CANTERBURY Cathedral is among a host of religious venues facing a backlash after hosting alternative ‘rave’ nights to attract a new audience to the church and to make some much needed dollar.
Places of worship across the UK are cashing in with more than a dozen planning to host controversial silent discos – dubbed ‘raves in the nave’.
A sell-out event at Winchester Cathedral saw clubbers dance under the spectacular medieval arches to a mix of old classic and modern disco favourites with the music being fed to the individual headsets – all while the booze (one assumes not blessed) was free-flowing.
“If you had told me this time last year that I would be in the cathedral, with a beer in my hand while belting out the chorus of Rolling in the Deep by Adele, then I would have thought you were mad,” wrote Matt Rooks-Taylor in the Hampshire Chronicle.
“Everywhere I looked, there were happy faces.
“The visuals were beautiful. The moon sculpture hanging from the ceiling was surreal. Vivid disco lights combined with gorgeous Gothic architecture made for one of the most unique experiences of my life. We were quite literally, dancing in the moonlight,” he added.
But not everyone is gurning with happiness, with a petition being launched to “Stop turning our great cathedrals into nightclubs”.
Signatories are opposing the “desecration of our historic holy places, and especially their use as nightclubs.”
The petition goes on to argue that the raves will not benefit the church.
“It will not bring young people closer to Christ, rather it will send the message that Christ and his church, and all the truth, beauty and goodness it has to offer, are unimportant. That entertainment deserves our attention more than God. That Christians do not take their faith or their holy places seriously.”
Despite the protestations – and over 2,000 petition signatures – the Canterbury event went ahead whilst a prayer vigil was held in protest outside the cathedral.
The crux of the problem seems to centre around the increasingly heady costs of running our nation’s churches particularly with the cost of living crisis sending operating costs soaring.
One estimate puts Canterbury Cathedral’s running costs at £30,000 a day or £11m a year. At Winchester it is £14,000 a day, over £5m a year.
At Guildford Cathedral, over 1,000 people attended a silent disco on Saturday evening.
“On Saturday, people came to enjoy a space that would be otherwise dark and quiet,” the cathedral’s chief operating officer Matt O’Grady told The Guardian.
“By generating an income in this way, we can keep the cathedral open. We simply wouldn’t be able to provide a sacred space without our commercial activities, including markets and music events in the cathedral.”
The commercial director of Winchester Cathedral John Blake argued that the the critics should come and witness it for themselves. The silent disco was a “great success” and a “joyous occasion”, he said.
He added: “There was nothing anti-religious about it. It was a wonderful, uplifting experience bringing in people who wouldn’t normally come to a cathedral, and everything was back in place for the first service on Sunday morning.”
Whatever your position, God certainly moves in mysterious ways. So we feel he’d happily give his blessing to some of the dance moves on display in his house.