What happens when one of the most formal and venerable branches of the Church meets a heavy metal festival run by Christians? Frederica Mathewes-Green, once a hippy and now an Eastern Orthodox believer, visited the Cornerstone Festival in Illinois to encounter ear-shattering music, honest faith, hokey t-shirts and a 12-inch mohawk haircut. This account is the first of two extracts from her newly-published book, "At the Corner of East and Now."AS I COME UP THE DUSTY, gravel-pocked road from the lake I pass one of the music tents, and its white canvas sides are trembling with the tumult within. Slipping through a side flap I'm engulfed in the loudest music I've heard during the entire festival. My rib cage feels like an accordion, struggling to keep pace with the thundering percussion. My feet vibrate so much on the dirt floor that they feel like they're falling asleep. I ask by gestures (speaking is impossible) which band this is, and a guy with a silver hoop in his lower lip shows me in the program: "Left Out."
The song crashes into a wall and dies, and the hopping lead singer grabs up the microphone. "This next song is for the pastors out there," he says. "If you're feeling on the downside, come on back up. God is here, his Holy Spirit is here. That's what's important." A roar of agreement goes up from the crowd, and the band slams into the next song. Again, no individual lyrics are discernible, but I hope any pastors in the audience feel cheered all the same. I AM A LONE ORTHODOX, as far as I know, in a crowd of twenty-five thousand screaming, stomping, tattooed, metal-studded Christians. It's the fifteenth annual Cornerstone Festival, which once again has overwhelmed the little town of Bushnell, Illinois. You can tell Bushnell looks forward to this each year: every movable-letter sign in town reads "Welcome, Cornerstone!" and all along the last stretch of dusty road to the farm the ranch-house lawns are festooned with yard-sale abundance. Some town businesses, I'm told, make more this week than in the whole rest of the year. Cornerstone is more than a rock fest; it's also a record label, a magazine, and an inner-city community. The last came first: in the early seventies, a group of Jesus freaks, calling themselves "Jesus People USA" (or "JPUSA") began living together on the rough side of Chicago. Nearly thirty years later they're still there, running a shelter for homeless and abused women, a home for the elderly ("Friendly Towers"), a transition-to-work housing program, a daycare center, boys' and girls' clubs, and a pregnancy resource center. Funding for all this is of the elbow-grease variety. Before coming to the festival I'd never paid much attention to Christian rock groups, about forty of which will be performing here over the course of several days. I arrived presuming this music would be like Mr. Rogers sitting by a campfire with a guitar and a fish lapel pin, singing songs from the category derisively termed "Jesus is my girlfriend." (Take any pop love song, change the pronouns so it's about Jesus.) The attendees, I thought, would be the variety of overly clean-looking young men and women who pump my hand and call me "ma'am." I'm glad these clean-cut kids exist, and admire purity as a mysterious virtue that previous centuries knew to be a generator of spiritual power. This is a wisdom we have simply lost, and unable now to comprehend it fall back to easy ridicule. I admire these kids and can acknowledge the communal support they derive from their culture, but I thought that spending more than fifteen minutes exposed to that kind of music would have me looking for an exhaust pipe and a rubber hose. I don't know where that music is, but it isn't here. Nor is its culture. I strolled on the campsite my first day here and saw a guy with tangled green hair and a t-shirt reading "Turn back to God, America." Another, with spiked green and yellow hair, wore a handlettered t-shirt with a more direct request: "Looking for a Christian chick." Nearby a group in bristling dog collars and chrome chains were admiring a friend with a brand-new giant safety pin through his cheek. "That had to hurt," one was saying. A WOMAN IN FULL GOTH GEAR – floor-length black, chains, lace, ripped sleeves, drooling eyeliner, and purple hair – was pushing twins in a stroller. Her gloomy expression may have been part of the costume, or due to navigating tiny wheels over the rutted ground while wearing lots of black and metal in ninety-degree heat.
Fashion has become a tossed salad during these intervening years. People dress in ways they enjoy, ways that seem cool or fun, without much strategizing. These festival-goers seem to say that clothes and accessories are for fun and aren't inherently good or evil or even significant; it's what's in the heart that counts. At least I think that's what they're saying, but it's hard to say anything clearly with a safety pin through your cheek. I find all this bemusing, but a couple of Orthodox monks who read over this chapter told me they found it dismaying. My friend Father Andrew, previously a Protestant, is concerned that evangelicals adopt elements of contemporary culture wholesale and without discernment, in the name of being "Incarnational." Anything can be sanctified by sticking a fish symbol on it, he says. "They seem to interpret the Incarnation as meaning that God 'came down' to us and, apparently, just stayed here," Father Andrew says. "As I understand the Patristic vision, God comes down to effect an immediate rescue program. He doesn't just set his seal of approval on whatever he finds." I'm an immature Orthodox and know that Father Andrew's discernment is keener than mine. At this conference I am mostly occupied with observing; though much of what I see strikes me as strange, I respect both the size and the sincerity of the effort, and I'm trying to comprehend it. TODAY I STROLL INSIDE the exhibition tent and find that the album covers and t-shirts for bands show surprisingly sophisticated graphic design. The standard Christian-message t-shirts, however, are hokey and disappointingly obsessed with replicating advertising logos and slogans. How about a giant hand nailed to a board, with the caption "This Blood's For You"? A perky chihuahua saying "Yo Quiero Jesus"? The UPS logo rendered "JPS – Jesus, Personal Savior"? No matter what the text says, the subtext says, "Let's get trivial."
