The Theology of The Chariot
(This paper is about my favorite band of all time, The Chariot. It was written for a seminary class I took in the fall of 2019 on missional theology. It is perhaps my most ambitious paper yet. As you will notice, while reading it, I wrote it in atypical fashion. It is part biography, part fiction, and all theological. The Chariot means the world to me, so to synthesize my theological reflections from my passion for the band was a dream come true. Long Live.)
Introduction: October 27th, 2013
I awaited with anticipation, as did my best friend Cullen. The moment was bittersweet. It was the beginning of the end–the hospice care of a loved one. We made sure to get to the venue early enough so that we could be the first ones to the stage. As we waited for the doors to open, our stomachs began to turn in hunger. Cullen saved our spot in line as I ran off to find a sandwich shop. Caught up in the hustle and bustle of downtown Minneapolis, I made my way around hoards of people, the sounds of honking cars, and the smells of urine and smog. Rushing back, Cullen and I quickly chowed down on the stale bread, old meat, and wilted vegetables of our fast food sandwiches. The line grew longer the closer to the door opening.
Fortunately, we had gotten there early enough to be among the first people to get into the show. We eagerly entered and found ourselves lost in a small dark room. It was dingy like the basement bedroom of a stoner. As the set time for the opening band grew closer, the room slowly filled. Being front-row, Cullen and I sat on the knee-high stage as we people-watched. They were our kind of people. They were our people. While there were plenty of tattoos, piercings, and band tees, the same could not be said about the amount of deodorant used. Nonetheless, the rest of the crowd also beamed with anticipation.
The opening bands all played. One that surprised me was a French post-hardcore three piece, Birds in Row. Their textured and dark tones paired perfectly with their chaotic rhythms. While each other opener impressed me, one could also palpably sense that no one in the packed room was here for the opening bands. We all knew, even the opening bands, what we were here for: The Chariot.
Having seen them once before, not to mention the hundreds of hours of live footage I had seen of them online, I had a fairly good sense as to what was about to transpire in the coming moments. The room was abuzz with excitement as the band began setting up their instruments and checking their sound. Cullen and I even caught ourselves once or twice unintentionally exchanging excited eyes with one another. Right before the band was about to begin their set, I reflected upon what this band had meant to me: awe, maturation, liberation. Whether I like it or not, it is not Jesus who has formed me more but The Chariot. Just like with a loved one, I have laughed and cried with The Chariot, as well as have been supported through the darkest and most exhilarating moments of adolescence.
As the deafening feedback rang throughout the venue, signaling the beginning of their first song, it all came to this. The last five years I had spent with The Chariot were coming to this one moment. It was as if I got to hold their hand and tell them I loved them one last time.
Incarnationality: The Chariot’s Beginnings
The Chariot began in 2003. Because their frontman, Josh Scogin, had recently stepped away from fronting up-and-coming metalcore band, Norma Jean, expectations were high for the band. Comparisons were sure to be made by critics, but Scogin was uninterested in recreating another Norma Jean. He wanted to blaze his own trail.
Yet, this did not come without its controversy. While there is no indication of a band fight, Scogin left Norma Jean contentiously. While onstage at one of their first shows since releasing their first album, Furnace Fest, Scogin told the crowd and his unknowing bandmates that he would be leaving the band after the show. He cited personal reasons as to why he left the band, yet the unsuspecting nature of it shocked and alarmed band members and fans alike. Furthermore, creating The Chariot within months of leaving Norma Jean left a bitter taste in the mouths of his former bandmates and fans.
Nonetheless, there was eager anticipation for The Chariot’s first record. Because of Scogin’s credibility with the label from his time in Norma Jean, The Chariot was immediately signed by Solid State Records. He wrangled up local musicians from Atlanta, Georgia and began recording their debut album. Fans received a taste of what to expect when they released a demo of what later became “Yellow Dress, Locked Knees” on compilation album, "This Is Solid State, Volume 5”. While it was a demo, the live recording used for the track would become a feature rather than a flaw in The Chariot’s sound.
