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Enemies within the church5/15/2023 From this proceeds the message that Christians should expect opposition and interpret it as evidence that they are serving God’s purposes. Some particular functions of ‘my enemies’ within the #LetUsWorship performance of ‘Raise a Hallelujah’ are suggested as follows.Īxiomatically, as an allusion to Psalm 23, ‘my enemies’ reinforces the identification of Feucht and his audience with King David and his royal status. 3) The provision of emotional resources to help community members in times of difficulty ( emotive). 2) The promotion of community formation around ‘common sacred ideals’, and subsequent boundary maintenance ( social cohesion). 1) Thearticulation and reinforcement of beliefs and worldviews ( axiomatic). In her book on ‘theolinguistics’, Valerie Hobbs identifies three concurrent ‘sacred-making’ functions that religious language performs. A number of candidate ‘enemies’ are thus suggested for the song, which appears around the midway point: officials preventing gathered worship, personal critics of Feucht’s, Black Lives Matter activists, the practice of abortion and its endorsers, practitioners of witchcraft, and even other (differently worshipping) Christians. Other topics addressed include abortion, the occult, Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination, Christians in government, and the coming Presidential Election. Feucht’s personal contributions focus on the perceived affront to Christian religious freedom, the backlash to his activism, and the ‘extreme turmoil and despair and brokenness’ that Feucht associates with the protest movement set in motion by the killing of George Floyd. A video recording of the three-hour long Washington finale features sung worship, guest speakers (including a Republican senator), and times of prayer. I was interested to explore how this internationally beloved song resonated in contrasting use-contexts. One high-profile example was the 2020 #LetUsWorship ‘protest tour’, organised by Bethel worship leader Sean Feucht as an act of resistance to public health restrictions preventing religious gatherings. Would they envisage us standing firm against the challenges of the virus, or would they project other ‘enemies’ – possibly even themselves – into our triumphalist imaginaries? Churches in the UK may lack the unified political force of the American Religious Right, but we have a not-wholly-undeserved reputation for being hostile towards groups some of us perceive as ‘outsiders’, and for over-egging supposed threats to our ‘religious liberty’ in order to reinforce narratives of persecution. I sat on my sofa in silent, unseen protest, wondering what a visitor to our YouTube channel might think. However, I couldn’t help but hear these lyrics against a global backdrop of rising Christian nationalism, with which (to me, at least) the Bethel community seemed to be complicit. ‘Heaven’ is on our side to defeat the ‘enemy’ virus, and our part is to sing loudly, unmoved and confident, in anticipation of the coming triumph. ‘I raise a hallelujah, in the presence of my enemies… My weapon is a melody… Heaven comes to fight for me…’ It was easy to imagine the resonance this message had with my fellow worshippers, as we all reached around for the emotional, spiritual and mental resources to face the unprecedented reality of lockdown and the physical and economic threat of Covid-19. It was a frequent feature of our lovingly pre-recorded Sunday services and was top of the lockdown Spotify playlist that we compiled together over social media. During the early months of the pandemic I noticed the Bethel Music song ‘ Raise a Hallelujah’ become something of an anthem in the charismatic evangelical congregation I’m a part of.
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