{"id":9702,"date":"2010-08-31T12:43:22","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T16:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/?p=9702"},"modified":"2010-08-31T12:43:22","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T16:43:22","slug":"a-church-of-england-vicar-the-devils-interval-and-the-liberative-theology-of-darkness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/a-church-of-england-vicar-the-devils-interval-and-the-liberative-theology-of-darkness\/","title":{"rendered":"A Church of England vicar, the Devil\u2019s Interval and the \u201cliberative theology of darkness\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Just when you thought you\u2019d <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/newstopics\/religion\/7971749\/Christians-could-learn-a-lot-about-life-from-heavy-metal-says-cleric.html\" target=\"_blank\">heard everything<\/a> from the CofE:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Rev Rachel Mann claims that the much-maligned form of music <em>[heavy metal]<\/em> demonstrates the \u201cliberative theology of darkness\u201d, allowing its tattooed and pierced fans to be more \u201crelaxed and fun\u201d by acknowledging the worst in human nature.<\/p>\n<p>She says that by contrast, churchgoers can appear too sincere and take themselves too seriously.<\/p>\n<p>The priest admits that many will be \u201cconcerned\u201d about metal lyrics praising Satan and mocking Christianity, but insists it is just a form of \u201cplay-acting\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Miss Mann, priest-in-charge of St Nicholas\u2019s, Burnage, writes in this week\u2019s <em>Church Times<\/em>: \u201cSince Black Sabbath effectively created it in 1969 by using the dissonant sound of the medieval \u2018Devil\u2019s chord\u2019, heavy metal has been cast as dumb, crass, and on, occasions satanic; music hardly fit for intelligent debate, led alone theological reflection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>For more information on the \u201cDevil\u2019s Interval&#8221; take a look <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/uk_news\/magazine\/4952646.stm\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>. And here it is as a diminished 5<sup>th<\/sup> in a distinctly non-devilish snippet (the dissonance in the 2<sup>nd<\/sup> and 4<sup>th<\/sup> bars):<\/p>\n\n<p>Sad to say, Rev Mann can\u2019t seem to make the distinction between the silly demonization of a musical interval and integrating Satan, darkness, violence, destruction and death into one\u2019s Christian life. I suppose it\u2019s just the next step in <em>inclusion:<\/em><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Miss Mann says that heavy metal songs, characterized by distorted guitar sounds, \u201cintense\u201d beats and \u201cmuscular\u201d vocals, are \u201cunafraid to deal with death, violence and destruction\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Its \u201cpredominantly male and white\u201d fans \u201cgenerally like tattoos and piercings\u201d but are \u201cgraceful, welcoming and gentle\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe music\u2019s willingness to deal with nihilistic and, on occasion, extremely unpleasant subjects seems to offer its fans a space to accept others in a way that shames many Christians.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMetal\u2019s refusal to repress the bleak and violent truths of human nature liberates its fans to be more relaxed and fun people\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>She goes on to claim that \u201cmetal has no fear of human darkness\u201d and while some Christians are similarly unafraid, \u201cmany are yet to discover its potential as a place of integration\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just when you thought you\u2019d heard everything from the CofE: The Rev Rachel Mann claims that the much-maligned form of music [heavy metal] demonstrates the \u201cliberative theology of darkness\u201d, allowing its tattooed and pierced fans to be more \u201crelaxed and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/a-church-of-england-vicar-the-devils-interval-and-the-liberative-theology-of-darkness\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[463,2089,1399],"class_list":["post-9702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church-of-england","tag-barmy-vicars","tag-church-of-england","tag-satanism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9702\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}