CANON by Rob Jones

A P R I L / M A Y # 1

£4.00

Chris.ti.an.. i ty

| kris CH ē anitē |

Noun: 1. The religion based on the person and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, or its beliefs and practices. 2. Christian quality or character: you may know a man by his Christianity.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or part without written permission from the publishers. ÂŠ2012 CANON Magazine. The views expressed in CANON are those of the respective contributors and are not necessarily shared by the publisher or CANON Magazine. These parties cannot be held responsible for them.

Produced by Robert Jones. jones.rjones.rob@gmail.com/07791906173 Cover photograph by Terry Richardson, cover design by Rob Jones and Joe Allam. Thanks for help in development go to: James Uden, Alex Cull, Joe Allam, Elly Tanaka, Dario Utichi, Katarina Hjorth, Rob De Niet, Lucy Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien, Mark Treadwell, George Jones. Thanks for encouragement and love to my family and friends.

THE NAMES AND ORDER OF ALL THE

STUFF IN THIS ISSUE OF CANON, WITH THE NUMBER OF THEIR PAGES

Editors Letter Madonna Christwire The Tree of Life Scrooge & Marley Hymns Christianity as a Child/Adult

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. . . . . . .

4 12 16 18 21 22 28

Kingston Street Pastors The Repubican Election: Bullshit Jim LePage House of Humanity Alain de Botton Christians in Films: Cool & Crazy

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40 46 50 56 66 68

THE FIRST ISSUE OF CANON:

CHRISTIANITY W

elcome to CANON.

Let us introduce ourselves…. We are a culture and lifestyle magazine, but everything we write about is based around the concept of religion. We’re not pro-religious, neither are we an atheist nor anti-religious magazine. No, instead, this publication takes modern day and current issues, figures and topics that regard religion and investigates, reports and reviews them constructively and incisively. We take pleasure in the wonder of religion from a factual point of view. Religion is and will always be apparent in society, and we’re interested in it because let’s face it, it’s interesting. We’ve researched and investigated and now we want to share this canon of knowledge we have acquired with you. For our first issue, we tackle

CHRISTIANITY. Now the formalities are over; a short history lesson:

“Christianity is today the world’s most widespread religion, with more than a billion members, mainly divided between the Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox Churches. It originated among the Jewish followers of Jesus of Nazareth, who believed that he was the promised Messiah (or ‘Christ’), but the Christian Church soon became an independent organization, largely through the missionary efforts of St. Paul. In 313 Constantine ended official persecution in the Roman Empire and in 380 Theodosius I recognized it as the state religion. Most Christians believe in one God in three Persons (the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) and that Jesus is the Son of God who rose from the dead after being crucified; a Christian hopes to attain eternal life after death through faith in Jesus Christ and tries to live by his teachings as recorded in the New Testament.”

They are the facts, but the way we think about this religion is a lot different. When I was a kid, Christianity was a given; I never even questioned whether I believed in God or not. To me it meant celebration and family, presents and food, songs and stories - it might have meant something different to you. But for me, after a while it all changed. As I got older I saw the cruelty of the world we live in and, for many like myself, found Christianity doesn’t have all of the answers. But it’s still plays a huge part in society, for both believers and non-believers. It’s in art and music; it’s on the streets and on TV and in film. In this issue we look at where Christianity has found itself within these mediums, as well as many others, in the 21st century: - We talk to agnostic and Catholic-imagery-led garage rock band Hymns, as well as examine Madonna’s careershaping obsession with religion. - We speak to graphic designer Jim LePage about his series of designs that illustrate what the books of the bible mean to him. - We catch up with world famous philosopher Alain de Botton about his new book and why both believers and non-believers alike are condemning him for it. - We go out on a Saturday night in Kingston-Upon Thames with a Street Pastor team and find that their volunteer work isn’t all about cleaning up pissed girls covered in sick. - Plus, we do a top ten of the coolest and craziest Christians from the movies. All this and much more loads this issue of CANON’s cannon to blow apart what Christianity means in society and culture today. Rob Jones - Creator.

‘O

h, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins,’ Madonna confesses in spoken word on ‘Girl Gone Wild’, the first track on her new record, MDNA. ‘Because I dread the loss of heaven, and the pains of hell/But most of all because I love Thee, and I want so badly to be good,’ she seductively utters before pouncing on a massive, four-on-the-floor disco hymn.

Unlike the Blessed Virgin, Madonna’s leadership and influence came through personal experience and decision, rather than through birthright. Her mother, a French-Canadian woman, was brought up an extremely strict Catholic, with martyrdom being emphasized as very important in her faith. Her Italian-American father was also a strong Catholic and so, because of the high regard in which religion was held in her childhood home, Madonna was brought up a strict Catholic too. Naturally this influence is what begun a career-long obsession with Catholicism and everything that goes with it: forgiveness, sin and guilt among others. The vivid imager y M a d o n n a presents on stage and in her videos is influenced from her childhood home, which was full of statues and Sacred Hearts. “My mother was a religious zealot,” Madonna herself has said in the past. “There were always nuns and priests in my house growing up.”

Whether we’ve simply come to expect this from her or not; the proclaimed Queen Of Pop, whose career spans some thirty-one years, is still flirting. But why are we still interested? “It is that music, combined with an odd, luminous beauty, compelling energ y and highly theatrical shows that has made Madonna a quasi-religious icon, ” Hol l ywood actor Rupert Everett once said. And in many ways, he’s right. Worshiped by the likeminded and feared by traditionalists, Madonna has become a Christ-like figure in pop culture. Her original ideas displayed with charismatic fashion converted a wondering flock into believers of intellectual pop music.

RAY OF LIGHT

This may explain the root of her obsession but w h e r e ’s t h e reasoning? Like in many types of art, the core of the obsession is often in questioning it, rather than accepting it. “I don’t know how curious my mother was… but that’s my personality – I want to know what’s going on behind what I can see,” she said.

MADONNA: Behind a Spiritual Icon.

“Quasi-religious icon” may just be the perfect phrase to sum Madonna up. Her status may be prophet like but her ideals are far from pure. Instead of portraying a virgin of modesty and purity like the iconic religious figure she is named after, this Madonna is sexual and adulterated although still spiritually captivating.

You don’t need to be an expert to know Madonna’s career is littered with biblical themes, metaphors and flirtations. Singing whist imitating a crucifixion from a mirrored disco cross on a 2006 tour named Confessions? Releasing songs entitled ‘Ray Of Light’ and ‘Like A Virgin’? Not to mention kissing a resurrected, stigmata-bearing black Jesus in her ‘Like A Prayer’ music video – even more provocative when you remember the Madonna was Mary Mother of Jesus – she’s done it all. “Images like crucifixion, stigmata and the Sacred Heart are very visually and viscerally powerful,” Madonna biographer and writer of Like An Icon, Lucy O’Brien explains. “Madonna has a strong imagination, and with her the themes of love, sex, religion and music are instinctively combined.”

“I just wanted to show off. And I knew I could get away with it, and I knew I could get people to pay attention to me” -Madonna

Without looking beneath the surface, it can all seem it’s done for shock value, a marketing tool. O’Brien says, “Madonna is a businesswoman as well as a performer, so it’s natural for her to put a spin on her ideas, using controversy particularly with religion.” Controversy and Madonna have had a very close relationship for years. In the aftermath of her ‘Like A Prayer’ video, she appeared in a Pepsi commercial singing the song, outraging religious groups furthermore. Since then she’s engaged in more and more controversy, sometimes even provoking it. After many religious groups expressed that singing from on the cross as if Christ-like was in poor taste, in statement to the press, she told them, “Jesus would’ve loved it,” and then invited Pope Benedict XVI to the next show she plays. Sassy. Arguably, the most controversy Madonna causes is when she links sex with religion. She knows that being sexually provocative in a religious context will get her attention and media coverage and has taken advantage of that to the nth degree. “Sometimes,” she admitted in 2005, “I just wanted to show off. And I knew I could get away with it, and I knew I could get people to pay attention to me.” The biggest disgruntlement she caused came when, whilst on her Blonde Ambition tour, after singing ‘Like A Prayer’ (with two male dancers feeling her up a bit), she would simulate masturbation. Even the Vatican voiced their opinion on her actions, with the Pope asking the general public and the Christian community to boycott the concert completely. Still cold? Get closer to that fire love.

