Table Of ContentThe Counter-Narratives of Radical
Theology and Popular Music
Radical Theologies
Radical Theologies is a call for transformational theologies that break
out of traditional locations and approaches. The rhizomic ethos of
radical theologies enable the series to engage with an ever-expanding
radical expression and critique of theologies that have entered or seek
to enter the public sphere, arising from the continued turn to religion
and especially radical theology in politics, social sciences, philosophy,
theory, cultural, and literary studies. The post-theistic theology both
driving and arising from these intersections is the focus of this series.
Series Editors
Mike Grimshaw is an associate professor of sociology at Canterbury
University in New Zealand.
Michael Zbaraschuk is a lecturer at the University of Washington, Tacoma
and a visiting assistant professor at Pacific Lutheran University.
Joshua Ramey is a visiting assistant professor at Haverford College.
Religion, Politics, and the Earth: The New Materialism
By Clayton Crockett and Jeffrey W. Robbins
The Apocalyptic Trinity
By Thomas J. J. Altizer
Foucault/Paul: Subjects of Power
By Sophie Fuggle
A Non-Philosophical Theory of Nature: Ecologies of Thought
By Anthony Paul Smith
On Philosophy as a Spiritual Exercise: A Symposium
By Philip Goodchild
The Counter-Narratives of Radical Theology and Popular Music: Songs
of Fear and Trembling
Edited by Mike Grimshaw
The Counter-Narratives of Radical
Theology and Popular Music
Songs of Fear and Trembling
Edited by
Mike GriMshaw
the counter-narratives of radical theology and popular music
Copyright © Mike Grimshaw, 2014.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-39413-2
All rights reserved.
First published in 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States— a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978–1–349–48381–5 ISBN 978–1–137–39411–8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137394118
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The counter-narratives of radical theology and popular music : songs
of fear and trembling / edited by Mike Grimshaw.
pages cm
Includes index.
1. Popular music—Religious aspects. I. Grimshaw, Mike, 1967– editor
of compilation.
ML3921.8.P67C68 2014
781.64112—dc23 2013045272
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: May 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface vii
1 Introduction—Sonic Bibles and the Closing of the Canon:
The Sounds of Secular, Mundane Transcendence? 1
Mike Grimshaw
2 My Affair with Ian 17
Jennifer K. Otter
3 In the Colony with Joy Division 25
Clayton Crockett
4 Sonic Stigmatas: Toward a New Fear and Trembling 37
Sophie Fuggle
5 Improvisation and Divine Creation: A Riff on John
Coltrane’s A Love Supreme 51
Sam Laurent
6 Protocols of Surrender: Stammering along the Gothic Line 67
Joshua Ramey
7 Louis Armstrong: A Rhapsody on Repetition and Time 81
Jeffrey W. Robbins
8 I Know My Way from Here: Walking the Hutterite Mile
with David Eugene Edwards 95
Eric Repphun
9 Meeting God in the Sound: The Seductive Dimension of
U2’s Future Hymns 119
Deane Galbraith
10 Praying the Confiteor at Westminster Abbey: Four-on-the
Floor Apocalypse 137
Christopher D. Rodkey
vi Contents
11 Nick Cave and Death 153
Roland Boer
12 Combine Dry Ingredients, Mix Well: Constituting Worlds
through Mix-Tapes and Maxi-Mixes 175
Chris Nichol
13 Why Kanye West Gets It Wrong: It’s Not “Jesus Walks”
but “Christ Who Is Glimpsed” . . . (or How to Think
Theologically in the Modern City) 187
Mike Grimshaw
14 Stop, Think, Stop 197
Daniel Colucciello Barber
Radical Theology Playlist 211
Contributors 213
Index 217
Preface
In 1965, the radical theologian William Hamilton stated the following:
If “Empty Bed Blues,” Tennessee Williams and “Guernica” are the sights
and sounds of neo-orthodox theology, perhaps radical theology is closer to
“We Shall Overcome,” Saul Bellow and Robert Rauschenberg.
(“The Shape of a Radical Theology,” The Christian Century,
October 6, 1965, p. 1222.)
