Faculty Research: The Theology of Surveillance
Last week, American Studies faculty member Dr. Randy Lewis published a third column in Flow that both fascinates and frightens me. He writes on the theology of surveillance and the very odd presence of cameras in conservative Christian churches. What I find particularly interesting is the psychological response to knowing that one is being watched in a supposedly safe and sanctified space - not only by the eyes of a supreme being, but by security officials. How strange that these sanctuaries might be provoking fear and anxiety as they also claim to offer God's loving embrace.
Here's an excerpt, but you must read the whole thing - it's beautifully written and, as I mentioned, fascinating:
I’m interested in my own feelings about CCTV as well, even surprised by them. Until recently I didn’t know I cared about cameras in sacred spaces at all. Yet I keep returning to religious angles that I’ve never pursued in the past. I wonder who would want surveillance cameras above the pews glaring down at the worshippers? What could be so alarming to a room full of gun-owning, God-fearing middle-aged white people in a small town run by other white people? In other words, who really needs sacred security, and what is so damn frightening that you’d replace the free-flowing calm and compassionate welcome of the idealized church with an ominous sense of lock-down? Apparently, it is not enough that some deacons areliterally carrying guns to Sunday services or that some pastors are literally clasping specially-designed bulletproof Bible holders at the altars. Something else is needed to assuage the fear.Although I am only beginning to explore these questions, I can hazard this much: terrorism is not their demon of choice. Rather, it is the rank stranger outside the gate. It is the black cloud of evil that can settle anywhere, anytime, in their fretful vision of modern America. It is the vile nature of strangers, of difference, of heathens, but also the evil within: what the pastor might do to the organist, what the children might allege in the nursery—and if they don’t fear these things, the marketing of sacred security explicitly tells them that they should. Thank God—or Gideon Protect Services, or Watchman Security, or Savior Protection, Inc.—that video surveillance cameras, properly installed, will protect the innocent and ward off the wicked. Such is the sales pitch from the companies that I have been researching in this complex economy of fear.What draws me to this topic is the sheer contrast between the ideal of hopeful refuge and shoulder-to-shoulder togetherness in a sacred space, and the insinuated, carefully marketed anxiety of the security business, forever amping up the threat of looming violence and the necessity of eternal vigilance. Must everything drip with fear?
(side note: as I began writing this, Hall and Oates's "Private Eyes" came on my Pandora station - "watching you watching you watching you..." - a sign from above through yacht rock)