Punk Rock Calvinists Who Hate the Modern Worship Movement": Ritual, Power, and White Masculinity in Mars Hill Church's Worship Music
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"Punk Rock Calvinists Who Hate the Modern Worship Movement": Ritual, Power, and White Masculinity in Mars Hill Church's Worship Music Maren Haynes A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. University of Washington 2017 Reading Committee: Christina Sunardi, Chair Shannon Dudley James K. Wellman Jr. José Antonio Lucero, GSR Program Authorized to Offer Degree: Music ©Copyright 2017 Maren Haynes ii University of Washington Abstract "Punk Rock Calvinists Who Hate the Modern Worship Movement": Ritual, Power, and White Masculinity in Mars Hill Church's Worship Music Maren Haynes Chair of the Supervisory Committee: Dr. Christina Sunardi Music This dissertation presents a critical case study of Mars Hill Church from its founding in 1998 through its closure in 2014 through the lens of the church's music ministry. Led by charismatic and controversial pastor Mark Driscoll, Mars Hill Church began as a small Bible study and grew into a fifteen-site megachurch across five states, largely drawing young adults between ages 18 and 35. Facing a cascade of scandals and accusations in 2014, Driscoll resigned as lead pastor and the church soon closed and dispersed. Tracing this bounded history through interviews with former members and musicians, archival print and web-based materials, published texts and books, and various participant-observation experiences at Mars Hill campuses before and during the collapse, I explore the multifaceted role of musicians as agents in perpetuating the iii church's youth culture orientation, precipitating church growth, centering and inculcating certain theologies, and patterning embodied worship experiences. I begin with an exploration of the history of Christian missions, detailing how 20th century European and American missionaries began to decouple Western cultural norms and practices from Christian orthodoxy, focusing instead on infusing Christian messages into indigenous cultural practices. This "missional" framework animated the rise of Christian rock 'n' roll and the Christian Contemporary Music industry. Mars Hill leaders adopted missional discourses to center the genres of punk and post-punk, perceived as authentic local practices in the Seattle context. I thus explore the cultural constructions of punk rock and the adaptations to punk's founding ideologies, politics, aesthetics, and practices that grunge and indie rock musicians and audiences forged to expand aesthetic bounds, form new audiences, and adapt to economic changes. Further, I detail how the church's musical performances of worship songs, Protestant hymns, and new music in the genres of punk, grunge, and indie rock served multiple roles, allowing the church to accrue subcultural capital in the Seattle music scene while simultaneously differentiating Mars Hill as a masculine religious movement within American evangelicalism. Yet Mars Hill Church underwent phases of massive organizational change in the course of its existence, with an effect on polity, theology, and musical style. To account for these intersecting changes, I draw my theoretical framework from the field of ritual studies at the boundary of performance theory, particularly following Catherine Bell who views ritual as a vantage point from which to analyze the production of power and meaning through habituated action. Bell explores how actions, interactions, and speech iv endow objects, texts, certain personnel or modes of relationship, and so on with meaning(s) that are variously shared, rendering collective ontologies and theologies that pattern political outcomes. While ritual theory affords an encompassing lens of the processes relevant to the production of power, critical theories of gender, race, and class inform my study as intersectional axes of analysis, particularly detailing Driscoll's strident privileging of men and hypermasculinity. As a central node of organizational change, I examine Driscoll and Mars Hill Church's adoption into New Calvinism, a paradenominational movement spanning the Southern Baptist Convention, the Presbyterian Church in America, and various non- denominational adherents. I argue that New Calvinist discourses and theologies lent Driscoll a totalizing operational framework of authority and submission that infused the church's polity, theology, and music ministry, leading to the broad disempowerment of elders, laity and artists. This dissertation thus offers ritual studies as a productive theoretical frame for ethnomusicological research, while furthering academic inquiry into the ways that streams of American Evangelicalism and punk, grunge, and indie rock subcultures variously inform the broad scale production of power and authority in American culture. v To my parents, Deborah and George Haynes, who taught me to value curiosity, compassion, exploration, and education, and my husband Michael Marchesini who offers endless support that sustains me every day. