I need your opinions on this odd little religion/school issue.

[Lyric]

Every year, my university (a public land-grant university) puts on an event called "FallFest." The entire point of FallFest was originally to encourage students to avoid a rather infamous local block party that nearly always results in lots of excessive public drunkenness, fights, property damage, etc. FallFest generally involves a few concerts, some games, a dance party, and beer available to over-21's, but in a safe, controlled environment.

This year, Chris Daughtry is headlining at FallFest, which is fine. What's not so fine is one of the other bands that they hired. It's a Christian rock band called "Day of Fire." They are a TRULY Christian rock band, and much (if not all) of their music is very Christ-centered and focused on religion. This isn't just some regular rock band that happens to have a few Christian members.

If the event is paid for by the University, then it's public taxpayer money that they're spending, and it irks me that they've hired a religious band with taxpayer money. It's not like this is some local band that's really popular--nobody here seems to have even HEARD of these people. But they're being paid to come sing preachy, Christianity-focused songs at FallFest.

What do you guys think? Should a public university be allowed to hire Christian rock bands (or music groups dedicated to ANY particular faith, for that matter) for official school events? Is that an appropriate and fair use of taxpayer funds? Does it send the wrong message to a student body with a large percentage of students who are of other faiths/no faith--a message that says, "You are not normal, and you are not welcome. Not really."

Tell me what you think.

Edit: I originally meant to post this in GD, but I'll just cross-post it. I figure you guys might have some good thoughts on this matter too. :)

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. For two reasons, I think this is inappropriate

1) The university shouldn't be hiring groups that are specifically evangelical (of whatever faith, philosophy, etc.) for what is, essentially, a secular event on secular land.

2) They especially shouldn't hire Christian rock bands because they tend to utterly suck donkey balls from a musicological standpoint AND a theological standpoint.

Out of simple respect for art itself, they shouldn't hire that band.

And out of respect for the taxpayers, they should not do so, either.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

4. possibly the most perfect response ever. nt

[Orsino]

12. That's unnecessarily harsh, don't you think?

Donkey balls aren't that bad.

[WinkyDink]

13. Yeah, what you said.

[Fearless]

18. Agreed.

[PVnRT]

25. Musicological is a word?

[Rabrrrrrr]

27. Yes, indeedy!

A good word, too.

[SidneyCarton]

34. Agreed.

The point of most Christian rock bands is to proselyte via the music. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it tends to make for lousy music and quite often vapid lyrics that neither move people toward faith, nor entertain.

Furthermore, Is proselyting on campus allowed? We've had Hari Krishnas, Gideons and the occasional Fundie on campus. (only the fundies ever cause any real problems).

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. It's probably not the university per se but some fundies on the planning committee

I don't know what your school's policy is on funding student organizations. At most places, they can be anything--religious, political, ethnic-- as long as all students are free to join.

But generally, state schools try to maintain religious neutrality, and this drives fundies crazy. This may be an attempted end-run.

[Lyric]

5. I'm not sure about the student orgs funding thing either.

For the most part, campus is pretty liberal. We have our CCC group, but they're pretty low-key, and the university has always (seemed) to be very supportive of things like GLBT equality, feminism, racial equality, etc.

But this event is an Official University Event, put on by the school itself, not just a student organization. So I'm rather disturbed at this. I'm not even sure who to complain to, honestly. It seems petty to gripe about a Christian rock band playing at FallFest, but these small incursions on the separation of church and state are the most dangerous kind, because they provide a platform from which to launch more intense incursions. "You didn't gripe about the Christian rock band, why should you gripe about the Christian prayer at commencement?", etc.

[yellowdogintexas]

3. I hate it hate it hate it. NO WAY should they do this with taxpayer funds.Now if

they can provide a very clean papertrail to show somebody privately donated the money just to get this particular band, well that is somewhat different.

Sounds to me like the ChristLife group president is in charge of the planning, or the BSU. The Wesley Foundation would OTOH be unlikely to do something like this.

ARe there a lot of other bands?

This just smells to me

[Lyric]

6. There are a small number of bands.

Five total. Here's a link to the program:

http://events.wvu.edu/fallfest/08/index.shtml

[yellowdogintexas]

10. looking at the bands, sounds like they have a variety. That Lupe Viasco(sp)

sounded interesting, since his music came on when I clicked the link. I would willingly listen to his stuff.

