What happens when one of the most formal and venerable branches of the Church meets a heavy metal festival run by Christians? Frederica Mathewes-Green, once a hippy and now an Eastern Orthodox believer, visited the Cornerstone Festival in Illinois to encounter ear-shattering music, honest faith, hokey t-shirts and a 12-inch mohawk haircut. This account is the second of two extracts from her newly-published book, "At the Corner of East and Now."

The proprietor of the booth notes my lack of familiarity with the genre and produces a portable CD player and some earphones saying, "Want to do some?" I begin listening to a song by a group called Crimson Thorn. The lead singer has a voice like James Earl Jones in a very bad mood. I think it's meant to sound like growling, but sometimes it sounds more like belching. Curiously, the CD's back cover shows the band standing in front of a Russian Orthodox church, complete with onion domes and three-bar crosses. I guess this was the scariest-looking church they could find. Sample song titles: "Dissection," "Putrid Condemnation," "Suffering," "Grave of Rebirth," and "2nd Timothy." The song rumbles on and I watch the CD counter: a minute and a half and I still haven't understood a single lyric.

Just then the Crimson Thorn lead singer walks up to the booth and the proprietor introduces us. Luke Renno is an immense guy with a waist-length ponytail and seven earrings. On his calf there is a large tattoo of the device called "chi rho"; it looks like intersected X and P, representing the Greek monogram of Christ. Renno is twenty-three and has been singing with the group for seven years.

I ask how he got his voice that low, and whether it's electronically enhanced. No, he says in quite a normal voice, it's just from practice, and he looks embarrassed. I ask, "Why death metal music? What aspect of the Gospel does it represent?"

"The Gospel's pretty intense," Renno replies. Is it meant to express anger? "Not really. We have a good time, smile and stuff," he says. "It's not that we're angry at Satan, but we're proclaiming Jesus with everything we have. We really put it out there."

I tell Renno that I listened to his song "Beaten Beyond" and couldn't understand any lyrics. Could he give me an example of the sort of thing he sings? He recites a verse from "No Exceptions," which begins, "Hanging on the cross the price was paid, blood shed for sin." The quatrain ends with the rhyme "É be born again."

I ask what sorts of themes Crimson Thorn sings about. "We don't get into social issues too much," Renno says. "It's all about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We're against drugs, but that's not our main focus. If somebody got off drugs but didn't come to know Jesus Christ, he's still going to hell."

So why use this type of music to get this message across? "Secular death metal bands seem depressed," he says. "We want to plant seeds. People come up after our concerts and talk with us, they say they had always been against Christians because they thought we were against them. We smile at 'em and talk to 'em and it gives 'em something new to think about."

CHRISTIAN DEATH METAL MUSIC, then, is not aimed at Christians, but is intended to reach secular metal enthusiasts who otherwise wouldn't consider the faith. I meet another performer, Matthew Harper of One Flesh, who reiterates Renno's image of seed-planting. He goes on, "We're kind of like sheep in wolves' clothing. Death metal kids are not going to listen to CCM," he says, referring to the genre called Contemporary Christian Music, encompassing soft rock, worship music, and other non-threatening sounds, mostly played on Christian radio and bought by Christian consumers.

"CCM is – " he hesitates " – kind of cheesy. But secular kids listen to our music, and they can tell we're serious, we're for real. You know, evil is not a matter of your appearance. It's what's in your heart." Two silver thorns protrude from the septum that divides his nostrils. "People listen to the music, they like it, then they read the lyrics and get interested. My band gets letters from people who say they came to faith through our lyrics."

Harper explains that there is some debate in the Christian metal community about whether to enclose lyric sheets with the album. Some kids might take a glance at the lyrics, figure out that it's that icky Christian stuff, and throw the CD away. Bands concerned about this try to build in a delay so that the kids can form an affection for the music before confronting the content. Instead of enclosing lyrics, they might give an address where buyers can write away for a free lyric sheet, or an Internet address where the lyrics can be downloaded.

