If you live in the United Kingdom and feel the desire to quite literally dance upon Christianity’s grave, then you have plenty of options. Thanks to falling congregations, over the last decade upward of 3,500 former churches have undergone a complete transformation in purpose—becoming homes, mosques, libraries, swimming pools, and even nightclubs.
Club owners are not shy about advertising the fact that their venues used to be holy spaces; they frequently give them names like Halo, Sanctum, Mass, St. Peter’s Tavern, or The Priory as an active advertising gimmick. Probably the leading example is The Chapel nightclub in Salisbury, proud possessor of several separate dance floors bearing names like The Vestry and The Soul Room. The club also actively glories in the inversion of the building’s former purpose by offering its clientele access to regular events called “Sin Saturdays.” At least the proprietors refrained from holding “Sin Sundays,” I suppose.
Some may shrug and say these buildings are now formally deconsecrated, so their owners can do whatever they like with such otherwise empty shells. But some churches being used to burst out phat beats to clubbers’ ears are still supposed to be in continued use as active places of Christian worship—including the nation’s most famous church of all, St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
Danse Macabre
One of London’s chief landmarks, the 17th-century structure’s crypt functions as the burial place of important historical personages like the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Lord Nelson. As such, holding nightclub musical events there would seem like a literal case of dancing on graves—and so it was feared when the cathedral announced this month it would be establishing a four-year in-house partnership with prominent London nightclub (or prominent London nocturnal drug-taking and queer venue, if you prefer) Fabric.
Contacted for comment, Peregrine Hood, President of the Nelson Society and descendant of the great man’s family, bemoaned:
Is nothing sacred any more? What a sad reflection on where spiritual integrity and Christianity are today…Nelson came from a family steeped in the Church, and…this misuse of a holy site would have caused him even greater unease than the prospect of [clubbers] dancing on his grave.
Actually, the concerts are due to be seated, with attendees apparently to be instructed they must not leave their seats while the interminable techno-dirge plays, in a direct reversal of the usual rules of musical chairs, but this is hardly the point.
The Devil Has All the Best Tunes
The way the program of events was described by cathedral authorities seems to indicate their only concern in staging the DJ concerts is to get people through the church doors, no matter what they then do once inside there.
Sandra Lynes Timbrell is a St. Paul’s employee who glories in the (non-)job title of “Director of Visitor Engagement.” Traditionally, the degree of “Visitor Engagement” to a church would have meant to what extent said visitors had embraced the message of Jesus Christ. Now it just means what mark out of 10 they would give the whole experience in a follow-up customer service survey email. As Timbrell said:
These events showcase world-class talent and create unforgettable experiences for audiences within one of London’s most iconic spaces. We hope the partnership will introduce new visitors to the Cathedral, encouraging people to discover and engage with this historic building in new and exciting ways. We look forward to inviting people to experience the unique atmosphere that live music can create within this remarkable setting.
You’re not supposed to engage with a church in “new and exciting ways.” You’re supposed to use it as a church. That’s what it’s there for. OK, it might well have great acoustics, but that is meant to be for choir song, not electro synth. Talking about the cathedral as a “remarkable setting” seems to suggest Timbrell views St. Paul’s primarily as an interactive stage for hire, not a living temple to a living God.
Lord of the Dance
St. Paul’s authorities reassure us the entire program will be respectful, but we have heard such empty promises before.
In 2024, a so-called “Rave in the Nave” silent disco, whereby “respectful” partygoers had music blasted into their wireless earphones by DJs from atop an altar, was held in Canterbury Cathedral, where the greatest crime that had ever previously been committed on the premises was the comparatively trivial murder of St. Thomas Becket. Strobe lights in rainbow colors were projected across the specially cleared “dance floor” while 3,000 cocktail-drinking attendees pranced around waving glow sticks and mouthing the lyrics to songs by such well-known children of Christ as Britney Spears, the Spice Girls, and Eminem.
The main stated purpose of the rave was to earn money for the building’s upkeep. Yet the Dean of the Cathedral, Reverend David Monteith, also invoked that dread demon of “Visitor Engagement” once more, cooing about how:
Cathedrals have always been part of community life in a way much wider than their prime focus as centers of Christian worship and mission, and whether people choose to come to Canterbury Cathedral primarily as worshipers, sightseers, or attendees at our [entertainment] events…it’s always joyous to see them discover this incredible place anew and on their own terms.
“It’s always joyous to see them discover this incredible place anew and on their own terms,” he says. Which, once again, means “discovering” it as being something other than a church. The place is also currently being rented out to hold “Lego Masterclass” workshops. Jesus was meant to have built His Church upon a rock, not a small brightly colored plastic brick.
Outside the Rave in the Nave, a protesting prayer vigil was led by a local Catholic physician, Cajetan Skowronski. Although only a layman, Dr. Skowronski seems to understand the true issues of theology at stake here rather better than the Reverend Monteith does:
It will not bring young people closer to Christ, rather it will send the message that Christ and his Church, and all the truth, beauty and goodness it has to offer, are unimportant—that entertainment deserves our attention more than God, that Christians do not take their faith or their holy places seriously.
Although the rave was presented as mere harmless fun, Dr. Skowronski took this argument effortlessly apart:
Profound [lyrical] exhortations such as the Real Slim Shady’s “My bum is on your lips, if I’m lucky you might give it a little kiss” as well as his theological musings that “if we can hump dead animals and antelopes, then there’s no reason that a man and another man can’t elope,” will be beamed into the headphones of intoxicated ravers while they contemplate the ancient architecture and 14 centuries of Christian history that they have stumbled into. A life-changing experience, which the dean must be sure will yield many Damascene conversions.
Sounds like yet another ordinary Sin Saturday in Salisbury’s The Chapel nightclub.
Instruments of the Lord
In my experience, the main response of many private citizens to news of such desecrations is to utter something along the lines of “They’d never do that in a mosque.”
It’s true. When, in 2019, Palestinian DJs held an alcohol-fueled techno party outside a mosque in the West Bank, angry worshippers turned up the next day to burn remaining detritus, while Muslim leaders from groups like Hamas called for strict punishment against its organizers—which, in Hamas-speak, tends to mean killing them. Unlike in England, offending DJs were arrested and a furious spokesman for the Palestinian Authority Ibrahim Milhem fulminated:
I feel disgust and rage about what happened at the Nabi Musa mosque…I do not know yet who is responsible for this sin, but whoever is will receive a punishment to fit the atrocity of what was committed. A mosque is a house of God; its sanctity is the sanctity of religion itself.
Milhem’s words about the true function of a House of God being to be a House of God—not a House of Groove—are, in my view, accurate and inarguable. Ironically, the devout Muslim may have made a far better guardian of England’s great cathedrals than Sandra Lynes Timbrell or Dean David Monteith.
Given current demographic trends in Great Britain, maybe someone like him someday will be. There might then be an alien call to prayer heard emanating from the pulpit; but at least it wouldn’t be an alien call to breakdance.
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