With God on Our Side: Towards a Transformational Theology of Rock and Roll

Rock and roll is more than just music. Rock is a culture and an ideology which carries its own ethos. It is forcefully countercultural and exists as a bane in the sight of dominant Western culture. As rock engages and critiques culture it invariably encounters issues of meaning that are existential and theological. A transformational theology of rock begins with those existential and theological issues raised by and within rock music. With God On Our Side attempts to respond to these queries in a way that is faithful to the work of the kingdom of God on earth by mining our long theological tradition and seeing what cohesive responses can be made to the issues raised by rock music. At its best rock acknowledges there is something wrong with the world raises awareness of marginalized voices and offers an alternative mode of existence within our present reality. By teasing out the theological issues found in rock music this book synthesizes the findings to create a distinctive cultural theology that is sensitive to the plight of the marginalized in the West. In this way the book offers a way forward towards a transformational theology of rock and roll. Too many theology of culture authors pillage cultural artifacts for the purpose of using them as cardboard props for use in service of their book topic. In this book Felix-Jager takes cultural artifacts seriously as complex items of deep meaning that not only avail themselves to the ideas we project onto them but also teach us things through the ideas they project onto us. And a book that has such creative insights makes this a pretty fun read. --Brent Everett Dickinson Azusa Pacific University Too often rock music is written off by the faithful as the devils music dangerous unless transfigured by the formulaic approach of the Contemporary Christian Music industry. Yet as Felix-Jager shows rock music is not one thing but internally diverse representing many sub-genres of music. Further these sub-genres are religiously complex engaging a wide range of basic human and even explicitly religious concerns. This unique and compelling book is cognizant of the diversity and religious complexity of rock and rewards the reader with a rich and original transformational theology of rock by way of response. Highly recommended. --Christian Scharen Auburn Theological Seminary There is a notable imbalance between the prominence of rock music in our culture at large and its relative absence from theological discussions of art and culture. In this lucid study Steven Felix-Jager performs a valuable service by inviting the church to follow his lead in bringing theologians like Barth Hauerwas and Gutierrez into conversation with artists like August Burns Red Relient K and Skillet. --Steven R. Guthrie Belmont University Steven Felix-Jager (PhD University of Wales/Glyndŵr University) teaches courses in theology philosophy and humanities at Southeastern University and Polk State College as an adjunct professor and teaches high school art. He is the author of Pentecostal Aesthetics (2015) and of numerous scholarly journal articles about art aesthetics and theology.