The band t-shirts are more interesting. They show more sophisticated graphics than the Christian-message ones, but on the other hand they don't convey any Christian message at all. This seems to be a prevalent dilemma. Christianity has become so overexposed that any hint of it seems hackneyed. In the secular mainstream world, the most successful efforts by Christian novelists, filmmakers, musicians, and other artists are those which reveal their faith the least. When genuine faith pops up in a work, it clangs like a cracked bell – obviously, a frustrating situation for the artists. Some protest that it's not fair, that if a Buddhist rock group is accepted as mainstream, a group that sings about Jesus (along with other topics) should be treated the same. But things don't work that way. The Christian group must either proclaim itself so, and wind up in the ghetto singing only to fellow Christians; or subdue the faith message to such a subtle level that it becomes inaudible; or attempt to pass as normal and risk being "found out" and viewed as phonies and sneaks. Fair or not, Christianity is different from other faiths in our common culture, because of its overbearing historic weight. The culture is so saturated with superficial familiarity that deeper engagement is often blocked. Everybody already knows about the cross, Jesus, salvation, the whole et cetera bagful; shut up or we'll change the channel. We've been inoculated against Christian faith, and when it insists on reappearing in the secular world it is annoying but ineffective, like a flock of gnats. WHAT SWEAT-STAINED LABORS are expended on overcoming this block. Church leaders have been worrying about making Christian faith "relevant" since the sixties; this seems to mean scrambling behind the culture by a few years' remove and copying whatever has proved itself a safe bet. (Admittedly, originality that housed a Christian message would merely baffle.) Nothing is more agonizingly dated to me now than my own hip 'n' earnest faith of the early seventies. The human potential lingo, the Fritz Perls posters, the trust-building exercises, the felt banners, the role playing, the passing an apple around a circle so everyone could, like, really look at it, all these now strike me as pretty cringeworthy.
More up-to-date attempts to make faith relevant can make the mistake of adopting the ever-present vernacular of consumerism, and offering Jesus as a product that will solve all your problems and make you happy. This justifiably provokes a "What kind of a fool do you take me for?" response. But strangely enough, in a way it's actually true; not the fixing-all-your-problems part, but the way in which his presence takes root and spreads, producing peace and joy no matter what life's circumstances. But there's no way to say that without sounding sappy and, frankly, like an idiot. Life hurts – how can you say Jesus makes it all O.K.? Well, it's hard to explain – you kind of have to come and see for yourself, and try it on for a while to get it. It doesn't mean that you get everything you want; rather, that gradually you get to want only Jesus. "He will give you the desires of your heart" (Psalm 37:4) turns out to mean that God gives the desires themselves; our impulsive and conflicting hungers are transformed, tuned, and ordered to receive what God intends to give. In light of this, much Christian output of every genre seems shallow because it fails to grapple adequately with suffering. It's not that Christians don't suffer, but the expectation that there will always be a peaceful resolution to the story, even if it is just the peace of acceptance won through anger and tears, tends to make any preceding anguish inevitably seem artificial or contrived. Yet, from a Christian perspective, a work that culminated in pessimism or cynicism would be the truly artificial one; we know that's not the end of the story. This is not an easy problem to resolve. Finding ways to cross faith with culture is a persistent concern at a festival like this. A further complication is that we don't all participate in a single broadcast culture anymore but are a nation of niches, tiny virtual communities linked by hundreds of narrow-cast channels.
Frederica Mathewes-Green is a senior writer and editor for Big Idea Productions, which produces the children's videos, Veggie Tales, and a columnist with Beliefnet.com. This extract from her new book, At the Corner of East and Now, is reproduced by permission of Lion Publishing. She is also the author of Facing East: A Pilgrim's Journey into the Mysteries of Orthodoxy. Top | Archive | Next Extract | SOF Home
Text © Frederica Mathewes-Green 1999 |
I've never liked heavy metal, but this is the first time I've seen it live, and I must admit it's a terrific show. The guys on stage are having a great time. The lead singer, bare-chested in droopy black jeans, is a skinny pale guy in Buddy Holly glasses. He spins and grins and pogos, and sweat flies into the crowd. I can't understand a word, even though he's screaming. The rest of the band – it looks like a lot of them, six or seven – are banging away at maximum force. At other concerts over the last few days, I've seen moshing, stage diving, and crowd surfing, but the late afternoon heat and sheer volume has left this crowd looking bludgeoned. Near the stage a few prone bodies are circulating like offerings to the volcano god.
It's strange to recall that there was a time when you could predict the opinions of total strangers merely from their appearance. Donning certain clothes or hairstyles expressed voluntary membership in an ideological group: hippies looked one way and straights looked another. Not cutting one's hair meant "letting my freak flag fly." There are reasons I'm glad that during my college years none of my friends owned a camera. But I'm not sure the costume of these young Christians is actually intended to mean anything.
I see faux logos for Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Adidas, Converse, M&Ms, Ford ("Have you considered the Lord lately?"), C.O.P.S., Hot Wheels, Gap, and Reese's. The only one I like is hot-pink Mr. Bubble rendered with a sneaky expression and horns: "Don't Mess Around with Mr. Trouble." Some may find these clever, but to me they so far betray the dignity of the faith as to communicate nothing true. Looking over this display I feel like I know what Jesus meant about not throwing your pearls before swine.
Some church leaders still talk that way, not realizing that the parade has passed them by. I occasionally see a "gut feelings" quote in the newspaper from a clerical eminence grise and think, "Boy, I know what year he graduated from seminary." He's griser than he thinks.