The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ‘n’ Roll
Over the past six decades, rock ‘n’ roll music has played a central role in…
Read MoreOver the past six decades, rock ‘n’ roll music has played a central role in…
Read More“Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist.”
Read MoreR.I.P. after 31 Years.
Read MoreIn this special series Dery uses his spiritual crisis, as a born-again teen torn between his conservative faith and his obsession with David Bowie, to explore the historical connections linking religious zealotry and rabid fandom.
Read MoreIn the eighth and final installation of Mark Dery’s “critical novella” about a ’70s Jesus Freak who switches saviors (from J.C. to Ziggy), the author connects the dots between his devout Bowiephilia and what theologians call kenosis—the emptying out of the self to make room for the indwelling spirit of god.
Read MoreIn this sixth installment of Mark Dery’s cultural critique-cum-“nonfiction novella” about a born-again teen’s encounter with Ziggy Stardust, Dery traces the religious geneaology of Bowie’s spacefaring genderbender through Jesus to Orpheus (by way of Plato) and, ultimately, to Bacchus/Dionysus.
Read MoreIn this, Part 7 of Mark Dery’s cultural critique-cum-“nonfiction novella” about a teenage Jesus Freak’s life-changing encounter with Ziggy Stardust, Dery considers the ancient, orgiastic, sometimes cannibalistic roots of all rock fandom—and, for that matter, Christianity.
Read MoreIn this fourth installment of Mark Dery’s cultural critique-cum-“nonfiction novella” about a born-again teen’s transcendent encounter with Ziggy Stardust in the 1970s, our hero reckons with a conflicted Christ and watches in disgust as his beloved friday night coffee house is subsumed by the very church it served as an alternative to.
Read MoreIn this third installment of Mark Dery’s cultural critique-cum-“nonfiction novella” about a born-again teen’s transcendent encounter with Ziggy Stardust in the 1970s, our hero experiences an agape that is equal parts sanctified rapture and endorphin rush at a radical Friday night coffeehouse church. Meanwhile, the hippie Jesus of the Jesus Freaks reaches the big time in mainline protestantism.
Read MoreIn this opening episode of Mark Dery’s original, autobiographical essay (a “nonfiction novella”) about a suburban teen’s transcendent encounter with Ziggy Stardust, we’re introduced to David Bowie’s astro-hippie alter ego from the early 1970s, a glam-rock deity of Frankensteinian spookiness and ladyboy vulnerability.
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