Perspectief 2014-26

Perspectief 26 prof. dr. Henk Bakker ‘Beliefs and belonging are still important, though these concepts must be observed within the context of new modes of binding, constituted through shared narratives, languages and discourses, and aesthetic styles – particularly in the domain of worship music (…). This study convincingly puts forward the importance of emotions, affects and bodily experience of (potential) converts, emphasizing the sensuous aspects of religion and the images it cultivates, and acknowledging people’s desires (…) Deducted from the ethnographic material, I have discussed three distinct semiotic domains at play within each church context; for analytical purposes, these are distinguished as separate fields of signs and meanings: the material domain of worship space, the aesthetic domain of worship music and the discursive domain of language. Bearing in mind the conjunction of these domains of meaning, together they reflect and constitute the social imaginary world – encompassing not only the ways people think but also how they imagine the world (…) – with ontological claims that direct the formation of converts’. 17 So, in dealing with growing differences and diversities between church visitors (believers and non-believers) churches may be able to transcend the handicap by emphasizing relation more than doctrine, divine intervention more than human concern, and Biblical imagination more than static inertias of the moment. In this respect aesthetics has become an important aspect of liturgy. The beauty of assembling, glorifying, and proclaiming brings many believers to new awareness of binding and bonding, and to new perspectives on the concepts of diversity and unity. Catholicity is under heavy pressure, and obviously churches deal with these tensions in different ways. My perspective is to set out some preconditions for the quality of catholicity to find new ways of binding and bonding in the local church. As I said before: the basic capacity is already there, in the church, possibly disguised or veiled. But it has been there always. We just have to cut off the right edges in the proper way. 17 Miranda Klaver, This Is My Desire: A Semiotic Perspective on Conversion in an Evangelical Seeker Church and a Pentecostal Church in the Netherlands (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011) 396-397.