Saturday, November 04, 2006

Jesus of Cool

One of the duties of this blog will be to show you examples of fundies trying to get with the kids. A longer article on the abomination that is Christian Rock will follow at some later stage but, for the mean time, enjoy this press release about a festival to be held at the Raleigh Street Christian Centre in Cambridge:
After a wildly successful freshman year, In His Honour is back to rock harder and prove that it's here to stay. The recipe: Take a half-dozen of New Zealand's best bands, chuck them on two stages and cram their acts into one amazing day. Topped with the mother-of-all stage set-ups. Jivin' to your favourite bands cranked all the way up to eleven, this will be a day you'll be sharing with your grandkiddies (just to show 'em you knew how to rock). Just follow S.H.1 to Cambridge on November 11. And the entry fee is next-to-nada.

Rockin'. Note as well, the names of the bands involved: Mumsdollar, Moped, Radiator. You would never guess they were doing the work of the Lord. Perhaps this is the phenomenon known as stealth evangelism or perhaps they are thinking they can just slip into the mainstream, as POD and Evanescence have done. As this discussion on the desperately hip Christian yoof forum Soul Purpose shows, such tactics are something of an issue for young fundies.

4 comments:

Josh said...

Have you heard about Stephen Baldwin's post-9/11 conversion and reinvention as an XTREEEEME preacher? He has massive events with, like, skateboarders in half pipes and stuff, where he proclaims himself to be a "Jesus psycho" (even more freaky than a "Jesus freak") and gets down with the kidz (who are largely half his age).

He's just released an autobiography called "The Unusual Suspect" (Subtitle: "You know, like the one good film I was in?"), in which he basically says that free will is for Satan. Bono, too.

Anonymous said...

The annual Parachute Festival is another example of fundies trying to influence the young through music. Their mission is "To take Christian Music in New Zealand to unprecedented levels… to use music both locally and globally to move people closer to Jesus Christ."

The Parachute Music Company, which runs the festival, has published a graph showing the rising influence they hope to achieve, but as there is no scale on the y-axis it's pretty meaningless!

http://www.parachutemusic.com/about/aboutparachutemusic.php

Paul said...

The graph is new to me. Thank you. I contributed to an article about Parachute for Craccum earlier this year. From what I could find, its mission seems to be more about moving lots of money than moving people closer to Christ. Parachute has Christian music in New Zealand in its hands. Not only do they have all the major local acts on their label, but they control distribution of overseas acts.

I will post my Craccum piece here soon.

Anonymous said...

I call 'em Chameleon Christians myself...

Craig Y.