Thanks so much for reading, it’s great to see folks interested in these exciting & inspiring set of stories. I want to let you know Al Jazeera interviewed Shane, Chris and Jay Beck & Scott Krueger from Psalters while recording the audio book for Jesus For President (disclosure: I’m director & supervising engineer on that project). Here’s the You Tube video of the two part piece on Christians entitled: Inside USA – Christianity, politics and power. It’s on the front page of Al Jazeera’s English. Fast forward to 06:49 of part one if you want to skip to the J4P folks.
Who knew Albuquerque was so fun to spell. Albuquerque barbecue’s are
best because Jessica Alba’s baroque albums abound. Anywhoo… New
Mexico is just beautiful. The drive through Arizona was amazing also.
We pulled over at one point to shoot time lapse and ended up catching
a rainbow and dining on a dirt road with the JFP crew. Delicious!
Had a great time shooting B-Roll and in the Mojave Desert on Monday before bedding down in the petrified forest of Arizona. As it goes, we were delighted to be met with the Jesus For President bus, where we set up camp, had dinner together and were treated to a rainbow and beautiful desert sunset. Here’s some photos & footage for ya.
The long road from Denver to San Francisco was, well, long. I would
recommend breaking that drive up over a couple days. After crashing
for a bit we set out to take in some Pacific Ocean air. We caught a
beautiful sunset at the shore and spent some time with our hosts (I
almost forgot to mention Deanna ate a cow tongue burrito – I guess the
beef brain was too far). We had a three day stay in an Innerchange
House in the Mission District. The 3rd floor view allowed us to see
to downtown. The venue for the JFP event, Grace Cathedral, was
spectacular. It felt as if we had been transported to a cathedral in
Rome. As for me, I’m a fan of the city called Saint Fransisco.
Our first stop in Fresno – Laundry Day – a much needed visit to the
local laundromat. I won’t say too much because we are going to post a
teaser video of Jamie and Dan hard at work, but I will mention they
had old school arcade games and a sweet Bruce Lee poster. The town of
Fresno appears as if it was built for a lot more people. Maybe it was
the day of the week, but it seemed to be a bit of a ghost town. The
people we met, though, were excited to have the JFP tour in their town
and not specters at all. They showed us some of the best hospitality
and support along the way!
and of course, it’s important to remember not everyone in these camps are on the same page…hence the irony of Christian “Creation Care” with a “Jesus Fish stuck on a back of a gas guzzling suv…
Greetings from North Hollywood. We’ve been running around silly lately and thought we’d take a moment to show you what we do during our break time. Might be a bit of an inside joke, but I’m sure a bunch of you will enjoy it.
Hey all,
Greetings from San Francisco! We’re having a great time on the road & feel well rested now that we’ve got beds to sleep in here in the Mission District. Our friends the Psalters , played an amazing show at the Anchor stage at the Cornerstone Festival this year in addition to being the musical foundation of the Jesus For President tour. Check out
Pass the Psalters (Link to original article on PhiladelphiaWeekly.com)
by Steven Wells
Don’t miss the message of peace Philly’s Christian rockers have taken on the road.
Brothers and sisters, I write this epistle from the Cornerstone Christian rock festival in deepest, darkest Illinois. More specifically, I’m in the back of the vegetable oil–fuelled tour bus of the righteous Philly band mewithoutYou. Their singer, Aaron Weiss, is something of a legend in these circles. Yesterday I saw him electrify 200 people with a two–hour sermon that started with a warning that he had absolutely nothing of interest to say, climaxed with a verbal demolition of religious fundamentalism, and ended with him asking Jesus to duct tape his head like a Guantanamo detainee if he said anything stupid or harmful.
A few hours ago I watched another Philly band, the Psalters—faces smeared with holy smoke and wreathed with beatific smiles; hearts full of prayer—lead a tent full of progressive and/or oddly dressed Christians through an ancient sounding, near–Eastern rythmed version of the Lord’s Prayer while a robed woman on the dance floor waved a flaming chalice. The woman next to me, bopping her head furiously, had electric green dreadlocks hanging out of the back of her burka. Sunday school was never like this.
