Research Question
What are the interactions between digital aesthetics, belief and practices in Bethel Church, Redding, Northern California, USA.
Research Method
The primary research method is discourse and visual analysis using available online media. This media will include not only their own web sites but will be extended to include other media relating to this church. With the rise of church service live streaming, the smart phone video camera and online platforms like YouTube; which is able to archive and show this content, it is now possible to get access to the inner workings of a church organization that is less controlled by mainstream news or censored by its leaders.
Research Essay
Introduction
Church in Redding, Northern California, United States of America offers media rich content for research. It is a well known, growing and culturally relevant church that has successfully used the Internet and latest technology to mediate itself on a global scale. As a case study it could be used as a prototype for the direction Christian churches may take in the second and third decades of the 21st century. This research firstly looks into Bethel’s own online content and then expands these findings using social network data and blogs (either hostel or supportive of Bethel), in order to develop a sober understanding of this church.Online Services
A comprehensive list of Bethel Church’s online services, including their links, has been included on a separate page in this blog under the menu ‘Online Services’. This church holds multiple online domains, which are used to separate their various strategies. As well as these the senior team use various types of personal online accounts. These include blogs, Facebook Public Figure accounts, Twitter accounts and RSS live feeds to service online audiovisual media. These personal pages make it possible for the leaders to control their own communications in an efficient and effective way to a large number of people. The kinds of information that they disseminate include: words of wisdom, jokes, personal thoughts, sermon updates, personal schedules, testimonies of miracles, video blogs and the like. Using these social media platforms also allows them to facilitate a public forum with their followers, where ideas and opinions can be shared. As Kris Vallotton (senior leader of Bethel church) stated in one of his posts on Facebook, he was not against disagreements only rudeness (Vallotton, 2014). As can be seen in Table 1, the leaders have a large number of followers on Facebook and Twitter.Table 1: Bethel Church leaders’ social media following
Date: 22 Oct 2014
|
Number of Followers
|
|
Senior Leader
|
Facebook
|
Twitter
|
Bill
Johnson
|
273,150
|
125,000
|
Kris
Vallotton
|
123,603
|
41,100
|
Danny
Silk
|
31,900
|
|
Eric
Johnson
|
16,700
|
|
Online Information
The main website domain used for general information about the local church in Redding is http://bethelredding.com. This website is useful for people who are local to this church or visiting the area and want to find out about what kind of church this is, what time services are available and how to get there. There is a professional video presentation by Eric and Candace Johnson (the paster of the local church at Bethel), which shows new people what the church is about (Redding, 2013). This site also defines their mission and provides links to audio recording of their recent messages. There is a page dedicated to church life, which also has a video of testimonials of people (men women and children) talking about community. For anyone wanting to know when services are held this web site has a calendar that can be accessed and for people who want to find their way to the church a web page provides Google maps. The Web site is professionally made, is simple to use and uncluttered.Audiovisual Media Services
Bethel Church have their own media company and have championed the use of audiovisual media. They use iBethel.org for audio products and Bethel.TV for video products. Because this media is available anywhere the Internet is available, there influence reaches throughout the world. The majority of their messages are available as podcasts and not only this they are also made available through translators into twelve other languages. The http://iBethel.org web site also hosts a store where these media products can be purchased. They have a business model which is to make free what is current and sell what is archived. Another way to think about iBethel.org is to think of this as their virtual church that has an international outreach while bethelredding.com is their local church.
Bethel Church video their services and host this footage on Bethel TV, which is an online video service. Here you are able to connect and watch a church service from when people arrive and chat before the service starts, until the time when the service is closed. This video footage is both streamed and then archived for a week. I checked with someone who has attended one of these church services and I discovered that there is no formal process that Bethel Church uses that grants them the right to film the people attending these services. I assume they can do this because a church service is held in a public place. Providing this video coverage of the church service in effect allows people to have a mediated experience of attending a church without being physically present. During their services the speaker will at times directly address the people who are viewing or listening to this broadcast. As in the audio products, their business model for video media is to make free what is current and sell what is archived.
Smartphone Applications
Bethel Church has released their own Smartphone Application that brings all their online media together into one place. This includes much of the data already discussed. There is a version for both the Apple iPhone and iPad (Subsplash Consulting, 2014), as well as for the Google Android device (Subsplash Consulting, 2014). This application could almost be thought of as some kind of virtual church membership.
