C. A Liturgical Process Theology?
II. How Worship Feels: Power
My first visit to St. Mark’s was on a Sunday evening during Advent—a “silent night”
service. The liturgy was from the Book of Common Worship, a service of healing and wholeness.
I was drawn in by the ambiance: low lights, soothing music, and a sense of calm. The female priest seemed warm and welcoming. I was moved by the people filing forward to prayer stations where someone would lay hands on them and anoint them with oil. I wanted to go back, but I already attended a church on Sunday mornings, a Presbyterian church—I’m Presbyterian.
But I kept wanting to go back. So, one day after the new year, I went back on a Sunday morning. I didn’t find the service to be particularly welcoming. It didn’t give off the same warmth that the evening prayer service had exuded. In fact, I’m not sure anyone greeted me or sent even a smile in my direction. I found that everything the church represented offended my progressive, Presbyterian sensibilities: conservativism, hierarchy, rigidity, maleness,
straightness, whiteness, wealth, and privilege. And yet, I wanted to go back.
I persistently showed up to this place in which I felt deep discomfort. I felt insecure almost every time I entered the building. I wondered if I was doing the liturgy “right.” I
wondered if I belonged even though I voted Democrat, drove a Prius, and shopped second-hand stores. I did not feel an attunement with this assemblage and yet, I wanted to go back. The church at worship compelled me to participate. It was powerful.
In the first chapter of Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power, Schaefer writes: “Affect theory in all its forms is designed to profile the operations of power outside of language and the autonomous, reasoning human subject. Affect theory asks: what if power was
not a symbol system, but something enfolding and exceeding language in the ways it plays across bodies—a ‘thing of the senses,’ in Stewart’s phrase?”178
Worship has affect. Worship has energy. Worship has power. And power is also a “thing of the senses.”179 Worship, power, and affect have a circuitous and complex relationship. Power is another non-representational element of worship.
We understand power in general and in context. We know what it means to have power over someone or something. We comprehend that our lights are powered by electricity.
However, it is difficult to grasp the concept of power “outside of language and the autonomous reasoning human subject.”
In the context of Schaefer’s affect theory, the word “power” functions as a noun: power is a “thing” that impacts action. For example, we can have the power to do something, meaning we have the capacity to act in a particular way. I have the power to vote. Power might also be understood as a “thing” one entity can bestow upon or withhold from another. The U.S.
government gives me the power to vote and has the power to prevent non-citizens from voting.
In either case, power has the capacity to influence behavior.
So, power is a thing—a capacity or ability—that compels, drives, convicts, motivates, invests, draws in, and repulses. Schaefer writes about power the way Ahmed writes about affect.
One might wonder if the terms are interchangeable. Affect could be said to compel, drive, convict, etc. Yet we have to understand the difference between power and affect in order understand the relationship between the two.
178 Schaefer, Religious Affects, chap. 1.
179 Stewart, Ordinary Affects, 84.
What do power and affect have in common? As stated above, affect and power function in similar ways, and as Schaefer will argue, seem to function outside of language. In that sense they are non-representational, or to put it another way, they are both an “asignifying energy.”180 Affect theorist Brian Massumi uses the terms “intensity” and “potential.”181 This means they don’t have an inherent form or shape. They are nearly impossible to define. And yet, they can form individuals and communities alike; both affect and power impact our sense of reality, our lived experience. Both have a sticky relationship to subjects and objects and bodies. Affect and power can draw us toward or away from––attach or detach us from––other things and people.
How do we differentiate affect and power? Affect has a broader meaning. As we read in the first chapter, affect can be synonymous with the term “emotion.” Or, as psychologist James Gross suggests, affect can be considered an umbrella term, encompassing many related
concepts.182
180 Supp-Montgomerie, Affect, 342.
181 Schaefer, Religious Affects, chap. 1.
182 James J. Gross, “The Future’s So Bright, I Gotta Wear Shades,” Emotion Review 2, no. 3 (April): 213, http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1754073910361982.
Figure 3
Power is a more specific concept, hard to define, and yet you know it when you
experience it. If you look up “power” in a thesaurus, you see the following listed: control, ability, nation, strength, right, drive, and fuel.183 You can follow all the derivatives of those words as well. While they all point toward a definition of power, none seem synonymous; there is no other word for power.
Another difference: physiology plays a significant role in affect. Though biology (a subset of physiology) impacts who is imbued with power within a society, power doesn’t generate a physiological response or change. The experience of power may, however, generate an affective response. Affect can generate power and power can generate affect. Affects can have power, but power cannot have affect. They are both responsive but in a different way.
183 Merriam-Webster, s.v., “power,” accessed January 25, 2021, https://www.merriam- webster.com/thesaurus/power.
When I think deeply about my experience at St. Mark’s and ponder what may have generated the sense of power, I can point toward many things St. Mark’s represents. I named some of the representable qualities of St. Mark’s that do not resonate with me: conservativism, hierarchy, rigidity, maleness, straightness, whiteness, wealth, and privilege. But that is not the whole picture. If it were, I do not think I would have gone back time and time again. Other qualities attracted me: polish, perfection, and order began the list. All these qualities, positive and negative, are represented in the people and things of the church—represented by the assemblage. But something else pulses through the assemblage, a power outside of representation: power produced, shaped, and undone by affect.
Attending closely to my own experience of the depths of affective power at St. Marks, it is powerful when I cry in worship, when I feel an emotional connection to music. It is powerful when I engage in rituals over and over until they become automatic and second nature. It is powerful to learn the liturgy. It is powerful when the assembly falls silent, whether in shame or awe. It is powerful when the assembly draws its attention to the cross as the music swells and the offering is lifted. It is powerful when the assembly comes together to bow down in reverence to the cross. And finally, it is powerful to experience the pomp and circumstance of Easter
Sunday—though for some, this power can be undone by a feeling of unsettledness.
In all of these instances, “power” signifies the harnessing of energy–-the effective ability to attach (my) emotions to certain liturgical objects, silences, musical pieces, etc. In those
instances, energy is socially constructed in such a way that, for some (many perhaps), the rushing motorcycle of energy doesn’t just pass through the liturgical gathering but is stopped, held up, grafted onto liturgical elements in ways that are aimed in particular, theologically oriented directions and toward certain theologically significant emotions.