The Invisible Church

There have been questions about our involvement with the Invisible Church. And I guess we need to answer that in some way – it’s not as though we’re trying to hide anything, after all, and it’s played an important part in our spiritual lives.

The problem is that there’s one group of people who really know about the Invisible Church, and those are the people that are a part of it. They already know. No one who isn’t in it knows much of anything other than that it exists and it’s around.

I know that it can be frustrating for people who want to know more about it (or think they want to know more about it), but if you are supposed to find out about it, you will.

Other than that, we’re not spokesmen for it – no one is. There’s no reason for anyone to be a spokesman or spokeswoman for it, because there’s no reason to ever make any kind of “official” statement to outsiders. Those involved speak on their own behalf.

So please remember that  with what I write, I’m speaking for myself always, for the rest of the Knights much of the time, and never for the Invisible Church.

ICP – Christian, part two

There’s an ICP fan I see sometimes hanging around Telegraph Avenue Berkeley, near the University. It’s what you’d expect from an area where UC Berkeley students hang out: record stores, used and new clothing stores, bars, non-chain fast food places, cafes, and lots of hanging out. I’ve talked to the guy, whose name is Chris, a few times when I’ve been in Berkeley and run into him. He always has one Insane Clown Posse t-shirt or another on and sometimes he even wear clown make up.

So I’ve been looking for him a few times since I found out about the whole thing about ICP being a “Christian” band (or not, depending on who you talk to). Of course, he never seemed to be around now that I was specifically looking for him, but I finally spotted him last week.  He was more than willing to share what he knew and felt about the whole thing. We went to a cafe and over coffee (him) and tea (me), he explained what I guess would have to be called the mythology that ICP have developed over the course of their albums. I borrowed some CDs for further study and this is my take:

The whole carnival thing is a metaphor (no surprise there) and it sounds kind of like what Pilgrim’s Progress might have been if Bunyan had been influenced by the Egyptian Book of the Dead or something. Essentially, the ICP put forth an idea that there is a God, there is an afterlife, and that people go to Heaven (Shangri-La) or Hell depending on the state of their souls. It’s a matter of whether they can overcome their base and evil aspects.

It’s very interesting stuff, but it isn’t Christian as most people define Christianity, as Jesus isn’t at the center of it – at least, not by name, which seems to be the most important thing to a lot of people. There is room for Him to be regarded as something that demonstrates the way out of the Dark Carnival of this world, though, even if it’s not specifically stated.

This was especially interesting, because we’ve long noticed that a lot of the “Christian” world thinks that Jesus died to redeem us and, since he did that, we don’t have to do anything. This is the same attitude that thinks it’s more important to identify as a Christian in “culture wars” than to try to be like Jesus in striving to not be “of this world.”

This is what has moved us closer and closer to a traditional Gnostic viewpoint, and it seems that this is pretty similar to the view that has influenced the Insane Clown Posse. They are Gnostic without perhaps even being aware of it, sheerly by instinct perhaps.

 

 

Questions answered

While I’m thinking over the Christian aspects of the Insane Clown Posse, I thought it would be a good time to answer questions asked in a few comments.

Cornerstone: we almost played it after our first album came out but the people sponsoring the stage we were going to play on decided not to do a stage. To play one of the regular stages these days, you have to sign up with some service that charges you to be considered, which seems like a kind of weird version of “pay to play” but just as bad. I’ve been to Cornerstone and it’s great for what it is but the bands seem kind of unnecessary. We don’t seem to see eye to eye with a lot of the Cornerstone scene. While this makes it all the more necessary for us to get our message to them, there are other people that may be more ready for it.

The cartoon is supposed to get syndicated to Christian and other family oriented cable channels. The producers seem to have some ideas that are a little different than what we would do, but I’m sure that however it turns out, it’s going to be fine.

The Invisible Church is something that I figured most people who have been following us already know about. The person who asked about it the question seemed to know about the symbol, so she probably knows more than she thinks she knows about the Invisible Church itself. The symbol seems to confuse some people who only think about the snake as the serpent of the Garden of Eden in Genesis, but the serpent is also a tradition symbol of wisdom. It should be remembered that Jesus instructed us to be as wise as serpents: we opened our first album with Matthew 10:16, where Jesus said that, which makes our association with the Invisible Church all the more clearly a part of His plan.

Thanks to everyone for their interest.

Insane Clown Posse – Christian Rock? Part One

I’m not a huge fan of rap rock (or most rock that doesn’t have the “and roll”) but the Insane Clown Posse have always been interesting. Why? Because anyone who attracts so much hate is worth taking a look at (and I’m not just saying this because of the hate we seem to have attracted!). They’ve been called “the worst band in the world” more than a few times (so have we!), which is a ridiculous thing to say: the worst band in the world is probably going to be one of the jillions of boring bands with lame songs (especially playing all covers) and no particular focus or image to make them interesting. Plenty of bands that critics love are just plain boring  to me, and boring is an important quality in being a contender for “worst band in the world.” The bands that Spin, Magnet, etc., write about are almost always boring. What’s not boring? The Insane Clown Posse are not boring. Often offensive, but never boring.

