MC Interview: Scholar/Bassist Tom Beaudoin on Rock and Theology

I first saw and heard Fordham theology professor Tom Beaudoin at the LOST? Conference we covered here a couple weeks back. He connected with us via e-mail and linked to our LOST? vid on the America Magazine blog “In All Things.” (He really hits the nail on the head with that conference recap, if you’re interested.) In some follow-up discussion, I learned that he heads up the Rock and Theology Project, which is as awesome as it sounds. I share his passion for this intersection, and thought I’d shoot him a few questions. He graciously agreed and sent some killer responses. I sent back some follow-ups, and what had originally been pitched as a “5 questions with…” feature turned in to lengthy exchange that is more like 9 or 10 questions. We had a lot of fun going back and forth. Oh, and Tom’s also an electric bassist, so if you’re in NYC looking for someone to fill out your band, track him down.

Mike: Wilco is one of my favorite bands, and I’ve always experienced a deep connection with something bigger than myself at their live shows. Then I checked out frontman Jeff Tweedy’s solo concert DVD, and during an offstage interview, he said this: “There’s a collective experience happening at a rock concert that I’ve always assumed would probably be what church should be like.” It’s not fair to the uniqueness of the liturgy (or to that of rock concerts, perhaps) to simply equate them, but the collectivity going on in both seems to embody a common human yearning that stands up to the West’s cult of individualism. Have you had similar experiences at, say, a good show and a good liturgy? A vivid sacramental imagination – being able to see God coming to us in everyday stuff like bread, wine, and three-chord rock songs – seems to come in handy at both.

Tom: I like how your first question goes right to theological experience, and we could take hours parsing the potentially relevant ways into this question from various theological and rockish perspectives, but I’ll be brief in each of these replies. Yes, I do acknowledge a deep consanguinity between secular concerts and Catholic liturgies. The language you use hints at a sort of shared transcendence, a communal sense of the gift quality of existence and the surprising recognition of “what is,” and many who find masses and concerts meaningful use similar language to describe their deep appeal. I might also add that many also describe this overlapping space not only in terms of a shared experience at the event, but a deep ethical formation through such events, over time, that makes them a better human being. That’s very important from the best theological and rockish perspectives. This, however, is not the end but the beginning of a theological analysis of the relationship between liturgy and concert.

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