Ideas Crashing Together

Darryl prodded me, the other day, to point to the Auseinandersetzung between Gardner Campbell and Jim Groom about the nature, importance, and current status of Edupunk. I had so many, such varied thoughts about it that I stalled out trying to figure out just what to say.
 
On one hand, I’m not a punk in any sense of the term, never was, not even in the seventies — so I don’t have an existential stake in the internal conflicts. I admire a great deal in the punk outlook, and I care that it not be diluted or poisoned by additives that mix in someone else’s great idea about what music, or punk, or some other enterprise, ought to be like (that’s one reason I try to butt out of the back-and-forth; my ideas don’t pertain, and would probably attenuate the urgent vigor of punk with my senior-citizen, bourgeois preoccupations).
 
On the other hand, some of what I’m up to bears clear relations to punk, and [some versions of] edupunk demonstrate ideas I advocate. Add in, then, my concern about the relation of popular music to theology (and theological education), and this very long reflection and its comment thread bring to the fore some white-hot issues for theological educators, especially since (as Michael points out in an essay on which he’s working) radical discipleship and the punk ethos converge at many points.
 
I don’t have a convenient take-away capsule, but these sorts of discussion matter, and they affect academy and church (and music!) in ways that we’ll be untangling for years to come.

1 thought on “Ideas Crashing Together

  1. Thanks for visiting the blog and for the link. The connections you cite are very interesting to me and I look forward to reading more of your thoughts on them.

    Best regards….

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