Message #69256

[Psalm 51:17]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/21/audiofeed-christian-rock-music-festival-illinois
7/21/17
God and metal: scenes from a **** Christian music festival

Photographer KC McGinnis went to Audiofeed, a Christian rock and metal festival, to revisit his roots. He found a surprising cross section of believers, incredibly loud music and a serious rock attitude

by KC McGinnis at Audiofeed, Illinois

At the beginning of July, I photographed Audiofeed, a Christian rock and metal festival in Illinois.

This was a bit of a reunion for me. As a teenager growing up in the evangelical subculture, I was a huge fan of Christian hard rock and metal in the early 2000s. The music helped me feel adventurous and unique, and it was an important way for me to craft an identity. I lost track of the scene after going to college, but I never stopped enjoying the music.

Since 1984, every Christian punk’s dream was to play at a festival called Cornerstone – a weeklong bohemian campout commonly likened to a Christian Woodstock. Cornerstone went defunct in 2012, and Audiofeed is in part an attempt to reunite the Cornerstone crowd, some of whom have moved on from Christian rock or from evangelical Christianity altogether. One of this year’s headliners, David Bazan, is a vocal ex-evangelical.

I came to this festival to get a clearer picture of what the next generation of post-culture war evangelicals will look like. A veteran of the festival recalled the days he couldn’t wear his Slayer T-shirt in church. Attending this festival made me wonder what kinds of things the current generation of evangelicals may be more tolerant of in, say, 20 years.

What I found was a surprisingly diverse cross section of evangelicalism: a predictable share of conservatives and charismatics, but also a vocal contingent of progressive evangelicals, including a transgender teen who claims to have both come to Christ and come out as trans at this festival. I also found many who have left the faith but who still see members of the Christian **** scene as their closest family.

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