Yesterday, I was walking with M through Bryant Park in Manhattan, and noticed that a show was about to begin, an hourlong revue of new Broadway shows and some longer-running successes. Basically a little live midday advertising for high-end theater. So we grabbed some lunch and a few chairs and joined the hundreds filling the lawn, not sure who we’d see.

It turns out we heard selections from many different shows, including “Falling for Eve,” “Chicago,” and — I couldn’t believe it — “Rock of Ages”. I have written before at R&T of my delight in this musical. Six or seven cast members from the show took the stage as the final part of the revue, bringing raucous cheers from many in the park, and the fist-pumping began almost immediately as they started belting out the rock tunes.

Here is a poor picture I took. It was the best I could do with my cellphone camera.

What interested me most about this event was the “Rock of Ages” star — a bona fide rock musician (and “American Idol” finalist) Constantine Maroulis — was wearing a t-shirt with large letters proclaiming “Rock Is My Religion.” There was a peace sign on the back of the shirt. (Here’s Maroulis and co-star Amy Spanger at the Tony Awards, and then Maroulis and gang in the kickoff to the Bryant Park summer series.)

I have seen what seems like an increasing number of people wearing such “Rock Is My Religion” shirts in the last several years. They are easily available on the Internet. I wondered what to make of the message.

There is the basic renegade quality of the declaration, which perhaps still has a tiny bite, though I wonder how much in New York City, when one declares that rock has replaced religion as a new religion. But then there is another interpretation: that with this shirt there is the very traditional evangelical form of the religious declaration itself: that one’s religious commitments ought to be confessable, and even (the American version of this religious traditionalism) confessable on a t-shirt. Beyond and within these two positions are the “meta” or “arch” stances: that confessability itself is being ironized, or that rock signals anti-religion by declaring its religiousness. I wonder if to most people, it simply means, “I expect to have a good time.” But even that meaning depends on being caught in the flurry of multiple meanings while caught up in these very singable tunes that, for a certain cohort, recall and recast memories. One gets a past both familiar and new, symbolized by the crossroads of rock and religion represented by this t-shirt.

There would also be another, more troubling, interpretation: that this is the kind of religion that secular culture allows: one that is finally at home with the secular cathedral, or maze of consumption, just down the street from Bryant Park: the new Times Square.

I think something of all these interpretations is “true.” One ethical task for theologians, and all who care about music and theology, is to help some interpretations become more effective as truth than others.

Tom Beaudoin

Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, United States

4 Comments »

1. 

   That is a lot to think about for a summer afternoon. I’m not sure why he chose the shirt for the performance but he looked hot in it.

   Comment by Betty — July 29, 2010 @ 8:40 am

2. 

   Constantine is MY religion. LOL Where can I find a T shirt that says that? There’s nothing that deep about it. He’s just someone I admire and enjoy and who has become an important part of my daily entertainment! I imagine Rock is important to him in a similar manner. And yes, he did look hot in it!!!

   Comment by Patti — July 29, 2010 @ 12:14 pm

3. 

   No hidden meaning behind the shirt…ummm…I think Constantine just loves to Rock!

   And for sure I love to see him Rock!

   Comment by Jan — July 29, 2010 @ 1:48 pm

4. 

   ROCK IS MY RELIGION t-shirt by Project e. XX
   http://www.Projecteclothing.com

   *Flattering, but the message wasn’t intended to be deep. It’s all about having nothin’ but a good time.

   Comment by Sue — July 29, 2010 @ 5:37 pm

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