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Even while research and writing involves a great deal of time alone with the computer immersed in the minutia of inquiry, I soon learned that it takes a village to write and complete a dissertation. I wish to acknowledge in gratitude the many who sustained, encouraged, and motivated me amid this project through many seasons and phases. The University of Washington Ethnomusicology department faculty and interdisciplinary faculty on my committee each unlocked a new universe of curiosity, possibility, and analysis during my time as a graduate student. I am daily grateful for the opportunity to spend years in the classroom and community honing my interests and skills, and for the generous financial support provided through scholarships and assistantships throughout my time in graduate school. Dr. Shannon Dudley introduced me to new ways of understanding music-making and community. He routinely challenged me toward greater precision, deeper understanding, and broader inquiry in my research. Dr. James K. Wellman Jr. inspired my interest in megachurch research and introduced me to this project's underlying theoretical framework in ritual studies. He consistently provided invaluable support as a mentor. Dr. José Antonio Lucero offered generous support, input, and guidance throughout this project, far exceeding his role as a Graduate Student Representative. I am particularly thankful for the mentorship and attention of my advisor and committee chair, Dr. Christina Sunardi, who consistently went above and beyond as an advisor, mentor, and educator. She offered lengthy meetings to discuss issues and talk through nascent ideas, aided in shaping and solidifying my arguments and interpretations, vii and read each draft with a close eye to detail, always with enthusiasm and genuine encouragement. I am deeply grateful to Christina for her positivity, support, and rigorous feedback. She made this project possible. Additionally, I am grateful for my colleague cohort in Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington—Kait LaPorte, James Morford, Jocelyn Moon, Claire Anderson, David Aarons, Joe Kinzer, Bonnie McConnell, Julia Day, and many others who came before us—who taught me how to practice genuine collegiality and camaraderie. I am grateful for the mutual trust and respect the department fostered amid our varying academic interests, experiences, and perspectives, viewing these as opportunities for collaboration and growth rather than competition. I learned an incredible amount from each of my colleagues, and cherish the hours spent in the TA office, in rehearsals, and in class together, whether sharing our research, expanding on class discussions, expressing and analyzing frustrations (usually with Kait), or arguing about interpretations (usually with Jim). I would also like to thank the faculty, staff, and students of Pacific School of Religion in the Graduate Theological Union for providing a haven for further research, inquiry, exploration, and creativity during my non-residential phase of research and writing. I am particularly grateful for Dr. Sharon Fennema for bringing me on as a collaborator in her life-giving, expansive, and creative approach to music and worship. PSR chapel services and rehearsals offered a much-needed contrast to my dissertation content, endeavoring to discover what multi-racial, queer-centered, decolonized spirituality might look, sound, and feel like. I am grateful to my many colleagues and collaborators, but especially Dr. Mary Donovan Turner, Andrew Jamieson, Laurie viii Isenberg, Schmian Evans, Marvin White, Latishia James, and Amanda Mathew who each taught me how to hunger for compassionate, freedom-seeking, uncompromisingly liberating spirituality rooted in an impatience for justice. Thank you, as well, to my many interdisciplinary academic colleagues in religion and music who read and critiqued my work, discussed ideas and drafts, and introduced me to new interpretive lenses, epistemologies, and ontologies beyond my own disciplinary silo. Thanks especially to Dr. Justin Tse, who routinely read drafts of my work and offered lengthy feedback, alongside Dr. Johann Van Niekerk, Mauricio Najarro, and Reuben Shank. Through their critical, enterprising ways of thinking, my world routinely shifted on its axis. Further, I am grateful for my international colleagues in Christian congregational music research who offered sustained support, encouragement, and criticism in every aspect of this project, and whose exceptional research and nuanced writing I admire and seek to emulate. Thanks especially