Multimedia Missionaries : Rock ‘n’ Roll Religion, Saving Earth Go Hand in Hand at High-Tech ‘Planetary Mass’

Worshipers danced to a pulsating rock beat in the darkened basement of Grace Cathedral. Around the room, screens and monitors filled with shifting images: planets in motion, planes dropping bombs, plants sprouting from the ground.

A large globe hung over the circular altar, projecting the face of the minister as he declared, “Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.”

Welcome to the Planetary Mass: part rave, part New Age mysticism, part Anglican church service.

As the Rolling Stones performed across the bay in Oakland, the British religious community known as the Nine O’Clock Service brought its high-tech program to San Francisco for two evening Masses last weekend.

In the best missionary tradition, they are attempting to attract young people to the church by creating a multimedia experience that more resembles a rock ‘n’ roll light show than Sunday morning Mass.

“Thirty-five young people are here generously teaching us to pray in a new way--and an ancient way--with less books and more dancing,” said the Rev. Matthew Fox, a defrocked Dominican priest turned Episcopal minister, as he delivered a sermon during the Mass.

The group from Sheffield, England, has not just discarded the pews and changed the music. It also is seeking to update the church’s message to one more relevant to young people today: saving the Earth from environmental destruction by abandoning the quest for material goods.

The members of the Nine O’Clock Service, who take their name from the hour at which they hold their evening services, were welcomed to California by the Episcopal Church, which invited them to stage the two Masses at the neo-Gothic cathedral on Nob Hill.

William Swing, the Episcopal bishop of California, attended one of the services and said he was “carried away by it”--despite having to sit on the floor.

The Planetary Mass, with its blend of technology and nature, could prove a powerful tool for reaching young people, the bishop said. “I think the Mass like we witnessed tonight is a forerunner of what’s going to happen,” he said. “I was very excited by tonight.”

Swing also said the young people’s movement could help focus debate within the church about its responsibility to safeguard all species on Earth, not just humans.

“The church has had a suspicion of nature for a long time,” he said. “Not only the Christian church but our Jewish ancestors also. You look at 2,000 years (of history), we have very few people who champion nature in the church.”

Now, he said, the church must focus its attention on the environmental destruction of the planet and decide whether it will take a leading role to help save the Earth.

“We’re coming to a moment in history where we have to fish or cut bait in regard to nature,” he said. “Did Jesus die for all people, or did Jesus die for all creation, which includes people? This is going to be a critical question we’re going to have to answer.”

To find young people interested in attending the two Masses, members of the Nine O’Clock Service visited churches, environmental groups and the streets of the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco and Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.

Among those attending was Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia, who was married recently in a ceremony conducted by Fox.

In Britain, the community includes among its members some refugees from the drug culture and others who were involved early in the rave scene--a subculture centered around all-night dance parties.

Pooling their talents in music and art, they began conducting Mass in an empty Anglican church and soon were drawing hundreds of people to their nine o’clock services. Their innovations were welcomed by the church, which has had difficulty attracting young worshipers.

“We originated out of an incredibly narrow fundamentalist church,” said the Rev. Chris Brain, the one ordained minister in the British group. “Our place is on the chaotic edge of the order. That’s where the creativity is.”

Nothing is too heavy-handed at the Planetary Mass--except perhaps the bass guitar. The environmentalist message was delivered subtly on television monitors as the image of a sleek new car was juxtaposed with pictures of trees being cut down.

As the white-robed minister and his associates talked of equality and spirituality, God and the rain forests, images of the moon walk, army tanks and people in the streets flashed briefly on the screens.

“We must change and change quickly or all is lost,” Brain told his congregation. “We are all saved or we all die.”

Fox, who battled the Roman Catholic Church for a decade before he was silenced and then defrocked by the Vatican, said after the service it is essential for religion to reach out to young people, who have lost faith in most modern institutions.

“The young people have a tremendous stake in this because they are the ones inheriting the depleted beauty of the planet,” Fox said. “The environmental revolution is coming and we don’t have much time to do it.