(Obviously, all of the Knights are into bands that have a “gimmick,” if that’s what you want to call it – we call it providing good entertainment and getting people’s attention.)

Bands doesn’t get really and truly hated for being “bad” – they get hated for being good at something that the haters don’t like. THAT is what inspires real hatred. However you feel about their music, it’s ridiculous to claim the the Insane Clown Posse are not good at what they do.

So besides having a band theme and being hated by some people who “just don’t get it” (and by some people who do, but just  don’t like it) what does this have to do with the Knights of the New Crusade? The Insane Clown Posse are of course much more commercially successful (and have done it with a minimum of compromise, so more power to them). More importantly, their “it” that confuses and angers people is obviously different from our “it.”

Or is it?

The Insane Clown Posse have come out squarely for God in the song “Thy Unveiling”:

“When we speak of Shangri-La, what you think we mean? Truth is we follow GOD, we`ve always been behind him, The Carnival is God and may all Juggalos find Him!”

(Juggalos are self-designated  hardcore fans of the Insane Clown Posse, kind of their equivalent to Deadheads).

Apparently, their religious beliefs have been a major part of their previous recordings, through what they call “hidden messengers.”

Very interesting! Time to do some research, obviously -after I know enough to come up with some opinions, I’ll share them in my next post – stay tuned.

Knights OTNC in a Cartoon

While we’ve been busy with Knight Vision, a project that we thought had fallen by the wayside has recently been picking up some steam: a cartoon featuring the Knights of the New Crusade!

Well, it features a band called the Knights of the New Crusade who play our music, but the names of the members are different – that’s show biz, I guess!

It started a couple or three years ago, when we were approached by Family First Productions, an entertainment company that was just starting as a breakaway from (as I remember – the conversation was a while ago) a company that bought old movies and sold them to family cable stations and released them on low budget DVDs.

One thing they wanted to do with their new company was produce an “edgy” family cartoon that used a Christian rock band living very much “in the world but not of the world,” as we strive to do. They seemed like good guys, so we said OK, and they said they’d find some local animators to turn the actual cartoon making over to when they had a script.

We didn’t hear any more about it for a while, but we just heard from them and it looks as though things are going ahead. I certainly hope it does, as it will kind of cool to see ourselves (well, some people somewhat like ourselves) as cartoons.

The Knights Doing a Concept Album?

After various mastering problems and other delays, it looks as though Knight Vision will finally be out this month (July). We’re supposed to get the latest test pressings this week.

Knight Vision (subtitled Hymns for the Invisible Church, although the Invisible Church wasn’t certain that they wanted that attention at first when the idea was suggested) is our effort at a “concept,” or “theme album.”

Of course, both of our previous albums were “theme” albums. My God Is Alive! Sorry About Yours! was subtitled Songs In Praise Of Our Lord God And In Condemnation Of Sin, and those were the two themes of that album, while A Challenge to the Cowards of Christendom continued those themes while adding an examination of the hypocrisy of Christendom that was inspired by Kierkegaard (as he wrote in his Attack Upon Christendom, “The human race in the course of time has taken the liberty of softening and softening Christianity until at last we have contrived to make it exactly the opposite of what it is in the New Testament”) as well as the hatred that we inspired in certain segments of the Christian Rock world, a hatred that we frankly couldn’t understand until we saw the Christian Rock world as being infested with the same false Christianity evident in the world of Christendom.

The difference with Knight Vision is that the songs are arranged in an order that tells a story: each song is like the chapter in a novel, while each of the songs on our other albums was like a short story that was part of a collection.

Does that put us in the realm of pretentious rock? We don’t think so. Most rock concept albums have been so thin on thought that they’re laughable if you actually think of them as anything other than a regular collection of songs. Would you see a movie based on the story of the Who’s Tommy?

If it turns out that we are making ourselves laughable with Knight Vision, that’ll be OK too, of course. After all these years, we’re still not trying to convince anybody that we’re cool: we’re just trying to attract attention to our message.

Knights of the New Crusade blog

It’s hard to believe that the Knights of the New Crusade have been around for almost ten years now. Looking at how we’ve grown both musically and spiritually, we can’t help but be grateful to everyone who we’ve encountered along the way. Even those who have stood against us, since they’ve been an important part of our spiritual journey, but especially to the many people who have shown their support for us in one way or another.

As many of you know, we’ve never been into going out of our way to promote ourselves: we’ve got a message, of course, but God can certainly take care of spreading it as He deems necessary. And we’re all too familiar with Christian bands that seem to have trouble separating glorifying themselves with celebrating the Glory of God.

But there are a lot of exciting things going on in the Knights’ castle, and we think that some of our brothers and sisters will find them interesting enough that we should share them. If they’re not, or if we ever seem to fall to the temptation of pride, please let us know!