But an entire career isn’t based on a fascination to upset old religious figureheads and fundamental Christians. Really, the proof is in the pudding, as surely if it were all for shock value, the ideas would be superficial and empty. Obviously this is not so. Even since her initial flirtations with religion, she has managed the provocation of her output – be it music, video, film, photography or fashion – with knowledge and intellect. The Like A Prayer album, for instance, is a layered knowledge of religion. It’s shown on the title track alone when she uses the line ‘Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone’ with both its everyday, and its proper Catholic mystical meaning. Madonna used - and is still using - concepts she learned as a child in the Catechism and fused it with adult emotions around sex and romance, an original fusion exercised in a contemporary, maybe timeless, way.

She has returned to the theme once more with MDNA, specifically with the track ‘I’m A Sinner’. But why keep returning to ground that she has covered times upon times before? Although Madonna rejected Catholicism, too patriarchal and unfitting to her idea of herself as a modern liberated feminist, it seems a sense of spirituality will always be important to her. “I think that all of us have God in us and that we have Godlike qualities; the ability to be like God,” she has said. This could be the reason she keeps returning to themes that go as far back to childhood. In order to engage with that spirituality, she plays with it, as she likes, like a cat would a ball of string. In the video for ‘Girl Gone Wild’, once she has confessed regret for ‘Having offended Thee,’ among the visuals we see are half naked men eating one apple at the same time. Writer Camille Pagila once said Madonna has “Rejoined and healed the split halves of women: Mary, the blessed virgin and holy mother, and Mary Magdalene, the harlot’.

Pure but corrupt. Sorry but not that sorry.

THE WORLD IS GOING TO END AND IT’S ALL OBAMA’S FAULT! CHRIS WIRE

gets you to question what you’re really reading.

hink you’ve found your new favorite rightwing, American, Christian-centric propaganda website? Well maybe look a bit closer, especially if it’s Christwire that you’ve come across.

The site has so much content you can be occupied (and laughing) for hours. There’s Foreign Dangers, which includes information and advice about ‘Commies’ and North Koreans; Science, with a special subcategory for ‘Lies Of Evolution’, as well as the investigative area of the website, dedicated specifically to exposing ‘Gay Agendas’ and ‘Liberal Conspiracies’. It’s become so popular that it gets millions of views and the creators have recently published, The Christwire Handbook: Staying Saved In A Wicked World.

“Together, in this community, you and your Moral Leaders will combat the evil liberals of this world and let those who don’t abide by our teachings know the eternal pit of hellfire shall be awaiting!” reads the conclusion of the website’s mission statement. The site hopes to restore the “Guiding principles of conservatism and Christianity, from which all morality is born” back into American society.

Amusing when you’re in on the joke, but when the site first began to pop its head up on the web, many took it completely seriously, reacting naturally outraged. NBC Los Angeles were just one of the news mediums to be fooled into reporting a story they had read on Christwire as real news – in their case, the story Bill Murray was “A murder of lambs.” In 2010, the New York Times ‘outed’ the site as a joke and interviewed the two friends behind it. “There’s just rampant idiocy in the media sometimes,” Kirwin Watson, who cofounded the site with Bryan Butvidas, said. “People watch their favorite news channels, don’t question it and will regurgitate it the next day at the office. That is no good at all.”

Well, not really. When it first hit the web it was great fuel for religion bashing atheists and liberals alike, probably the extremists on the other end of the spectrum. But the site is actually a brilliantly satirical piss-take of the stereotypical Christian, republican-voting Yank. The website publishes daily news stories about the horrors of this liberal world we have apparently found ourselves in. The write-ups are hilarious, most of them mock-warnings. There’s ‘Starbucks: Are You Drinking The Gay?’ Which includes advice like, “A good Christian must be cautious with their choices of beverages. You don’t want to drink something homosexual or something liberal and atheist.” And the brilliant damnation of the modern male, ‘Metrosexuality: Satan’s Second Most Fabulous Demon’, in which Christwire warns nothing can stop the feminization of young men, not even with God “Striking down the homogays with AIDS.”

So rather a parody of over the top Christian beliefs or a piss-take of actual news, the content on the site is a reminder to actually think for yourself and not believe everything you hear and read. An important message exorcized in the funniest of ways.

Below are some of our favorite Christwire stories:

I. Barack Obama Forces Children to Use Facebook, Helps Gay Agenda II. You Want Some Alone Time With Our Kids? That's Just Not Appropriate, Mr. Obama III. The United States 0f Sin (Sinmap 0f The United States, Collaboration With Kansas State University) IV. Lindsey Lohan is a Lesbian Vampire V. Atheists Invent Armored Catfish, Beasts Destroys South Florida Ecosystem VI. Newly Uncovered 18th Century Artwork Proves the French are Sissies VII. Liberal Pedophiles Unleash Hello Kitty Lingerie (Photos) VIII. Negro Uprising! Riot Breaks Out in Miami IX. The Hunger Games: A Barbaric Socialist Saga of Impending Obama-Sanctioned Doom X. Kony 2012: The Leftâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Recurring Assault on Christianity

Nature vs. Grace

Artwork by James Martin.

jamesmartinart.com

Terrence Malick’s Palme d’or winning and Oscar nominated spiritual epic transcends the joys and tragedies of life.

s it a masterfully profound comment on the role of suffering within God’s world or is it a cinematic mind-fuck, without so much as a steady narrative?

Whatever it is, it’s bloody beautiful. But lets deal with the former. If the purpose of this Terrence Malick picture is to ask why God allows suffering, then it does so in many different ways. Giving us an introduction to this theme, Malick has Sean Penn’s character, Jack O’Brien, aimlessly wondering around, his internal monologue displayed via voiceover: “Where were you? Who are you? Who are we to you? Why should we be good if you aren’t?” he asks God. “The riddle of existence is not a riddle the universe poses to us, but one we pose to ourselves, as Malick does in The Tree of Life.” Steven D. Greydanus, film critic for the National Catholic Register, tells me. “We are the riddle, and the very fact that we ask the questions we do is one of the best clues we have to the answers we seek.” In exploring rather than solving that riddle, Malick flirts with the Biblical parable found in the book of Job from the Old Testament. As the film begins, a section of the book is shown on screen; the beginning of God’s response to Job’s complaint of suffering: “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?...When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy? Job 38:4,7.”

The book of Job, in which God enables Satan to test a happy man’s faith by forsaking him with numerous afflictions, but to no avail, is a metaphor for why God allows suffering in the word. In many ways, The Tree Of Life tells the story of Job, but also shows what is perhaps Malick’s personal conclusion of the story; that life is a battle between Nature and Grace. Within the film’s first minutes we see the childversion of Penn (played by Hunter McCracken) and his brothers playing happily whilst their mother, played by the wonderful Jessica Chastain, speaks in voiceover. “The nuns taught us there were two ways through life,” she says, “The way of nature and the way of grace.” Nature “Is willful; it only wants to please itself, to have its own way. … It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it,” she continues. But Grace, by contrast, “Doesn’t try to please itself; it accepts being slighted, accepts insults and injuries. … No one who follows the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.” Throughout the rest of the film, Malick explores the roles of Nature and Grace in many different incarnations. These incarnations sometimes seem strange in choice since the film, even in its title, has so many religious overtones. The film’s lengthy ‘beginning of the world’ sequence – beautifully showing galaxies, stars, planets and the incarnation of earth through glorious CGI – touches more on Darwinism than the Biblical explanation you would expect. But Malick’s pantheistic treating of God only makes the film’s conflict of Nature and Grace richer. In a now much talked about scene, a predatory dinosaur comes across a smaller dinosaur lying wounded near a stream and places its foot firmly on the other dinosaur’s head before moving on. In the film’s constant representation of Nature and Grace, is this Nature asserting its dominance, or is it Grace sparing the wounded creature’s life? Afterwards, illustrated in more brilliantly used CGI, a meteor strikes the earth, wiping out the dinosaurs while ushering in a new era of life. Is this again showing both the cruel and kind sides of the universe without even considering God’s role? Or is it emphasizing God’s power, presenting us with the brilliance of what the Lord can giveth and taketh away? Like I said, it’s kind of a mind-fuck.

Penn; ‘I’m getting my knees wet but I don’t care ‘cos I’m in Heaven!’ The clearest demonstration of Malick’s Nature vs. Grace battle is shown via the narrative in the film. Naturally, the story of Jack O’Brien and his family living in Texas in the ‘50s is the area of the film that is the most connectable. For Jack, his mother - gentle and nurturing - represents Grace in this modest suburban setting, whilst his father (Brad Pitt) – strict and tempered – symbolizes Nature. Jack’s early life is a blissful playtime where his mother’s joyful personality dominates. Eventually though, his father’s often-unreasonable sternness dominates his life, and as this slowly becomes apparent, tragedy also rears its head. Again, with this we see the apposing force of Grace and Nature, the boy’s happy childhood juxtaposed with the introduction of adulthood in his early teens. The introduction is over when, early on, a telegram arrives bringing word that one of the O’Brien boys, now 19 and presumably in the military, has been killed. Penn, distraught, remembers Nature creeping its way into his life, which we see in flashbacks. What sort of God presides over such a world? One driving Nature or one driving Grace?