Oh, for sure there’s more than enough crazy, life–hating, groin–clutching right wing stuff here. There are stalls with smugly subtle homophobic T–shirt, anti–choice propaganda (”Abortion is selfish”) and literature that ”proves” Noah stuffed the ark with dinosaurs and that science was made up by the devil to confuse us.
You’ll find them in the same tent as the ”progressive” Christian rock magazine, the antiwar stall and the anti–poverty campaigners. Christians who give a shit, I call them (as opposed to Christians obsessed with abortion, homosexuality, the expansion of the American Empire and the literal truth of the Bible—subjects Jesus plainly didn’t give a tuppenny damn about).
A couple of the chaps from the Psalters are involved in the Jesus for President campaign. A main plank of their manifesto appears to be that patriotism and nationalism are fundamentally un–Christlike.
”The Prince of Peace is born as a refugee in the middle of a genocide and is rescued from the trash bin of imperial executions … What is a Jesus–follower to do when the empire gets baptized?”
And I’ve seen presumably Psalter–related patches featuring a blackened, upside–down U.S. flag with text taken from the Sermon on the Mount: ”No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
This is Jesus speaking. He’s saying God’s an anti–patriotic commie. You gonna argue with him?
Turns out Philly is a hotbed of radical anti–imperialist Christian rock ’n’ roll. Whoa—hold the front page—just got an email from Margaret Downey, righteous leading Philly atheist, inviting me to a reading of Christianity–bashing Philadelphian founding father Thomas Paine’s anti–imperialist classic Common Sense.
What a town!
To get to the Psalters show I pass another tent where, as July 4 rockets glare red (and a dozen other lovely colors) in the sky above, a stage jam–packed with healthy, white–toothed, pink–skinned young Christians—bursting with health, glowing with testosterone, seething with unspent spunk—sing ”Happy Birthday” (dear America) and the national anthem. And then finish off with a rousing chorus of ”U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”
One can only imagine Jesus—that first–century Palestinian proto–Marxist revolutionary and avowed enemy of greed, selfishness, exploitation and the petty nationalism and imperialism that sustains it—rolling his beautiful dark brown eyes.
Hey, didn’t he say something about coming back next time with a sword? To establish the kingdom of truth and justice here on earth? Well, obviously, like so much of the Bible, this is a metaphor. The kingdom obviously refers to a socialist society based on equality and justice. And the sword is clearly referring not to an actual old–fashioned edged weapon but to some sort of super sophisticated laser device that liquidizes the rich where they stand and then instantly squirts them the eye of a needle, so they can enter reeducation camps in heaven where they’ll be encouraged to read the Sermon on the Mount over and over again until they get it into their thick capitalist skulls that Jesus says that stealing wealth and power from your fellow humans (and, as any real Christian will tell you, all property is theft) is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Yesterday the Today Show aired an interview with Senator Obama about Iran’s test firing of missiles capable of hitting Israel. Just thought it would be good to post here so we can all keep this issue at the forefront of our minds and education during this election year…
On the road from Denver to San Francisco we make a stop. This one filled with hope as well as despair. Laramie, Wyoming, is our destination. The location where, on October 7, 1998, a horrible hate crime was committed. A young man named Matthew Shepard was taken to the outskirts of this small town, tied to a split-rail fence, beaten and was left out in the cold of the night to die. This tragedy helped the nation see that hate and discrimination still exist in our neighborhoods, schools, and in ourselves. As a result, many organizations, artists, and community activists have spoken out through music, words, and action to replace hate with understanding, compassion and acceptance. For more information on the life and tragedy of Matthew Shepard go to www.matthewshepard.org.
Have you been? It is a first time for me (this is Scott by the way). Denver and the surrounding mountains are spectacular. A rare rain came down in the morning as we ate breakfast and it looked like our plans to hike might turn out to be a bit moist and muddy. But as we drove out of town toward the mountains the skies parted the clouds opened up and the sun shone down on our faces and the scenery was a bright green and smelled better then any pine tree car air freshener. We ran around Red Rocks and the foothills for a bit.. it is going to be hard to drive away. Our friend Erin and Cassie’s mom, Tricky Vickie, fed, housed, and toured us around town. The hospitality has been amazing along the way.
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