Bethel Church Venues
Bethel has two different venues; Bethel College View and Bethel Twin View, the former being the primary location, and the latter a smaller facility for services held in another district within Bethel. Bethel Twin View also has a separate venue for their office. At College View they have their own café, bookstore and prayer house. College View also has a Christian School from preschool through to 8th grade called ‘Bethel Christian School (BCS). Bethel also has a training centre called Bethel School of Supernatural Ministries (BSSM) http://bssm.net where they train 2000 students from 64 countries. For this training they lease Redding Civic Auditorium http://reddingcivic.com. Since this building is used for other city events, Bethel Church also need a separate administration office dedicated to this ministry so they have another facility called Lake Building (Bethel Church, Lake Building, 2013), which is used for this along with other ministries such as Moral Revolution, with plans to renovate to facilitate new ministries. Since Bethel Church is very media focused they also have their own media centre. The purpose for this Media Centre is to “serve the local church through website development, branding and graphics for various ministries and events, as well as the filming and online streaming of weekly services and major happenings at Bethel through Bethel.TV ” (Bethel Church, Bethel Media, 2013). The close connection with their own media company would explain why all their media is very professional.
Belief
Bethel Church like many other religious organisations presents their ‘Statement of Faith’ on their web site at http://www.ibethel.org/we-believe. As a way of comparison with other Christian creeds it stays within the core of Christian belief. The main points of difference in their own creed is that they say that Christians “minister supernaturally” and that the “redemptive work of Christ … provides freedom … [from] sickness” (Bethel Church, 2014). As well as a statement of faith Bethel Church has a mission statement, but unlike a statement of faith a mission statement defines the ethos of a church. This can be found at http://www.bethelredding.com/about (Bethel Church, About, 2013). Bethel Church's focus is on experiencing the manifest presence of God. Along with this they also believe in supernatural power that enables the church to do the kind of miracles that Jesus was recorded to have done. An article by Amanda Winters explains that Bethel was part of the Assemblies of God movement (AOG) until it became independent in January 2006 and is now aligned with a larger group called the “Word of Faith” movement (Winters, 2010). The Word of Faith movement as described by Wolf (Wolf, n.d.) holds some extreme beliefs but in my opinion after listening to many messages preached by Bill Johnson I doubt that he would align himself fully with the beliefs of this movement. A better fit for Bethel is a movement known as the “Third Wave Charismatic Movement” or the “Signs and Wonders Movement”. Ed Stetzer explains this movement in an online report in Christianity Today (Stetzer, 2013). As Stetzer has pointed out some key people in the Third Wave movement were P. Peter Wagner (C. Peter Wagner, 2014) “Professor of Church Growth at the Fuller Theological Seminary's School of World Missions for 30 years until his retirement in 2001” (Stetzer, 2013) and John Wimber “who pastored the Anaheim Vineyard Christian Fellowship from 1977 to 1994 (John Wimber, 2014)”.
Bethel Church is often under a lot of attack from other Christian groups that disagree with their doctrines and practices. One example of this can be seen in a well-researched online blog by hollysgarcia (hollysgarcia, 2013). In this blog there are 36 citations, which are useful for understanding better the negative press towards Bethel Church. My intention in referring to hollysgarcia was not to agree with the cult claims made in this research blog, but rather to show what kind of accusations are raised against Bethel Church and to provide a link to other useful research data to help better understand what they believe.
Bethel Music
With Bethel Church’s primary focus on experiencing the presence of God, music plays an important role in bringing this about. This is reflected online by the use of a dedicated domain for this ministry http://bethelmusic.com. Members of this church write songs that are sung by Christian churches throughout the world. With the Internet there has come a rapid dissemination of Christian music. Why this has happened is because new songs written around the world can either be listened to, or seen performed through video and the music to play these songs is often freely available for download and printing. Along with this, independent musicians who have mastered the playing of these songs will make their own YouTube tutorials; also free of charge. The reason why songwriters encourage this practice is because churches must pay license fees to agents for singing songs that hold copyrights, and these fees are then used to pay royalties to the artists. An example of one of these agents in New Zealand is CCLI http://nz.ccli.com.