Naturally, the film wouldn’t be as interesting if it simply illustrated themes in life that can be divided between the subtitles of Nature and Grace. “Mr. O’Brien says grace at meals, prays in church and mentions tithing every week,” Greydanus explains. “Yet his worldview is essentially Darwinian; teaches his boys the hand-slapping game and forces them to learn to fight,” he continues, perpetuating the idea that some areas of life can waver between the two areas Malick has carved out. Similarly, Mrs. O’Brien also wavers. Although an archetypal mother, gentle and forgiving, she is also passive. When tensions boil over during a family supper and Mr. O’Brien lashes out at his sons, his wife is unable to protect them or restrain him; instead, he restrains her. In some ways it shows she is not the epitome of Grace we thought; but it also asks us whether this Grace she once spoke so highly of doesn’t always prevail, but we are in fact firmly under the boot of nature. Despite young Jack’s building hostility he has with his father, he begins to act like him - torturing animals, stealing from a neighbor’s house, bullying his younger brother – more than his mother whom he prefers. This poses more bewilderment to Penn’s adult Jack whilst looking back on his life. Can he not even save himself from Nature? If his brother was Grace, then why did he die? The end is a flash forward to contemplate the death of the universe. When Nature has exhausted itself, does Grace have the last word? There is no suggestion of a divine encounter, or of judgment that sees the film’s ‘two ways’ lead to different destinations, yet, as with the rest of the film, it offers a genuinely religious vision. We see the O’Brien family reunited on a huge beach full of other families doing the same thing. Penn and Pitt look at each other with reconciliation whilst Chastain is reunited with her dead son. Maybe in a life dictated by Nature, we are rewarded, in the end, by that Nature being turned into Grace.

Gay As Christmas

The world’s first gay Christmas story.

ave you ever been watching a Christmas movie and thought, ‘This just isn’t gay enough for me’?

Well, directors Richard Knight Jr. and Peter Neville did. They have gathered a cast and crew together to make the first gay adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Set for a Christmas 2012 release, Scrooge And Marley will be a “Modern-day variation on Charles Dickens’ classic story” but “Recounted from a gay sensibility.” We’re promised a film with heart, comedy and music to showcase this classic story with “a fresh perspective that will appeal to audiences of every persuasion.” Gay actor David Pevsner will play Scrooge and Tim Kazurinsky will play Marley. We can only speculate on the narrative changes, but it’s most likely that Scrooge and Marley - who in the original is dead (‘to begin with!’) – will have/have had a relationship closer than just business partners. Love scenes with a ghost? We can only hope. David Moretti, who will play legendary Scrooge employee Bob Cratchit, said, “Christmas movies hold a very special place in my heart as I have a handful of favorites I’ve watched every single Christmas since I was a little boy. My hope is that Scrooge & Marley becomes that for the gay community. It’s a sweet, classic story of redemption ... with a little glitter.”

David Pevsner; a new Scrooge.

v HYMNS v Confused and angry about the religion and God he was brought up with, Sam Manville put all his energy in to a band. He tells us, often reluctantly, about his music’s origin, his frustration with his faith and why he still needs to go church.

amuel Manville is annoyed at God. The lead singer and predominant force in the alt-rock Midlands two-piece, Hymns, is so annoyed that he may have based the whole concept of his band around this premise.

Previously singer and guitarist in the cult post-hardcore band Blakfish, Manville left due it “taking over” his life a little. “There are a lot more things in life than a band”, he tells me later on. Hymns are, by contrast, something he can do at his own leisure and concentrate on as he and drummer, Pete Reisner, please. Although at the moment, I begin to think that the Sutton Coldfield born singer doesn’t really know what his new band is about.

Manville speaks to me by phone on a Tuesday evening, but he sounds like he’s only just woken up. Mumbling through the first few minutes or so of our conversation, I give him chance to get his bearings and begin with simple questions.

And after a few more yawning ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’, I wonder if he can even decide when pushed. This is surprising when Hymns’ music presents articulate monologues of the frustration of agnosticism, interlaced with clever use of religious terms sung with furious venom. The music is a dirty, lo-fi garage rock, matching the aggravation and tension felt in the lyrics with violence and unavoidable confrontation. Even on the quieter moments of their debut album, a double record entitled Cardinal Sins/ Contrary Virtues, tension and pent up emotion is always on display.

So tell me about your band and its concept. “…ermm. Just like, in a broad sense yeah?” Yeah. “(Yawning through the first couple of words) well... it’s… It was all a bit of an accident in the first place; it wasn’t really a preplanned concept. But it just kind of evolved naturally.”

“I was brought up, myself, as a Roman Catholic, but I’m not anymore. I now have quite odd views and an odd relationship with religion to be honest”, Manville finally confesses. But falling back into mumbling and not finishing his sentences, he tries again to explain the concept of the band: “It’s quite odd because it’s not necessarily blasphemous…but it’s not praising… I donno, it’s quite confusing. And to be honest it’s quite confusing for myself because I don’t really know how I feel about a lot of that stuff.” ‘Right’, I say, slowly and a little confused, with a few extra i’s added between the r and g to get him to realise, in the politest way possible, he is making little sense. But then suddenly, he snaps: “I think a lot of it really, let’s stop talking shit, is questioning more than anything. There’s a lot of ‘if this is real, then just fucking show me instead of having to go through this rigmarole of believing.’ If there is anything that can help or do things why can’t it just become apparent?” Samuel Manville is annoyed at God. And this annoyance seems to have led to the incarnation of possibly the first agnostic/atheist rock band. It seems ridiculous, and quite unfeasible, to label anyone both atheist and agnostic, but the nature of Manville’s lyrics show the narrative of someone who is angry with God, but more specifically, angry with him for not existing. Probably.

But as Manville unsurely told me earlier, it was almost one big accident that came out of an unrecognized obsession with the whole idea of organized religion. “It wasn’t like I tried to do it; it was a natural thing to happen. Then after I’d written a few songs, that was when I tied it all up with the name and the concept of the whole thing.” As something that was and is still heavy his mind, it was almost inevitable a lifetime’s worth of contemplation would creep into his songs, both lyrically and musically. “I’ve always been fascinated by religion,” he says defiantly, “And it all kind of tied in with the kind of music I was writing. Lyrically it was something that was always cropping up for me; it was something that was really at the forefront of stuff that happens in life.” His interest in religion seems to stem from the realization of his disbelief in it. But the aggression he expresses in his songs has been conceived through disappointment that something so idealistic could be pitched to humankind, only for the premise of the concept to, in his eyes, fall through completely.

I ask him outright if this project is an exercitation of his personal demons. It wouldn’t be surprising considering some of the lyrics from the band’s album. The reprising line from ‘A Punch To The Temple’, the first single from the record, hears Manville crooning sadistically, ‘Screaming ‘Hail Marys’ and ‘Deliver me please’/I’ve got a fist full of rosary beads.’ But despite his issues with faith he presents in his music, any journey of self-discovery writing took him on was short lived. “I don’t think I’m exorcising any demons through doing it as much as I like to think I probably was,” he considers. “Rather than exorcising anything, I guess I’m just documenting my thoughts on it. The lyrics are just from different situations, putting religion in to different contexts of how I feel and think about it.”

Manville sounds so confident in his stance on God in each Hymns song, but many of the song’s views contradict with each other; explaining his indecision about the subject. This way of writing and documenting feelings about the issues many have with religion is a fresh one. Many proactive Christian faith bands, whether it’s Resurrection Band or P.O.D, go no further than praising and preaching to others about Jesus and his teachings. In a similar way, bands with atheist agendas, Bad Religion, Anti-Nowhere League; also take the route of preaching beliefs as set in stone as the ones Christians hold. But rather than leave you with a stubborn concept shoved down your throat, Hymns’ wavering speculation of God illustrates different ways of thinking and feeling about the omnipotent being. Whether it’s being patronizingly sinful in ‘Repent And Rebuild’ (‘Your God as my witness/I sure hope he don’t see this’), or self-pitiful in ‘Diligence’ (‘I’m crying for help but there’s nobody near, to hear or care’), Manville sings intelligently of diverse and original issues far beyond wondering if God is there or not.

