joel Osteen to beg for money while living in luxury that Jesus would have decried with weird metaphors about camels and needles. Or it's just the slow creep of what Tom Lehrer encouraged to be done "if you really want to sell the product," adding rock bands to the chancels and raffling off iPads in the leather seats formerly known as pews.
That last part is part of it, but it's not It. Rather, it's arguable (and here's a good argument for it, titled Jesus Doesn't Tweet) that the old-school elements of Christian ceremony are what we all relate to. We want our smells and bells, and the sacraments that can't be duplicated at an atheist's Sunday Assembly or in any secular setting. But we want them in connection with a message and a mission, which need to be consistent, and loving, and, yes, interesting.
Sorry, Lord Jesus, but we're fucking that part up.
----
Consider the Christian year. You may as well; it's rammed down your throat by that horribly repressed and persecuted still-majority of population (declining) and power (sadly increasing). Its center is at its beginning: Christmas, which now creeps into the final three or more months of the preceding year and gives us that constant reminder of this Miracle of Birth. Never mind that, if it happened, it surely didn't happen anywhere near December. It's preceded, liturgically, by Advent, which is slowly gaining secular traction in this country with calendars and crackers becoming part of our co-opting.
Then, for a random number of weeks but never more than about ten, we pack in stories of persecution, presentation and really bad parenting, skipping over the Missing Years and quickly heading right into religion's wheelhouse: suffering and regret. For here comes Lent, and seven weeks later, we get what is essentially the season finale on Easter Sunday. Alleluia! Praise the Lord and pass the chocolate bunnies!
There follow predictable plotlines about doubting Thomases, blind men on the road, and ascensions into heaven, with last Sunday's Pentecost bringing one last story of hope and change.
And there it ends. We're into summer reruns.
----
Finally, summer. (Well, not so finally- it's in the 50F range today here.) School's ending for the very cohort the church is seeking out, and many businesses slow down. Unfortunately, it's exactly when this organized religion chooses to hibernate for a period of many months.
There are still guidepost events to keep the wheels from totally falling off- mainly manufactured observances, such as today's "celebration" of that stupid Holy Trinity mystery. But for the most part, it's literally called "ordinary time." The choir is retired, the robes packed away until "Rally Day" in September. It's months of hymn sings and clergy vacations. You could burn down the church with fireworks on the Fourth of July and it would take three months to get a trustees' meeting scheduled to decide what to do. (And advocate for taking a stand on your denomination's offensive view on LGBT matters? Sorry, Ray- no meeting this month. Or next.)
I understand where this came from. Once upon a time, long before my time, we had a way more agarian society, and we needed that summer off in order to harvest from those fields. Yet today, the only fields we're traveling in summertime are soccer and baseball fields, and our closest contact to farms is flying over them on the way to Disney World. We have no excuse for not having a message- and we're idiots for tying our message to a series of "seasons" that have no relevance to me, much less to those missing Millennials.
Don't worry, O'Reilly- I'm not suggesting that we kill off Christmas. We still gotta shake that moneymaker. Easter, likewise. But we need a better story arc for the other 50 weeks of the year, and not one tied to "Christ's Gracious Life" and "Suffering- It's Not Just for the Jews Anymore." We have to start paying attention to the needs outside our doors, and stop watching the same reruns over and over and over again and then complain about our ratings being down.
We make strides. Just last week, on the choir's final gig before the summer off, the handbells did Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and the minister even worked Buffalo Springfield into the sermon. But I suspect it won't be enough, and further that it won't change in time.