When Christians make reference to the presence of God, what they most likely are meaning is a mind state of transcendence. Transcendence as defined by Luckmann, “is where everyday life loses its status as the preeminent reality” (Luckmann, 1990, p. 129). Although subjective, Luckmann saw that transcendence could be experienced at different levels. With a church vision to experience the presence of God, Bethel Church plays a style of music that to me maximises the transcendent state in the worshipers. The music is intended to be a balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic states, by the use of changing dynamics and the repetition of words that focus the mind as in mediation. (See Mark Force’s article for an explanation on sympathetic and parasympathetic states (Mark Force, n.d.)).
To take this research further it would be interesting to identify how effective Bethel Church music was in creating transcendence through the use of Bethel TV. Personally I found that transcendence occurs from viewing their music over Bethel TV, but since my experiment is limited to only one subject, it is of little persuasion and therefore would require more research. Not wanting to loose this topic I started my own research question and survey on a separate page in this blog called “Research Bethel TV transcendence”
Falling Down and Laughing
Many people might describe what is referred to as being filled by the Holy Spirit as a state of high transcendence. This phenomenon comes under many different titles, (drunk, baptised, slain, holy laughter) and it happens through various methods. One method that Bethel Church uses to help this to happen is what they call the “Fire Tunnel”. To understand what this is like you are best to watch it at Bethal Fire Tunnel 20th Jan 2012. Not everyone is affected the same and some people appear to be extremely drunk. In Charisma Magazine, Kris Vallotton (a senior leader at Bethel Church) posted an article describing this phenomenon (Vallotton, 2012). He states that:
We
call the “falling down” experience “being slain in the Spirit.”
One
of the manifestations that has been most offensive to people is something we
call “holy laughter.” This condition occurs when, for no obvious reason, people
just begin to laugh hysterically as if they are drunk. Some laugh so hard that
they literally fall on the ground. I love what Angela Monet said, “those who
danced look quite insane to those who didn’t hear the music.” (para.17)
In terms of transcendence it would seem from observation that this requires the people to be local. This is not to say that it could not happen by a mediated experience, it is just that this practice requires physical touch. For many religious groups’ physical touch is something that is part of their ceremonies.
Glory Cloud
Because Bethel Church has a fundamental belief in miracles and this worldview is in contradiction to secularism, it will be worthwhile looking at this topic in detail. There are many claims of healing and other unusual things like falling feathers, jewels and spontaneous gold teeth, but one that is of practical interesting is something they call a ‘Glory Cloud’. According to Daniel Vogler in his blog, the glory cloud and gold dust first appeared in Bethel Church in October 2011 (Vogler, 2011). Robert an eyewitness of this night is interviewed on YouTube and describes the gold dust as a spinning cloud that at one point moved over the stage. He described it being like falling glitter that was raining down, getting into his eyes and throat (without irritation) and onto his clothes. At the time of this interview you could see some of the sparkly gold dust on his hand. He also reported that it also smelt like roses. (iTestifyTV, 2011).
This alleged miracle highlights an important aspect of spirituality. Many religions are foundered on some supernatural event, for example Christianity is founded on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. An observation from reading many comments made about this and other similar alleged miracles at Bethel Church is that very few people consider the evidence; instead they simply conclude what they already believe and answer accordingly. In one of David Hume’s five point argument he concludes that, “a wise man should never believe in miracles” (Hindson, 2003). This extreme argument is circular in that it claims to be correct based on evidence, but leaves no room for any evidence to prove otherwise. It is with this kind of logic that many people react. Some people who it would seem dislike Christians respond by mocking and being vulgar in order to belittle and shock those presenting their claims of miracles at Bethel. Their arguments for me are of little value being ad hominem rather than intelligent and investigated. There are many counter arguments from Christians who don’t believe in miracles (at least bizarre ones), who argue their point using scriptures. This unfortunately for them is not easy to do for the reason is you can only assert something is not from God if it specifically incongruous to his nature. Since a glory cloud results in people worshiping his name it does not fit in this category. Even an argument of idolatry would for them be difficult to assert, since there was little left after the cloud had gone to worship as a relic. The gold flakes were almost invisible to the eye and so would make a poor idol. There were two viewpoints held from among the Christians who could not believe that this glory cloud at Bethel Church was from God. The first took the naturalistic approach that the gold glitter came from the air-conditioning duct and the others concluded it was from some evil spirit that was attempting to deceive people in this church. To my frustration there was no thorough investigation carried out on the first claim. In my opinion this is the biblical approach to a miracle - Jesus would often direct people to test out miracles. For example after turning water into wine he instructed the servants to “draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet” (John 2:8 New International Version).
