The Church: An Agent of Disruption

by John Ellis

“For me, to live is Christ, to die is gain.” Philippians 1:21

One of the most important works of theatre theory published over the last century (or, really, ever) is The Theater and Its Double by the almost inexplorable and wonderfully mystical Antonin Artaud. In the book’s preface, titled “The Theatre and Culture,” the enigmatic theatre theorist penned the profound observation, “What is most important, it seems to me, is not so much to defend a culture whose existence has never kept a man from going hungry, as to extract, from what is called culture, ideas whose compelling force is identical with that of hunger. We need to live first of all; to believe in what makes us live – to believe that whatever is produced from the mysterious depths of ourselves need not forever haunt us as an exclusively digestive concern. I mean that if it is important for us to eat first of all, it is even more important for us not to waste in the sole concern for eating our simple power of being hungry.”[1]

While not a Christian,[2] Artaud recognized something in the world – in life – that had first been given voice in the teachings of Jesus Christ, expounding on in the letters of St. Paul, and then echoed in the courageous words of Ignatius of Antioch, among other early Christian martyrs.

Facing execution, Ignatius learned, “that Christians in Rome were considering the possibility of freeing him from death.”[3] In a gracious letter to those well-intentioned brothers and sisters in Christ, the godly saint urged, “Do not seek to confer any greater favour upon me than that I be sacrificed to God while the altar is still prepared.”[4] He goes on to explain, “Do not speak of Jesus Christ, and yet set your desires on the world. … For though I am alive while I write to you, yet I am eager to die. My love has been crucified, and there is no fire in me desiring to be fed; but there is within me a water that liveth and speaketh, saying to me inwardly, ‘Come to the Father.’ I have no delight in corruptible food, nor in the pleasures of this life. I desire the bread of God, the heavenly bread, the bread of life, which is the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son of God … I desire the drink of God, namely His blood, which is incorruptible love and eternal life.”[5]

Ripping a hole in the opaque veil of modernity, Artaud warned that true reality has been more than diluted; true reality has been removed from view via the cultures of modernity’s imminence. The sacred no longer exists, only the secular; the Divine is dead, only the material desires of flesh and blood remain. We hunger for “food” because the Machine demands – needs – hungry cogs. As Cobain wailed, “Here we are now, entertain us.” Through our consumption, we become less and less human.

The Church used to understand this; used to teach this. Taking the words of Jesus seriously, the Church used to eschew earthly power, prestige, and comforts. Because of this, Ignatius of Antioch and his fellow saintly martyrs set the world on fire.

Fire both destroys and purifies. Over the course of the first few centuries of this millennium, fire purified God’s people while condemning those who persisted in their rebellion against their Creator. Through the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church brought both life and death into the world because it was uncorrupted by the civilizations of The Tower of Babel. The Church, borrowing some of Artaud’s words about true theatre, used to give the world a “glimpse into real life.” Sadly, it does so no longer. Now, serving the Machine, the Western Church, especially white evangelicalism, by and large, throws open the door to the false feast of secular power, prestige, and comforts from which we’re invited to assuage our hunger and quench our thirst. The Bread of Life is no longer enough.

I’ll leave you with one last Antonin Artaud quote as an appetizer for my next article about how the forms of worship in Western churches feed the Machine instead of offering the Bread of Life:

“And if there is still one hellish, truly accursed thing in our time, it is our artistic dallying with forms, instead of being like victims burnt at the stake, signaling through the flames.”[6]

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[1] Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 7.

[2] Although he wasn’t a Christian, Artaud saw more clearly than most 21^st century (and 20^th century) Christians. In the preface, he confessed, “For far from believing that man invented the supernatural and the divine, I think it is man’s age-old intervention which has ultimately corrupted the divine within him.”

[3] Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Vol. 1: The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation (New York: Harper One, 2010), 52-53.

[4] Ignatius of Antioch, “Romans” Letters to the Churches, 24.

[5] Ignatius, Letters to the Churches, 28.

[6] Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, 13.