Axis of incoherence: Engagement and failure between two material regimes of Christianity

Abstract

In the opening chapter, the editors outlined a general theory of failure such that ‘material failure’ can be understood to occur when ‘objectifi cation ceases to adhere’. The language used in this defi nition assumes a processual decomposition: a shoe falling apart, moving from a state wherein the subject can be seen to successfully concretize themselves into an object to one wherein the agentive work of the subject may no longer be the master over the material indexicalities of the thing. In this chapter, I work with a more processual phenomenon of ‘failure’. Rather than the material conforming and then not, the materials discussed in this chapter – a parish church building, to be exact – never fully matches the aspirations of the community. Each week, the Orthodox Christian parish of St Æthelwald’s enters the space of a homonymous 1 Church of England building in order to set up the space for their weekly liturgy. And while the transformation of the space is successful, such that each week the liturgy is carried out, I argue that the sensual quality of