In February there was a commotion at Canterbury Cathedral. Or, to be more precise, there was a silent commotion. The cause was a ‘silent disco’ which took place in the nave over two nights.
For anyone above the age of 12, a silent disco is where everybody has headphones on and is in their own world. Like the London Underground but with more legroom. There is a DJ as well and so I think (if I’ve got this right) everybody is listening to the same music. In any case, over two nights thousands of revellers came to the cathedral, put on headphones, bought drinks in the side aisles, brushed past the tomb of Thomas Becket and then waved neon lightsabers and danced around to their heart’s content.
There was a certain amount of backlash to this in the popular press which called it ‘a rave in the nave’. There was then a defensive response to the backlash. Clearly the whole thing was a money-making exercise. But its defenders in the Church said that it was also a very special and precise ruse intended to get people into Canterbury Cathedral who might not otherwise come.
I do not know whether the data has yet been collected for service attendance in Canterbury since February. But I would be surprised if the headcount at Matins has shot up. I may have to stand corrected, of course – and I am willing to be. It may be that next week’s Letters page will be adorned by missives from multiple pew-openers at the cathedral or maybe even from Justin Welby himself informing me that Evensong is now one great big mosh pit and that every time the cathedral choir strikes up a canticle a battalion of people wearing headphones and waving luminous lightsabers have to be held back by the vergers, who act as bouncers at a nightclub. More likely is that a lot of people on MDMA and vodka Red Bull wandered into the cathedral for a night and have not wandered back since.
In any case, the Church authorities insisted that these events in no way harmed the sanctity of the place. Scholars of canon law noted that the silent disco would seem to go against the Church’s own rules – specifically F16.1, which I have just carefully re-read. This is the law that states: ‘When any church or chapel is to be used for a play, concert, or exhibition of films or pictures, the minister shall take care that the words, music, and pictures are such as befit the House of God, are consonant with sound doctrine, and make for the edifying of the people.’ I am not quite certain how the cathedral authorities found their way around that one.
Yet Canterbury Cathedral resisted all the tabloid descriptions of its fundraiser and insisted that this disco was in no way a ‘rave’, and was in fact very far from it. In a very real sense.
But the Church of England is nothing if not predictable. Read it all in The Spectator
