Holy Rock ’n’ Rollers

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It’s moving, actually, to watch guys with tattoos and downcast eyes, peering from their black sweatshirt hoods as they approach band member after band member, saying, “My friend brought me, and he thought I could talk to you.” It’s a bizarre twist on the cool posturing of punk shows I’d occasionally checked out in high school. To watch a community of people form before your eyes, connecting through music to each other and to a shared vision, committing to the political causes they identify as joined with that vision—it’s the vibrant community of a liberal utopian’s dream.

That is, if you can block out those Rock For Life shirts, the repetition of “Jesus” and “Lord” from the conversations. This, of course, is impossible. Even though religion is a dirty word to these instruction-fearing believers (as Murray says, “We’re against religion—our God is a God of freedom, not one of religion who won’t let you have tattoos”), it’s the only reason this scene works. And that’s the reason politics so effortlessly becomes a part of the scene. It’s the nature and extraordinary effectiveness of evangelical Christianity—the whole-life, whole-belief experience. So whether you’re praying in church or at a club, or screaming on a stage or at the doors of an abortion clinic, it’s all just an articulation of the oft-repeated “way we live.” Is it a political movement? Not in the usual sense. But it is a massive and exponentially self-replicating cultural movement that binds itself inherently to politics.

Lauren Sandler writes about culture for publications such as The Nation, The New Republic, Elle, and The Los Angeles Times. She lives in New York, where she is currently investigating the cultural ramifications of the museum looting in Iraq as part of a project sponsored by Harvard's Carr Center (the human rights center at the Kennedy School). Reprinted from The Nation (Jan. 13, 2003). Subscriptions: $39.97/yr. (47 issues) from Box 55149, Boulder, CO 80322.

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