Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at how technicians and producers ‘behind the scenes’ of Sunday worship services carefully cultivate religious experiences. I show how this group of people is implicated in the creation of affective regimes enabled by complex assemblages that include people and technologies.

Paper long abstract:

In many contemporary Christian churches, a Sunday worship service can feel like attending a pop concert. Multimedia technologies such as lighting, music, video, haze machines, and the use of smartphones not only help to set the scene but are instrumental in the creation of feelings of belonging and an experience of the ‘presence’ of the Holy Spirit for Pentecostal Christians. This paper looks at how technicians and producers ‘behind the scenes’ of worship services carefully cultivate these religious experiences and how they negotiate which technologies are (not) used to what ends.

I argue that religious experiences cannot be simply explained away as resulting from the successful manipulation of technologies by the human hand. Rather, they are the result of complex assemblages which include humans and (digital) technologies. I propose to understand the ‘successful’ implementation of multimedia technologies as the result of powerful affective regimes that share affinities with the contemporary, arguably secularised, context in which these churches are situated.