Holy Rock ’n’ Rollers

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IN HICKSVILLE, Long Island, on any given Sunday afternoon, pierced and tattooed teenagers in black clothing gather to watch as other kids like themselves tear their fingertips on guitar strings and scream unintelligibly into microphones. All the elements of the indie music scene announce themselves: the spiky haircuts, the leather, combat boots, the wide eyes, the acne. At one recent show, Matt Koldinski, the lead singer of the band Legacy, muddles his lyrics with screams and throws his head back in ecstasy. To those assembled, this is music in all its soul-baring transcendence.

Then, in a break between songs, Koldinski does something that would be unthinkable at most hard-core rock shows. Panting and solemn, he invites people in the crowd to come up and talk to him about their problems after the show. He has been there, he says. And he has found the answer. “The reason I’m here, that the band is here, is that we love Jesus,” he says. “So if you have any problems, come up, say God loves me, let me help you find the way.”

Legacy is just one example of the proliferation of Christian rock over the past decade. Christian is the only musical format with increased sales in the past year—cracking the 50-million-album mark—and it is poised to eclipse country music in sales, according to Rick Welke at Radio and Records magazine. He says nearly 500 such bands have been signed to major labels. Meanwhile, innumerable garage bands are performing in storefront churches and other small venues around the country.

It’s not surprising that a certain number of disaffected youth have found hope and meaning in their own “personal relationships with Jesus,” in their literal reading of the Gospel, and in their collective desire to spread the word—in their own words. And yet it’s still jarring to see these punks in metal cuffs and fatigues, the girls in too much eye makeup, the guys in too much hair dye, setting up a table at this show to dispense leaflets against pornography, masturbation, and abortion.

The anti-abortion part of the message comes courtesy of Rock For Life, an organization launched almost 10 years ago by Bryan Kemper, who was then a mohawked security guard trying to make it in the hard-core scene. Kemper says he saw a woman lying on a table at a Los Angeles abortion clinic, which he interpreted as a sign from God that he should get into activism. “God gave me a literal vision for Rock For Life,” he explains. “I saw the concerts, the kids in the streets. I knew from that moment on that’s what my life had to be.” Since then, more than 100,000 kids have signed Rock For Life’s pledges to work to end abortion. There are more than 80 youth chapters nationwide, staffing tables at hundreds of shows like this one every week.

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