Holy Rock ’n’ Rollers

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Though Rock For Life members also participate in more standard forms of activism, they find their biggest constituency at summer rock festivals, a dozen gigantic Jesuspaloozas drawing more than a half-million people—festivals with names like Kingdombound, Alive, and Sonshine. The Christian rock festival has become the superchurch for the thrashing masses and the ultimate mobilizing force for anti-abortionists. “It’s one thing to hear a message in a church,” says Bryan Kemper, “kids’ guards are up; at a concert they’re open to a lot of stuff.”

It’s tough to find a force that galvanizes youth—especially dissenting youth—as effectively as music. The antiwar movement in the late 1960s was deeply tied to rock music, and it’s what brings so many kids today into the evangelical fold. The collective experience of the live show—that intoxicating merger of music’s transcendence and the authority of the performer—is its most powerful form. Christian rock shows even seem capable of reversing what most people would expect of teen behavior. At a festival last year, one of the 40,000 people in attendance had an asthma attack, and the singer of a band halted the show so the audience could pray until her breath was restored. The group prayer lasted 45 minutes without a complaint. Just imagine that energy turned toward right-wing politics.

Most young evangelicals are loath to talk about politics as politics. They insist that their behavior—whom they choose to be intimate with, what books they read, what they drink, how they vote—is part of a way of life directed by their religion and aimed at developing a closer personal relationship with God. (Technically, no political campaigning—of the electoral sort—is permitted at these festivals, because they are all run by not-for-profit organizations. A press representative of the Christian Coalition admitted that the organization leaflets Christian music festivals but declined an interview.)

When some artist-preachers, whether easy-listening or head-banging, break into the mainstream, they scramble to cover up their evangelical roots, driven at times by corporate pressure or their own desire to forge new identities. POD, which stands for Payable On Death, has become Atlantic Records’ best-selling act, topping rock charts, ruling MTV, selling out huge shows nationwide. Except for one song, all its recent lyrics make the band’s personal relationship with Jesus intentionally ambiguous. But take a look at the message boards on their Web site, where members heatedly discuss topics like dating “heathens” and personal faith stemming from “fear of hell,” and you’ll see where their core fan base lies.

Not everyone who shows up at a Christian rock festival or an underground show is a believer. In Hicksville, many of the kids I talk to, like Kevin Murray of the band Now or Never, had not “known Jesus” until they found him in the mosh pit. “Sure, most of us come to this when we’ve been smoking pot or having sex or getting depressed, or hitting a point where we know we can’t live like that anymore,” Murray says. “And you come to a place like this and see a guy like me, and I tell you I’ve been there, and I’ve pulled through it, and I can help you, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a total stranger or think you don’t believe in God, or what. I’ll show you the way.”

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