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Religion 169

Christiangoth.com features articles, testimonials, and a link to a Washington
D.C.–Maryland area organization called “Hope for the Rejected,” which
ministers to Christian subcultures. Loyal T., a “Youth for Christ evangelist
since 1998” runs Hope for the Rejected with the goal “to establish unity and
fellowship in the underground scene as a whole…to not only bring together
but unify the three largest underground subcultures: the Punk, Goth, and
Hardcore communities” (“Hope for the Rejected” 2007). Christian music
festivals such as Cornerstone and organizations such as Hope for the Rejected
work hard to blend traditional ritual such as prayer and Bible study with
American youth subcultures.
However, Christian rock musicians are often caught in a tension between
the lure of the mainstream and the needs of the Christian communities
that they largely serve. Christian stores refused to carry “The Fundamental
Elements of Southtown” by hard rock band P.O.D., a popular act at
Cornerstone, because its cover depicted “a figure sitting cross-legged with
open cavities in his head and body (one stores the sacred heart of Jesus, and a
dove is dropping a symbol of the Trinity into another).” P.O.D. changed the
artwork for the Christian market to a “black cover with a small square showing
only the seated figure’s face” (Beaujon 2006: 29). Like an earlier generation
of evangelicals that utilized television and radio to spread its message,
young twenty-first century Christians—journalist Lauren Sandler calls them
the “Disciple Generation”—have appropriated the Internet and popular
music to gather in their peers (Sandler 2006: 121). Like Christian Goths
negotiating between the larger Gothic subculture and conservative Christian
values, Christian rock musicians are making their way in a contested terrain
between evangelical Christianity and mainstream commercial success.
Many conservative Christians are uncomfortable with the appropriation
of subcultural style and popular media. “Donnie Darko” played to a packed
room of Imaginarium participants, many of them identifiably Goth. Tim,
one of the audience members, complained in his blog that he could not help
but hear a protest group “just outside the tent singing songs like ‘Light of
the World’ and ‘Jesus is the Light’ over and over” (Tim 2006). Protester
Dwayna Litz described her “covert mission trip” to Cornerstone 2006 in her
blog on “Days of the Dead at Cornerstone ‘Christian’ Youth Camp”: “Skulls
and pictures were also placed to remember Mr. Rogers. However, it was not
a beautiful day in the neighborhood! It was a satanic night in the ‘Days of
the Dead.’ ” Litz worried that young people were not learning appropriate
Christian beliefs and practices concerning the dead:

There were the pictures in the glowing dead shrine of everyone from Rosa
Parks to Mr. Rogers…Many would speak to the dead people saying, ‘I just
want to thank ___ for all he/she has taught me,’ as if the person’s spirit