Page 187 - Key Words in Religion Media and Culture

170 Sarah M. Pike

was in the place to hear. (No clarification was made on how we should
not speak to the dead according to the Bible, of course).
(Litz 2006)

Litz’s blog on Cornerstone 2006 set off a lively blogging battle and a
spirited defense in Jesus People USA’s Cornerstone magazine (Trott 2006).
Controversy about Cornerstone reveals rifts among conservative evangelicals
over the proper attitude toward popular media and youth subcultures.
The emergence of music festivals all over the country, the presence of
bands and their friends on MySpace, and the ease of downloading music
have enabled music and religion to negotiate new relationships in the “other
spaces” of alternative clubs, music festivals and online communities. Christian
Goths, Hare Krishna hard-core fans, and Muslim hip-hop followers, to name
just a few examples, have created spaces for themselves in a larger corporate
mediated music culture. The punk and hard-core scenes, often typecast as
radically secular and anarchistic, include Christian and Muslim punk and
Hare Krishna hard-core. Hare Krishna hard-core is a far cry from Krishna
devotees chanting in airports, and yet there is overlap between them, for
instance, when hard-core band 108 chants “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama”
between songs at their live shows and includes band member Rasaraja’s
personal testimony on their MySpace site (Dasa 2007). Religion, popular
music, and politics converge in unexpected ways at festivals and music
shows.
From devotional chanting in punk clubs to Black Muslim rap, music
is an important medium for expressing and shaping religious belief and
practice. In “Enemy,” Ice Cube raps, “Master Fard Muhammad [founder
of the Nation of Islam] comin’ like a comet/when they see him, they all
start to vomit” (Knight 2006). The Five Percent Nation, an offshoot of
the Nation of Islam, blend rap and the teachings of N.O.I. prophet Elijah
Muhammad. Five Percenters have included Queen Latifah, Erykah Badu,
and members of the Wu-Tang Clan as past or present members. Like hard-
core Hare Krishna youth and Christian Goths, most Five Percenters practice
clean-living and vegan lifestyles. Subcultural Christians, hip-hop Muslims,
and Hare Krishna hard-core bands have created spaces for themselves in
popular culture and within their religious traditions that subvert norms and
challenge stereotypes.
Judging from the popularity of supermarket tabloids, the reading public
and obliging reporters love stories of the evil other. Vampires preying
on innocent college students make better headlines than my attempts to
humanize the members of Heaven’s Gate. To restore agency to the objects
of earlier studies of religion and to correct the colonial history of religion
and its Other, we might, as Johannes Fabian recommends, strive to achieve