On the heels of Mary and Mike’s recent ruminations on her rock addiction and his inquiry into defining “Christian” rock….

Today I’d like to make my own confession. I’m a gear geek. When I go to a show, I’m looking to see what gear the lead guitarist is using to boost his sound during a solo (two TS-9s in tandem always works best, right?). When I listen to an album with a prominent bassline, I try to identify the frequency where the bassist’s compression kicks in, allowing for both a grainy, unmuddled bottom and a smooth, phattened high end (a distinction that is unfortunately washed over in poorly compressed audio files).

This propensity for “geargeekity” also manages to express itself in other spheres beyond the musical. When my academic institution installed a SmartBoard last year, I was eager to use it in seminars. Similarly, when we purchased Adobe CS4, I stayed awake at night thinking of all the possibilities for using Flash animation in teaching. And like everyone else, over the past year I’ve been researching e-readers for their PDF capabilities so I can take my favorite academic journals with me everywhere. (Forget the gear…perhaps I’m just a categorical “geek”!)

Yet last week I attended (more…)

I mentioned in an earlier post that I have recently begun work on a new album. This particular musical project — my second full length “solo” record, if I could arrogantly claim that term — is the most “theological” of the various musical projects of which I have been a part. It is also the first serious recording project that I have undertaken since I joined the Rock and Theology project. So I can’t help but be reflective in the process of making this record; perhaps more reflective than I have ever been about “what I’m doing” with these particular songs in this particular band. In this post I’d simply like to throw out some very tentative reflections and questions, to “think out loud.” (Can I get a little more of me in my monitor?)

Although my “solo” material has for a long time featured overtly “religious” language, especially Christian imagery and references, I have always emphatically rejected the notion that what I am doing is “Christian rock.” (I have never been interested in “Christian rock,” with the exception of a couple very fringey “Christian metal” bands long ago.) And though no one, to my knowledge, has ever “accused” me of making “Christian rock,” a few listeners have come pretty close. A friend of mine told me once after a show that when he saw my band play he felt like he was at church — “In a good way,” he added. I believe my response was “Thanks?”

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When I was getting my master’s degree in theology I took a class on the book of Psalms. The professor, a Benedictine monk originally from South Vietnam, had a deep passion for the subject. The Psalms were not simply a bunch of words to this man. He actually credited them with saving his life. As a teenager he had been one of the “boat people”— the many Vietnamese refugees who fled the country after the fall of Saigon in small, overcrowded crudely built boats not made for navigating the open sea. Thousands of these refugees succumbed to thirst, hunger and drowning while many others were kidnapped by pirates.

This gentle, soft-spoken monk recalled his long, treacherous journey with a marked calmness. It was only through praying the Psalms, he told us, that he was able to survive the boat trip. These cherished poems and hymns brought him immense comfort, peace and strength.

In his book The Psalms Through Three Thousand Years, William Holladay argues that, when compared with other scripture, the Psalms are unique. While much of the Bible is made up of stories told by other people the Psalms are personal. When we pray a psalm, we address God directly, in the first person. Holladay calls this action performative because we create a new, individualized interaction with God.

Walter Brueggemann, another Old Testament expert and author of The Message of the Psalms, organizes the Psalms into 3 general themes. Psalms of orientation articulate the delight found in God’s creation, Her reliability and presence in our world. Psalms of disorientation reflect anger, resentment and dismay at the injustices, suffering and alienation around us. Psalms of new orientation speak of awe, thanksgiving and praise for the grace of God that intervenes in our lives when we are amidst the depths of disorientation.

It occurred to me that perhaps rock music could be categorized similarly, without the intertwined theology of course. But that topic is for future research and writing. Today, I want to focus on the notion of new orientation. These psalms bear witness to grace, to joy, to praise. My favorite is 118:24: “This is the day which the Lord made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” I try to repeat this prayer at least once a day to remind myself that, no matter how bad things might seem, I am truly blessed.

The words rejoice and glad remind me of a speech the actor Tom Hanks made in 2008 to induct The Dave Clark Five into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He spoke about the joy their music brought to a country mourning the death of President Kennedy:

Why do you need this music? Because on a specific day, a definitive moment in the history of the world, in November of 1963, a terrible storm pounded your classroom in your town and your country, and for weeks and for months, for the longest time, your heart and your world have been wrapped in black, and the head of every single person you look up to is still bowed in mourning. It was the bleakest winter of your discontent. But then mourning became morning, as the sun rose in the East, coming out of England… the Dave Clark Five….

