Dedication (‘s what you need)

Over the weekend, we went to a dedication for the youngest son of one of our friends. All well and good, it’s one of those things that you go to when friends have families. After all, this was the second one we’ve been to this year, although this time just as friends rather than either of us playing a “bigger role”, as it were.

On this occasion it was combined with a harvest festival thing, and the entire church genre was the one occasionally (well, chez Lyle anyway) known as “Happy Clappy”. In fairness to the entire thing, it was a lot more fun than the standard stoic po-faced type of service, but in some ways I find myself becoming oddly traditional. I’m not a churchgoer normally (hey, you’d never have guessed, would you?) but if I were, I’d prefer the more stoic stuff – to my mind it’s supposed to be about serious things, and a more serious perspective on life, and the Happy Clappys seem to be more of a Kid’s TV version. Tabloid vs. Broadsheet Religion, if you will.

Anyway, all this to the side, the actual event was quite fun. Well, I haven’t found myself giggling quite so hard in a long time. Some of the hymns were truly godawful, and of the “Rogers and Hammerstein” rhyming school. (“Raise your hands to Jesus / he’s the one who frees us” being one memorable example) The more – to me – disturbing aspect was the selection of Happys who also raised one arm for the choruses (chorii?) in order – apparently – to show how devout they were. It all struck me as either a) very American in it’s outlook, or b) very reminiscent of Leni Riefenstahl’s films of Nazi Germany, with whole bunches of the crowd/congregation/whatever stood there reverently raising one arm at 45°. Quite spooky.

In fact, I think that’s what worries me the most about the Happy Clappy types – they’re all so bloody vocal. Fair enough, they do what suits them, and who am I to argue? But I found myself expecting to hear the audience doing the full-on Blues Brothers-esque church revival “Praise the Lord!” schtick.

But at the end of the day, I suppose the entire thing did bring some kind of belief to me. In fact, come the prayers, all I could say was “Dear God, is it over yet?“.