coffee

The Big Box Church

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Sitting in “The Well,” a coffee shop within the campus of Christ’s Wesleyan, a local mini mega-church.  Why a coffee shop? It is pretty much the same reason a Target store has a Starbucks. It is a trendy and cool place to chill out as the service plays out on the big screen.  The ‘church’ here is as American as a big box store.  It is quite the production, with many programs tailored to children and all needs in the congregation.  The wonderful thing is that you are free to participate to the level that you want.  I’m not alone as I sip my caramel frappe while the administrative pastor goes over bulletin announcements and the highlights of Miami versus Kansas City play on the small screen.

The thing is, I was once threatened by this, the professional musicians mimicking rock stars on the stage.  How could this really be called a church?  And, as they currently ruin “How Great Thou Art” with some ridiculous contemporary rendition, I would definitely be tempted to pile on.  There’s certainly a kind of consumerist hokeyness to the whole enterprise.  I mean who looks at Walmart and an Alanis Morissette wannabe, then says, “Wow, this is the perfect model for the church!”? It’s all as cheap and throw away as the American culture in general.  Nevertheless, this is the place most people are today and also as close to an actual community as many get in this age of suburban sprawl.

Yes, I’m a worship snob.  To me, nothing can rival true Orthodox worship.  Old hymns, like those in a traditional Protestant church, and the Psalms and Scripture of the liturgy feel much more meaningful.  But is this really a substantive difference?  Is the worship here more or less about our personal preference than it is there?  Even Orthodoxy, with its simple images and chanted theology, was trying to make the message accessible to the people at the time.  Would Jesus have filled a stadium had he had the opportunity to do so?  Maybe so.  Certainly, the church has always taken some of its form from the local culture. But then shouldn’t the church create the culture rather than the other way around?

The thing is the biggest problem that I have with all of this is that it exposes religion for what it is.  The reason some of us need to stay traditional is because if worship is allowed to change then we start to question.  Could it all be fake?  We find our security keeping it all the same.  If it has a timeless feel then we don’t need to struggle with the foundation of our faith.  My cynicism takes over because this chintzy architecture exposes the framework that some of us would rather keep hidden under the ornate historical facade. It works like satire to undermine my confidence.  Oh well, as the couple prepares in front of the lights and cameras in the lobby, like television reporters, I suppose it is time to wrap this blog up.

Postscript: I attended with my wife, out of convenience due to our busy afternoon, who prefers this style of service as it is similar to her church in the back in the Philippines. I was reflecting on the similarities of this to Orthodoxy, in that you have “coffee hour” after the Orthodox church. The biggest difference really is the size and organization. One models itself after the Byzantines and the other off a shopping mall or shopping plaza. And yet both require donations from viewers like you. What really is the big difference between dropping money in the offering plate and tapping your credit card to pay for the brew? The church calendar and the many programs to help make the Gospel accessible? Being in awe of the temple and being impressed by the light show? It all basically serves the same purpose.

A Tempest in a Coffee Cup?

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One may think from the news coverage that Christians are out, torches and pitchforks in hand, looking for coffee shops to burn.  The story is that Starbucks isn’t exploiting Christmas enough and this lack of proper capitalization for a profit of holiday has offended the sentiments of the unwashed religionist hoards.

This fury seems to have originated with a humorous poke at a bland Starbucks holiday cup design.  It was escalated by a fuddy-duddy blowhard extraordinaire (aka Joshua Feuerstein) who, apparently not seeing the joke, posted a video that urged a movement to trick hapless minions of secularism (aka Starbucks employees) into saying Merry Christmas.

And, since then—like that bar fight where nobody knows which drunken idiot started it or why they are fighting to begin with—the story of angry Christians has exploded into a media fiasco.  But strangely the two main characters in this brawl do not seem to exist as much more than mythological creatures and that has led some to wonder if the whole ordeal is a fabrication.

Where are these offended Christians?

In my cadre of conservative Christian social media commentating friends, I have yet to see one who is offended by the Starbucks design.  In fact, of my coreligionist friends voicing an opinion, I have observed two main camps:

1) The Apologists, or those annoyed by other Christians who are offended by Starbucks cups and have taken to social media to scold these theoretical entitlement-minded embarrassments to the Christian cause.

2) The Sanctimonious, or those who are suspicious that this controversy is created by the liberal irreligious media and take their high horse to condemn those annoyed as being pawns in this imagined nefarious plot.

Then there’s one last group made of non-religious friends:

3) The Amused, or those who watch with a little gleefulness, are not overly suspicious of the media and have little trouble imagining Christians that feel they are entitled to special treatment or would become outraged over something as silly as Starbucks cup.

My own opinion is that the whole thing has gotten blown out of proportion.  It has likely only gained traction because we are already accustomed to the cultural wars that take place over issues similar to this.  There is usually a skirmish or two this time of year (whether arguing for and against nativity scenes or some other cultural expressions of Christianity) and this has primed our pumps to expect it.

I also do contend, again, that Joshua Feuerstein represents a small segment of the general Christian population.  There’s always those who are perpetually offended on behalf of their own tribe (look at the Halloween costume controversy at Yale and the chaos at Mizzou as examples) and yet whether or not these outspoken activists represent much more than themselves is an open question.  My own anecdotal evidence suggests that those outraged by the cups are, at the most, a fringe element even amongst fundamentalists.

What’s with the media coverage, anyhow?

If one wants to study the interplay of the media echo chamber and social media viral phenomena they should start here.  There seems to be a positive feedback loop at work in this where a one-man movement on YouTube, picked up by the mainstream media, was then sifted through the amplifier of social media and each step promoting more to add their own opinions.  This has gone through several cycles of growing in magnitude.  Even Donald Trump weighed in suggesting a boycott of the mermaid logo brand.

I do not think this is a media reporting this ‘controversy’ is a coordinated attempt to discredit Christians.  Professional journalists are not any different from the rest of us and will report on what is the latest buzz as we do.  In the age of social media the feedback loop is faster and the amplification quicker than ever.  By the time people start breathing again, we all feel a bit duped and start to wonder how the insanity got started.

Newsflash: All news is manufactured!

And, furthermore, we all participate in manufacturing news when we share about events that interest us.  We present a product of our own perspective whenever we tell other people about anything.  As a professional news reporter, we also select the facts we believe are relevant and omit those that seem inconsequential.  We carefully craft our words to reach our target audience and create a narrative based in our own worldview.

The adage “if it bleeds it leads” holds generally true.  We are drawn to controversy and this latest fracas over Starbucks cups has struck a cord or we wouldn’t be talking about it.  There are evidently enough perpetually outraged Christians like Feuerstein to make a premise of widespread butthurt believable.  He may be a crude caricature of us, but there’s a reason that he’s not taken as parody and that’s likely because he’s representative of a type of person we know does exist.

My decaffeinated analysis of the issue…

Yet, the bigger story is that most people (Christian and secular alike) are seemingly more offended by the controversy itself than the plain red cups that started it.  So maybe we should be careful not to get too carried away in our own outrage over the outrage that may or may not be an outrage at all.  There are plenty of people sharing dumb opinions (Bill Nye on abortion for example) and this is probably a good reason to reserve judgment until the facts are spoken.

Anyhow, for the record, the only problem I have with Starbucks is the inferior quality of their brackish liquid.  I prefer my coffee with milk, sugar, in a Dunkin Donuts cup and agnostic.  If that offends you, then please, by all means, do complain and start a movement or something—I will sip away amused as my blog views climb.

“…whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,  and whoever wants to be first must be your slave—just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28)