… The true product was joy, unparalleled, unstoppable, undeniable joy…. In fact, next time your New Year’s Eve shebang ain’t banging, well, put on the Dave Clark Five string of hits on “shuffle mode” and I guarantee you that everyone in that room will get up and dance. Everyone will get up and sing, because everyone knows all the words. And how is that? Because over and over and over again, the Dave Clark Five made a joyful sound.

Hearing Tom Hanks’s speech made me think of all the songs that make me feel “glad all over.” You know the ones. Those silly, catchy, upbeat songs that always put a smile on your face. You play one of these songs and no matter how bad things are, your dog may have just died, your boyfriend might have run off with your best friend, it doesn’t matter. For those 3 or 4 minutes you can’t help but feel better. Your head begins to bob to the bass. Pretty soon your foot starts tapping to the drums. Then, even if you hate dancing, you feel compelled to get up and move around. Pretty soon a smile creeps across your face and you start to feel “glad all over.” Sometimes you even try to sing along until you realize you don’t exactly know the lyrics. You thought you did but you don’t because several of these songs don’t make much sense. Some have lyrics that aren’t even real words. Just what does Manfred Mann mean when he says “do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do?” Others have real words in them whose meanings aren’t exactly clear. I still don’t know what a Blitzkrieg Bop is. But that’s okay because whether or not I know or understand the lyrics these songs just make me feel good.

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I recently came across this video of Jacob Moon covering Rush’s 1980s hit “Subdivisions,” and it has bewitched me.

I love that you can hear the lyrics in their learned sweetness, hard half-anger, and egghead poignancy. These lyrics and the original music video were manifesto, landscape, and script for me and many other adolescents, especially boys, in the 1980s.

Subdivisions
In the high school halls, in the shopping malls, conform or be cast out
Subdivisions
In the basement bars, in the backs of cars, be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help to soothe the unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth

As I take in Jacob Moon’s version on repeated viewings, and imagine its place in my current life frame, I notice how little in those lyrics need to change in order to retain as much force for my life at 40 as they did for my life at 13, when this song first came out.

Coming up on ten years of university teaching, and I have written recently at Rock and Theology about the temptations in the professorial life to “die young.” Jacob Moon and I seem to be about the same age, and it is easy to fantasize he took this song to heart like the legions of middle class kids in the 1980s did. This taking-to-heart makes some of these lyrics my informal scripture, annotating scenes from adult life: “Some will sell their dreams for small desires / and lose the race to rats / get caught in ticking traps…”

There is an adolescent force in the “individual against the masses” motif so memorably presented in the Rush lyrics of this era. But let’s not let embarrassment or fear too quickly separate our adult selves from what was once important to us and now forms the substrate of adult life. Seeking such a cultural through-line sometimes goes against the current of polite professional company, but is a continual theme in everyday life for fans of popular music, many of whom, freed from the sanitation laws that structure what used to be called bourgeois society, talk about what parts of themselves survive from the earlier eras of their lives, tied in memory to songs, concerts, musical personae.

I have found the incitements to give up on the dare that life represents to be a nearly habitual spiritual struggle in adulthood. True, there is a wisdom purchased at the cost of surrendering dreams, and doing this wisely is often taken to be intrinsic to a happy adulthood. But Jacob Moon’s cover of “Subdivisions” reminds me that is not the whole story. Eberhard Bethge wrote with generous nuance about his friend, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that the “driving force in his life was the need for unchallenged self-realization.”

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Why try to engage theology with rock and roll here and now with the USA at war, with a financial crisis rearranging lives and livelihoods, with so many serious moral questions impossibly demanding the attention of every thinking adult? Are we not at risk of too casual an approach to a discipline with as weighty a set of concerns as theology? Or, as one of my colleagues said to me, “I sure wish I had time to write about fun topics.” Ought theology only deal with topics of the deepest sobriety? Or indeed, are rock musics and their cultures only “fun” matters? What right, then, have we to devote theological resources to rock?

