Christian Punk: Identity and Performance

Christian punk is a surprisingly successful musical subculture and a fascinating expression of American evangelicalism. Situating Christian punk within the modern history of Christianity and the rapidly changing culture of spirituality and secularity, this book illustrates how Christian punk continues punk’s autonomous and oppositional creative practices, but from within a typically traditional evangelical morality. Analyzing straight edge Christian abstinence and punk-friendly churches, this book also focuses on gender performance within a subculture dominated by young men in a time of contested gender roles and ideologies. Critically-minded and rich in ethnographic data and insider perspectives, Christian Punk will engage scholars of contemporary evangelicalism, religion and popular music, and punk and all its related subcultures.

Ibrahim Abraham is Hans Mol Research Fellow in Religion and the Social Sciences at the Australian National University, Australia. He is the author of Evangelical Youth Culture (Bloomsbury, 2017).

Christopher Partridge is Professor of Religious Studies, Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, Lancaster University, UK. He is the author of several books, including High Culture: Drugs, Mysticism, and the Pursuit of Transcendence in the Modern World (2018) and Mortality and Music: Popular Music and the Awareness of Death (2015)

Marcus Moberg is Professor of Theology and Study of Religions at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. His research interests include the sociology of religion, media and culture, religion, markets and consumer culture studies, and the discursive study of religion.