It was an exciting time for hardcore music, especially Christian hardcore music. Solid State Records and its parent label, Tooth and Nail Records were gaining respect outside the Christian music industry, and other smaller Christian hardcore labels were emerging, like Facedown Records. Needless to say, there was a buzz captivating the minds of youth group boys and girls around the country–youth groups being the exact sites where many of these bands would get their launch. The Chariot was no different.
It was their first year in existence, and the rag tag bunch of no-name but energetic musicians from Atlanta joined Scogin on a journey to share, to participate in the Incarnation. First stop: the youth group basement of Grace Community Church in Pensacola, Florida. While the youth group teenagers of Grace Community Church love Jesus, they knew little about, much less experienced, the Incarnation. That is, until The Chariot played.
Incarnationality: Sending, Dwelling, and Matter(ing)
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” Trinitarian theology posits that God sent God’s son to dwell among and within the world. At the heart of Christian theology is a God who sends and a God who dwells. In addition, the Incarnation presupposes, then, that God is both the sender and sent. “The sending of the Father (sic) and the sentness of the Son point to the being and action of the triune God as both sender and sent.” The triune God, therefore, engenders the Incarnation. The Incarnation has a multiplicity of implications for us. It is a fleshy, bodily, messy theology with fleshy, bodily, messy ramifications.
This talk about the Incarnation, however, is a bit of a misnomer. It supposes it is a static, once-and-for-all sort of event. In doing so, theologians have attempted to monopolize Truth, utilizing the Incarnation as their defense. This monopolizing, orthodox-izing Incarnation is what Catherine Keller calls “Christ, Inc.” However, the theological beauty of the Incarnation is not that it was a stand alone event in history, but that it has and continues to reverberate in the world–incarnations if you will. It is not a polemic but “witnesses to the multiplication and entanglement of any and all becoming flesh.” Incarnations affirm “the corporeal, the carnal, [and] the mattering of matter[.]” While the affectionately named Christ, Inc. puts blinders on itself to solely focus on God, Jesus Christ, and the relationship between the two when wrestling with the Incarnation, Keller’s incarnations avoids “obsession with the singular guy incarnate[,]” but rather “this theology (incarnations) is preoccupied with just about everybody else”–just as the incarnate, himself, was. Thus, incarnations attend to a multitude of bodies including (but not limited to) “female, animal, vegetal, mineral, religious, irreligious, cosmic, and cosmopolitan” bodies.
The reverberations of incarnation are the multiplicity of bodies that throughout history mark the process that is incarnation. Becoming flesh, incarnating, “happens precisely not as an exceptional episode or last-ditch rescue operation.” God did not become flesh once but becomes flesh in the in-breaking of every moment of every creature, thing, and event. Thus, where God begins and the flesh ends is not only imperceptible, it is hardly a necessary task to differentiate the two. Furthermore, “[f]or if what theology calls God is nowhere and never not, no hard line can be drawn between creation and incarnation.” The singularity of “incarnation” versus “incarnations” is not only a misnomer, but the prefix of “incarnation,” because of the indistinguishable difference between creation and incarnation, is as well. Rather, Keller suggests a god who is through and in all is by definition “pan-carnate.”
Lastly, incarnations magnify “the intermittencies, the intervals and interdependencies, of world relations.” In the messiness of the fleshy, incarnational, relations with the innumerable bodies in the world, the diversity and division of this “vulnerable flesh, the entanglement of all creatures in their neighbors and in their strangers…demands now relentless attention.” Therefore, with the sending and sentness, messy, chaotic, stressful, vulnerable entanglement of sound, lyrics, performance, recording, etc. of the band, The Chariot is an incarnation.