First, as seemingly all research in cultural studies seems to agree, rock and its cognate musics figure significantly in the practice of everyday life. For North America and the Western-influenced globe, secular music comprises an influential environment; certainly one with which a great many of our students live, with which many in theological cultures live. Robert Wuthnow’s research on generational differences in American religion has found that with regard to the arts, “the most notable generation gap is in preference for contemporary pop/rock music. Nearly four-fifths of young adults in their twenties say they especially like it; fewer than one-fifth of adults age 65 and older do. Other kinds of music, such as classical and country, are generally favored more by older adults than by younger adults. This includes those who especially like Christian music and gospel music.” (After the Baby Boomers, Princeton, 2007, p. 130) As Journalist John Allen wryly observes, today’s students of theology are “usually far more catechized by pop culture than by the church” ( John Allen, “Navigating the Future of Theology,” National Catholic Reporter, 14 November 2008, p. 2a), and according to historian Tim Blanning, the form of pop culture that seems to be most widespread and influential in everyday Western life is secular music (The Triumph of Music, Belknap/Harvard, 2008).

This environment gets registered quantitatively in the significant amount of time that people spend “consuming” rock in its many media and “products”; and qualitatively in the defining emotional and spiritual significance attached for individuals and groups to certain pop culture experiences. In most teaching situations, if I ask people of almost any age to reflect on a “secular” pop culture event or process that has been important for their sense of who they are or what they are about, or ask what scene, lyric, sound or reference they call upon to get through questions or crises, or to remember or incite joy or vision, almost everyone has an example of a favored movie, television show, and especially a song. Considerable research in various disciplines bears out how importantly these musics register what the Second Vatican Council famously called the joys and hopes, griefs and anxieties of people today, and, this research shows, thus are for the maintenance of ongoing identity today. We are still learning what it means for us in this culture of secular musics for Karl Rahner to have told us, “We are not like a street, on which the endless stream of moments passes and then is just as empty as it ever was, once the moments have passed. We are much more like a storehouse, in which every moment leaves something behind as it passes, namely that part of it which is eternal.” (Karl Rahner, Prayers for a Lifetime, Crossroad, 1995, p. 62) That Rahner prayed this, as well as that “It is both terrible and comforting to dwell in the inconceivable nearness of God, and so to be loved by God [such] that the first and last gift is infinity and inconceivability itself” (Prayers for a Lifetime, p. 3), these will give me some coordinates for a theological allowance of rock.

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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

Catholic liturgy is rooted in the Latin adage lex orandi, lex credenti which means the law of prayer is the law of belief. In other words, the way people pray establishes what they believe. For this reason, Catholic liturgies are highly structured with every biblical reading, prayer and song carefully chosen to reflect the Church’s theology. Moreover, when it comes to music, the Church makes an incredibly rigid distinction between what it considers sacred music and what it deems profane. Any rite that takes place in the Church, be it a baptism, wedding or funeral, is required to contain songs that have been approved as sacred and thereby reflect the Church’s theology.

My problem has always been that I simply do not like what the Church designates as “sacred” music. Perhaps it’s because I’ve always despised organs. Or maybe it’s my lack of appreciation for classical music (translation: I like it about as much as organs). Then there’s the Gregorian Chants, so loved by the Church hierarchy, which are sung in Latin, a language few people understand. As for “contemporary” hymns and praise songs (note: Catholics think something is contemporary if it’s written within the last 100 years or so!), they simply annoy me.

Okay, it wasn’t that big of a deal…until my father died. My mother and I went to the church to plan his funeral. We were presented with a book containing a list of songs from which we must choose for the ceremony. My father was Irish and very proud of his heritage so my mother told the music director that the only song she really wanted was the old Irish ballad “Danny Boy.” Not exactly an offensive tune. But no, we couldn’t have that song because, although it may have been sacred to my father, it was not sacred to the Church and therefore, absent from the list. So we were forced to choose songs my mother didn’t know and I didn’t like. That’s when I decided to hire the bagpiper. I left the church, called the funeral home and told them to find a piper to play “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling” at the cemetery. I didn’t, however, tell the priest. Some things were just better left unsaid. After the funeral mass we headed to the graveyard. When the cars arrived we all got out and proceeded to walk behind the casket. The bellow of the bagpipes began to fill the air with a joyful song that made everyone who had known my father smile broadly. Except for the priest. He just ignored the piper while occasionally glaring at me with a look of shock and disdain.

After my father’s death I fell into a deep grief. I had adored him, he’d been my biggest fan and best friend. Yet, in my darkness, I didn’t turn to “sacred” music for comfort. Instead, I turned to rock. Every night I would take a bath and crank up three songs: Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” R.E.M.’s “Everybody Hurts,” and U2’s “Sometimes You Can’t Make it on Your Own” (written for Bono’s father who died of cancer). I would sit there in the bathtub, night after night, sobbing while listening to those songs. That music helped me acknowledge the enormity of my loss, deal with the despair and transcend my grief.