Hymns express a distorted vision of religion in their music. They also convey this in their visual output. The music video for ‘A Punch To The Temple’ is set in an huge, empty church with the band playing at the alter, dressed in collared white shirts and black trousers like choir boys turned bad. Manville’s eyes look like a zombie’s as he stares into and follows the panning camera, singing through the side of his mouth, tormented. The band’s first t-shirt features a blurred photo of a church with the statement, written faintly, ‘I am a disciple’ across the middle. Live, they are as moody and provocative as they are in song. Manville barely talks between songs and Reisner hides behind his huge fringe as if the audience isn’t there; lip synching the odd lyric and throwing his arms around as if he’s listening to the band at home, singing along and airdrumming. Even before they begin playing, they walk on to an overture of choir music, Manville removing his long undertaker-like coat before picking up his guitar.

But then again, Manville’s pure aggression does come from the simple puzzlement with belief. “I’m just constantly calling him out!” he says when I ask him what he’s trying to express with that aggression. “‘Come on then! Fucking show me!’ You know? ‘What is it? Prove something to me. Don’t keep going on about yourself; just fucking show me!’” he says with an evil laugh and an ‘if you think you’re hard enough’ tone. If his views in the lyrics show his philosophies he’s documenting, the way Manville does it is the artistic part. The lyrics are interlaced with spiritual terms used in opposing ways to their origin, giving them fresh new meanings. Without even listening to the lyrics on the album it’s obvious from track names like ‘Miracles’, ‘Terms Of Endearment’, ‘Revelations’ and ‘Wicked Tongue’ what the theme is with this band and just incase it isn’t, they’re called Hymns - but it’s the context these terminologies are used in that paints the real picture.

“I’m just constantly calling him out! ‘Come on then! Fucking show me! Don’t keep going on about yourself; just fucking show me!’” - Sam Manville

But how can some of Pärt’s overwhelming sense of haunting and doom be achieved when Hymns are so instrumentally limited? “Trying to get that kind of apocalyptic sound with just guitar and drums is a bit of a challenge…” Manville admits, falling back into the hesitant state with which he began our conversation in. This seems to rear its head whenever Manville is talking about himself. “But we kind of just hold the mood with intelligent use of open strings and… things like that…” he continues, drifting off the end of his sentence like a car without its handbrake on, rolling away slowly.

But the religious overtones don’t stop with the lyrics. The band also represents a bastardized version of religious music in the same way the lyrics put old terminologies in to new contexts. In keeping with the eerie connotations of the words, the music embodies an almost medieval and certainly apocalyptic version of industrial garage rock.

Manville and Reisner; bound by the book. In some ways it all seems a bit forced. The uniformed dress, the decision to showcase how Manville feels about God, and, well, the name. This full on theatrical style of rock music is surely reserved for heavyweight prog-rock stars of the ‘70s and ‘80s, Jethro Tull or Pink Floyd; who have somehow coaxed their record labels into letting them do whatever their fucked up and damaged-by-drugs minds feel like. Instead this arguably pretentious display of a ‘concept band’ is been acted out by two Midland’s twenty-somethings on an indie label, who play gigs in the upstairs of pubs with other semi-famous but definitely financially backward metal and math-rock bands.

Asking Manville about the influences for the musical side of the project sees him really perk up. “I listen to quite a lot of Arvo Pärt, who’s really minor and really ominous and quite haunting in a way and I tried to capture that kind of sound but obviously not with classical music,” he explains. Throughout the next five minutes he tells me about the contemporary composer whilst barely stopping for breath. He describes Pärt’s music as “Dillinger Escape Plan doing a classical soundtrack to a film” and says how he admires the mass he did for the Berlin Cathedral, describing it as, “Incredible. Really haunting and very beautiful; very affecting.”

And I realise this is truly what separates Hymns from bands with religious or anti-religious agendas. Manville isn’t voicing a prophecy or damning a belief, nor is he intent on helping others explore how they feel about God, he is simply documenting how he feels, and very often, his feelings change.

I feel brave bringing this up with Manville, knowing that it will either make him clam up or give him verbal diarrhoea. Luckily, it’s the latter. “You know”, he begins honestly, “I’ve never really had the chance in the past to concentrate on a concept. So when the concept did rear its head and became apparent we thought we might as well roll with it a bit.”

He opens up further: “I mean I’m a fucking sucker for writing in the first person which is something I wish I knew how to not do but it’s just how I’ve always wrote,” he says with fatigue, as if I’ve beat it out of him or he’s beat it out of himself in order to prevent been misunderstood.

“Something bad happens, and automatically I think, ‘fuck. I need to go to fucking church.’”

The concept of the band is an interesting one, no doubt, but I ask him if it really has permanence. Surely there’s only so much about God that you can tackle? “I think that one thing you don’t run out of is personal things and things that happen to you”, he says, again with a sense of exhaustion. “Because you’ve had relationships with people you know and love for a long time, those relationships change and things happen that make you think differently, and they are the things I capture. It’s just that for me, the religious view seems to always come in to it at some point.”

Finally he feels comfortable explaining his intentions behind the project. “Without sounding too ‘oh yeah we’re punk rock we don’t give a fuck’, we’re just doing it because it’s something that interests us and something that we both enjoy.” Rather than seeming embarrassed to explain his creation like earlier, Manville shifts to defending and validating the choices he’s made for the band. “You know, I kind of hate the idea of concept albums and every now and then I think ‘fuck I’ve ended up doing one.’ But, you know, why not? If it feels right to do it I’m just gonna do it.”

We are getting deep now. But before we get any deeper, Manville backtracks back to legitimacy; I may have struck a nerve. “I know it sounds stupid, but it does just feel like all the stuff that we’ve done image wise – photos and the video – all of it ties up neatly into this package that just makes sense. Just logically, to keep it all around the same thing.”

Does he want to provoke people with this? “I’m not trying to provoke anything or anyone”, he says. “To be honest, it’s quite a personal project in a way. And lyrically it’s quite my own views and thoughts and shit,” he says, finally divulging more in order for me to begin to truly understand. “Like I say, because I was brought up a Catholic, and even though I really don’t believe in it and really hate organized religion; there’s some part of that learnt behavior of the church that has stuck with me. Something happens, something bad or whatever, and automatically I think, ‘fuck. I need to go to fucking church.’ And that sounds so odd from someone who doesn’t believe in it and fundamentally disagrees with a lot of it. But I still do it just out of learnt behavior and that’s the thing that always fascinates me.”

So the project has continuity? ‘Yeah. I’ve always liked continuity, and when I find a band I like to know where I stand with them. Like, you know what you’re getting and you like it or you don’t.” This continuity is, in a way, religious itself and Manville’s love of continuity has something to do with his obvious obsession with faith. Possibly, all of the sense he can’t make out of religion, he outputs into the band; the frustration he feels with faith making little sense, he uses to fuel a concept that, to him, does make sense. Maybe he’d believe in God in only God were real.

Warming the bench.

Christianity as a child/adult.

-Rob Jones/Jordan Daniel*

S T R E E T FIGHTERS Since 2003, a crack commando unit sent by God has patrolled the streets and kept people safe. If your mate’s a bit poorly, if you’re a bit lost, or if you just need someone to talk to, maybe the Street Pastors can help you.

get off the bus at half nine on a Saturday night in Kingston Upon Thames. It’s colder than it has been recently; the early spring weather we’ve been having has regressed into similar to the month previous rather than the month ahead. I’m prepared though. And I mean two pair of socks, long johns, jeans, vest, t-shirt, flannel shirt, jumper, zip-up, hoodie, hat and gloves prepared.

The Street Pastors is a network of some 9000 volunteers in almost 250 different towns and cities across the UK. The brainchild of the Director of the Ascension Trust and London based Rev Les Isaac, it was started in 2003 as a ‘response to urban problems’, helping people in need whilst on nights out (usually at weekends) from about 10pm through until 4am. The Kingston branch has been going six years and Louie tells me that he’s “Been here from the beginning.”

After ringing the front doorbell and then walking around the back of Kingston United Reformed Church – shady to say the least – I am greeted by a shadow at the door and then welcomed jovially by an American bellow. “So you’re Rob”, it says. The voice is that of tonight’s Street Pastor leader, Louie. “We’re gonna have some fun!” he assures me.

Louie’s a sweet guy. He’s got a face like Doc Brown from Back To The Future and is just as eccentric. Telling me odd stories about the vast things he’s done for charity, he says he draws the line at a sponsored skydive, “God didn’t create us to jump out of airplanes,” he insists.

