Church Crawl - Part 5: The United Church

On this special Sunday our adventure took us to the United Church.

With a name like "The United Church" I had expected a very generic churchgoing experience. If there was such a thing as a generic religion.

I was wrong. It was odd.

The United Church

It all began very normal. The building was organized much like the Presbyterian's - everyone is seated like they would at Parliament. Naturally, with all churches with balconies, we had to get a prime spot. One of the places you could snipe anybody in the place from. Benito ( pioneer in Italian Fashion ) and I didn't expect the show we were about to receive.

The first very original thing we noticed about this church was its use of a rear projection screen. Looking around the room, it was obvious that any other kind of projection system would have been impractical. Neat stuff anyways.

It started out like quite a few churches do - a bunch of little bastards run up to the front row to hear a short story about Jesus/God/etc before they are sent off to Sunday school to glue their fingers together or something. I believe the person leading the story said aloud "God is good, all the time". A phrase the congregation repeated.

Then began the real deal talk from the pastor. The church had a special Emily Carr exhibit on the Tuesday that they were promoting. The large majority of the service was extracted from Emily Carr's writings about God and related activities.

It was weird. The pastor would mention a few things about Emily and the bible, and then he would insert an interlude ("She believed in God, and trees, as described in her writings...") where he would throw the congregation's attention to his co-anchor at a podium that would read an excerpt of her writings.

In the middle of the service, a singer sang an operatic version of Richard Wagner's Traume while pictures of Emily's art was shown.

The closest description of the service would be an orgy of A&E's Biography, a funeral service and a Shakespearean soliloquy.

When the event came to an end, the singers sang an operatic version of "The Whole World in His Hands" while collection was going around.

Then we walked through a maze of hallways to reach the gym where the coffee was. Stood around, ate cookies and talked to people.

There was no hellfire. No wrath of God. Just a shitload of Emily Carr.

The whole thing kind of gave me the feeling they thought they were in the entertainment business. Pitch in a few bucks every Sunday and we'll tell you a cool story.

But maybe that's all churches really are. Entertainment.