As you’ll hear in this conversation, this episode started with a collegial back-and-forth about a footnote concerning punk rock. I was reviewing my friend Erv Klassen’s Doctor of Ministry project on hope, and he took an excellent side quest at the bottom of one of his pages to talk about the birth of punk rock.
Don’t you just love it when music fans get into hairsplitting conversations (i.e. arguments) about who started what and when and how they started it? I know I do. Well, sometimes. And then at other times, I don’t.
Either way, what I love about this footnote is that it started an offline conversation that started the podcast dialogue that you’re about hear—and maybe one day, it’ll result in a micro-course on theology and punk rock. We’ll see. But for the time being, my conversation with Erv is about punk rock, and what that has to do with hope and theology.
The funny thing is, Jacques Ellul wrote about punk rock (and disco) in his book Empire of Non-Sense. And here’s what he says in a footnote:
"These pages were written well before the appearance of punk and disco. But these movements are nothing more than the confirmation and continuation of the previous movement of insignificance congealed by the hypnotic effect of technique. The sounds, the shouts, the gesticulations, the frenzied outbursts, the throbbing, the fragmentation are in reality perfectly stereotyped and express a programmed type of music. The sounds that burst forth do not express any “emotion” in spite of what one says; they simply produce an instant of mind-altered happiness. One must not forget that after punk the emotionless style prevails. After the anarchy and spontaneity of punk comes, not with a tip of the scale but with the continuation of the same tendency, a frozen, rigid, and petrified style. It is not for nothing that one hears “Do the Mussolini,” a derive appeal to Fascism, and constant appeal to death, “I wish I could die…” What causes this completely depersonalized and neutralized ethos and a glorification of militarism?
So, clearly, Ellul wasn’t a fan—at least not of nihilistic synth-punk bands. Fair enough. But the question he asks “what causes this…?” can lead in all sorts of directions, and not all in the ways Ellul proposes here. There are other, more hopeful directions, that punks can take. And in this episode, Erv and I try to articulate what those other directions may be.
Bio
Erv Klassen is the Registrar and Assistant Academic Dean at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford. He teaches in the areas of Spiritual Formation and Christian History. Erv is passionate about old books like medieval Christian devotional literature, and loves introducing these spiritual classics to others. He has worked at Columbia since 2008 following his work as a youth pastor and many summers working at summer camp. He loves playing modern board games, listening to rock and roll, reading Superman comics, flying kites, and birdwatching. He and his family live in Hope (figuratively and literally).
Links
Erv's Doctor of Ministry Project on Hope: https://actsseminaries.com/assets/main/klassen---hope-dmn-project-final-version-with-signatures.pdf
A Non-Comprehensive Punk Rock Playlist in No Specific Order
• Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965–1968
• The Clash - London Calling
• The Go-Gos - Beauty and the Beat • Greenday - American Idiot (2004)
• Iggy and the Stooges - Raw Power
• Patti Smith - Horses
• The Ramones - Ramones
• Talking Heads - 77
• The Clash - London Calling
• Sex Pistols - Never Mind the Bollocks
• The Jam - In the City
• Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures
• New Order - Movement
• Black Flag - Damaged
• Minor Threat - First Two Seven Inches
• Fugazi - 13 Songs
• Bad Brains - Rock for Light
• Refused - Shape of Punk to Come
• At the Drive - Relationship of Command
• Blink-182 - Cheshire Cat
• Blink-182 - Dude Ranch