Street Pastors go out in groups of no less than four in order to stay safe, so joining Louie and I is Bethany; young and well spoken, Kathy; mumsy and round, and Gina; a German woman who doesn’t really talk much. I get given a high-vis jacket (I don’t get an official Street Pastors coat as I’ve not got the training that gives me the privilege) and we’re ready to save some pissed up people from themselves. At least I think we are. Apparently, first we need to pray. Other than the four Street Pastors that patrol the town, there is another member of the team that stays at their base, in this case at the church. These Prayer Pastors have a radio, as do the Street Pastors themselves, which is linked to the police in the area and the bouncers on the doors of clubs and pubs in the town. “We’ll listen to what’s going on and if they are reporting there’s a scene or anything causing concern then we pray for that specifically, but we also pray generally that the Street Pastors will be kept safe,” Pastor Dave, tonight’s Prayer Pastor tells me. “And we pray for all the other people on duty in the town and for the people out enjoying themselves, that they’re having a good time without any hassle. Just supporting them all in prayer try to make a difference,” he concludes.

“Don’t just go to church and warm the bench, show what you believe; live what you preach.”

- Gina, Kingston Street Pastor

It’s easy to forget the Street Pastors are even a Christian based charity. If you overlook the organization’s name, then their work is really more social than religious. They might be ‘Pastors’, but they’re not spreading the word of God verbally to people in towns. “These days, I think people are surrounded by others telling them what they should and shouldn’t believe or think,” Kathy tells me later when I bring this up. “It’s very easy to switch people off by telling them what they can believe in. So to show them that we love them as God loves us is much more powerful.” “You could tell anybody until you’re blue in the face, but if you show them through demonstration that you do care about their welfare, it’s showing them Christianity in a practical way”, Louie agrees.

The A Team; Bethany, Kathy, Louie and Gina.

We set out at 10.30pm. The streets are expectedly quiet and our walk is a relatively somber one. Louie says hello to all of the bouncers as if he’s known them for years (which, realistically, he may have). He asks how the night is looking and then moves on to the next pub or club to chat to their respective bouncers. I walk just behind the group and I hear Louie talking – Louie’s always talking – about what Paul Jaccobs, another leader and the Street Pastor coordinator for the area, told him about the previous night; some drug dealing apparently, but nothing the police weren’t in control of.

The beginning of the night is expectedly quiet. After two hours we walk back to the church down an empty shopping precinct, rather than past the pubs and clubs, because there could be people who are alone and in trouble down there. Back at the church, we sit down for a brew (something all good Christian religions are based around). It’s only twelve o’clock, but everyone (apart from Louie) looks tired already. Whilst they have a quiet five, Louie tells me about a chunky Asian man called Mr. Moon, who although used to be homeless, now just pretends, and sells cans of larger, collars for shirts and cheap shoes outside clubs.

I met up with Paul a few days previous to talk about his branch of the Street Pastors. We met at St. Peter’s Part of me doesn’t really understand why you’d want church in Norbiton, just outside of to do this job. It’s not the easiest Kingston town, where he and charity work on offer; a “I started to act up and the church’s reverend hold a charity shop worker or drank quite heavily; weekly discussion group and fundraiser would be a lot It made me realise we don’t easier and definitely not free lunch called The Great as messy. “I believe that Feast. It was originally started know the stories behind to help those suffering from Christians should live the youngsters we meet.” drug or alcohol addiction and out what they believe, not - Kathy, Kingston Street Pastor homelessness when a nearby just keep their belief to program was limited to just giving themselves,” Kathy tells me. “Like out methadone, rather than giving counseling along Jesus said, ‘Love your friend as you love yourself,’” Gina with it. This resulted in many showing up on the church chips in. She continues in broken German-English, grass to take their dose, and rather than send them “Don’t just go to church and warm the bench, but you away, Paul invited them in. also need to go out and show what you believe and be part of what you believe. Live what you preach.” Paul’s a lot less eccentric than Louie. Just a normal southern bloke, sporting a couple of tattoos on his And it seems it’s not only because they think they forearms and a shaved head; he spoke to me in a should be doing it, they want to. When Bethany straightforward way. I could tell he really believes in was eighteen, she decided she wanted to become a the work he does. He told me a story about a girl that prison chaplain but realised she “Knew nothing about his group of Street Pastors saw a few times, who was Christianity outside of Sunday mornings”. So she joined being abused by a boyfriend. “She was trapped, sort the Street Pastors to get experience. “I found it so of following dog-like behind the guy”, he recounted. much more rewarding than I ever thought it would “And sometimes it’s just saying to them, ‘you’re worth be,” she tells me. “I did it; not purely for selfish reasons, more than this,’” hitting the table with the end of his but to gain an experience but then realised really how first finger, really showing me how deeply he feels rewarding it is.” about this stuff. Personal experience also adds the desire to make a “It’s like these guys here,” waving his arm around the whole room. “If we build these guys up to such a point, difference. Later on in the evening Kathy surprises they can make a right choice about what they’re doing.” me by telling me when she was fifteen there was a But Street Pastors surely isn’t all like that? “Hey; it’s breakdown in her family. “I started to act up and drank people that are drunk and need our help to people quite heavily,” she confesses. “It made me realise we that just want to talk about football, we’re there for don’t know the stories behind the youngsters we them all,” he laughed. meet. They may also have stories like that, which made me very aware of how venerable we all are. It’s made me want to help people that have gone through difficult times.”

Street Pastor coordinator Paul Jacobs receives the Mayor’s community award in 2008

Before we head back, Pastor Dave leads another prayer. “Oh Lord,” he begins. “We pray for Kingston, for safe streets, for safe people, for safe pastors, for safe doormen, for safe ambulance people and hospital workers. We ask for good conversations and interactions with people the pastors meet tonight. We pray for people to hear you Lord and against violence on the streets tonight.”

They know where they’re needed via the radio the leader of the group has, in this case Louie. We’re barely out five minutes before there’s a call from the police about a girl who has collapsed close to the curb of the road near the train station. When we get there she’s throwing up on the pavement, not really getting much help from her friends who are also quite visibly drunk. The girls in the group help her, Louie says girls feel more comfortable when girls help them; he just speaks to her friends. Unpacking their first aid bag, the girls use some wet wipes on her face to clean her up, give her water to get everything up and give her a space blanket because she’s wearing next to nothing. Louie has found out from her friends that she’s not taken any drugs, which means she probably has no need to visit the hospital. He finds out where she lives and tells her friends, if they can’t get a taxi because of the state she’s in, to get the bus and tell the driver she has epilepsy so they let her on. “A white lie won’t hurt,” he says to me with a wink.

By half twelve we’re back in the town and it’s evident that it’s changed a lot since earlier. The police riot van is already driving around and there’s a lot more people about. “This is when we get busy,” Louie tells me, kind of excitedly. “It’s when the pubs and clubs start chucking out and people can’t get into another but also don’t want to go home; that’s when we’re needed,” he says proudly.

At first I’m surprised at how they fall into their respective roles like a trained military unit, but by the end of the night this scene will have been played out almost identically multiple times.

Louie thinks the reason people can be anti-religion these days is because they have the wrong perception of it. “People think that to believe in God you must be perfect all the time and that scares them, but it’s not like that,” he says. “When you’re learning to ride a bike and you fall off, what do you do?” he asks me, what I realise after a few moments, non-rhetorically. ‘Get back on?’ “Get back on,” he confirms. “And that’s religion. You might fall off sometimes but you practice and eventually you have a good relationship with God.”

We get another call; again from police about a case similar to girl we’ve just dealt with. “At first police weren’t very welcoming to us,” Louie admits to me on the way to the next call. “They saw we valued them and relied on them, which made them fear we’d be a nuisance. But eventually they realised we could add value to what they are doing and give them extra manpower.”

Not everyone would agree with Louie, but the faceless mockery of a few would never be enough to deter them from the work they do. “A lot of people share their testimonies about how we’ve helped them before, and that’s just amazing,” Bethany proudly tells me. “Every time I go home from doing this, I know we’ve made a difference in people’s lives,” Louie concludes, “And that’s what matters.”

