The atmosphere is absolutely relaxing. An extra-long wooden sofa with plump fluffy cushion in a leafy courtyard. Playing in the background are acoustic covers of some of Japan's most famous pop songs from the 1990s. Next to the sofa is a stand serving up carbonated blueberry juice and coffee from Myanmar. Customers lounging around on the sofa are quietly sipping their drinks while reading copies of artistic magazines describing the most innovative architecture and delicious specialty food stores around Tokyo under a windy but sunny cloudless sky.
Such a view could very well come from a community park in an expensive, ultra-gentrified neighborhood anywhere in the world. But in this case, the setting was in the open space in front of the main hall of a Japanese Shinto shrine. Just next to the long sofa and the coffee stand was the line for people to wash their hands before going to pray in front of the main hall. The priest and shrine workers, dressed in traditional long flowing robes, filed past the smartly dressed women and running children to attend to the business of God's work. The juxtaposition is a bit surreal.
And it is also technically problematic. Like religious buildings of other religions, a Shinto shrine is supposed to be sacred ground that is open to only pious activities of the pure-hearted. Reading magazines of secular nature, while eating and drinking right in front of where the deities are displayed would have been considered a big no-no in the past. Yet, as a measure to bring in most food traffic to a rather remote location amid a residential district, the shrine had to make compromises. As the word of the shrine's relaxing atmosphere spread, more people came to relax than to pray.
The evolution of a little community Shinto shrine in Tokyo speaks volumes about the state of religion in Japan and beyond today. While Japan always had a rather flexible and at times flippant attitude toward religious belief by mixing Buddhism, Shintoism, and even Christianity in major events like commemorating births, deaths, and marriages, in the present religious establishment has become even less of a place for serious ceremonies. Instead, religious buildings have been better noted for their architecture and historical significance to draw in more tourists and just people seeking to relax.
That push to secularize religious buildings have followed a global trend toward less religiosity, at least among the globetrotting liberal elite. As belief in God weakens among the progressive, they no longer travel the world for religious purposes. Instead, they are seeking out churches, temples, mosques, and shrines to connect to other and their own cultural identities. The changing view toward religious buildings, then, necessitated the guardians of the buildings to "soften" their image. Gone is the rigidity of what can and cannot be done on-site, replaced with more general cultural activities that are more in line with travelers' expectations.
And pandering to the contemporary traveler's lack of religiosity has also taken on a commercial element. The religious donate a large amount of cash as a display of piety. The nonreligious sees no reason to donate. Thus, for religious institutions needing to fund their daily expenses, new income streams are needed to offset declining donations. The coffee shop at the Shinto shrine is but one example. Plenty of religious sites across the world have put up gift shops, cafes, and outright charged people for entrance fees. While financially keeping the place together, such activities no doubt further distance their establishments from the sanctity of tradition that they are supposed to observe and protect.
Of course, not all religious buildings are becoming a playground of hipster types looking for a place to have organic coffees. Plenty in the global South continue to be truly God-fearing and thus demand religious sites to be conservative, serving up dogma and little else. Those growing up around pockets of religious orthodoxy will no doubt be appalled by guardians of centuries-old houses of worship making money in the name of bringing in more foot traffic and awareness of cultural traditions. Yet, as religiosity increasingly becomes less of everyday reality for a younger, more cosmopolitan, and more urbane crowd, more religious buildings are bound to do more than just religion.
Perhaps even the most religiously conservative should support at "cafe-ification" of religion to some degree. Religion, like all social concepts, needs to evolve with the times to stay relevant. If religion remains conservative, setting narrow limits on what individuals can do and believe in their daily lives, it will quickly become irrelevant to the more liberal city-dwellers of the global North. By being brave enough to put up cafes in their own sacred grounds, religious sites are instead showing that they are still needed in a modern world, perhaps not as a center of ideology, but at least as a spot for social interactions.
Such a view could very well come from a community park in an expensive, ultra-gentrified neighborhood anywhere in the world. But in this case, the setting was in the open space in front of the main hall of a Japanese Shinto shrine. Just next to the long sofa and the coffee stand was the line for people to wash their hands before going to pray in front of the main hall. The priest and shrine workers, dressed in traditional long flowing robes, filed past the smartly dressed women and running children to attend to the business of God's work. The juxtaposition is a bit surreal.
And it is also technically problematic. Like religious buildings of other religions, a Shinto shrine is supposed to be sacred ground that is open to only pious activities of the pure-hearted. Reading magazines of secular nature, while eating and drinking right in front of where the deities are displayed would have been considered a big no-no in the past. Yet, as a measure to bring in most food traffic to a rather remote location amid a residential district, the shrine had to make compromises. As the word of the shrine's relaxing atmosphere spread, more people came to relax than to pray.
The evolution of a little community Shinto shrine in Tokyo speaks volumes about the state of religion in Japan and beyond today. While Japan always had a rather flexible and at times flippant attitude toward religious belief by mixing Buddhism, Shintoism, and even Christianity in major events like commemorating births, deaths, and marriages, in the present religious establishment has become even less of a place for serious ceremonies. Instead, religious buildings have been better noted for their architecture and historical significance to draw in more tourists and just people seeking to relax.
That push to secularize religious buildings have followed a global trend toward less religiosity, at least among the globetrotting liberal elite. As belief in God weakens among the progressive, they no longer travel the world for religious purposes. Instead, they are seeking out churches, temples, mosques, and shrines to connect to other and their own cultural identities. The changing view toward religious buildings, then, necessitated the guardians of the buildings to "soften" their image. Gone is the rigidity of what can and cannot be done on-site, replaced with more general cultural activities that are more in line with travelers' expectations.
And pandering to the contemporary traveler's lack of religiosity has also taken on a commercial element. The religious donate a large amount of cash as a display of piety. The nonreligious sees no reason to donate. Thus, for religious institutions needing to fund their daily expenses, new income streams are needed to offset declining donations. The coffee shop at the Shinto shrine is but one example. Plenty of religious sites across the world have put up gift shops, cafes, and outright charged people for entrance fees. While financially keeping the place together, such activities no doubt further distance their establishments from the sanctity of tradition that they are supposed to observe and protect.
Of course, not all religious buildings are becoming a playground of hipster types looking for a place to have organic coffees. Plenty in the global South continue to be truly God-fearing and thus demand religious sites to be conservative, serving up dogma and little else. Those growing up around pockets of religious orthodoxy will no doubt be appalled by guardians of centuries-old houses of worship making money in the name of bringing in more foot traffic and awareness of cultural traditions. Yet, as religiosity increasingly becomes less of everyday reality for a younger, more cosmopolitan, and more urbane crowd, more religious buildings are bound to do more than just religion.
Perhaps even the most religiously conservative should support at "cafe-ification" of religion to some degree. Religion, like all social concepts, needs to evolve with the times to stay relevant. If religion remains conservative, setting narrow limits on what individuals can do and believe in their daily lives, it will quickly become irrelevant to the more liberal city-dwellers of the global North. By being brave enough to put up cafes in their own sacred grounds, religious sites are instead showing that they are still needed in a modern world, perhaps not as a center of ideology, but at least as a spot for social interactions.
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