Incarnationality: The Chariot’s Beginnings Continued
They took the stage…if you want to call it that. Like that of all The Chariot shows, even the ones to come, feedback roared from their amplifiers–the mark of the beginning of the unprecedented. These Pensacola teenagers know Jesus, but do they know the Incarnation? They are about to. With the florescent light illuminating the whole basement and an American flag tucked into the corner, this basement was built for a quilting club, not a hardcore show. Nonetheless, this is The Chariot, being sent and dwelling among eager, optimistic, pimple-faced incarnations. With the feedback continuing to roar, Josh Scogin pronounces their arrival, “they call us The Chariot.” With their embarrassingly early 2000s dyed hair and skinny jeans, the band blares into their first song–an early rendition of what would later become, “The Company, The Comfort, The Grave.” What is unique about this “stage,” unlike those that would come much later in their career is it is not a stage at all. The band is playing on simply the Grace Community Church’s tile basement floor, reminiscent of many church basement floors built in the 1990s. As unassuming as this church tile basement floor may sound, it is the very reason why The Chariot is incarnational. For it is this very floor that places band and fans on the same level. The band dwells, lives among. The band and fans, alike, dance, thrash, and create with one another, on the same level. Despite a cross overhanging the main doorway of the youth group basement, it is in The Chariot playing on the same level of their Jesus-loving fans that they finally know, even experience, the Incarnation.
Relationality: The Chariot’s Touring, Members, and “Fun”
As a small band, life is perpetually on the road. The Chariot was known for their work ethic, particularly, touring relentlessly. Their frontman, Josh Scogin, has said several times he, personally, enjoys touring. While it is a paycheck to provide for himself and his family, the longevity he has had in music has only been achieved through his enjoyment of touring.
Nonetheless, touring takes a toll on the relationships between band members. In addition to their hard work, The Chariot was also known for what seemed like a countless number of members (16 to be exact) despite being a band for only ten years. It almost seemed as if there was a wholesale overhaul of members every album. In fact, besides Scogin (whose project The Chariot was), only one member, Jonathan Kindler, appeared on more than two albums. Excluding Scogin, The Chariot seemed like an amorphous entity of a web of relationships. While there were many reasons for the constant rotation of members in The Chariot, the nonstop touring, perhaps, had much to do with it.
While touring and a revolving door of members certainly takes a toll on a band, there is a beauty of the relationality, a camaraderie even, that materialize from being in close proximity with one another–especially in the name of art. The Chariot most certainly exemplifies this better than most bands. Among their peers, they were known as the “fun” band. One could find them spontaneously creating the most out of the little “fun,” a relationality, that road life has to offer–especially in a gas station in southern Texas.
Relationality: The Social Trinity
Social trinitarianism is, perhaps, the single most significant development in trinitarian theology. It suggests that God is ontologically a relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Furthermore, this relationship implicates humanity’s own ontology and subsequently our relationship with other humans and non-humans. There is wide, albeit not unanimous, consensus among theologians “of the significance of relationality as the most fruitful model for understanding the doctrine of the Trinity.” The love “expressed, received, and shared by the trinitarian persons among themselves provides a description of the inner of God” that manifests throughout all creation, especially humankind. Additionally, love requires both an object and subject. Many trinitarian theologies prior to the development of social trinitarianism posited God as ontologically objective withe creation, especially humankind, as ontologically subjective. However, social trinitarianism dispels that notion by offering God, through the Trinity, as both ontologically objective and subjective–God as the expresser, receiver, and sharer of God’s self. God the Father beckons, sends, and loves the Son and the Holy Spirit and vice versa. Therefore, the missional nature of God flows out of the relational, trinitarian ontology of God. This missional nature manifests in God’s relationship to creation as well, as God beckons, sends, and loves creation into participating in God’s salvific activity in the word. It is also important to note that missiologists like David Bosch stress rooting the mission of God in God’s trinitarian ontology rather than ecclesiology and soteriology. Therefore, the trinitarian ontology of God engenders the missional nature of God.
