An affective religious boundary tool

Abstract

This paper examines how a Copenhagen Night Church worked to affirm and bridge cultural boundaries by relating worship services to an incomprehensible corpo-affective experience and construing the atmosphere as a type of boundary object; an object that provides an interpretational flexibility while conserving an underlying common identity. It starts by exploring a public trial concerning the use of music in the Night Church. The trial forced the clergy to engage in boundary work in order to establish the Night Church events as worship services and not concerts. Most importantly, this included relating worship services and religion to an incomprehensible corpo-affective experience unmediated by meaning-making. This helped protect and transform pastoral authority as pastors emerged as theologically minded aesthetic workers just as it created a sense of coherence with an imagined religious past. However, if it helped establish a cultural border, it also afforded a crossing of cultural boundaries outside the context of the trial. Drawing on data generated from fieldwork in the Night Church, we explore how it helped position the Night Church atmosphere as a boundary quasi-object intended to connect a younger, more secular generation to religion.