Or more precisely, are theologians who work theologically with popular music helping to create and inhabit a “court of the gentiles” for those participants in the cultures of secular music who do not belong actively to churches?

In a recent address (brought to my attention by my Fordham colleague, Fr. Claudio Burgaleta), the bishop of Rome, Benedict XVI, remarked on the importance for “the Church” to establish a new “court of the gentiles,” as a way of inviting in those who search for God but cannot commit to the God proclaimed by Christians. I could not help but wonder whether Rock and Theology and similar theological engagements with contemporary secular(izing) cultures are a contribution toward such a symbolic “court.” Some of our contributors and readers might indeed defend such an interpretation, on the grounds that we are so intent on thinking through the ways that Christian churches can interact with popular cultures.

Indeed, there is much to endorse about the idea of fostering such a “court,” through various practical-symbolic actions that churches could take to welcome a full array of those who cannot fully “believe.” Among the strongest benefits would be that of direct encounter with the “others” of “the Church.” In that encounter might lie mutual deepening, clarification, and courage for committing to reality – among both those in the “court” and those further on “inside.”

Among the problematic elements of such a call are the naïve repetition of a kind of replacement or supersessionist mentality, in which the Catholic use of the Bible simply takes over and cancels any distinctive Jewish meanings pertaining to the ancient “court of the Gentiles.” In this recent address, as so often in the theological tradition, “Temple” (or its “interior”) effectively becomes “Church,” and “Gentiles” become non-Christians or those not fully Christian. Apparently we are not yet fully within an era when such embarrassing and hurtful theological moves can be seen for what they are: clearly out of bounds theologically, and harmful to the public credibility of Catholic ideas. Moreover (but not unrelated), reviving this idea is tantamount to saying to contemporary society that those who cannot believe Catholic teaching ought to move to the back of the bus: show up symbolically to this select and demarcated “space” where you can say what you must say, witness to your own actions and beliefs, but your witness will never echo into the holy of holies. In that way, it is like the confessional box of which I write in my most recent book: that ironic but telling Catholic space in which one can speak frankly, but demurely. One can express one’s convictions and hesitations, be open about God, but that frankness will not be read back onto the church’s own “self-understanding.” The telling of truths cannot become part of the inner contestation of “Truth” itself. In other words, and to put it simply, a “court of the gentiles” seems evidence of that peculiar kind of Catholic thinking that manages to be both creative and patronizing at the same time.

We would open up more practical and theoretical possibilities by opening up the ways in which God, approached as “the Unknown,” remains “Unknown” even to those who get past the velvet rope and bustle in and out of the inner sanctum.

What kind of therapy would this require for the theologically-minded who feel the urge to write Christian theology that usurps Jewish worlds or teaches itself to forget that it too is stuck mercifully with the “Unknown”? We could begin by asking that any time these urges, which have deep roots in theological tradition, arise, we ask why we think we need to repeat this dangerous game, recite again these tired divisions of labor.

In this way might we construct conditions for the new “dialogue with those for whom religion is something foreign,” to which Benedict’s recent address strikingly, and most welcomely, commits itself.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

When trying to construe the relation between ’secular music’ and ’sacred theology’ in a rigorous and relevant way, it is helpful to remember the routes that Christian imagination has already taken. One gets a sense for an influential kind of Christian tunnel-vision when viewing this special from the Christian show “The 700 Club” from the mid-1980s, in a special report on the Christian rock band Stryper.

A thick mane of rock talmudism could be occasioned by this brief video: The Christian preoccupation with an imagined culture of disaster, such as casting rock culture as celebrating “death and the leadership of Satan;” the influential ecclesial suburban legends about rock culture, such as that shows are “popular” places for (presumably male) musicians to “urinate on the crowd” (!); the place-finding for rock in a “biblical worldview,” such as a fulfillment of Psalm 33 and the attraction-repulsion toward sexual suggestion in religious gesture.

But also notice how capacious is this Christian vision regarding ingenuous camp and a sunny homoeroticism. It cranks to a surprising pitch the Pauline stage-direction, “become all things to all men” (1 Corinthians 9:22). We can see Marcella Althaus-Reid’s queer Christian theology coming out already in 1986, in visions of bumble bee spandex and airborne Bibles.

(more…)

My colleague here at Fordham University, theologian Professor Bradford Hinze, recently asked the students in his undergraduate “Faith and Critical Reason” classes where they found talk of “sin” in their music. These first-year students came up with a very interesting list.

When he mentioned this to me, of course I wanted to share it here on Rock and Theology. He and his students have graciously granted permission to do so.  Professor Hinze tells me that the context for the list was that they had been discussing scriptural understandings of sin, and classical lists of sins, and that he invited the students, in his words, to “search for songs which they listened to when they considered how ‘I,’ ‘we,’ or the ‘world’ are messed up.”

