The Politics of Fun in a Singaporean Megachurch

Abstract

In academic literature and in popular imagery, Protestantism is often described as emphasizing an ethos of self-restraint, moderation and discipline, and as such is usually seen as casting out earthly enjoyments. Authors such as Asef Bayat have suggested that ‘fun’ represents a threat to the stability of hegemonic power structures and to religious authority. In order to nuance these approaches, this ethnography investigates how fun can actually be made central to the exercise of religious power. The thesis primarily draws from an analysis of the experiences of youths and of the liturgy of City Harvest Church, a Singaporean megachurch. Data was collected via participant observation during four months of fieldwork, and was complemented with semi-structured interviews conducted among 20 informants from the church. The findings demonstrate that the ‘politics of fun’ are not necessarily repressive, and that fun, redefined and incorporated, can even be an integral part of religious power structures. The ‘subversiveness’ of fun suggested by several authors proves to be largely overstated in the case of this ethnography.