Page 206 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

Modes of Binding, Moments of Bonding 191

boundaries of the event (cf. de Abreu 2005 and in this volume). The church
does try to establish a more stable community, however, through its highly
supervised and bureaucratized membership trajectory (De Witte 2008).
The effects of this in generating and sustaining a “Christ Temple commu-
nity” are limited, especially because of the church’s mass character. More
than by being a member of a strong religious congregation, then, religious
subjectivity and bonding is constituted by the personal and momentary
experience of Holy Spirit power, mediated by bodies interacting in ritual
performance. Whether through the format of the sermon or through the
very different format of healing and deliverance, the body of the “anointed
man of God” becomes the medium that facilitates a connection between
the individual believer and the spiritual. Also, the crowd dynamics gener-
ated by the thousands of worshippers filling Christ Temple and jointly
participating in a common ritual of worship evokes an experience not only
of spiritual presence, but also, if only momentarily, of being one commu-
nity, one body in the Spirit.

Editing Otabil and His Audience

In the ICGC editing studio the theater of mediating the Holy Spirit is
further dramatized by editing the parts both pastor and audience play.
Watching this process, I saw how the editors carefully created the image
of pastor Otabil and his audience (De Witte 2003). Specific camera
angles and editing techniques, close-ups of his face and expressive ges-
tures followed by wide-angle shots showing him elevated on the stage,
watching over his large congregation, all add to Otabil’s charisma. This
focus on the image of the pastor—his face, his dress, his body—connects
to the spiritual importance in charismatic churches of the person of the
leader (and usually founder). This display of flamboyance on stage, com-
bined with facial close-ups and a personal word to the viewer at once
highlight the spiritual power bestowed upon Otabil by God and suggest
the possibility of close interaction, and thus of acquiring some of this

“anointing.”
Just as Otabil’s public personality is edited, so is his audience. Shots of
Otabil preaching are interspersed with cutaways of the church audience.
We see wide-angle shots of the crowd filling the auditorium, moving and
being moved almost as one body, simultaneously responding to Otabil
with identical gestures and utterances. And we see close-ups of individu-
als in the audience. From the raw recordings of the moving camera, shots
of audience reactions are selected, categorized, and saved in digital folders