He then posed some inventive theological questions:

“How do the sins named, described, and narrated in these song lyrics compare with the classic lists we have examined in Mark’s gospel, Paul’s letter to the Galatians, Evagrius Ponticus, Pope Gregory I, and Dante Alighieri? Is there overlap? Same sins, new stories? Any new kinds of personal sin? Are there instances of communal sin depicted in contemporary lyrics? Are there instances of global dynamics of sin (social structures, institutional patterns) identified? Do these songs provide a more comprehensive portrayal of sin than the classic lists?”

Here is the list. You can find many of these on Youtube or other song-related sites if you’re interested in the words or performances.

“Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems” by Notorious B.I.G.

“Changes” by 2Pac

“Come on, come on” by Little Birdy

“Mother, mother” by Marvin Gaye

“Amsterdam” by Jacques Brel

“Where did my baby go?” by John Legend

“Dizzy” by Goo Goo Dolls

“House of the Rising Sun” sung recently by Tracy Chapman

“She’s not a girl who misses much” by John Lennon and Paul McCartney

“The Freshman” by The Verve Pipe

“I love college” by Asher Roth

“One Song Glory” by Jonathan Larson in Rent

“Symbol in my driveway” by Jack Johnson

“Judas’ Death” by Andrew Lloyd Webber

“Stand Up” by Flobots

“1975 Ram’s Horn Music” by Bob Dylan

“Sic Transit Gloria. . . Glory Fades” by Jesse Lacey, Band: Brand New

“Can’t Tell Me Nothing” by Kanye West

“Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson

“Ghetto Gospel” by Tupac

“The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel

“Match Box Twenty” by Unwell

“Changes” by 2Pac

“Where is the Love? By Black Eyed Peas 11

“Waiting on the World to Change” by John Mayer 1

“Despair” by Envy [Zesubou—An Café

“What I’ve Done” by Linkin Parks

“Helpless” by Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young)

“Into the Ocean” by Blue October

“Eleanor Rigby” by The Beatles

“Simple Plan” by Crazy Lyrics

“Heartless Bastard Motherfucker” by Frank Turner

“Call Me When You’re Sober” by Evanescence

“I Love College” by Asher Roth

“Who are You?” by The Who

“ABC” by Knaan

“The Dark I know Well” from Spring Awakening

“The Things That Hate Us” by Strictly Leakage

“Killing in the Name Of” by Rage Against the Machine

*

Are there any other songs that you would add, R&T readers?

Tom Beaudoin

New York City, New York, United States

This post continues my discussion of Bernard of Clairvaux and the notion, developed by Dr. Luke Anderson, of “imperation.” Part one is here, and part two is here.

Theologians of culture participate by way of academic theology in a practice whose dynamics are also found in everyday theology, taking responsibility for the interpretation of our culture, not assuming its meaning to be univocal. Such an approach may presuppose or surmise that God has abandoned us / entrusted us to do it for ourselves. God does not make certain aspects of culture or certain experiences “religious,” even when certain theological “criteria” are satisfied. There is no religiousness permanently “within” symbols or any cultural artifact waiting to be “accepted.”

Imperation would suggest that religious experiences in culture are always in part a matter of the possible interpretations of those experiences, what is able to be (individually and socially) “bounced” off of them, and whether what bounces back has the “power” to manifest. Emmanuel Levinas writes, “The truth illuminates whoever breathes on the flame and coaxes it back to life. More or less. It’s a question of breath” (“Reading, Writing, Revolution, in The Levinas Reader, p. 266). Imperation is interpretation as religious performance in a “world come of age” without a deus ex machina (see Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison) in the form of a methodological guarantee to save our interpretation. It is having our theology of culture through Foucault’s insight: “If interpretation were the slow exposure of the meaning hidden in an origin, then only metaphysics could interpret the development of humanity. But if interpretation is the violent or surreptitious appropriation of a system of rules, which in itself has no essential meaning, in order to impose a direction, to bend it to a new will, to force its participation in a different game, and to subject it to a secondary rules, then the development of humanity is a series of interpretations” (“Nietzsche, Genealogy, History,” in The Foucault Reader, p. 86).

In this vein we can invent-retrieve “biblical models” of this freedom for interpretation. Recall Genesis chapter 19, wherein Lot cancels God’s plan (communicated through the angels) that he should go to the hills, and instead chooses to go to a city. God grants him this, then says, remarkably, “I can do nothing until you arrive there.” God waits for the enactment of our abandonment to each other, our utter reliance on each other within the world.

“I can do nothing until you arrive there.”

More to come.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York