Which means Sunday mornings may just become another CSI franchise- and I never liked that shit, anyway:P
bill_sheehan, a nearly-ordained now-atheist who graces us with his thoughts every week. You should read them.)It's hell in the writers' room. (Also, rather stinky, since so many of the showrunners have been dead for going on 2000 years.) Ratings have been way down and are heading even further south, as recently confirmed by their equivalent of Neilsen. The moment may be coming- may indeed have passed- where this long-running series will resort to some kind of stunt to turn things around. Most millennials, even some of us older folks, know the term for this, deriving from the classic 70s comedy Happy Days which, faced with declining numbers, decided to put the Fonz on water skis. The resulting scene sent him over a shark and the show's reputation over a barrel:
When will, or did, the Church do this? Perhaps, as Bill speculates today, it was as early as the third century, when the Christian religion and politics first mixed in a bad way and we got stuck with the "mystery" of the Holy Trinity. Maybe it was more recently, when "prosperity gospel" enabled the likes of Joel Osteen to beg for money while living in luxury that Jesus would have decried with weird metaphors about camels and needles. Or it's just the slow creep of what Tom Lehrer encouraged to be done "if you really want to sell the product," adding rock bands to the chancels and raffling off iPads in the leather seats formerly known as pews.
That last part is part of it, but it's not It. Rather, it's arguable (and here's a good argument for it, titled Jesus Doesn't Tweet) that the old-school elements of Christian ceremony are what we all relate to. We want our smells and bells, and the sacraments that can't be duplicated at an atheist's Sunday Assembly or in any secular setting. But we want them in connection with a message and a mission, which need to be consistent, and loving, and, yes, interesting.
Sorry, Lord Jesus, but we're fucking that part up.
----
Consider the Christian year. You may as well; it's rammed down your throat by that horribly repressed and persecuted still-majority of population (declining) and power (sadly increasing). Its center is at its beginning: Christmas, which now creeps into the final three or more months of the preceding year and gives us that constant reminder of this Miracle of Birth. Never mind that, if it happened, it surely didn't happen anywhere near December. It's preceded, liturgically, by Advent, which is slowly gaining secular traction in this country with calendars and crackers becoming part of our co-opting.
Then, for a random number of weeks but never more than about ten, we pack in stories of persecution, presentation and really bad parenting, skipping over the Missing Years and quickly heading right into religion's wheelhouse: suffering and regret. For here comes Lent, and seven weeks later, we get what is essentially the season finale on Easter Sunday. Alleluia! Praise the Lord and pass the chocolate bunnies!
There follow predictable plotlines about doubting Thomases, blind men on the road, and ascensions into heaven, with last Sunday's Pentecost bringing one last story of hope and change.
And there it ends. We're into summer reruns.
----
Finally, summer. (Well, not so finally- it's in the 50F range today here.) School's ending for the very cohort the church is seeking out, and many businesses slow down. Unfortunately, it's exactly when this organized religion chooses to hibernate for a period of many months.
There are still guidepost events to keep the wheels from totally falling off- mainly manufactured observances, such as today's "celebration" of that stupid Holy Trinity mystery. But for the most part, it's literally called "ordinary time." The choir is retired, the robes packed away until "Rally Day" in September. It's months of hymn sings and clergy vacations. You could burn down the church with fireworks on the Fourth of July and it would take three months to get a trustees' meeting scheduled to decide what to do. (And advocate for taking a stand on your denomination's offensive view on LGBT matters? Sorry, Ray- no meeting this month. Or next.)
I understand where this came from. Once upon a time, long before my time, we had a way more agarian society, and we needed that summer off in order to harvest from those fields. Yet today, the only fields we're traveling in summertime are soccer and baseball fields, and our closest contact to farms is flying over them on the way to Disney World. We have no excuse for not having a message- and we're idiots for tying our message to a series of "seasons" that have no relevance to me, much less to those missing Millennials.
Don't worry, O'Reilly- I'm not suggesting that we kill off Christmas. We still gotta shake that moneymaker. Easter, likewise. But we need a better story arc for the other 50 weeks of the year, and not one tied to "Christ's Gracious Life" and "Suffering- It's Not Just for the Jews Anymore." We have to start paying attention to the needs outside our doors, and stop watching the same reruns over and over and over again and then complain about our ratings being down.
We make strides. Just last week, on the choir's final gig before the summer off, the handbells did Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, and the minister even worked Buffalo Springfield into the sermon. But I suspect it won't be enough, and further that it won't change in time.
Which means Sunday mornings may just become another CSI franchise- and I never liked that shit, anyway:P