Analysis: My Experience At VOX And The Methodist Easter Sunday Service

Hadiya J. Malone
Professor Laurel Holland
Sociology 1101
22 April 2014

My experience at VOX and The Methodist Easter Sunday Service
For my cultural event, I attended the Oak Grove United Methodist Church Café VOX meeting and Easter Sunday service. The church service took place in the main “Sanctuary” hall at Oak Grove United Methodist Church in Decatur, Georgia. Café VOX also takes place at the church in a coffee house-style setting just before the church service. Easter Sunday is an extremely important event in Christian religion, as it is a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And Easter Sunday service is a popular tradition among Methodist churches worldwide. According to the church’s website, Oak Grove United
Methodist Church, Decatur, is the origin of Café VOX, a community that offers Methodist students the opportunity to be expressive through poetry, music, theater exercises, etc. It’s a weekly gathering of high school and college-aged students, and it strives to encourage sharing in order to celebrate “the diversity of our voices and the wisdom and beauty we can find if we listen well enough.” (OGUMC Altogether, My Experience was extremely interesting and I actually enjoyed it and connected it to a few sociological concepts that I have learned this semester.
Religiosity, religious affiliation, and the Micro- A macrosociology link that connects religion to society were three ideas that popped into my head when I thought of my experiences this Sunday at Oak Grove United Methodist Church. When I attended the VOX meeting, I honestly didn’t have a tremendous feeling of awkwardness. The participants were all in my age group, and when they performed their poetry, skits, etc., I could feel a sense of fellowship with them. According to Kenda Dean in her book Almost Christian, “Teenagers demonstrate an openness to religion, but few of them are deeply committed to one.” (Dean), which is
something I absolutely felt through the teens’ voices as they shared during the meeting.
It showed me that even though we were old enough to make our own decisions we showed a devotion to our religion based on the teachings of our parents. Most of the teens at the VOX event showed a great deal of religiosity which made me feel a little left out because I do not attend church as often as they do. Which comes to the ideas of extrinsic religiosity and Intrinsic Religiosity. I would consider myself more intrinsically religious than the peers that I met at the VOX event when it comes to the Christian faith. The only obvious difference among us was that I was the only African American in a room full of about 30 teens, but I was okay with that because we shared some common threads: age and voice. However, as soon as I went out into a larger area with a larger population of older and younger Caucasian males and females, I began to feel out of place. I remember even telling my mom that I didn’t want to stay at all because I was uncomfortable. I didn’t feel any sort of Ethnocentrism, and I was proud of that. And even though I felt awkward, I actually enjoyed some aspects of the ceremony. For example, the reverend was female, and I have never witnessed that at any of the places of worship that I have attended. In fact, I even read in my textbook that “From a conflict perspective, the doctrines of the three major monotheistic
religions- religions that worship one divine figure - are quiet sexist.” (316, Kerry/Stein) I have heard people argue about how wrong or right it is for women to be in the “pulpit,” quoting scriptures such as “I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.” (English Standard Version Bible, Timothy 1- 2:12) But I have also heard quoted scriptures such as Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Standard English Bible, Galatians 3:28) So rather than feeling that sense of isolation that I would get if I were culturally shocked or that feeling of my denomination of Christianity being better, I felt a feminine connection, and I was pleased. However, as the service went on, I started to think of myself as belonging to the group of unchurched because of how uncomfortable I felt during worship and what some of the thoughts were that ran through my head. The definition of unchurched is “not belonging to or connected with a church” (Definition), and that was clearly something that defined me at that moment, as I just wasn’t used to this type of worship, with its quietness, unfamiliar hymns, and the lack of diversity. Also, I don’t attend church regularly. I am a part of that group that attends church on special occasions. Maybe that is also why I felt so uncomfortable. These thoughts brought me more onto the topic of Religious affiliation. Like stated in my textbook “A slim majority of American maintain the same religious affiliation throughout their lifetimes (56 percent according to a 2008 survey by the pew forum on religion and public life.)” (Kerry/Stein 316) and “Only about 17 percent of Americans claim no religious affiliation” (Kerry/Stein 316) so where does that leave the others? I say in the categories of the Unchurched and the intrinsically religious. Well, either way religion continues to be the one of the social institutions that links our society together. Religion is the like stated in my textbook an “institutionalized system of shared beliefs and rituals that identify a relationship between the sacred and the profane” (Kerry/Stein 316) and it is what help structures our society, religious practices no matter how different affects our individual agency and also our population as a whole and this is exactly why religion is a line to micro- and Macrosociology.