The relationship they’ve built with police is very similar to the one they’ve built with the public. Like the police, when people on nights out, usually young, always drunk; encounter the Street Pastors, they can be a little hesitant towards them. On the way back from another call – other than meeting Mr. Moon which makes me very happy - we walk past the huge, 2500 capacity Oceana nightclub where one girl in a large group of friends recognizes the Pastors and starts talking to them. She’s pretty drunk, but harmless. She asks Louie for some flip-flops because her shoes are hurting her. The Street Pastors carry a rucksack full of disposable flip-flops for just this reason, after seeing an uncountable amount of girls walking around the streets with no shoes on. At first, the people the girl is with poke fun at her, even taking pictures of their friend taking to these strangers. But as the girl is getting her new shoes, the others are intrigued and ask the Pastors about their work. By the end of it, more girls’ request flip-flops and they can’t stop telling the pastors about how great they are. It seems if they are met with hostility then they leave with acceptance and gratitude. But for the gratitude they get, there will naturally be a bit of flak. “Here’s five angels,” one bloke says as he walks past. This isn’t a regular occurrence, but it’s often enough. “Here’s the help brigade,” a girl says later; “Hey up God squad,” another lad shouts out.

Flip-flops?

Why the Election for a Republican Candidate is

bull I

don’t care that the only options the Republicans have are old white men that all seem to be saying the same thing. Maybe the fact that they are all saying the same thing represents where the true heart of the Republican Party lies. I don’t care about those same things the party candidates are saying. To some people, the agendas and policies Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and (the recently self-suspended) Rick Santorum hold are terrifying; but to others they embrace morality and principle.

Those policies, even with Romney, the most moderate of the three, are reminiscent of attitudes more at home in the 1950s than in the present day. Romney, who is cleaning up the polls now Santorum has put himself out of the race due to family commitments, spoke a few weeks ago about getting rid of Planned Parenthood in the States and has clearly stated that he’s “Not concerned about the very poor.” But I don’t care. They are just Romney’s policies and people who agree with him will vote for him. People that think he’s a dinosaur won’t vote for him and will also try their best to deter others from voting for him. This is all fair enough. How could anyone not demonstrate their strong feelings about what they believe in?

shit

But what I do care about is how Romney and these other far-right presidential contenders encourage people to trust them. And how do they do that? They use God. God has no place in politics. American believers are being convinced that a Christian – whatever type; Gingrich and Santorum are Catholic, Romney a Mormon – is the answer to a good president. But Jesus wasn’t a politician with God as his manager and his disciples his campaign team, so why link the two together? When the two are linked, it has the capability to influence many Christian votes. ‘I’m a Christian,’ these candidates are saying, ‘and if you’re a good Christian; you’ll vote for me.’ The worst thing is, they are all in this mindset, so in order to be the man against Obama in November, they must out-religion each other.

Romney. “Sweet Jesus, tell me what to do.” Santorum didn’t find that hard. Not only did he link his policies with his faith – having already written the book Conservatism and the Common God - he misleads the people who can’t see through him that America will be better because he’s a Christian. Obama is Christian, but that’s not the foundation of his policies. When Obama required the Catholic Church to provide health insurance for its employees (meaning they’d get contraception if they wanted it), Santorum insisted that he will stop the current President’s “War on religion” if he were in power. In Santorum’s South Carolina campaign he even sent Jewish supporters holiday greetings cards reading, “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life,” from the New Testament. ‘If you trust in God then trust in me,’ is what slick Rick was saying.

Despite Santorum’s extremely far-right ideals – gay marriage and relationships: wrong, pro-choice: wrong, homosexuals and women in military: wrong – at least he believes in them. Romney on the other hand, once a pro-choice, lefty-Stanford attending man, seems to change his views according to the reaction he gets. Deep in to his campaign he was making speeches that could’ve been written by Santorum’s team, showing the same kind of backwards ideals; anti-choice, antisame sex marriages. But now it seems he’s got carried away and strayed so far to the right that he’s clawing his way back to the centre. Back in the 2008 election (yes, he won’t go away) Romney declared that America’s religious liberty is “Fundamental to America’s greatness,” and said “Faith would inform my presidency, if elected.” But here we are, present day, and after noticing that he’s been appeasing the right so much, he’s reading out a speech written on tracing paper with an old JFK speech under it. “I am an American running for president,” he said. “I do not define my candidacy by my religion. A person should not be elected because of his faith nor should he be rejected because of his faith.” If so, then why need to point that out? Or use religion as a basis so many times before?

But now Santorum is out of the race, it seems the Republican candidate to stand against Obama will certainly be Romney (the most press Newt has got recently is that his finger was bitten by a penguin at a zoo in Missouri, so we’ll count him out). Santorum is bad enough using his faith to persuade fellow believers into carrying him to the White House. But Romney is definitely worse.

Shoot the atheists! Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what!

What it comes down to is that it’s never acceptable for a candidate to use God as a political tool. For Christians, surely nothing could bastardize Jesus more than fusing him with some kind of worldly power. If the candidates are acting in the belief and name of Jesus, how can they want to gain power of armies and the power to inflict violence or the power to govern people when Jesus believed we should all be free? In fact, according to the Bible, Jesus set us free. Jesus lived and died for everybody, even his enemies, not fighting back with violence. So to try to gain power in Jesus’ name and use that power to defeat enemies with violence, have more money and more influence is just hypocritical. How can you market yourself a Christian candidate when your behavior is technically un-Christian? The worse thing is that this gives all Christians a bad name. Because of the Bush’s, Santorum’s and Romney’s of America, who have some how changed the world’s view to that Christian means Republican; we see all Christians as rightwing, gun bearing, homo-hating idiots.

Jesus wasn’t a politician with God as his manager and his disciples his campaign team, so why link the two together? You might say that if, like Christians believe, we contain the spirit of Jesus, why shouldn’t Christians be the ones making rules? But whether you’re Christian or not, everyone wants order and justice, so why slap God’s name on it.

Honesty over Propriorty Graphic designer Jim LePage talks us through his series of Word designs and what’s really in the Bible.

n January 2010, Jim LePage wanted to start afresh. He wanted to establish himself in his profession by doing something that was important to him; he wanted to grow.

“I was putting together my first portfolio website and wanted to have some continuously updated content on there to keep people coming back,” LePage tells me via a Skype call, “I didn’t have enough important thoughts to be a blogger, so I thought a design project.” This also tied in with the time of year: “I was thinking about resolutions and things like that too. I always say every year, ‘Man, I wanna read the Bible more.’ But I never follow through.” So LePage mixed together these two elements. What came out was a project where, each week, the Minnesota based graphic designer read and did a design for each book of the Bible, based on something that stood out to him within that book. He called it Word. It lasted just under two years and he did around 91 designs. ‘That’s more designs than there are books,’ I point out to him. “Yeah. A few of them had two, three, some even had four, because there’s just no shortage of content for cool designs,” he explains.

LePage works at Woodhills Church in St Paul Minnesota, “It’s five blocks from my house,” he tells me. “I oversee the print and design area and manage our online presence; I’ve been there seven years this month.” Although brought up in a Christian house, he feels it wasn’t a personal choice for him until he was about 22. “I was living out on my own and I hadn’t gone to church since I moved out. Then, for some reason, I just decided I was gonna check that out again. From that point on it was something that became really meaningful to me,” he recounts. If LePage’s reasons to start his Word project were firstly for professional reasons, I wonder why he didn’t stray from faith-based work, considering his day job is at a church. “I think like most designers who have a Christian faith, it can be really frustrating to see the Christian art and design that’s out there,” he explains. “Just awful, awful stuff,” he says almost with anxiety, upset the stuff even exists. But why is his work different? Taking a large influence from gig posters, LePage’s designs are wonderfully quirky and aesthetically entertaining. “Gig posters are so far from what you’d expect to see in a Christian design,” he tells me. “So I fused the two, Christianity and poster-style designs.” They are brilliant. Instead of trying to overwhelm himself by representing a whole book or expressing personal sentiment felt about it, LePage would just take a section that would jump out at him visually. “There’s one in Micah I did and the passage is, ‘Stand up I plead my case before the mountains let me hear what you have to say,’” he remembers. “That doesn’t speak to me on a gut, emotional level at all, but visually, I had this immediate idea of what that verse would look like.” (fig. 1) So although reading the Bible for his personal gain, at the same time LePage was often separating the religious meaning from the books in order to get the perfect visually pleasing design. But this doesn’t mean he wasn’t inhaling the message of the Bible the way he wanted to. “Once I hit Jesus, those designs started to feel more personal and meaningful to me,” he says, sounding happily reminiscent of the way he felt when arriving at that part of the good book.

fig. 1.

fig. 2

“It’s been huge for me. I wouldn’t be doing interviews if it weren’t for this; who’d wanna talk to some St. Paul Church designer?” - Jim LePage

