When music writer Kathleen Tarrant moved to Seattle, she noticed a divide between two groups in the Northwest. On the one hand, you had secular alternative kids who grew up rebelling against the church and other establishments, all set to grunge and indie music. On the other hand, there were young Christians who grew up drawn to the same alternative music, but also to religious faith. In the 1990s, these two groups began to commingle with artists like Dave Bazan and Damien Jurado, faithful Christians who also played alternative music.
At the same time, Mars Hill Church, under the leadership of charismatic, controversial pastor Mark Driscoll, began to court the young people in this crossover culture. Local musicians regularly led worship and the church opened a successful all-ages venue, The Paradox. But as Seattle began to take notice of Driscoll's conservative teachings, especially when it came to gender and sexual orientation, secular artists became wary of the punk-church nexus.
Tarrant recently wrote about Mars Hill's influence on the uneasy connections between secular and Christian local music in an article for The Stranger. Gabriel Spitzer talks to her about this divide and what has happened since the dramatic fall of Mars Hill in 2014. We also hear from local musician and former Mars Hill attendee Jordan Butcher, about what it was like to find and then lose a like-minded community of artists in the church.