Before I start telling you about my recent experience, I am going to give you a background of my overall religious experience. I have been to a few types of places of worship in my lifetime. Even though I was brought up in a mostly Christian-based community, I have attended a Buddhist monastery, a Muslim mosque, a Catholic service, as well as my own non-denominational services. On Sunday, the Café VOX meeting was pretty short, most likely because of the Easter Sunday service the same day. I think the whole program is a pretty good idea. Basically it happens in a room set up as a coffee shop. Students that attend the Methodist church, from high school-age to college, participate. They recite poetry they’ve written or share anything “Soul-full” I wouldn 't say I felt too awkward because there were people my age. But I did feel some awkwardness being the only Black person there. In my prior religious experiences, I have worshiped amongst either all African-American congregations or very integrated congregations. After the VOX meeting concluded, we had to walk in front of the altar and the congregation to a seat to attend the Easter service. Now that 's when the real awkwardness started. I felt really out of place because I had to walk in front of the whole church, and I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was the only Black person in the entire church, which I noticed quickly when I walked out in front of the altar. I immediately felt uncomfortable as I searched for a seat, so I sat in the first available seat I could find. As soon as I sat down, I had to stand back up for the prelude of a hymnal called “O’ sons and Daughters.” Unfortunately for me, everyone in the church knew the song and I didn 't, but I tried to harmonize and sing random parts to blend in. I guess I wasn 't harmonizing enough because the guy next to me kept looking at me and eventually handed me the “UMH,” which is the United Methodist Hymnal book. Then just when I thought we were going to sit back down, we sang another song for the choral call to worship called “On the Third Day,” and everyone aside from me knew this one as well. After the choral call, Reverend Mary Lou Gilbert walked on stage and gave a greeting, which everyone knew as well. Around this time I was extremely embarrassed because I didn 't know that either. We sang another hymn and then an Easter affirmation, a prayer, and then the tithe. We proceeded with a doxology, a praise sung to the Holy Trinity, and another hymn, which I could find in the UMH and was extremely happy finally to be able to sing along. Then there was an anthem, which I didn’t know that made me sink back into my disappointment, and then finally a sermon. I was so happy that I didn 't have to sing anymore only to have to stand up 10 minutes later for another hymn. The sermon was only 10 or 15 minutes. I was so shocked. So I brought the "UHM" back out and began to sing the sending hymn called “Day of Resurrection.” we had a benediction, a choral response, and a postlude and then church was over. I was extremely surprised I had finished the Café VOX meeting at 11:00AM. I would say the service probably started at 11:10AM and ended right at noon.
In conclusion, The whole experience was very short. I don 't think I have ever been to a church that had such a short service, especially for Easter. I was equally surprised and happy that they had fit the whole service in an hour’s time so that I could go on about my day and finish things that normally wouldn 't get done on a Sunday. Although I will admit that I felt very out of place, and I most likely will not be attending that church again, I really enjoyed the experience, it was different from any church that I have ever attended.

Works Cited
Ferris, Kerry, and Jill Stein. The Real World: An Introduction to Sociology. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012. Print.
Francis, Leslie J., and William K. Kay. Teenage Religion and Values. Leominster, Herefordshire: Gracewing, 1995. Print.
The Holy Bible Containing the Old Testament and the New. Cambridge: Printed by John Field ..., 1668. Print.
Roof, Wade Clark. Religion in America Today. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1985. Print.
"The United Methodist Church." The United Methodist Church. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.
The United Methodist Hymnal: Book of United Methodist Worship. Nashville, TN: United Methodist House, 1989. Print.