Creating work so alternative to normal Christian design, LePage did receive some backlash from traditional Christians, but it was mainly the write-ups he’d post along with his designs that would receive the most hostility. “There’s this phrase I keep coming back to, which is ‘Honesty over propriety,’” he defends. “Being honest with how you feel and what you think of the Bible. There were some passages where I was thinking, ‘What in the world does this mean? This sounds ridiculous or horrible.’ And that’s just what I’d write, and some people wouldn’t like it.” But as for the designs, “For a few of them, I was a bit disappointed I didn’t get more flack!” he confesses. As it became more popular, a certain audience became attracted to it because it wasn’t your normal Christian design, something many relished, rather than disapproved of. After working on the project for so long, picking a favorite must be like choosing a favorite child. “I like them all for different reasons,” he says diplomatically. “But some mean more because of how they came about. The David and Goliath story (fig. 2) was the point I realised I was going to stick with it ‘cos I was enjoying it so much, not just ‘cos I said I would,” he remembers. “I really like the Ecclesiastes too. I like that I drew the type on that one. I’m not a typographer so that was nice ‘cos it was new.” (fig. 3). Working on a new design every week, LePage found himself naturally developing more as a designer. “I tried so much new stuff that I never would have before!” he says animatedly. He recommends the process to everyone, not just designers: “Find something that you’re excited or passionate about and make a project about it,” he almost instructs me; as if his discovery is a good book that I must read. Not only did the project help LePage grow as a designer, it got him noticed. “People started following and it created an audience for me,” he says, sounding truly grateful that people checked out his work. Although in one way it was a personal project that would help him read more of the Bible, it also became a professional blessing. “It’s been huge for me. It’s the reason I’m talking to you! I wouldn’t be doing interviews if it weren’t for this, who’d wanna talk to some St Paul Church designer?” he says humbly, as if it wasn’t him, but the project that deserves praise.

And as he de veloped as a designer, LePage also developed as a Christian. “I grew up in 80’s Conservative, Mid-West culture and I got the sense that Christianity was about propriety, you know, being nice,” he explains. “And although I grew up going to Christian school and church I’d never read some of the books in the Bible.” In doing so, he saw the whole picture. Other than the nice stuff he was taught as a child, LePage found an epic also full of grittiness, ugliness, confusion, weirdness and humor. “I mean, God talks through a donkey in one passage of the Bible and that’s hilarious!” he laughs. “It opened up my mind.” LePage’s latest project, based on Biblical passages, is called Old & New. He followed Dan Cassaro, a designer and animator, who curated 50 and 50. He had a designer from each state in the U.S design a poster for their state motto, culminating in fifty posters from fifty different designers from fifty different states. “It was cool to see them at the end all together; with these different perspectives all centered around one theme,” LePage says. “So I enjoyed those and I thought the Bible would be perfect for that.”

It might sound a little similar to his Word project but he insists the fact it’s collaborative means the outcome will be completely different. “The first round is twenty-four designers; I’ll just do one of the designs,” he explains. To differentiate the outcome even more, the people involved are incredibly diverse. “About six of them are outside of the US, and there’s an even mixture in gender” he begins. But the most interesting choice about the project is again related to faith. “The designers we picked out aren’t all Christian,” he explains. “About half of them aren’t believers and a handful of them don’t like the Bible and have a problem with it.” This is something that LePage and his partner in this project, Troy Deshano, wanted. “We’re really proud of that mix. Some of them will read a passage and be really bothered by it and do a design that reflected that. All this means the final product represents a wide variety of perspectives. It’s not just a load of mid-western, mid-thirties, white males,” he jokes. Instead, it’s Honesty

over propriety.

fig. 3

HOUSE OF HUMANITY

House of Humanity.

-James Uden.

COMMON GROUND The world’s most famous philosopher tells us why Christians and atheists are finally agreeing on something. That he’s an arsehole.

“I

Once understanding the theory, it’s easy to see why a nerve may have been touched, with members of both sides of the argument. “Non-believers like to say, ‘There is NOTHING we need to learn from religion,’” the writer, philosopher and television presenter told me. “Think of Christopher Hitchens’ subtitle, Why Religion Poisons Everything. I think this seems very dramatic and a flight from reality.” Because of de Botton’s interest in religion and its benefits, many strong atheists feel his curiosity is plain stupid. After all, how can something be half-right? How can something good come out of something de Botton admits to be based on an astronomical farce? Freethoughtblogs.com were extremely angry with de Botton, writing, “Are we to live in a society that values truth, or one run by idiots like de Botton, who think the truth is irrelevant…Who live their entire lives guided entirely by disproven myths and falsehoods, and evangelize that nonsense intensely?” Going on to accuse him of pandering to everyone and sitting on the fence in order to gain popularity.

’m touching a raw nerve,” Alain de Botton admits to me. The nerve he’s going on about is religion, and what he’s touching it with is his latest book, Religion For Atheists: A non-believers guide to the uses of religion. The idea behind the book, in theory, is quite simple: The debate between believers and non-believers is redundant, “boring”, he says; there’s no point in trying to force members on either side of the argument to see a different point of view. What de Botton, an atheist himself, suggests is that we look past this argument. He thinks that, although in the modern world the spiritual essence of religion is easily proved false, it doesn’t mean religion isn’t still valuable to society. According to de Botton, religion offers lessons in right and wrong, maintenance of relationships and how to overcome feelings of envy and inadequacy, not to mention its wealth of art, music, architecture, and history we can enjoy.

One of the most interesting points de Botton makes is that without God, man in the secular world is in danger of overlooking the need for empathy and ethical behavior.

This accusation is quite easily disputed when you look over the other side of that fence. As, for every fundamental atheist, there’s a fundamental believer. “His mission to rescue beauty from religion is arrogant and ignorant,” Catholicherald.co.uk said of his work. De Botton explains, “Believers accuse me of cherry picking ‘the best bits.’” To believers, this is a negative thing; again, how can something be half-right? But de Botton sees no problem whatsoever with it. “I agree,” he says, “I am cherry picking, and as an atheist, it’s normal that I can’t take on board the whole of religious doctrine.”

De Botton feels religions are “giant machines” that make ideas about goodness, death, family and community vivid and real in people’s lives. If religions are organizations or institutions, then he feels they are directed to managing one’s inner life. But religion is nowhere near a popular as it once was, and so for the people that don’t follow a faith, de Botton feels they are without this direct management.

Despite being hit from both sides, Religion For Atheists is de Botton’s bestselling book he’s written, so some people must share his interest in the study of faith.

“In the 20th century, capitalism has really solved (in the rich West) the material problems of a significant portion of mankind,” de Botton said. But, in his opinion, “The spiritual needs are still in chaos, with religion ceasing to answer the need.” This is why he wrote his book, in order to show that there is a way of filling the modern world with lessons from religion, but with no need to return to any kind of occult spirituality.

But where did this interest come from? “Religions primarily intrigue me as agents of social change; as social engineers, if you like,” de Botton tells me. “I was interested in the way that religions are exemplary in their method of translating ideas into action. I may not agree with all their intentions, but their methods are extraordinary and are ignored at our peril,” he says.

This meeting in the middle sounds promising, but highly doubtful regarding the disgruntlement from either fundamentalist side of the religious fence. “The world will always be divided into the two camps,” concludes de Botton. “The priority is to build bridges and point out that underlying the secular and religious systems are shared human needs, which should be mutually recognised.

His vast research on the subject has ended in an interesting and very persuasive book. For the atheist who is interested in their own livelihood rather than humiliating others for their beliefs, this book is almost perfect. In treating religions respectfully rather than, like Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, as a threat or annoyance, de Botton mulls over the great and no so great areas of both religion and atheism.

Amen.

De Botton, ‘My religion might not have a Heaven but at least it’s not made up.’

Christians In Films: COOL

CRAZY

We run through our favorite Christians from the movies; 5 cool and 5 crazy.

ules Winnfield played by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction. Of course, there’s that verse from the Bible that he quotes before he kills someone. But the coolest thing Jules Winnfield does in Tarantino’s 1994 masterpiece is when he decides to get out the gangster trade “Just like that”, because he believes he’s seen a miracle. Whether all those bullets missing him and his partner, Vincent ( John Travolta), is a miracle or not, Jules’ ‘eyes have been opened’ and he’s ready to make a change. You might think this “Divine Intervention” he believes he’s witnessed is just superstition, but there’s no denying it saves his life – twice. For in the next story (chronologically), the film sees Vincent shot whilst on the toilet after continuing to work for L.A gangster Marcellus Wallace. Lesson: Being a cool Christian keeps you alive!

argaret White played by Piper Laurie in Carrie.