What is One Flesh like? Harper, a jazz theory major, explains, "It's technical metal, extremely heavy." And what is its message? "We sing about sexual purity, sex abuse, porn. We do a lot of secular events.

THE COMBINATION OF HARD ROCK and sexual purity is surprising, but I suppose not inherently incompatible. On a staff golf cart outside sits an exhausted-looking Edie Goodwin, who with her husband make up the band Headnoise. Edie is not very conversational; she worked hard the night before. A friend who caught Headnoise's act was enthusiastic. Edie, she said, had hammered the crowd about sexual purity. She'd told them that anyone sleeping with a boyfriend or girlfriend at the festival had to cut that out and go to the prayer tent and repent. She offered to find any left tentless another place to stay.

Edie has a stunning mohawk, twelve inches high, black at the bottom and orange at the top. It looks a little crumpled in the back, and I realize that if you have a hairdo like this, you can never let the back of your head rest against anything. No wonder she looks tired. Are mohawks still around? I don't see any others at the festival. Is this just out of date? Or is it trendy retro? Is it ironic, or a homage? When did this get so complicated? Most troubling, is it time to be nostalgic for the eighties already?

Except for serendipitous connections like that between the Death to the World monks and punk street kids, Orthodoxy does not expend much effort in resonating with contemporary culture. When the faith enters a new geographic area, a few basic adaptations are made: the Liturgy is translated into the common language of the people, and, though the prayers are unchanging, they may be set to melodies that feel more comfortable to local worshippers.

Other than that, the Church just does what it always has, and expects outsiders will accommodate its timelessness. The liturgical year makes its round just as it did for centuries of previous years, paying no regard to headlines or hemlines. Once my husband was talking with a Baptist pastor who complained that his congregation had dwindled down to a handful of elderly members, because they refused to update. "They still want to worship like they did in the fifties," he complained. My husband thought, "Oh – those fifties."

Standing between oblivious changelessness and a twelve-inch mohawk, I wonder if there's a middle road that might be more culturally responsive. I suspect that for some seekers, the very detachment and timelessness of Orthodoxy is a primary appeal. But judging from the frequency with which members refer to the Church as a "best-kept secret," I wonder if we Orthodox can find some appropriate way to be less secretive. Something that doesn't involve body piercing.

TOWARD THE END OF THE DAY I get to hear Tourniquet, a band whose bug-picking cover artwork I admired earlier. They sell a black t-shirt with the name of the band in dripping, daggerlike red letters; on the left there is the dictionary definition of "tourniquet," and on the right the band's definition: "A spiritual process by which the living Triune God can begin to stop the senseless flow of going through life without knowing and serving our creator."

Sample song titles: "A Dog's Breakfast," "Vitals Fading," "Broken Chromosomes." This band is deafening – in fact, I notice that many of them are wearing earplugs. The drums churn like machine guns, and the screaming singer gets the crowd to chant along. I can't discern the lyrics, but it sounds like they're defiantly shouting, "Bassinet!" Another performer is holding a blond two-year-old on his arm as he sings. She's wearing red airport-style earprotectors. A fan clambers onto the stage, motions the crowd to come toward him, and leaps onto their arms.

The lead singer pauses to instruct, "God is not a salad bar. It's a two-way street – you're supposed to talk and listen. Not just go, 'Pal, can you help me out of a jam."' As he goes into the song "White-Knuckle It," the crowd jostles the surfer off balance, and he reaches up and nearly grabs the electric wires strung to stage. Some in the audience rock their heads violently back and forth on their necks; some cheer and bounce; some just stand and nod their heads thoughtfully, like wine connoisseurs.

Not all the music is metal variation; among the alternatives is a good number of ska bands. The group Not for the Crowd has a large and grinning audience skanking in the afternoon heat. Between the songs, the lead singer urges listeners not to let the joy of the faith grow cold in their hearts. I hear several bands give messages like this between songs, which makes me wonder if cooling emotion is a recurrent problem. It doesn't seem to be a concern that listeners will actually lose their faith, but rather that they'll fail to experience a sufficiently vivid level of emotional engagement with it, that they may gradually grow numb or take it for granted.