The following mix-tape of essays, was, in the mind of Mike Grimshaw,
both inspired by and pursued in reference to this quote. He sought out
those, like himself, who combined a varying obsession of theology and
music: those who experienced, heard, and saw ‘a sight and sound’ of radi-
cal theology. The mix-tape that resulted, by those who, in some way align
themselves with radical theology, expresses what radical theologies might
sound like in the twenty-first century.
William Hamilton died (February 28, 2011) as the ideas for this collec-
tion were attaining final form. It is dedicated to him.
Chapter 1
Introduction—Sonic Bibles and
the Closing of the Canon
The Sounds of Secular,
Mundane Transcendence?
Mike Grimshaw
“The 3Ds came to me like Chinese whispers. Sweating and drunk, my friend
Mike, who was studying theology, wandered out of an Orientation gig and
declared them rock ‘n’ roll gods. I thought if anyone could recognize the divine,
he could.”1
On their night, the 3Ds were an as transcendent, redemptive experience
as one could ever hope for. Any album doesn’t do justice to what occurred
as these post-punk garage-pop maniacs sonically immolated themselves
before a sweaty, drunk crowd (there was no other in Dunedin) seeking
that simultaneous loss and gain of self that is central to rock ‘n’ roll. There
were a number of such gigs that I could have wandered out of in a similar
state and with a similar declaration at that time. Such glory it was to be
young and in Dunedin at a time when bands from this small, university
city at the bottom of the world were creating an underground “Dunedin
sound” that found its way to influence generations of American college
bands and circulate within the larger British and European indie-mu-
sic scene. The big names were the Clean, the Chills, the StraightJacket
Fits, the Verlaines, and the 3Ds; but often it was the gigs of smaller,
lesser-known bands that burned their way into your soul. These were
M. Grimshaw (ed.), The Counter-Narratives of Radical Theology and Popular Music
© Mike Grimshaw 2014
2 Mike Grimshaw
the Torquemadas—Dunedin students providing an antipodean answer
to the Ramones—, Funhouse who channeled Iggy and the Stooges, the
Orange who harmonized psychedelic pop, and Snapper’s dirty-fuzz riff-
ing. Venturing up to Christchurch there was the sonic assault of Dolphin’s
superpower pop and the concrete wall of sound of Bailter Space. But best
of all these were local bands, made up of people who sold you records,
who lived in flats two houses down, who drank and got drunk in various
pubs and played great indie-pop and rock ‘n’ roll to an ever-expanding
mess of students, hangers-on, and dropouts all looking for that which
took them out of the mundane banality of everyday life and plugged them
into something transitorily transcendent. This was sound, music, rock
that made you feel different to the core of your being. You felt changed
for having experienced it; the possibilities of sound to make you feel and
think anew was transformative. The tinnitus I carry is my aural wound
of Jacob’s wrestling.
The sound itself was a mix of English punk, 1960s Americana and the
Velvet Underground all taken up with a “give it a go” attitude that meant
at some stage almost everyone you knew was in or had been or was friends
of someone in a band. It was the freedom offered by three chords and an
attitude. The freedom that rock music offers to make transformative noise.
If the band scene was one side of this endeavor, the other was a “high
fidelity”-like obsession with vinyl both new and second hand with an
undercurrent of homemade mix-tapes that circulated and got dubbed and
redubbed independent of their compilers. I can remember putting together
a number of eclectic tapes that then got lent out to parties at houses other
than the ones I was going to and later meeting up with people who knew of
me through my mix-tapes. The tapes were a mongrel-mess of sounds and
songs that brought together England and Scotland, New York, Minnesota,
Los Angeles, New Zealand, and Australia in a new sonic narrative of chap-
ters and texts that attempted to speak to and speak of the times and world
we found ourselves in.
The mix-tape was the way most of us back then heard of what was
new—and rediscovered that which had gone underground. The making of
a mix-tape was an introduction to editing—what song follows this, what I
am trying to do by placing this here next to that, what impact, how many
fast songs can one play, do I have too many of this compared to that? They
became statements of sonic identity that, if successful would be adopted by
others as providing possible soundtracks to their lives.
While we tend to think of the album as the text of rock, the reality is
that it is first the single/s and then some selected songs of an album that
we really respond and relate to. The mix-tape, in the age before the skip-
function of the CD and then the perpetual singles of the download and
