The "Kama Sutra" of an Emerging Church: Positioning Ourselves to Engage the Senses
Now that I have your attention, let me introduce you to something fellow “Kiwi” (a colloquial way of saying, “New Zealander”) Mike Riddell has written:
…Several centuries of modernity have made the Western church aesthetically anorexic. The triumph of reason, when added to an historic suspicion of images and the feminine has provided thin gruel for embodied human beings. Paganism becomes an attractive option when compared to the asthetic and colourless face of demythologised Christianity. What has become of the art, the symbolism, the mystery, the wonder and the transcendent earthiness of Christian faith? It is no surprise to me that those sections of the church which are resistant to current hemorrhaging are those such as the high Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions which have preserved some colour and bodily resonance in their worship... In practical terms, the recovery of sensuality would mean a new romance between faith and artistic expression…