A liturgical Church has an advantage over one where worship is relatively spontaneous, in that people powered by religious emotion simply do run out of steam. Where there is a Liturgy, you show up each week and merge into that stream, and allow the prayers to shape you. But where the test of successful worship is how much you felt moved, there's always performance anxiety; even the audience has to perform.

I HAD BEEN A CHRISTIAN about ten years when I noticed to my dismay that my spiritual feelings were changing; the experience was growing quieter, less exciting. I feared that I was losing my faith, or that I might hear the Lord's words to the church at Ephesus, "I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first" (Revelation 2:4). Then I came to sense that my faith had undergone a shift of location. It had moved deep inside and was glowing there like a little oil lamp; if I was swept away with emotionally noisy worship, it might tip and sputter. Silence and attentiveness were now key.

I think this happens naturally in a believer's relationship with God, just as it does between two people who are in love. At first, being in love is all so strange, and the beloved is so other and exciting, that every moment is a thrill. But gradually over long years the couple grows together and grows alike. They no longer find each other a thrilling unknown but drink deeply of a treasured known that will always extend to mystery.

At the beginning, the heart pounds just to see the beloved's handwriting on an envelope; at the end, two sit side by side before a fire and don't need to speak at all. When these rock bands urge their audience not to let the joy fade, they may be calling them to fight a fruitless battle against moving to the next stage of spiritual communion, the one where God moves deep inside. When years shape us to be like him, his presence is less electric and strange; yet as we draw nearer, deeper faith yields deeper awe.

Music like this is a huge boost to Christian teens, like Kris Wolfe of Cedar Rapids. She is a fan of the band MxPx, which she describes as "Cal punk" and says sounds like Green Day. Wolfe tells me, "I'm gonna change this country when I grow up. It's completely too liberal." What kind of changes? I ask. She's momentarily at a loss, then says, "Everything. My version of this country would probably result in a lot of anarchy." She laughs self-consciously. "I like to think that if there weren't laws and a government everything would be cool, but probably it wouldn't be." Before coming to Cornerstone I haven't heard of a conservative agenda to fight liberalism by introducing anarchy, but then again I hadn't heard of Christian death metal either.

Wolfe lost her pocketwatch while crowd-surfing the night before, which leads her to give me some advice. "If you go crowdsurfing, tuck your shirt way in, because people's hands go up your back and eventually your shirt gets pulled up. And that's cool if you're a guy but not a girl." She reflects. "And it's good to have pockets with buttons. If I'd put my pocketwatch in my pocket I wouldn't have lost it, but they took me by surprise. My friend just said, 'Let's put her up,' and they did."

IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, the band Ignited Soul is singing about suicide. "Temporary problem – PERMANENT SOLUTION! Temporary problem – PERMANENT SOLUTION!"

During an instrumental bridge, the singer instructs, "Close your eyesÉ don't pay any attention to the musicÉ Look at your LordÉ" He describes the passion and death of Christ. "He paid the price with his blood, and still you push him away. And still you push him away. And still you push his love away."

At the end of the song, he speaks to the audience. "A lot of bands sing about suicide, but I know about it. About three years ago I took a razor to my wrist. And if it wasn't for our Lord, I wouldn't be here today."

He pauses. "If you're feeling that way, please come and talk to us after the show. Don't leave with this inside you. The devil will use it to attack you."

Even Christians get the blues, sometimes the black-and-blues that leave them racked and stumbling. At a lonely time like that, hope in Christ can seem pretty theoretical. This singer knows what that's like, and his voice cuts through the afternoon heat, through the dusty air hanging over the heads of this crowd. Yes, even Christians suffer, and sometimes we can't remember what the hope is without each other's help.

The singer's eyes search the crowd, looking for the ones who know what he's talking about. Maybe someone will drift up to the stage when the set is over, ready for a heart-to-heart talk. Even when you know in your head that Jesus Is the Answer, it helps to have another person, someone with skin on, put his arm around your shoulder and help you see it fresh. It's like somebody said: you will not forget what realism is all about.

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Text © Frederica Mathewes-Green 1999
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