Kurt Morris is a Boston-based writer, librarian, tour guide, mental health advocate, and recovering evangelical who has written numerous zines including 21 issues of Welcome to Flavor Country and the one-off Donald Trump (Almost) Ate My Brain. His memoir, Fiercely Lonely, is forthcoming on Pioneers Press. Find out more at: kurtmorris.net. Steve Thueson is a cartoonist from Salt Lake City living in Philadelphia. They graduated from the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2017 and make comics about punks, monsters, and punks fighting monsters. You can find more of their work at stevethueson.com. One Punk’s Guide is a series of articles where Razorcake contributors share their love for a topic that is not traditionally considered punk. Previous Guides have explored everything from pinball, to African politics, to outlaw country music. Razorcake is a bi-monthly, Los Angeles-based fanzine that provides consistent coverage of do-it-yourself punk culture. We believe in positive, progressive, community-friendly DIY punk, and are the only bona fide 501(c)(3) non-profit music magazine in America. We do our part. One Punk’s Guide to Christian Punk originally appeared in Razorcake #95, released in December 2016/January 2017. Original article layout by Todd Taylor. Zine design by Marcos Siref. Printing courtesy of Razorcake Press, Razorcake.org This zine is made possible in part by grants from the City of Los Angeles, Department of Cultural Affairs, is supported by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles Arts Commission, and funded by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov. One Punk’s Guide to Christian Punk can almost guarantee your first thought when you saw the title to this piece was, “Christian punk? What in the world is an I article about Christian punk doing in Razorcake?” Well, it’s likely you’ve come across a punk or two (especially if you live in an area with a predominantly Christian population) who describes themselves as a Christian punk. And if you’re not a Christian punk I’m sure you’ve wondered how such terms could be put together. Isn’t punk against Christianity? Thankfully for you, dear readers, during my high school and college years I was a Christian punk (or, more accurately, a punk who was a Christian). My hope is to give you some background on the genre, the major players, and how it sees itself in relation to the non-Christian punk scene. This won’t be an exhaustive history—that would require a book (which is unfortunately not yet written). Instead, it will be this punk’s take on Christian punk. I grew up in Indiana, raised by Christian parents and attended our evangelical church two or three times a week. I wasn’t forced to go—I was a Christian, enjoyed attending youth group events, and have a lot of good memories from that time period. While I can’t say what the reasons were for others being Christian punks, my reasons caused a great deal of conflict in my adolescent mind. I wanted to rebel and fit in. I desired to be my own person—someone who was unique and didn’t go along with the crowd. I wanted to showcase the music I listened to, while also please the god who I believed deserved my allegiance. Somehow my friends and I found a way to combine the punk rock idea of rebellion with Christian values. I was willing to rock the boat, but not too much. Terminology ne of the inherent problems with Christian punk music is definitions. Once again, these come from Omy experiences over the years. While I’m no longer a Christian (for reasons entirely unrelated to the music), I worked in a Christian music store for two years in high school so I’d like to think I know something. But all you Christian punks out there feel free to tell me to fuck off. So, what is Christian punk? How is it defined? Christian punk is music created by Christians, often with a message regarding Christian and Biblical themes. This music falls within the spectrum of what most would consider the structure of “punk” music. (Defining punk music is an entirely different conversation.) But how can Christians be punk? Isn’t punk about questioning authority? To a great extent, Christian punks would agree. Without getting too deep into theology, Christian punks would argue the world is run by sinful human beings, so it’s important to always question the secular world and its motives at all levels. But when it comes to religion, Jesus is an exception. The Christian punk’s take is that Jesus questioned authority and paid for it with his life. If Christians wish to truly follow in Jesus’s steps, they believe they need to question everything except him, since he served as a perfect example (being the son of god). I have—on more than one occasion—heard people say, “Jesus was the original punk.” (It’s possible one of those people was me in high school.) An often bandied-about term in the Christian music scene is “secular music.” This is music that does not fall into the realm of Christian music—so basically anything else. Additionally, there are record labels that cater almost exclusively to Christians, another way in which the divide of Christian and secular music is cleaved. These labels (including Christian punk, hardcore, and metal ones) release albums primarily—although not always exclusively—made by Christian bands. They are distributed primarily in Christian bookstores, where one can buy a wide range of products—including a Bible, a devotional book specifically aimed at teen girls, and a CD by a Christian punk band. The idea of a store only selling Christian music is incredibly rare. As mentioned earlier, there is a basic problem in what the primary identifier is of an individual involved in this scene: Are they first and foremost Christians who also happen to consider themselves punk? Or are they punks who are also Christians? Is the music punk with a “Christian message?” And what is that message? How do we define it? As one can tell, this was—and perhaps still is—a debate within the scene. Responses will vary from person to person. Trying to hitch together a lifestyle, a musical genre, a belief system, and a religion is complicated. It was certainly the source of a multitude of discussions from my time in that scene. Who are we and how do we define ourselves? When it deals with a message that some believe has eternal consequences, it’s not quite as simple as feeling that one just wants to play some punk rock. I wanted to rebel and fit in. I was willing to rock the boat, but not too much. Early History of Christian Punk he roots of Christian punk, like secular music, go back to rock’n’roll. While there were some smaller acts in the Tmid-1960s, Christian rock built up steam in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s with acts such as Larry Norman, The Resurrection Band, and Mylon Levefre. Most of these acts drew influences from blues and folk music. None of these artists were especially original, but their emergence as Christian rock bands was, in itself, groundbreaking. The stage was being set to show that, yes, it was possible for Christians to play what had been known in some Christian circles as “the devil’s music.” Indeed, as artists such as Larry Norman argued on his 1972 album Only Visiting This Planet: “Why should the devil have all the good music?” After the introduction of rock and roll made by Christians, it was only a matter of time for them to start playing other genres of music. It’s difficult to pin down an exact band that started the Christian punk scene, though. That’s partially because the first semblance of punk in the Christian scene were bands drawing influence from new wave, a less threatening subgenre. Acts such as Undercover played a poppy sound akin to the Cars although they had an occasional fast beat. But Undercover seemed more interested in mixing keyboards into their tunes than anything distorted and aggressive. Altar Boys were another act drawing from punk’s roots but with much more in common with the Replacements than the Sex Pistols or Ramones. During the first decade of Christian punk, more bands emerged from Southern California than anywhere else. This wasn’t just a coincidence, however. Music critic J. Edward Keyes writes in his blog that Undercover and Altar Boys formed: “under the aegis of Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California—a laid-back, all-are-welcome type church…. Their connection to Calvary was crucial; the church, as unbelievable as it sounds, was kind of the Gilman Street of the Christian punk community, generating scores of tradition-breaking bands who thought Stryper and Petra sounded about as hokey and terrible as most of their mainstream compatriots did. It wasn’t just a scene, it was a movement, as strong and—in its own world—as revolutionary to the church kids who heard it as the Ramones were to everyone else.” A prominent exception to this great flood of Southern California Christian punk was Miami-based band The Lead. It’s likely they were the first true Christian punk band. Formed in 1984, this three- piece traded off vocals between Julio Rey and Nina Llopis, which in some ways marked the act as even more of an anomaly.