Resistance, Renewal, and Congregation at Christian Music Festivals

American Academy of Religion

AAR, Boston, Massachusetts, November 19, 2017.

Material from this paper was published in Music Festivals, Ephemeral Places, and Scenes: Interdependence at Cornerstone Festival and God Rock, Inc.

Abstract

For many attendees, Christian music festivals supplement their local churches as the locus of face-to-face congregational life. For others, however, the festival becomes their congregation: attendees lacking a strong center to their spiritual lives find community and communion in prayer tents, at food courts, on the soccer field, and especially at the numerous concerts that structure the program. At times, the festival articulates resistance: confronting dominant norms about evangelical Christian culture, including issues of style, ethics, commerce, and theology. Festivals also provide sites of renewal, enabling places—however transient or ephemeral or muddy—for worship, transcendence, and reflection. This paper, based on several years’ of ethnographic research, considers these issues at three Christian music festivals: Cornerstone, Wild Goose, and AudioFeed. I argue that community and congregational cohesion are essential components of lived experience at these festivals.

Part of the organized panel Community Formation: Intersections of Congregations, Religious Musics, and Popular Culture. Panelists:

• Joshua Busman

• Andrew Mall

• Maren Haynes Marchesini

• Katelyn Medic

• Jeffers Engelhardt (chair)