Thread "MYspace" in forum "Comic Talk and General Discussion *"

Posted at 10:06AM, Jun. 27, 2006

Yeah, but… recruiting people by clearly expressing your church's main principles is one thing. Recruiting people by wrapping up your church's principles in a fake pop-culture coating, so that people will join for the music or the friends or the popularity and not the belief itself, is another.

~IJ

Posted at 11:06AM, Jun. 27, 2006

Yeah, but…
~IJ

I know, nasty isn't it? Christian rock is poisonous.

Posted at 12:06PM, Jun. 27, 2006

What are some good Christian rock songs? There are some out there…
"Jesus is Just Alright" by The Doobie Brothers,
"All you Zombies" by The Hooters,
A few of the early Cat Stevens songs like "On the road to find out" and "Morning has Broken",
"Shine" by Collective Soul…

I don't know, there must be more. Those are just cool songs. I can ignore crazy god lyrics if it's a good song (only the first two have crazy god lyrics).

Posted at 12:06PM, Jun. 27, 2006

Yeah, but… recruiting people by clearly expressing your church's main principles is one thing. Recruiting people by wrapping up your church's principles in a fake pop-culture coating, so that people will join for the music or the friends or the popularity and not the belief itself, is another.

~IJ

Exactly! I have a very religious friend who brought me to his youth group one day, and basically it was about eating food and listening to people perform Christian Rock. I felt extremely awkward. Needless to say, I never went there again. (Besides the fact that that church is a bit… weird. It's known in our community as "Six Flags Over Jesus" on account that it's huge and all about recruiting as many young people as possible. Seriously, my friend got rewarded because he brought 7 of his friends to that youth group one night. )

The Killers have a slightly religious song of "All These Things That I've Done," but you'd have to really look into it.

Posted at 1:06PM, Jun. 27, 2006

Yeah, but… recruiting people by clearly expressing your church's main principles is one thing. Recruiting people by wrapping up your church's principles in a fake pop-culture coating, so that people will join for the music or the friends or the popularity and not the belief itself, is another.

~IJ

Doesn't matter. It hardly ever works. :wink:

.: SpANG! :.

Posted at 10:06PM, Jun. 27, 2006

I'm not against Christianity in itself, but… this just seems like another attempt by Christian church elders to get the younger generations to believe religion is cool. And no offense, but religion is not supposed to be "hot, hip and teen-demographic-oriented!".
Even so, I'm nothing short of amazed at how astonishingly uncool most hip Christian youth groups are. I mean, they don't even come close. You'd think that one of them could present religion in a somewhat appealing way.

Take Christian music, for example. You've seen the commercials, right? Like every CD collection has at least one band covering "Sing Of Your Love Forever". It seems like the number one prerequisit for being a faith-based artist is to have absolutely no idea what type of music people actually want to listen to. There are exceptions of course, but they usually do so by making their Christian messages more cryptic. You know, like Creed.

Maybe the reason Christian youth hipsters are so uncool is because so very few of them make an effort to conceal their propoganda. I flipped through a Christian comicbook once. To my amazement, it had very little to say about love and God and a whole lot to say about instructing young Christians to denounce homosexuality, cool music, the evil secular media, and proper science.

All right, I get the point.

Look, maybe I was wrong about Christian groups. I realize that religious scouting is 10% actual belief and 90% marketing (and I'm not being sarcastic here– you need to get people's attention before you start laying down specific guidelines), and these guys just want to try out what's new and exciting. I can't fault them for that. Maybe, even, the only reason that they're failing at it is because religion has a "serious and somber" connotation that comes with the whole spiritual journey thing. And that doesn't appeal to people these days; they want salvation now, without all that confusing church dogma.

Besides, there are good Christian artists, like Sufjan Stevens, and Norman Greenbaum, and Relient K, and (who could forget?) Kanye West. So I'm sorry for being… I don't know… a bit hasty in my opinions. I'm still going to feel a little bit ashamed of my "Xtreme Teen!" copy of the Bible that I got on Communion ("The straight truth you want to hear, in words you can understand!"), but that's just me. Most aforementioned "church elders", I guess, just want to help as many people as possible with their problems, and if MyPraize is the way to do it, then more power to them.

~IJ

PS: However, this isn't to say that I think that all Christian music is good on a musical level. Like regular music, the "Worship" section of your average record store contains a few good bands surrounded by a lot of… well… not-so-good ones.

Posted at 6:07AM, Jul. 16, 2006

http://www.myspace.com/radmetalmonk

Even though I don't really like myspace, it's fun to tamper with bulletins…

And also, what's with myspace bulletins and it's obsession with sex? Seriously, there's like a bazillion questions on it…great. wonderful. awesome.

Posted at 8:07AM, Jul. 16, 2006

I'm still going to feel a little bit ashamed of my "Xtreme Teen!" copy of the Bible that I got on Communion ("The straight truth you want to hear, in words you can understand!"), but that's just me.

~IJ

X-Treme Teen copy of the Bible?! It's like they're trying to tell you to read cliff-notes for the rest of your life.

Alright, I'm gonna add that to my list of why I hate religion.