Despite the seemingly apparent beauty of social trinitarianism, it is not without its detractors. Threatened by the unbridled social trinitarianism in the controversial book, Quest for the Living God: Mapping Frontiers in the Theology of God by Elizabeth Johnson, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops requested a doctrinal evaluation of the Elizabeth Johnson text. Johnson, being a Catholic theologian herself, treaded on tendentious ground. Nonetheless, she stood her ground until the matter faded into oblivion.
Johnson proposes that despite the inherent mysterious, dare I say confusing, nature of the Trinity, it remains inherently practical. This is not to say the practical nature of the Trinity makes it any less mysterious or confusing, but simply that practicality is inherent to it. In addition, the practical nature of the Trinity, she warns, does not necessarily solve the world’s issues of violence, war, and oppression. Rather, she offers, “it functions as a source of vision to shape our actions in the world, a criterion to measure the fidelity of our lives.” She continues, “[t]he revitalized idea of the Trinity makes clear that, far from existing as a monarch ruling from isolated splendor and lording it over others, the living God is an overflowing communion of self-giving love.” Social trinitarianism is concerned about the Transcendent’s ontology for the immanent’s well-being. The Triune God is the archetype of relationality, simultaneously beckoning, sending, and loving us into God’s self and the world–including a southern Texas gas station.
Relationality: The Chariot’s Touring, Members, and “Fun” Continued
Second to the ontology of God being the archetype of relationality are the shenanigans that happen at gas station parking lots. The Chariot, being unabated in their touring schedule, found themselves at no shortage of gas station pit stops. While fans only know of the hour or so long show of the band’s day on tour, the vast majority of the day is spent cooped up in a van. Therefore, to entertain one’s self takes great creative ingenuity. In addition, traveling across the country from bustling cities to desolate ghost towns, a band can often find what makes this nation so peculiar and odd.
Under the cooling night sky of southern Texas, The Chariot found themselves at one of these aforementioned gas stations. At the nexus of converging cultures of cowboy Americana and ranchero Mexico, southern Texas gas stations are ripe with the strange and puzzling. One of these strange and puzzling artifacts The Chariot once found was what can only be described as an edible food-like substance, El Gordo’s tamarind pulp candy. Less out of enjoyment and more of a dare, the band, giggling at the expense of their bandmates’ tastebuds, gulped down on the candy. As innocent as this episode of The Chariot’s life may have seemed, it underscores the deep relationality that fostered what made this band special. The dare, the giggles, the spontaneity at a random gas station parking lot in the middle of southern Texas all serve illustrate the deep relationality The Chariot had–second only to the Triune God!
Plurality: The Multiplicity of The Chariot’s Sound
Heavy music, especially punk rock, is known for its dissonance, being loud, and three-chords-and-a-cloud-of-dust structure–essentially, a uniform sound. In addition, its songs tend to be fast and abrasive, hurling the listeners into an engulfing sea of noise where one song ends and the other begins is unnoticeable. Being a heavy band themselves, The Chariot hesitantly follows the pattern of heavy/punk music. I say hesitantly, because while their sound is also dissonant, loud, chaotic, etc., The Chariot takes gigantic, plural risks. If one listens to their first album, Everything Is Alive, Everything Is Breathing, Nothing Is Dead, and Nothing Is Bleeding, then listens to their last, One Wing, there is a clear evolution in sound. While each sounds distinctively like The Chariot, the differences are also stark–a unity-in-plurality and plurality-in-unity if you will. For example, on their debut album, the song “And Then, Came Then” opens with what sounds like a radio orchestra from the Prohibition era before unleashing into the fierce, take-no-prisoners onslaught typical of the band. This dichotomy between the serenity of the beginning before the eventual raid of noise of the track highlights the complexity, the plurality, of The Chariot. Furthermore, their fourth track on their final album, “First,” opens with what fans could expect from The Chariot before transitioning seamlessly into what sounds curious at first and eventually emerges to be a spaghetti western bit! Yes, The Chariot, married their sound with a spaghetti western sound harmoniously. That is The Chariot’s sound in a nutshell– unity-in-plurality and plurality-in-unity.
