God & Guitars:

A Forum on Christians Engaging with Popular Music

Readings by Jeff Keuss and Joel Hartse, and a performance by The Cellar Door
Seattle Pacific University, Demaray 150
Thursday, February 21, 2013   7pm-9pm

Were you allowed to listen to "secular music" growing up? Were you fraught over how to make your CD collection "in the world but not of it"? Do you wonder how your dorm band is going to "engage the culture"? Lingua Journal is inviting Joel Heng Hartse (SPU '03, author of Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll) and Dr. Jeff Keuss (SPU Theology Professor, author of Your Neighbor's Hymnal) to read from their books on the subject of Christianity and popular music and hold a Q&A panel afterwards.

Hartse's Sects, Love, and Rock & Roll is "a lovingly written ode to all that is weird and wonderful, disturbing and divine about the world of Christian rock" (Brett McCracken, Hipster Christianity)—packed with hilarious Christiancamp anecdotes and sincere explorations of what it means to make and love music, it follows Hartse's journey out of the cloister of 90's CCM into the broader world of indie and rock.

Dr. Keuss's Your Neighbor's Hymnal explores "what popular music teaches us about faith, hope, and love," with the idea that Radiohead, Kanye West and Fleet Foxes are "your neighbor's hymnal"—neighbors "who might not sit in the pews of our churches but who are asking many of the same questions, who have the same desires, and who hope for the same heaven even if they get there by another soundtrack."

A Q&A panel will follow the readings, featuring Hartse, Keuss, and Gabriel Much of Gather and The Cellar Door, with a guest performance by The Cellar Door (acoustic) to follow. We hope you'll join us in an evening to explore and celebrate the relationship between God and guitars.

This event is free and open to the public, and coffee and cookies will be provided. Get directions to SPU here.