I am sick of Christian Rock anyway, I never liked it and I go to church every week.

I think it is totally a marketing ploy to make money off people who are askeered of listening to big bad regular popular music. Or are being make askeered by their church

oops went off on a rant there.

(Now if this were West Virginia Wesleyan, I would not be so concerned, although the very idea of a band like this showing up at a Kentucky Wesleyan event when I was there is totally ludicrous. KWC took a lot of pride in being a true liberal arts school in every way and did not kowtow to the conservative side of the page at all. Even our required religion classes were very liberal.)

[JVS]

7. Tell us more about this block party. It sounds interesting.

[Lyric]

9. Locally, it's known as the Grant Avenue Block Party.

I don't know if it even exists anymore; when WVU instituted FallFest in 1995, the local police started cracking down hard on partygoers on Grant Avenue. I've never been much of a partier, so I have no idea if it's still going on.

[XOEnterprises]

8. I'd complain.

My university is secular and private, and this seems odd to me. I'm not sure how it would work at your particular university, but I know here there's someone in charge of those kinds of events(I can't remember the title off the top of my head, but I knew the student who ran it my freshman year).

I would guess that while the university, liberal as it is, is paying for this, whoever is in charge of booking the bands might have a religious bent, and that's why. I'd try to find out who is involved in campus bookings and contact them to complain.

[Chan790]

11. I'm going to disagree...

for a few reasons, not because I like the idea of Christian rock bands playing as I think Rabrrrrr hit the nail on the head for the most part.

1.)A primary role of any good university is to expose students to a different ways of thinking, schools of thought, and a broad array of experiences. You can't get any more diverse in that department than that lineup of acts. I think it's possibly important that a christian rock band play a school like WVU because to truly appreciate the reality of anything, one must experience it. My fondest hope is that shitty Jesus-rock will cause people to question whether the entire idea of religion is lame.

2.) I think that there is a legitimate argument to be made that by and large separation of church and state is a good thing, but I feel it has zero place in higher education. I completely discount the application of any context of the law to narrow the flow of ideas or censor any POV in the public square, even those as ludicrous as that of a punitive invisible man who imposes rules from on high and hates women, GBLTQ individuals, minorities and people of different faiths. I think all ideas are welcome on the field of battle if for no better reason than they then have to stand on their own merits or perish from the face of the Earth after being utterly destroyed. That's the double-edged sword of the establishment clause in this scenario: It doesn't just keep your dollars from funding shitty X-tian rock, it protects their insular bigoted racist stupidity from ever having to enter the steel-cage winner-take-all grudge match free-for-all that is higher education against such heavyweights of the battle of ideas as feminism, liberalism, utilitarianism, Darwinism, humanism, Marxism,...and even materialism and capitalism. In short, they should be welcomed into the fray if simply because our ideas/philosophies are better. We all should look forward to crushing their myth.

3.) A late addition. Inspired by my brother who I asked to proofread. As he said: "Dude, it's not exactly high-minded debate we're discussing. It's Jesus-music so it's maybe art...though that's a debate in itself." He has the kernel of a good argument there. It's not exactly religion, it's "art" inspired by religious belief. If you pursued this and won (and I suspect that you might win if you pursued this.) what is the fallout? By the same reach, it becomes debatable whether any religiously-inspired work is appropriate at WVU: Should we remove the poems of William Blake, John Donne, and Amiri Baraka from the curriculum of the English department? Should The Last Temptation of Christ and The Crucible still be among the films shown for "Critical Analysis of Cinema"? Can we ban Aquinas from the philosophy courses? Plato too since he advocated for strict adherence to state-religion in Res Publica? Do the works of Bach, Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel and Leonard Bernstein still belong in the collections of the music department? I'd argue that WVU would be poorer for this Pyrrhic victory.

I think it sucks that they're spending your money on crappy God-rock but I think the best response is to show up and protest. Never lose an opportunity to publicly engage stupidity in a debate or confront bigotry.

[lildreamer316]

14. I think you have a point, but just a bit of info: Chris Daughtry's former band was Christian.

Now, he's from here, and he's not ultra-rabid-Christian, but I'd wonder if this may have been some sort of inspiration for them..the organizers, I mean.
My best friend used to work with him at the auto place here. She said he was cool.

