Anyone who knows me, knows that I’m not a particularly pious man, when facing a moral dilemma I’m unlikely to ask “what would Jesus do?” and with a few exceptions (school trip, squat party and a funeral) I’d never been to a church before last Sunday. Until recently I’d describe myself as an atheist and while my beliefs haven’t changed I think the term gives the whole concept of religious faith a little too much respect. You wouldn’t describe yourself as an anti-philatelist because you don’t collect stamps and by calling yourself an atheist you’re defining your beliefs in relation to someone else’s grown-up imaginary friend. There are plankton with sufficient intelligence to not believe in God and you don’t feel you need to label yourself as not being a microscopic creature that lives in the sea and eats algae. Anyway, that’s a completely different rant, perhaps for another day, but hopefully it will give you some idea of the scale of my contempt for religious ideas, that you can refer back to as you read this piece about church, and how funny it would be if they didn’t actually mean it.
So, for this issue of Now or Never! I agreed to go to church and write a review of the experience. Not just any church though, I’m off to Potter’s House Church on Dereham Road, Norwich, it’s a Pentecostal church which is Christian slang for ‘absolute fucking loonies’ and they’ve advertised it as a ‘Miracle Healing Night’.
As I walk up to the pentecostal church, it’s clear from all the cars parked up all the side streets that it’s going to be quite busy, clearly this isn’t just a local crowd-puller and people have probably come from all over Norfolk. Whether its the promised miracles that’s pulled the crowd I don’t know but I’m shocked as I walk through the door, the hall is packed; there must be over a hundred people in there and there’s still five minutes until kick off, or whatever its called in church. I take a free pew and am immediately spotted, they must have people looking out for fresh meat or repentant sinners. A guy in an ill-fitting suit who seems to never blink comes over and welcomes me, we exchange names and chat, I pretend to be someone who’s just recently started to believe in God etc.
As the service begins I breathe a sigh of relief, having come across as a convincing new convert ready to join their gang. It starts with a sing-song which was very much like being in an assembly at primary school, pretending to sing to a badly played piano; but to enhance the experience there was a fat bloke playing a bass guitar and they’d cunningly projected a picture of a beach behind the words. The words to the songs are written in what they probably thought was a ‘cool’ or maybe even ‘funky’ font, probably to contrast with fact that the words are mostly about wanting to make the entire nation think about nothing but God (that was actually the jist of the first song). I expected the service to be formatted along the lines of: song, listen to man talking about God, song, listen etc but no, they prefer to sing really crap hymns back to back without time to draw breath in-between. Imagine a sinister episode of Songs of Praise where everyone looks like they’re enjoying it far too much, there’s clapping, swaying and what for want of a better word I’ll call dancing. A bloke with a microphone tells everyone to hold hands and they do, which makes the out-of-time clapping subside, I’m half expecting someone to start a conga line when a new hymn starts up which is actually different to all the others and a real crowd pleaser. At the end of that hymn everyone somehow knows the singing is done and it’s all smiles and handshakes time, there wasn’t anything on the word projection on the wall, perhaps they sing the same songs every week.
Everyone sits waiting eagerly for some scripture, a man in a suit announces its time for prayer and reads out a list of names along with what those people want, or at least what he wants them to have, its mostly ‘salvation’ that people get on his list. This was actually the bit I’d been waiting for, as I’ve seen Pentecostal Christians praying once on Louis Theroux and they talk in tongues! I was under the impression that it’s something that’s optional or perhaps accepted in a Pentecostal service but they all do it at the same time. Now I think about it, since they believe talking in tongues is evidence of the Holy Spirit within you, no-one is going to be the only person who doesn’t gibber away like their very life depends on it. There’s one bloke at the front trying to say the prayer in English but he has to shout so he can be heard above the noise of about a hundred people with their eyes shut all making the silliest noises they can, all trying to be the loudest and therefore holiest cretin in the room. I was tempted to join in but if you have to make up convincingly silly noises on the spot it’s not as easy as it looks, so I concentrated on keeping a straight face.
Next, another fat man told the whole congregation about how he had driven a van load of Christians to Newcastle, he drove them back again but people still thought he deserved a round of applause. Apparently on the way back they got a flat tyre, which proved the existence of God, I can’t recall his exact logic, but everyone seemed fairly impressed. He had a very entertaining mannerism which was shared by some of the other speakers; he used the words ‘hallelujah’, ‘amen’ and the phrase ‘praise the lord’ as if they were punctuation. He didn’t just say them so often that they were like punctuation though, he’d slip an “amen!” in the middle of a sentence as if it was a comma and end a rhetorical question with a “Hallelujah?” as a question mark.
