Anti-Creedance Front

Are you frustrated about the amount of Christian bands breaking into the subculture music genres? Do you get angry about evangelism/ists? Seen one too many abortion protestors walk down your street carrying blown up posters of bloody fetuses? Frustrated with religion for any other reason? We're a small group of people concerned about the "role of religion in public life". Our goals are to promote personal spirituality (i.e. non-Messianic religion), stop defamation against pagans, nontheists, and the like, counter-protest religious fundamentalists, and stop the sectionalization of our subcultures by fundamentalist bands. Our message board is at (http://pub5.ezboard.com/banticreedancefrontforum) and our site is at (http://www.blocka.net/anticreedancefront).

[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: Anti-Creedance Front ]</p>

galiel

In other words, you oppose free speech.
<img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Philosoft

Yeah, those mainstream Christian bands are just mucking up the whole works. All three of them.

What is anti-creedance[sic] anyway?

Anti-Creedance Front

No, in other words, we want to defend our rights to free speech from religious fundamentalists.
This is just a different way to go about it than
most people do. Grassroots activism. Creed means an authoritative religious belief. Organized religion. I just made it creedance because Anti-Creed Front would make people think we were against the band. That would be dumb. Think of it as a coined term.

galiel

Explain please how the existence of Christian bands threatens your free speech.

Please explain how you intend to stop this without infringing upon their free speech rights.

Please also explain why the creation of Christian punk genres is any different than all the other subgenres that are created all the time?

Isn't the problem you have with fundies is their desire to impose their beliefs and ways of life on us and to inhibit our rights to be free? What makes you any different than them, except for the switching of the oppressor and the oppressed?

[ September 09, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

Toto

My first thought was that this is not a church state issue. But this forum is also home to threads involving activism, so I will leave this for now.

villainess

Properly speaking, boycotts and counterprotests don't constitute blocking free speech; it would only become a free speech issue if they were proposing legally banning Christian musicians/ evangelists, or killing them.

Though protesting mainstream Christian bands (Amy Grant, POD, U2, the Cranberries, to name more than three) is probably just free publicity for them, counterprotesting evangelists could be useful in communities where they otherwise could project the image of having hegemony over public thought.

I have to say, though, anti-Creedance has the same problem as Anti-Creed: people will think that you have a problem with CCR.

- the Villainess

Anti-Creedance Front

The reason you see so many people on here, but it seems like fundies populate the entire outside world, is that most just sit and bitch. Bitch, bitch, bitch. What does bitching get done? If you talk the talk, you should walk the walk. Like I said before, it's NOT the presence of Christian bands, it's the presence of the political groups that run the *fundamentalist ones*. Free speech isn't even an issue when it comes to this, really, because the only way you can block another's free speech, like the person above said, is to block their legal rights, or to inhibit their speech in some way. We don't advocate blocking anyone's free speech, but you know damn well there has been fundamentalist efforts to block ours. By the way, I don't know where you got U2 being a Christian band. The Cranberries, you probably mistook for Sixpence None the Richer.

galiel

Ok, anti-creedence, thanks for the clarification. I fully support activism, (obviously, given the threads I create), I had gotten the wrong impression from your initial post.

Being a musician myself, I am expecially sensitive to any attempts to censor music, which come as often from misguided PC "liberals" as from close-minded "conservatives", and being a civil libertarian, I vehemently oppose limiting free speech, no matter how offensive (fire in crowded theater exception duly noted, etc.,etc).

I do agree that making an issue out of it carries the danger of bringing attention to otherwise obscure bands, but I, too, have noticed that a few are penetrating the, for lack of a better phrase, "alternative mainstream" (and oxymoron, I know, but you know what I mean).

However, just like the epidemic of "guardian angel" television series and pseudo-documentaries about the supernatural, I'm not sure that direct confrontation or opposition will do any good.

What I find most useful is when prominent entertainers like Frank Zappa write contrary lyrics, or when atheist actor-directors like Jodie Foster carry their values onscreen. Just like the presence of gay characters in positive roles helps to reduce the bigotry on TV, so positive portrayals of nontheists in popular culture help a great deal to counter the "holy-rock-n-roller" crowd.

Good luck!

waj

Says Bono on Christianity:

(from U2 at the End of the World)

U2 are Christians, although Bono, at least, has voiced opposition to organized religion (he wrote the introduction to Adam Harbison's They've Hijacked God).

[ September 10, 2002: Message edited by: waj ]</p>