About my project
The first time I went to St John at Hackney Church in London with my Indian flatmate I was completely captivated. Actually, I had never been to any church before I came here because churches are not very common in my country and not many people, especially young people, are religious, so I had the impression that going to church was something only old people did and it was boring and dull. However, when I got there, I was completely shocked by the vibrant atmosphere. The lights, the music and the joyful atmosphere gave me a pure enjoyment, with young people from different countries and races singing, performing, reading poetry and communicating, just like a big concert. It really helped me relieve my stress and gave me a spiritual baptism. I could totally sense relief and happiness and can’t wait to go there for more times, wanting to find out how this church attracts young people like me and why young people still want to go to church today.
Just like Max Weber (1963, 1) said, the essence of religion is not even our concern, as we make it our task to study the conditions and effects of a particular type of social behaviour. By selecting St John at Hackney Church as my field site and conducting a four-month ethnographic study there, my research attempts to answer the following questions:
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Why do young people from other countries choose to go to St John at Hackney Church?
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How do senses as tools help them experience this church and what role does digital technology play in this process?
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How do these young people connect this Church with London?
How senses can help us experience the church in London?
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St John at Hackney is a Grade II* listed Anglican Church in the heart of the London Borough of Hackney with a large capacity of around 2,000. It has also become a music venue, having hosted performances by Coldplay, Robbie Williams, Ed Sheeran and other famous singers and bands. The church has community facilities in the adjacent Hackney Gardens development to enable it to grow its outreach work and community activity. During my ethnographic observation, I found that although there are also non-Christians like me who go to this church, the young foreigners who frequent go to this church are Christians, most of them were born in Christian families and influenced by their parents to become Christians as well, this is also how my participants became Christians. I have four participants, they are a 23-year-old Indian female, a 25-year-old Kenyan female, a 28-year-old Kenyan female, all three of whom came to UCL last year for postgraduate studies, and a 27-year-old New Zealand male who came to London two years ago for work. It is interesting that two of them gave up religion a few years ago due to doubts about beliefs and God and then came back to it, and two of them have always been strong believers in God, but now they all attend Hackney church regularly.
To address my research questions, I used semi-structured in-depth interviews and participant observation, while I visited this church basically every fortnight to document my participants' experiences in Hackney through photography and documentary. In the next section, I divide my research into three parts: space, which focuses on senses of sight, taste and smell; music, which focuses on senses of hearing; and London life, which links the church experience to their lives. The ending section summarises my findings and my reflections on the study.