[Dr. Strange]

15. Hiring them doesn't bother me any more than hiring Daughtry.

In fact, based on Fire's webpage, it sounds like they're pals with him. Probably his opening act.
Personally, I'd be opposed to the University spending money on anything like this (music). They should probably stick to education. (Didn't we just have a couple of threads complaining about the cost of textbooks?)

Besides, I just turned 40, and have gone into old fogie mode. Kids today don't know good music, Christian or otherwise.

[bridgit]

16. How do you know it's funded from that side of their public ledger?

At my son's satellite school parents were encouraged to pledge time as well as raise funds by way of rummage sales, yard sales, donations, rotary club, elks, local buzz advertising, etc, to fund such events. With some vendors prepared to donate services as well i.e stage setup and stuff like that. Granted, all under the auspices of the school, and ultimately the locale board of education. But there's other ways to generate money for events than clip the school's public budget.

I don't have a problem with trying to setup a positive environ for young people. And for that matter, how do you know the message would be, "You are not normal, and you are not welcome. Not really."

'Sides, some Christian rock actually does rock! The production values are solid, and the message is positive O8)

[bridgit]

29. "You are not normal, and you are not welcome. Not really." is a message...

DUer's have delivered to each other, region to region, NE to everyone, ass kissers to the hesitant, cool kids to the perceived uncool kids, etc. How is it possible to feign 'big tent inclusion', while sanctioning such hypocrisy as preferable in one instance and not the other?

[City of Mills]

17. Check them out here

http://www.last.fm/music/Day+of+Fire

I don't think it's a big deal that they were hired, personally. They actually don't sound too bad. I've listened to a lot of 80's christian rock bands such as Vengeance Rising and Deliverance (good friend in grade school was big into the christian metal scene and introduced me to a lot of bands). I'm also a fan of 'evil' bands like Slayer, Dark Angel and many other decidedly non-christian bands and everything in between. It's just music, preachy maybe but I'm still atheist and a non-churchgoer. Oddly enough, the lead singer of Vengeance Rising has since left the Christian faith, and the lead singer for Dark Angel now fronts a Christian band. Weird world.

[Critters2]

19. "Vengeance Rising"? What kind of a Christian name is that?!! nt

[City of Mills]

21. LOL

Actually they are probably one of the heaviest bands (Christian or no) I have encountered. Their first two albums are fantastic. Their second album "Once Dead" is brilliant. They sound more satanic than christian and were fairly controversial when Christian Metal was pretty much "Stryper". Their debut album cover featured a crucified hand which freaked a lot of christians out. There's more info here, really an interesting band and story http://www.bnrmetal.com/v2/bandpage.php?ID=VeRi

[Critters2]

20. Yeah, I gotta agree. Sounds inappropriate to me.

I never understand why Christian bands have to get in on things like this. It's not like they can't find venues to play in. I'll bet there are a couple of megachurches in WV.

Yep, bad idea.

[qb]

22. Sucky Christian music at a drunk-fest?

Something tells me they're going to get a lot of beers thrown at them.

[mcctatas]

23. No...

I think it is sucky christianist music as a way to keep students AWAY from the drunk-fest. Ya, like that'll work;)

[1]

24. so you would "discriminate" against a band for religious reasons?

hum...

[PVnRT]

26. Uhhhh....what?

Your post makes no sense.

[bridgit]

31. sure it does, right to religious freedoms extending to music contracts...

venues, and play-lists

[MrCoffee]

28. I don't have a problem with it

I wouldn't go see them because, for the very reasons so elequently stated above, but I wouldn't get my nose all bent out of shape about it, either.

[bertha katzenengel]

30. I think it's inappropriate personally. But I say, forget it.

In my opinion, it's too little to waste a lot of energy on.

If it were an elementary school, I would feel differently. College students can make up their own minds; they're not as impressionable as children.

[Gormy Cuss]

32. One out of five bands, I see no problem.

I'd feel differently if they were the ONLY band hired.
I agree with much of what Chan790 wrote on the subject, and I also agree with Rabrrrrr's musicological statement ;-)

If a sufficient number of students aren't interested in the band they'll use the band's set for toilet breaks and later complain to the university admin about it.

[DU GrovelBot]

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