A choir rehearsal in an Amsterdam church building on the Saturday before Holy Week. I am taking part in an ad hoc amateur choir that is to perform J.S. Bach’s Matthäuspassion at the end of the day. During the break, the professional baritonesoloist who will be singing the role of Christ comes to me and asks: “Didn’t I see you in the Concertgebouw yesterday?” He is right to recognize me: I am here for fieldwork, and had been at the Concertgebouw the day before, attending a rehearsal of the same Passion performed by professionals. The baritone had seen me interview members of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Choir (the choir of which he was a part).
I smile at his question, because it immediately reminds me of that famous scene in the Christian passion narrative in which Peter is recognised for the third time as one of Jesus’ followers: “Did I not see you in the garden with him?” Now I am recognised – by Christ, of all people! – and we exchange phone numbers so that I can contact him later on for an interview.
Later the same week, I am in Rotterdam with two colleagues for participant observation at an open-air passion event that will be broadcast live on national television. At one point during the show we stand in the path of the camera, which catches us singing along with one of the pop songs. After the show, I find that I have received a text message from the baritone: “WTF! I turn on the telly, first thing I see is you coming in the shot!”
This series of events occurred in 2012, two years into my research project on contemporary musical performances of passions in the Dutch cultural domain, and, during this busy week, I engaged in fieldwork on far more than just these three passions. Despite the efforts of some to liberate passion performances from the Christian liturgical calendar, most passion concerts still take place during Lent, especially Holy Week. So, I found myself immersed in the field, and there were plenty of opportunities for fieldwork at multiple passion performances every day.
Research in such a rich field, of course, had its limits: it was impossible to investigate every single passion performance in depth, so the project demanded more focus. A natural choice was to concentrate on the passion that had grown the largest, and which would continue to grow further in the years that followed – a passion that, contrary to other, sometimes modern, classical music passions that were performed in classical concert halls, stood out for its inextricable link with contemporary popular culture, the public sphere, and the street: The Passion. This book is the result of that particular focus. It sheds light on one particular rendition of the narrative of the suffering, death and even (although strictly not part of the passion narrative) the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Through that, the book offers a number of perspectives on how (Christian) religion has changed in the Netherlands over recent decades.
I want to extend my gratitude and thanks to those who played a part in the process that eventually led to the book. I should start by saying thank you to my colleagues at the Department of Culture Studies at Tilburg School of Humanities (Tilburg University), since I embarked on my research on the ritual-musical appropriation of passions in Dutch culture in 2010 in their midst. I did so as a post-doctoral researcher on the project Religion? Music! which was originally conceived by Martin Hoondert. Martin gave me the necessary space to find my own focus, and eventually to zoom in on the passion. I should also mention, at this point, Paul Post who, whilst sparing in his use of words, has always encouraged me to find my own pathway through academia. I am grateful for the opportunities they both gave me. I also owe a word of thanks to my colleagues in the Practices research programme at the Protestant Theological University, with whom I continued my passion research within the project Passio Resurrexit in 2013 and where I adopted a more theological outlook. I want expressly to thank our sociologists of religion Joep de Hart and Marten van der Meulen who supported me with endless and indispensable sociological expertise, and my colleagues in the chair of Practical Theology in Amsterdam who have kindly hassled me with their critical questions, discussion, and feedback over the past few years. Special thanks to Marcel Barnard for his ongoing encouragement to develop cutting-edge research, and to Rein Brouwer, Joyce Rondaij, Lydia van Leersum-Bekebrede and former PThU-colleague Jos de Kock who, at different stages, read in detail and advised me on different portions and versions of this manuscript. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Dutch Lutheran Foundation ‘Stichting Luthers Diakonessenhuis Fonds’ for their financial support, as well as the rector of PThU, Mechteld Jansen, and to say how much their continuous confidence in me is appreciated! Outside of PThU, I want to thank Erin Wilson at the University of Groningen, who was kind enough to let us recruit her ReMa-student Anita Zijdemans for ethnographic research in Enschede, and I am grateful for Anita’s dedication and the data she collected. All-round theologian Peter-Ben Smit (VU University/Utrecht University/University of Bern) and Rev. Eddy Reefhuis, with his knowledge of Bible and rabbinic teaching, both deserve special mention for being such fabulous and constructive sparring partners in creative biblical hermeneutics. I say thank you to international colleagues to whom I presented some material in this book at meetings of the Societas Liturgica, at Christian Congregational Music conferences, and at the ‘Conversations after God’-consultations of PThU and the Theological Faculty of the University of Pretoria. I benefitted greatly from the comments and suggestions of many scholars and practitioners that I received on those occasions. They have been very encouraging.
I am tremendously grateful for various informants in the field, without whom this research could never have taken place, particularly those from the audience who chatted with me in the squares where The Passion was staged. I am grateful for the support and hospitality of many individuals at the broadcasting companies KRO-NCRV and EO (as well as KRO-NCRV’s predecessor RKK that initially embarked upon the project), and the production company Eye2EyeMedia (later: Mediawater) who were incredibly kind in providing me with all kinds of information, statistics and photographs, who cooperated in interviews, and who allowed me to attend their meetings. I cannot name them all here, but I want to mention Reinder van Dijk, Jacco Doornbos, Leo Fijen, Maddy Christine Hope (in New Orleans) and Arjan Lock in particular.
My co-authors Marcel Barnard, Martin Hoondert, Marten van der Meulen, Erin Wilson and Anita Zijdemans let me recompose previously published texts without any restrictions, and I thank them for their confidence in me. I here also want to acknowledge my protégé (Habilvater) during the course of my habilitation at the Theological Faculty of the University of Bern, David Plüss, to whom I give thanks for his advice, support and guidance. I am grateful to him and to Gutachterin Andrea Bieler and Gutachter Thomas Schlag, for their reviews of the manuscript, and to the former Dean of the Faculty, Angela Berlis, for guiding me through the Habilitationsverfahren. For their constructive criticism of earlier drafts and thoroughgoing feedback on the manuscript I offer a special thank you to the chief editors and series editors of Theology in Practice and their reviewers. I also want to offer a word of thanks to Ingrid Heijckers-Velt for her patience, instruction and support throughout the writing and publication process. I am thankful that Hijme Stoffels and Hans-Peter van Velthoven let me reproduce their photographs. I owe a lot to Mark Porter, who meticulously edited the English text, and to our former student-assistant Esther van Bijsterveldt, for her dedicated work on the bibliography and footnotes.
The road to the completion of this manuscript has been bumpier than any publication process I have been part of so far. The main obstacle on the road was a life-threatening illness that has driven my research subject into my personal life in a way I wish I would never otherwise have experienced. If it were not for the medical staff, and a circle of close colleagues, friends and family who have surrounded me during this period and kept me alive, this book would never have seen publication. For their care and support I am grateful beyond words. I want, in particular, to mention my good friends Eddy Reefhuis, Paul Sheppy, who kept me going during this period of turbulence. I thank my mother, and Jacco, Swaentje and Jasmijn Calis for their love and their generosity (they gave me so much time and space to write).
This book is dedicated to my daughters, who grow up in a society where Christian religion is rapidly changing, and where the quest for God may well become even more challenging than it has been for me.