Plurality: The Multiplicity of God and Creation
Embedded in the fabric of both the ontology of God (in the Trinity) and in creation is plurality. No thing or organism is the same. All is simply an innumerable array of particularities existing with one another. Even something that appears to be a particularity is also made up of even more of an innumerable number of particularities, i.e. the human body. Needless to say, all is multiple. It is foundational to ground this as fact–as reality–because everything subsequent to it is the way in which the particularities relate to one another. Some particularities relate well to one another while others find it much more difficult.
Despite some Christianities and theologies embracing this reality, many are unwilling to capitulate to it. Nonetheless, plurality is the feature, not the exception of Christianity and theology. While most of the over two billion Christians globally fall into Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, or Orthodox, about 26 million do not! Those 26 million fall into one of the “[m]ore than 20,000 distinct groups or movements that do not consider themselves to be Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant[.]” To the chagrin of many who hanker for a uniform, clean-cut Christianity, this given multiplicity is the very nature of Christianity. Christianity was born into a plural world and has embedded and retained in its DNA, throughout its history, plurality.
It should be noted, however, that multiplicity is not necessarily plurality. While multiplicity is a given, plurality is not. Plurality, being how the multiplicity of particularities relate to one another, is difficult but necessary and ever-evolving work. While this all may sound like useless metaphysical and ontological jargon, its lived implications have drastic positive and negative effects to reality. Plurality postures us, each of us being a particularity, to other particularities–the Other–human and non-human alike. In fact, it opens us to, as John Franke says, “the witness of the Other.” Furthermore, this openness is not a means to an end of assimilating the Other to ourselves but to love the Other on their own terms. The lived implications of this critical truth is that it warns us from colonizing the Other. Whether that be colonizing in thought, theology, labor, etc., openness to the multiplicity and particularity of the Other cultivates plurality. Therefore, relating to the Other as other is plurality–just as The Chariot related the particularities of different sounds with one another.
Plurality: The Multiplicity of The Chariot’s Sound Continued
In early 2010 The Chariot began recording their fourth album, Long Live, at Glow in the Dark Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. Glow in the Dark Studios’ producer, Matt Goldman, had been the producer for The Chariot’s previous three albums; therefore, the band and Goldman had built a well-trusted repertoire.
During one song in particular, “David De La Hoz,” the band concocted the brilliance to flawlessly meld the stressful sounds of The Chariot, the “talk music” of Dan Smith from Listener, and the haunting melodies of Timbre Cierpke. The song began with typical chaotic, arhythmic fashion from the band, until it devolved into the strangeness that is guest “singer,” Dan Smith’s voice. With his backwoods Arkansas drawl and his range-y inflection that is not singing nor spoken word, Smith sang (if you could ever call it that) the poetic beauty for which he is known. With the amalgam of dissonance of The Chariot and hectic-ness of Smith’s vocals, the song continued until it relayed back into the closest The Chariot ever came to playing a heavy metal breakdown. As the “breakdown” spirals into dissipation, a stark turn in the song heavenly and hauntingly concludes it. With a harp, piano, and xylophone, Cierpke and others create a soundscape for the listener that juxtaposes perfectly the intensity and harshness with the typical The Chariot sound.
It is not the multiplicity of sounds in particular that accentuates the plurality of the sound of The Chariot, but rather the way in which the band places each particular sound in relationship to one another without assimilating it to the other. They are not attempting to create abrasive and chaotic sounds with Cierpke’s harp or dull the intensity of Smith’s “singing;” rather they place them in harmonious relationship with one another–allowing one particular sound, as demonstrably different it may be from the others, to magnify the beauty of the others and vice versa. Therefore, the sound of The Chariot is a sonic plurality.