Out of all of the people that treat Carrie White so cruel and heartlessly, you’d think the one person to be her saving grace would be her mother. Sadly, her mother is Margaret, an unstable Christian fundamentalist who walks from door to door “Spreading the gospel of salvation through Christ’s blood,” and abuses Carrie in numerous ways. Because of her mother, Carrie is very sheltered to the point that she thinks she’s dying when actually she is getting her first period. Hearing about Carrie’s incident – which embarrassingly happens in the school showers – Margaret tells Carrie that “the curse of blood” is punishment for sin. Carrie notices after a while that she has telekinetic powers after strange things happen when she gets angry. This comes to a head when, after she is showered in pig’s blood at the prom in a nasty prank, her powers cause huge destruction and kills everyone in the building. Margaret is no help when Carrie comes crying afterwards, stabbing her in the back since she thinks she being taken over by the devil. This backfires dramatically when Carrie’s telekinesis chucks kitchen knives at her mum, killing her in the position of the Saint Sebastian shrine in Carrie’s punishment closet. Lesson: Being a crazy Christian makes you a bad mother!

III

treet Preacher Played by Raymond St. Jacques in They Live. From John Carpenter’s 1988 cult classic staring WWF wrestler ‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper, Street Preacher is there right at the beginning of the movie telling everyone that will listen about the impending doom that’s sure to come. “The fear of God is not before their eyes” is his warning about the greedy beings that are controlling everything and everyone, unbeknownst to the rest of the world. Now, stuff kind of gets crossed over here, because Street Preacher does seem kind of crazy. You’d presume anyone standing on a street shouting things like, “Perching on top of us from birth to death are our owners! They own us! They control us! They are our masters! Wake Up!” is a little head mental. But, as ‘Rowdy’ Roddy finds out once he puts on his special sunglasses, it’s all true. Street Preacher might have sounded crazy, but he knew the facts. Lesson: Being a cool Christian means knowing the truth!

IV E

li Sunday played by Paul Dano in There Will Be Blood. Using his faith to gain acceptance from the members of his congregation and inflate his ego, Eli Sunday’s got the wrong attitude. Also, he’s a pain in the backside of Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day Lewis), who has come to Little-Boston at Sunday’s twin brother Paul’s request to drill oil. Sunday lets his faith and high self-worth get in the way of the industriousness of Plainview’s project, pissing the oil man off a treat, especially when Plainview has to watch the whole town trust him when he knows that he’s just a loony. And he is; note the scene where he chases a woman’s arthritis out of the church. Tension builds throughout the movie and almost comes to boil when, in order to gain land from an old member of Sunday’s church, Plainview has to admit to the whole town that he is a sinner and has abandoned his son now he has become deaf, all while Sunday slaps the sin out of him. A terrible error in judgment that Plainview holds on to until the climax of the film, when he forces Sunday to admit he is a false prophet and kills him with a bowling pin. Lesson: Being a crazy Christian gets you killed!

esus Christ played by Jim Caviezel in The Passion Of The Christ. Although Jesus was Jewish, he is, after all, Christ, so I wanted to give him a mention in this Christian rundown. In probably the most graphic and gory version of the Easter story, Mel Gibson has Caviezel’s Jesus take his destiny in his stride. He stoically strides through town with those infamous thorns wrapped around his brow and, even though he gets a bit tired, you can’t help but have respect for the guy. As a boy I was told to love him for dying for my sins, but after seeing this film as a man, I respect him for taking the most ultimate of tortures like a boss. I mean he is the Son of God, but still, kudos. And I bet he didn’t brag about it when he got resurrected (we’ll have to wait for Passion 2 to see). Getting shot 50 Cent? Try getting crucified. Lesson: Being a cool Christian means respect!

VII

arianne Bryant played by Amanda Bynes in Easy A The antagonist in this 2010 John Hughes-esque teen comedy, Marianne and her Christian group of friends make it their prerogative to ‘save’ odd members of their school from themselves. We meet her when she decides the film’s hero Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) needs converting after hearing she’s become a bit of a slut. Problem with Marianne though, is that she’s mental. And I mean teenage high school bitch mental. Like the characters in Mean Girls, she epitomizes the evil bullying we all remember from our teens, but taken to the next level. “We need to pray for Olive,” she says; “But we also need to get her the hell out.” Woah. She goes on to cry, “Jesus tells us to love everyone, even the whores and homosexuals, but it’s just so hard!” Eventually, after condemning the world for being un-Christian, she finds out her apparently chaste-vowing boyfriend has Chlamydia. Bummer. Lesson: Being a crazy Christian makes you a massive

uliss ‘Sonny’ Dewey/The Apostle E.F played by Robert Duvall in The Apostle. Texas Preacher Sonny really just wants to be a good Christian and that’s why he makes the cool list. He knows he’s sinned, admitting to his wife, Jessie, to being unfaithful, but comes clean so he can declare his love for her and his devotion to God. Sadly, she’s already given up on him, having begun an affair with youth minister, Horace. Even worse, her new lover helps her to have Sonny removed from power in his church. Feeling God is ignoring him; he finally succumbs to more sin, attacking and killing Horace with a bat. I know; adultery, impatience and manslaughter don’t make a good Christian. But Sonny understands this and vows to make a(nother) change. Settling in Louisiana and re-baptizing himself as Apostle E.F, he starts a new church, gets a modest radio-preaching job and even turns a mega-racist construction worker (Billy-Bob Thornton) towards the path of God. Unluckily for E.F, Jessie hears him on the radio and has him arrested. The last we see of him is working on a chain gang, but, never doubting his love of God, he’s preaching to fellow inmates working on the highway. Lesson: Being a cool Christian means never losing faith!

VIII M

ax Cady played Robert De Niro in Cape Fear

“I am like God and God like me,” yells De Niro’s Max Cady after giving five hit men a bettering in Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear. Cady is on the hunt for his old attorney Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) after, whilst in prison for rape and battery, he learns to read and discovers in his court papers that Bowen held back possible case-changing information that his victim was promiscuous. When learning to read, Cady picks up the good book, pretty much memorizes the whole thing - letting us know by quoting passages heavily - and gets numerous bible passes as well as a massive cross tattooed across his back. In his hunt, Cady scares the bejesus out of everyone he meets, but especially Bowden; beating up and raping one of his colleges as well as preying on his impressionable teenage daughter ( Juliette Lewis). After countless attempts at getting rid of Cady, it really looks like Bowden and his family are going to be the losers in this quite messed up tale. Luckily, in Cady’s final attempt on the family’s lives, he finds his leg handcuffed to a sinking boat and drowns. Lesson: Being a crazy Christian means… YOU

IX D

eloris Van Cartier/Sister Mary Clarence played by Woopi Goldberg in Sister Act. Naughty Catholic schoolgirl turned casino lounge singer Deloris is living fancy free but in sin with her mobster boyfriend Vince LaRocca (Harvey Keitel). But she soon sees the light after witnessing LaRocca killing a chauffeur. After reporting it to the police, she finds herself in witness protection at St. Katherineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Roman Catholic Church to be disguised as a nun and takes the name Sister Mary Clarence. The naughty schoolgirl returns as the new Sister feels bored and restless, but once she sees how terrible and disorganized the church choir is, she puts her strengths to good use. Turning the nuns into a sassy, God-praising singing machine, Mary Clarence reinvigorates old Church songs by giving them a rock n roll twist that might have even made Jesus rise a day early. By the end of the movie, the bad guy gets put away, the nuns are singing for the Pope and the girls are closer to each other (and therefore God) than ever. Halleluiah! Lesson: Being a cool Christian means great music!

arry Powell played by Robert Mitchum in The Night Of The Hunter. At first just seeming charismatically eccentric, Powell soon turns out plain psychopath in this 1955 American classic. Powell marries widow Willa Harper in order to steal the $10,000 dollars her husband received the death penalty for stealing himself. She happens to be unaware of the money, but once Powell realizes her two children know of its whereabouts, he’s after them. With Love and Hate tattooed across his knuckles, a Johnny Cash smooth singing voice and a charming manner of quoting the gospel, he’s an interesting guy that everyone instantly warms to. But behind closed doors he’s full of evil, forsaking his new wife for wanting to sleep with him and then brainwashing her into loving him though of his ‘love’ of God; let alone turning her against her kids. After killing his new wife, he goes all out trying to find the hidden money. Unluckily for him, the kid’s runaway to an orphanage and when he finds them there, he gets shot, arrested and sentenced to death. Lesson: Being a crazy Christian ruins people’s lives!