Then a little guy that looked like a weasel started talking about Northern Rock, to be honest his grasp of the situation could have been improved upon, by say... watching Newsround on CBBC. But anyway, his assessment of the situation for people who could have lost their savings (this was before the Treasury stepped in) was that they should have given their money to Potter’s House Church and in fact, especially when you’re hard up financially you should keep tithing (giving your money to the church) to prove your devotion and be rewarded. This was the first time I stopped laughing inside and I felt genuinely angry at this cultish little shit hole of a church. While some people there looked well off, a lot of the congregation looked as if they didn’t have loads of cash, but as the collection buckets went around most people were putting either tenners or twenties in. I refused to part with my hard earned beer tokens and as a ‘new believer’ they seemed prepared to overlook it.
After the cash had been gathered, there was a quick ‘fire and brimstone’ style speech, accompanied by some incredibly homophobic passages from Leviticus (a book of the Bible that goes something like: Thou shalt not do a series of fairly random things, women know your limits, queers are evil. Amen.) This really hammered home to me how much this church is an outpost of fundamentalism. The venom and conviction in the preacher’s voice as he proclaimed the passages that many (not so outwardly bigoted) Christians find a bit embarrassing and try to gloss over, threw the happy-clappy front this church puts up into sharp relief. Then it became clear what this sermon was getting at, all the talk of sin and separation from God was to frighten and guilt trip the new people down to the front. During a prayer ‘new converts’ were asked to raise their hand if they wanted to come and beg forgiveness, the two other newbies both raised their hands, I didn’t and the prayer went on for an unnaturally long time with the preacher looking directly at me. He eventually gave up, the faithful took their two ‘new converts’ down to the front, surrounded them and they all prayed together in what resembled a strange initiation rite. While this was happening a bloke was trying to convince me that it wasn’t too late to join in, the absolute horror of the situation (it was like a dodgy 80s horror movie) almost made me drop ‘out of character’, all I could do was mumble at him.
As everyone returned to their pews with their brand new ‘born again’ friends, it was time for the main event; the Miracle Healing. It began with a general prayer for anyone who was sick, as the congregation gibbered away in tongues there was a noticeable atmosphere of excitement and anticipation. Then the sick people went up to the front and announced their ailments, the preacher put his hand on a sick person’s forehead and everyone prayed, this time the tongue talking was louder and more intense. When they told the preacher what was wrong with them, he’d ask questions like “so have you had that since you were born?”, his doctorly tone suggesting he needed to know; as if an all knowing God would require his professional help and not just theatrical assistance as he healed the sick. After all the really sick people had been ‘healed’, or at least had funny noises made at them with a sweaty palm against their foreheads, it was time for people who were just in pain. There were a great number of people who came up to the front for a piece of the action this time. Handily, to perform miracle healing, the procedure is the same whether you have osteoporosis or a sore throat (no really, a guy actually asked for divine intervention for a slight cough!) The preacher was obviously rushing the miracles as he’d gone over time, if the person reported no improvement then the miracle would be performed again but quicker. The guy with the sore throat (I really hope he was taking the piss because it was sheer brilliance) still felt no better after the miracle was performed twice; the preacher looked stuck and then said something which made me have to clench my teeth to avoid laughing. He said; “Mmm... yeah. I’ve seen this before; sometimes the miracle takes a while to work. Perhaps it’ll get better in a few days.” Some miracle eh? And Lo, the Good Lord did Walk Upon the Sea at Galilee, Maketh a nice Red Wine from Water and Maketh Some Blokes Sore Throat Get Better in A Few Days. Since this was the last miracle, the preacher shouted “Praise the Lord!” and it may have just been wishful thinking but some of the congregation might have been having just little sparks of independent thought preying on their minds, because their echo of “Praise the Lord!” was a bit lacklustre. And there endeth the sermon.
Looking back, I was expecting to be both entertained and disgusted but I really was surprised on both counts. It was at times like something from the League of Gentlemen; sinister to the point of making my skin crawl but undeniably hilarious yet in incredibly bad taste. What I do wonder is: do these guys really believe it all? Perhaps they’re all just pretending like I was but afraid to let on that they’re not convinced, worried that their standing in the church and their community will be forfeit. Perhaps I have too much faith in humanity (hah!) but surely no-one can be so thick, gullible and suggestible to believe in what’s being preached at Potter’s House Church. Also, while it’s quite clear what I think of the shower of nasty little bastards in suits that run this pentecostal church, I want to make clear that what I felt for most of the people in there was pity. As a sense of community disappears in wider society, horrible little cults like Potter’s House will soak up the lonely and vulnerable, taking the piss like this is all well and good but as anarchists we need to defend the remnants of our communities otherwise this shower of bastards and more like them are here to stay