Contextuality: The Chariot’s Social Location
The Chariot would have not become The Chariot had they began much sooner or later than when they actually did. They emerged at the opportune time and in the auspicious scene. Needless to say, The Chariot became The Chariot because of context.
The band benefited greatly, even gained a considerable head start on other new bands in the Christian hardcore scene, because of Scogin’s already-established reputation. With his writing, recording, and fronting of Norma Jean’s debut album, Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child, Scogin and the other young founding members of Norma Jean could not have imagined how monumental this album would become. Christian and non-Christian hardcore scenes alike quickly took notice of the young band’s debut album. It topped many hardcore/metalcore album-of-the-year lists by the end of 2002.
Coming off of this critical and commercial success in his niche scene, the anticipation for The Chariot was immense! Because of the brilliant artistry of Scogin, The Chariot exceeded expectations of fans and critics early on and throughout their career.
And like all good things, just as quickly as this burgeoning scene began, it dissipated even quicker. After their third album, The Chariot (along with many other Christian hardcore/metalcore bands) left Christian heavy music label, Solid State Records, and ventured into more of an independent route, signing with Good Fight Entertainment for their final two albums. This essentially ended the scene and the careers for many of these bands. However, it was not as if The Chariot was struggling commercially. In the wake of their final album, One Wing, the band found themselves in their most critical and commercial success. Nonetheless, like biblical numerology, after 10 years of 5 albums with 10 songs each, it was the felicitous time to disband. Like all things, The Chariot was a band of context.
Contextuality: James Cone, Black Power, and Black Theology
While hundreds of years from now theologians will perhaps still be shaped by the theologian that could have been in Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the prolific writing of Karl Barth when reflecting upon 20th century theology, perhaps the most significant theological development that occurred during that century was liberation theology–more specifically, black liberation theology.
The lived and liberative implications of Latin American and black liberation theology were cosmically significant in redirecting the trajectory of the theological landscape, especially in the West. Additionally, the presuppositions to ground liberation theology were not necessarily new but rather explicit–that is, that theology can only be done from one’s social location (race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ability, etc.). Liberation theologians, especially James Cone, boldly insisted the contextuality in and of which one does theology almost undeniably generates the outcome of their theology. This is not only liberating for oppressed groups of people but to dominant groups as well–for it frees them from the bondage of the illusion (despite its realness) of supremacy. We are only beginning to reap the benefits of grounding theology in social location rather than reason, tradition, etc. It holds people of dominant groups accountable for their ancestors, or even their own, actions of violence and oppression upon other groups of people.
To begin his groundbreaking (and very first) 1969 book, Black Power and Black Theology, James Cone tells the history and issues surrounding the preeminent black movement of his day, the Black Power movement. Before making any theological claims in his first published book, in an ingenious weaving of civil rights leaders and existentialism, Cone prepares a soil that will eventually bear the first fruits of black theology. Rather than exclusively or mainly grounding his theology in reason, tradition, or scripture, he unapologetically builds his theology upon his context and social location as a black man living squarely in the 1960s during the rise of the Black Power movement. Cone even goes so far as to say that “unless theology can become ‘ghetto theology,’ a theology that speaks to black people, the gospel message has no promise of life for the black man (sic)…it is a lifeless message.” Furthermore, for Cone, “if a higher, Ultimate Reality is to have meaning, it must relate to the very essence of blackness.”
Like missional theology, Cone’s theological project was explicitly and decidedly contextual. Regardless of any time and culture in Christian history, Christianity has been shaped by the context in which is it situated. Whether that be at the mercy of empire or the overseers of it, Christianity and its theologies have always been shaped by their context–just as The Chariot was shaped by its context.
