Stranger Staff’s article A Month of Sundays presents the role of religion in a modern society and the attitude of the people to the church. Stranger sends 31 writers to 32 houses of worship to investigate the situation of modern churches and to share their feelings and emotions evoked by the visit to Sunday services. In fact, the writers talk about serious things in a funny or even mocking way.
This article witnesses to the fact that the church has stopped to play a crucial role in our life. The writers talking about their visit to the sermon mention that they have not been in the church for a long time and this event was quite disturbing for them. Most of them going to the church imagined another picture of Sunday service. They realized that the situation in the churches has considerably changed. Many priests defame the God and the Bible impelling dissolute behavior. For example, mentioning the conduct of some blonde girl and another female dancing next to her, the writer emphasizes the provocative and seductive behavior of the women in the churches. He pays a lot attention to describing the appearance and the clothes of the girls. The similes used by the author to let us imagine the girls’ dance more vividly are very bright and interesting. Thus, the blonde is compared with Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club, and the brune’s dance reminds the writer the one from the Wayne show (Staff Stranger 2007, 6). Moreover, the author expresses his concern about the lyrics of the songs accompanying Sunday sermons: “Lyric that could double as dirty talk: none – the lyrics to this song are a recipe for terrible sex, just like listening to Coldplay” (Staff Stranger 2007, 6).
Many churches are used for entertainments, sexual propaganda and advertisements. Did Jesus Christ want the church to look like entertainment centers? What are the reasons of such debauchery in the churches? The whole society seeking for entertainment and satisfaction of personal demands is guilty of such deplorable situation in the church holding up the religion to derision. The priests do all possible to attract people to the sermons.
Sometimes, churches confuse with their buildings and motifs, the writer describes the impressive size of the Overlake Church mentioning that the chapel seats more than 5 thousand guests. Moreover, the stage arranged there also impresses “with sparkling lights through black curtains and camera crews projecting the scene onto three giant screens.” (Staff Stranger 2007, 5). Churches have become for modern people just architectural monuments.
We live in the era of modern technologies and the decline of morality. People are not accustomed to visit churches and it is quite difficult for them to understand the Word of God living in the world captured by money and entertainments. The writer’s associations during Sunday service at Overlake Christian Church demonstrate the influence of modern technologies on human mind. Thus, the title of one of the books of the New Testament, the book of Colossians, reminds the author the name of one of the characters from the X-Men, Colossus, so he cannot help imagining him reading the Epistle of Paul to the Colossians. Moreover, when “the pastor stresses memorization of Bible passages, and each program includes a card with a verse on one side and the acronym on the other”, the writer associates it with the game, Brain Age, for Nintendo DS (Staff Stranger 2007, 5).
The era of modern technologies influence the ways of preaches. Priests use TV to pass the Word of God to the people who do not want to go to the churches, mentioning the benefits the one can have watching TV church. Thus, he says that you can even eat during the service. However, he also admits that even such small advantages cannot make the ceremony more interesting. (Staff Stranger 2007, 14). Many people consider Sunday services as one of the ways to make fun.
It is not even a simple task to catch the main idea of the article. Does the author want to make fun of modern churches or to make people think over their spiritual state? Although there are a lot of funny situations described in the article, it was not funny for me to realize the spiritual decline of our society. In fact, the main aim of the article is a sort of entertainment. There are a lot profane commentaries and wordiness in the article without any results. It will be more useful if the author stresses the main goals of his article and make people think over their spiritual needs. It seems that the author impels readers to laugh with him at the churches and priests. The behavior of some writers is improbable in the church and they look like teenagers frustrating the unpopular classmate’s party.
Although, the decline of the church is an indisputable fact but there are still many people who regularly visit Sunday sermons. The author should respect the beliefs and traditions of such people. Stranger Staff presents the situation of churches from different points of view and perhaps he makes a lot of readers think over such a deplorable state of religion in a modern society. Nevertheless, he does not provide the reasons of such situation and the ways of improving the role of religion in our life. Are the churches necessary for the worship or not? Are they really the house of the God or the places of debauchery and the fall? The weak point of the article is that the author provides a lot of material without making a conclusion which complicates the reader’s comprehension about the main aims of his experiment.
Reference List
Staff Stranger. “A Month of Sundays”. The Stranger, 2007.