Because I found this glory cloud phenomena at Bethel intriguing I carried out my own investigation. I focused mainly on the event on the 14th of October 2011 listening to the testimony of witnesses and investigating the video evidence. As a quote by Jean-Luc Godard, “the cinema is truth 24 frames-per-second” (Godard, 2012). I have included a separate page “Miracles at Bethel - The Glory Cloud” that includes this investigation. From my own investigation I have concluded that the evidence that is available remains inconclusive. For me the evidence is inconclusive and I realize that a claim of being a hoax raises serious implications about the integrity of this Church, for which due to the seriousness of this claim, it would be unwarranted to use my inconclusive result to assert negatively against them. My reason for inconclusive results can be seen in the comparison of evidence in Table 2 below:
Table 2. Glory cloud miracle or hoax
ID
|
Hoax
|
Miracle
|
1
|
There
were two air-conditioning vents next to where the bulk of the gold dust was
discovered. There is some possibility that it went beyond this but it was
seen here because of the lights located in this area. There is other video
that shows the gold cloud in other places of the room.
|
Robert
said that at one stage the cloud moved over the stage. This evidence suggests
the two air-conditioning ducts were not essential. For this evidence to
completely rule out the former it would require that there were no similar
ducts on the stage that was using a different air handler unit and it could
be proved that cosmetic dust in the air could not move in the way he described.
I have no data to prove it either way.
|
2
|
Robert
described the gold dust as falling on him like rain
|
There
is video evidence that this dust went up as well.
Terry
reported that it did not seem to be coming from anywhere in particular. In
regards the first point this really is a mystery. First I thought it was a
framing artefact like the way cart wheels run backwards on Western films, but
after careful examination of the video footage frame by frame this was not
the case. Secondly I thought the updraft could have come from body heat
rising or ducted air down on the floor. This also was not convincing because the
kind of air needed to do this would be expected to ruffle people’s hair; which
was not the case.
|
3
|
The
dust came in bursts of quantity which you would expect would happen if it was
being fed into the air handler unit multiple times to sustain 45 minutes of
keeping it airborne.
|
I
sent an email to Kris Vallotton (senior leader) regarding this claim of gold
dust in the air conditioning unit and received the reply as follows:
“Thanks
for getting in touch with us. I have passed your message along to
Kris. Unfortunately, due to the large amount of e-mails we get,
I don't expect that he will be able to respond to
you personally.
However, I remember that being the main doubt when the event occurred, and they checked into that just to make sure it wasn’t the case. I believe they did not find any evidence of such. Blessing on your work Todd” |
4
|
An
unconfirmed technician as reported by Nathan Kurtx (Kurtz, 2011), who looked
at Bethel’s gold dust under a microscope said, “some are hexagonal in shape”
which are shapes seen in the cosmetic gold glitter. He also said “they appear
to be translucent” which is a
characteristic that some glitter products possess (Glitter, 2013).
|
Although
there is this similarity between these two gold flakes, this is only
confirmed subjectively and not with careful lab testing.
Robert
testified to a smell like rosses and also said that when it got in his eyes
and throat it was not irritating. Also he described it like smoke and in the
video it looks like a haze. I at first thought this haze to be a video
artefact but have gone off this idea after closer examination of the footage.
Other
people have investigated this gold dust and reported this on YouTube. There
is someone from the Dominion Fire Church who showed the gold dust under a microscope
(Dominion Fire Church, 2014)
and another from Bethel who called himself the Old Lab Rat who described the
difference between the cosmetic dust and this glory cloud gold dust. (THE OLD LAB RAT, 2012).
|
5
|
It
was seen on clothes. (This is included only because of other accounts where
the gold dust did not appear on clothes only imbedded in people’s skin.)
|
|
6
|
There
were no witnesses that I identified who were there that denied it was real.
(Not to say there weren’t). They claimed it was far more amazing than the
videos showed.
|
|
7
|
This
does not have the characteristics of a magic trick; which relies heavily on a
controlled environment. It would have required previous experimentation to
know if it would work. It would be hard to do this without witnesses.
|
|
8
|
If
this was a stunt of behalf of the leaders of this church it could have easily
gone wrong and would have been an absolute disaster for them. It would seem
to me that the risk was too high and unnecessary as they were already
successful.
|
Note. The evidence was collected from online videos and other online blogs. See the separate page in this blog called “for citations.
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