Schitt’s Creek won a ton of awards.
Would you like to write the next big Canadian sit-com? I came across a potential idea.
In the current issue (June 2021) of “The Walrus” magazine there is an article on a church that meets in a strip club in Guelph Ontario. (The church has met there since 2014.)
The Manor Adult Entertainment Complex is a name that sounds loftier than the actual establishment as it exists. The article points out that the industry is dying, another victim of online options. It is not uncommon for dancers to outnumber patrons. This curious kind of nostalgia is only one interesting consideration in the article. It also brings to mind questions of the sacred and the secular. Where are those lines drawn? How are they unhelpful and arbitrary?
You should read the article if you can access it.
I include just a few brief snippets:
A few members of the ministry team were strumming guitars and singing — “We believe in Jesus Christ / We believe in the Holy Spirit” — while the congregation ate.
“How’s everybody doing?” a singer asked the crowd, hype-man style.
“Shitty!” someone yelled back.
On any given Sunday, the attendees at the Manor services were a mélange: middle-class Christians, mostly friends or associates of the church organizers; Manor Motel residents, there for a few hours of diversion; and those who lived elsewhere but had heard about the free food. Confused strip-club customers sauntered in, looking for an afternoon lap dance.
At first, the Ninabers (pastor and spouse) were disappointed by the lack of dancers in the congregation, but they made their peace with it. “The idea of going to church in the same place that you strip and take off your clothes and the whole nine yards — that’s a giant leap,” Jack said.
As Stefan (SNL Weekend Update Night Life Correspondent) used to say, “This story has everything”. The original house that became the Manor was once owned by George Sleeman (yes, the beer). Sleeman lost the house when prohibition laws were passed in Ontario in the 1920’s.
The current owner of the Manor is a 67 year old man of Jewish background who is given to gold chains and rings. There is also a nun. She worked with the owner years back sometimes requesting the use of the motel attached to the strip club as she looked for accommodation for people in need.
The article is worth reading just for the sake of the spectacle of it. The author points out that a banner with an image of Jesus is placed each Sunday morning over a lit up shower that exists beside the stage for the dancers to use as part of the show.
There are interesting themes beyond the spectacle, however. Here is a stated reason as to why the author was interested in researching and writing the article;
“When I first heard about Church at the Manor, it seemed so literal — sin and salvation, the sacred and the profane, side by side — that I decided I had to see it for myself.”
It is one of the many things that I like about the article. It points out that the line between sacred and secular is confusing. I would say that it is actually a false line. One of the key tasks of hopeful Christian theology will be to show how this line is false from the perspective of the church and from the perspective of so called “secular” society.
From the church perspective there is a tendency to declare sacred anything that has to do with the church. This leaves out just about everything. Conversely, it can falsely sanctify even the most profane activity of the church. If you grew up in a strict religious setting you may have seen the results of this divisive way of seeing things. In such contexts, if something did not have to do with the church, then it had to do with “the world”. It was secular. It was perhaps dangerous. It was part of the fallen world.
From the non-religious perspective the mistake made around sacred and secular is a failure of knowing social history. Secularism in the West has religious origins. Larry Siedentop points out (echoed by Charles Taylor and others) that, “Christian moral beliefs are the source of the social revolution that has made the West what it is.”
This means that the sign I sometimes see declaring that “In this home we believe, Black Lives Matter, Women’s Rights are Human Rights, … Love is Love and Kindness is Everything” is actually an echo of a religious worldview.
When we don’t see that it is largely religion that has led to great concepts such as human rights, we can become “people who take our own goodwill for granted and who believe ourselves to be authors of our own values.” (Ivan Illich) Or, as Renée Girard has written, “Modern reformers complain, quite justly, about the violence of Christianity, but they fail to notice that they complain only because they have Christianity (and what it taught about the value of humanity, etc.) to complain with.”
In other words, the secular is not as secular as most people think, and the religious is far, far less than sacred than it has often presented itself to be.
I think that this is actually good and hopeful for the future. My faith does not have to push me away from people who don’t believe as I believe. Rather my faith, properly understood, can help me to see what I have in common with other people.
For some people it can feel sacrilegious to consider that growing in faith might mean giving up the sacred/secular division. I am mindful of the challenge, but I am hopeful about the way forward. The future of human rights and social change will benefit by an understanding of where the concept of human rights originated in our culture. The future of Christian mission will benefit by doing away with false divisions of sacred and secular. It will also make for better life with friends and neighbours.