Christian 'metal' does not exist - part 2
posted on 04 Apr 2007 under category Meta
In Part 1, I showed how christians try to use the weasel term ‘christian band’ to sneak into the discussion with an air of legitimacy. I started by deconstructing the idea that a ‘christian band’ is ‘a band of christians’ (an admittedly trivial argument, and one little-used except among the more impaired of the believers). Next, I focused on what I think is most christian ‘metal’ apologists’ main point, that a christian band is one that ‘expresses christian values’. I’ll deal with the weasel term ‘christian values’ later and focus on the big ones - specifically, obedience and moral legitimacy/source of god. I briefly described the argument I laid out in my Black Sabbath essay series to show that metal’s espoused values - freedom, individualism, rejection of external control - are completely incompatible with the anti-freedom, anti-individualism, and submission to control that is at the heart of christianity. At this point, you will get one of two main argument paths (sometimes both, if your apologist is especially dumb and/or desperate - since they’re somewhat incompatible). I’ll discuss those here. “But it sounds like metal.”
This is the lower-level argument path, in that it refuses to deal with the concepts behind christianity, metal, or music in general. Needless to say, it gets lots of action from the lesser-intelligence types and basically anyone who doesn’t like to think too hard. It’s basically a ‘no, it isn’t’ to my previous argument about values. And it’s about as content-free as ‘no, it isn’t’, also. The argument goes something like this:
“But it has power chords, and heavy distortion on the guitars, and the music basically sounds like Black Sabbath/Judas Priest/Iron Maiden/Cradle of Filth/Metallica/Slipknot/etc. - and since it sounds like other metal bands it’s metal too, bleh (*sticks out tongue and blows raspberry*).”
This one just takes the tiniest bit of verbal judo to deflate. All one needs to do is point out how many bands use power chords and distortion yet aren’t metal. One need look no farther than 80’s cock-rock hairbands or their modern-day equivalent, the mallcore groove-monkeys. If ‘christian metal’ is metal, then so is a lot of other clearly non-metal stuff. This can be tailored to the individual (dis)tastes of the opponent. If you know they hate glam, drag out glam. If you know they hate mallcore, throw out one of those. Classic rock and old heavy prog might help if they’re somewhat more literate. But that’s not very common among people stupid enough to use this argument in the first place.
“But Black Sabbath/Judas Priest/Iron Maiden/(other random metal band) also sings about christian values.”
This ‘argument’ is a bit more involved than the previous one, but not much. They pretty much grant that music isn’t just what it sounds like, but what it’s about. However, they are shifting tactics at this point to stop trading on the ‘christian band’ angle and move to the retreat position, ‘christian values’. The argument goes something like this:
“But christianity tells you not to steal or murder, and that war is bad, and you have X band singing Y song telling you not to steal/kill/go to war, so of course christian values can fit in metal.”
It almost sounds reasonable, but that’s the kind of mileage you can get out of weasel words. As always, the way to stop this kind of argument cold is to force a definition of terms. In this case, ‘christian values’.
Christians try to trade on this ‘christian values’ angle often, by showing how other cultures, both older and newer, were all built around the same basic core of laws - don’t steal, don’t kill, don’t lie - and since christianity tells people not to steal, or kill, or lie, those are ‘christian values’.
See, when you actually spell it out, it becomes obvious just how idiotic the argument is. So the ancient sumerians, thousands of years before even christianity’s parent judaism sprang up, had laws against theft and murder and so they were christian? Ridiculous. “But their values were universal and handed down by god, so even if they didn’t know god their values were christian.” Laughable.
I could go on, but you get the point. Yes, christianity has some ideals that make it easy for people to get along with each other. Other cultures have done the same thing, without the christian basis. Others might have done it strictly by reason, or by another god, or some other method. So, clearly, you can’t use those kinds of ‘values’ arguments to claim them as christian.
This is getting a bit longer than I planned, so I’ll break there. In part 3 I’ll discuss what ‘christian values’ are and show how the entire concept is completly incompatible with metal.
(I’ve toyed with the idea of going back and making all of these a bit more rigorous and less combative - both faults a byproduct of the grain of sand that spurred me to spin these pearls. The idiots I was responding to with these essays were especially stupid and quite persistently argumentative, and I was frustrated by having to type these out post after post every few months - hence crafting them as blog posts.
This particular latest series, though, I think all I’d really have to change is preface ‘christianity’ with ‘fundagelical’. I barely cringed at all when I reread this one in particular.)