The events surrounding my father’s death got me thinking. What makes some music “sacred”? In 2003 Pope John Paul II defined sacred music as having “holiness as its reference point.” How does one determine what is holy? Must music reference God, Christ, or the Holy Spirit to be sacred? Many works of classical music are considered sacred but contain no lyrics at all. Is it the melody itself, the way it makes us feel, or the timelessness of a particular composition? What roles do culture and institutional authority play? Surely, to be sacred, music must evoke something deep inside of us—a special, transformative insight, emotion or experience. If so, can’t that killer guitar riff, throbbing bass beat, or powerful drum solo do the same thing? Don’t certain rock lyrics also touch the depths of our souls?

I’m not suggesting that rock music take the place of church hymns and chants, or even organs. Although, recently a friend of mine whose children go to the local Catholic school commented that today’s praise music would make “Jesus puke.” He went on to say that one of the best songs to play in church is “See Me, Feel Me” by The Who because what better lyrics are there for moving people spiritually than “see me, feel me, touch me, heal me…?”

Maybe he’s right. I don’t know. But what I’m pretty certain of is that when it comes to music, the disparity between the sacred and the profane is simply not that clear-cut.

Mary McDonough

The debates over filesharing, particularly with relation to music, continue to rage. Here at Rock and Theology, the topic was recently brought up in posts here and here, both of which extended the question of “free” music to the sharing of theological reflection. My own view on the sharing of music, both as a “consumer” of music as well as a musician, is quite liberal. (Two great sources on the politics involved in new music technologies are the irreverent and often potty-mouthed site Tiny Mix Tapes and the personal blog of New Testament scholar and Episcopal priest A. K. M. Adam.)

Regardless of where one stands on the issue, most lovers of music would probably agree that music-sharing technologies are simply fantastic for preserving, sharing and discovering out-of-print music. Countless music blogs have sprung up for exactly this purpose. While poking around on blogs featuring rare and out-of-print ’60s psych-folk, I stumbled on a remarkable record by one Fr. Pat Berkery called Prayers for a Noonday Church, released in 1969. (more…)

The “Rock and Theology” project got its start in the spring of 2007, when a theologian friend sent me a link from “Whispers in the Loggia,” to a story about Notker Wolf, then the head of the Benedictines, a Catholic religious order. There was Wolf, strumming an electric guitar with right hand, left hand a-swashing the neck forth and back, face full of focus and a drum kit off his right shoulder. Oh, yes, that’s definitely an atypically liturgical shade of concert orange sidelight shining onto him and the kit, as well. And that cowl—so exceedingly metal! As a cohabitor of Catholicism, rock music, and theology, as a devotee of loud sounds shaken out of guitars under auburn lights, I could hardly breathe. What face of rock was this? I felt in this picture a strange, uncontrollable, entrancing, and consoling beckoning.

I soon learned that Notker Wolf lives not only in the spiritual atmosphere of Sant’Anselmo in Rome, but of his own rock band, Feedback. This was all too much for me and seemed to spell out an opportunity for integrating much that I cared about. I had been playing bass guitar in rock bands since 1985 (starting in Christian bands, and then off to secular bands by the late 1980s), had been raised Catholic, and had finished a PhD in religion and education at Boston College in 2001. Since then, I’d taught theology at BC, and then at Santa Clara University (and am now at Fordham University). I knew that I was called to an academic theological vocation, but had stayed connected to the rock scene wherever I lived, and played in bands where I could, all the while living the life of a rock fan: going to shows, listening to music, keeping up with music news and online fan discussions.

Immediately after the defense of my doctoral dissertation, I went to get my ear re-pierced and found a rock show that night, as a way of reminding myself what I thought my life should be about. And as I have gotten deeper into academic life, staying in the rock world and playing in rock bands has only become more important for me. I’ve been in more bands since I started teaching college than I was in all my years before. It became impossible to tell whether I was, at my core, more rabid for theology or for rock, and this mutual imbrication began to show up more and more in my theological publications—and in my rock playing and songwriting. More and more of my academic and musical production was beginning to center on the cultural register of theological experience: appreciating what it means to think theology as a cultural (and secular, and musical) practice, and how cultural (secular, musical) practices come to be experienced as theological.

So that Notker Wolf picture activated something in me. I knew other theologians who were also practicing rock musicians, and I wondered how they held it all together. How did they live in both “secular music” and “sacred theology”? I thought it would be worth trying to see what a deeper integration of rock and theology might feel like.

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