Paul Shockley

In my personal experience, I have discovered notable aesthetic problems that face many contemporary evangelical churches. In spite of these churches’ best efforts, they fail to bridge the culture gap and foster a meaningful worship service. But John Dewey’s aesthetic philosophy understands the shifting nature of our environment and the value of aesthetic experience, providing beneficial insights to assist unhealthy churches. To better understand the applicability of his philosophy, Chapter II is an exposition of John Dewey’s aesthetics that revolves around four central questions: What is Dewey’s starting point for aesthetics? What distinguishes aesthetic experiences from others? What is his criticism of the “museum conception of art”? What is the significance for Dewey of our activities having or not having aesthetic quality? Chapter III is a Deweyan investigation of four real churches: the elite church, which promotes an aesthetic that is reserved for its members; the broken church, which is divorced from community; the humdrum church, which is preoccupied with the routine; and the sensational church, which is characterized by indulgence. Chapter IV is a description of two recent attempts to bridge the culture gap and offer meaningful worship activities: the seeker-sensitive movement which contends that the church must be “culturally inviting” to the community, and the emerging movement(s), which seeks to dismantle traditional churches using deconstructionism and reconstructing worship services that are experiential, pluralistic, and sensory. My Deweyan argument in Chapter V is that both the “seeker-sensitive” and the “emerging” movements fail to adequately understand the shifting character of our environment and our relation to it. If problem churches acknowledge that discontinuity with environment is inevitable, seek to meet the needs of others, embrace adjustment as a core component, and value aesthetic experience, they will be in a better position to bridge the culture gap and offer an enriching worship experience in their services. Three Deweyan lessons are gleaned from this inquiry: value aesthetic experience and its contribution in bridging the culture gap, implement Deweyan insights drawn from our examination of traditional churches, and contribute to society by generating artproducts that will benefit the community

In the Schutzian tradition, Berger and Luckmann expand upon the concept of the stranger and discuss the social reality of ritual purification as a coping strategy for reality-maintaining procedures and mental hygiene whereby individuals reconcile their encounter with a foreigner or stranger and their official reality. Using examples from the trans, gender non-conforming community (TGNC), the central question of this paper is: What about those considered a stranger in their home community? Given the hardships that TGNC people have encountered and continue to face, “unsuccessful socialization” does not offer the best account of their challenges, obstacles, and sufferings when marginalized by others. Advancing Schutzian research, we offer two terms that can be applied to the idea of the stranger: ritual desecration and reverse ritual purification. Using a dialectical framework, a social and interpersonal conflict occurs between ritual purification and ritual desecration. Consequently, two personal iterations emerge: those who experience ritual desecration by remaining in their home environment and those who migrate to another community for the possibility of acceptance and belonging, hence, reverse ritual purification. The iterations between ritual purification, ritual desecration, and reverse ritual purification lead to incremental changes and hardships, potentially creating a new social reality.

Paul Shockley's Worship as Experience: An Inquiry into John Dewey's Aesthetics, the Community and the Local Church serves as an exploration into how aesthetics affects a church and its community. Using the aesthetic principles of John Dewey, Shockley gives insight into what aesthetic deficiencies churches face, and how these churches can engage with people to provide a richer, deeper, and more fulfilling worship experience. This work offers a description of local church types, and what challenges these particular church communities face. Worship as Experience goes beyond merely offering acute insights into the aesthetic lives of the local church, and gives prescriptive measures to ensure the fullness of a meaningful worship experience. By examining with philosophic rigor the accounts of religious leaders and aestheticians, Shockley offers us a rational evaluation of aesthetic experience, an eye opening account of the challenges a church faces, and a powerful message for overcoming these challenges.