Contextuality: The Chariot’s Social Location Continued
There was no other event that better embodied the context of The Chariot than Cornerstone Music Festival. Held annually for over 25 years on a small farm just outside of Bushnell, Illinois, this music festival became the premier gathering of youth group emos, punks, and every other evangelical weirdo in between.
Because it was the context that provided the sustenance for a band like The Chariot to even be a band, they undeniably performed more intensely, chaotically, and over-the-top at Cornerstone than any other show throughout any given year. The context of any The Chariot show oozed in intensity and chaos, yet the context of Cornerstone added an extra oomph.
With the fast-paced nature of their songs, The Chariot was accustomed to playing a show as if it was a CrossFit workout with little need for unplanned rest. It seemed as if most shows, the band was yearning for a culture that would be able to match their intensity, and only Cornerstone was able to do so consistently.
Additionally, the band pulled out all the stops for Cornerstone shows. For example, at their 2008 Cornerstone show, before concluding their last song, “The Deaf Policeman,” the band stacked their large wooden boxes that held their amplifiers on top of one another. As soon as they had built the stack of wooden boxes as high as it could reach, the band’s bassist, Jonathan Kindler, climbed to the top with a crash cymbal and a drumstick in hand. With feedback blaring throughout the tent, fans awaiting eagerly, The Chariot soared into the concluding part of the song, and subsequently their set, with Kindler rhythmically crashing on the cymbal with the drumstick as Scogin screams into his microphone, “if there’s blood on the roots, then there’s blood on the branches.” The context of a show for The Chariot shaped the band’s sound, creativity, performance, etc.–just as context necessarily shapes theology.
Missionality: Long Live The Chariot
On August 16th, 2013 The Chariot announced they would be breaking up. With the melancholic, yet at-peace music of Salvage My Dream accompanying their announcement video, “a slow-motion montage of the band recently performing, touring, and enjoying each other’s company [tore] open the hearts of fans across the world. Still, the band did not seem distraught about the announcement. Like a dying loved-one in hospice, The Chariot seemed to have graciously accepted their finitude and eventually death–why should we fans have been distraught?
The announcement video also announced the band’s final tour–their last hurrah. They were about to embark on a month’s long tour around the country to send themselves off as a band that was near and dear to so many. Booking shows at some of their favorite venues around the nation, the band found themselves inundated with support, love, and reassurance that their music will live on forever.
The beauty of this end is that it was on their own terms. Scogin has said that it was a serendipitous decision by all involved. It was at the height of their career, coming off of arguably their best album. Furthermore, they had accomplished their mission–to create art that inspires a generation.
Central to Christianity is that the faith is not to be exclusive to one group of people. Rather, it is to inspire and be shared. Therefore, just as the Triune God, the Father calling and sending the Son, The Chariot, in its own beauty, sent itself in the manifestation of those who carry on their legacy through their own art–their own beauty.
Missionality: Beauty as Evangelism
The missional instinct begins with God the Father calling and sending the Son–God becomes flesh and dwells among in Jesus Christ. God takes on the skin and social locale of a poor refugee Palestinian Jewish man. From there Jesus Christ calls the Church, the body of Christ, to carry on the missional instinct–“the church is a missional community in keeping with the sending of the church into the world after the pattern by which the Father sent the Son.” Therefore, it is the purpose of the church to bear the mission of God.
Yet, the mission of God has been weaponized throughout Christianity history. Whether from Constantine, the Crusades, Manifest Destiny, or even modern-day evangelicalism, the mission of God, the missional instinct of Christianity, has been weaponized and caused horrific violence and oppression. Therefore, how do Christians today accept responsibility for this history of their faith, while also retaining the core of the mission of God?
Nothing is more convincing than beauty. Beauty, especially that in art, shapes, moves, even transforms that most hardened of hearts. With the ugliness, violence, and oppression the mission of God and evangelism has had throughout Christian history, Bryan Stone, in Evangelism after Pluralism: The Ethics of Christian Witness, posits “the practice of evangelism could very much use a reconnection to beauty.” Furthermore, “when it’s reconnected to beauty, we may find that evangelism becomes more a work of art, embodiment, and imagination than an exchange of information or a technology designed to secure results.” Stone is adamant to clarify, though, that the beauty to which Christians are to witness is not comprehensible. Rather, “[e]vangelism is the practice of witnessing to beauty–not a beauty we might possess, grasp, buy, sell, master, or contain, or that we are in a position to withhold from some and bestow on other…True beauty always grasps us rather than our grasping it.” Like infinitude of God, “beauty somehow always exceeds us and defies our attempts to contain it.” Therefore, all we can do with beauty it witness to it and participate in it.
Despite evangelism’s and the mission of God’s inexcusable history, both, at their core, are inextricable to Christianity. Reframing both through the lens of beauty may prove to be helpful to repent from and dismantle their history of violence and oppression. In doing so, may the mission of God manifest into a beauty that cannot be grasped for manipulation into colonization but grasps us into awe, wonder, and participation–just as The Chariot’s music did for so many.
Missionality: Long Live The Chariot Continued
Over a year ago I interviewed my friend, Garrett Russell, frontman for an upcoming metalcore band called Silent Planet. In the midst of many questions about Silent Planet’s new music, I asked Russell about the influential bands that have shaped his music and faith. He listed many, explaining why they have contributed to him being a musician and how they have influenced his band’s sound. Finally, he mentioned The Chariot–saving the best for last. From their sound, vision, ethos, performance, and everything else in between, Silent Planet is uniquely shaped by The Chariot, according to Russell. The Chariot lives on through Silent Planet.
Sometimes I am asked what some of my influences are on my theology. I often list Catherine Keller, Monica Coleman, Doug Pagitt, Marcella Althaus-Reid, among others. However, without a doubt, the most influential thing on my theology is The Chariot. While certainly not attempting to be an explicitly theological band, everything that made up The Chariot, from sound, creative vision, mission, recording, performance, etc., shapes exactly how I do theology and what I believe theologically. The Chariot lives on through the beauty that is my theology.
Just as I am sure the disciples of Jesus grieved as their mentor, leader, and messiah departed from them, I too still grieve the loss of The Chariot. However, as Jesus called and sent the disciples to live on his mission for all the world, The Chariot too called and sent its few fans to do likewise–to carry on The Chariot’s legacy through their own beauty.
Conclusion: October 27th, 2013 Continued
The feedback increasingly roared as the band all look at drummer David Kennedy in anticipation for when to strike. Once the tension could no longer be held, Kennedy struck his drumsticks together three times before the band unleashed into their first song, “Evan Perks.” At the moment of the first note a wave of movement from the back of the crowd reverberated to the front. Everyone was pushed forward, to the point that those of us in the front had to jump and crouch onstage or our knees would have snapped. The pushing at hardcore shows is not atypical, in fact, it is simply a part of the culture of it. However, typically there is a counter-push that normally ebbs and flows–not with this show. Once those of us in the front row were pushed so far forward where we had to crouch onstage, we could not counter to get back on the floor. Essentially, we were stuck on the stage. Of course the security was concerned about this, and the band was surprised. After the first song there were feeble attempts by both security and the band to move the crowd back; however, their attempts proved unsuccessful. Cullen and I, along with several others, were perpetually stuck onstage with the band. I had never seen something quite like it at a hardcore show.
Despite my knees wanting to give out after crouching an entire set and sweating profusely, the show was mystical. Like everyone else there, including the band, we participated in the incarnationality, relationality, plurality, contextuality, and missionality impulse of The Chariot. The Chariot may never go down in history with the legends of music–in fact, I can assure you they will never. However, they mattered to me. My theology, politics, and general philosophy of life can all be deduced to the incarnationality, relationality, plurality, contextuality, and missionality of The Chariot.
Long Live.