This interview is part of The Reconstruct, a weekly newsletter from Sojourners. In a world where so much needs to change, Mitchell Atencio and Josiah R. Daniels interview people who have faith in a new future and are working toward repair. Subscribe here.
If you’ve encountered Mason Mennenga online, it’s likely due to one of his viral tweets.
Gems like “bible college girls are like ‘marriage is so hard’ yeah, you married a 19-year old evangelical man” and “christians will name their kids after old testament prophets and then are shocked that their kids eventually speak out against injustices.” Occasionally, he dunks on a conservative personality, or he becomes the punching bag for conservative voices frustrated by his progressive theology.
But Mennenga is more than a social media account. He hosts two podcasts, writes about theology and culture, and works as director of admissions at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities.
On the podcast BlackSheep, published with HM Magazine, Mennenga and his cohost Cullen D. Mack cover the wide world of the alternative Christian music in many genres, including heavy metal, punk, indie rock, death metal, and more. It’s a world completely unlike any other Christian music artistically and culturally. And through his podcast, Mennenga practices bringing progressive Christian values into contact with the rest of the world.
While it might seem like a niche genre, the alt Christian scene gave birth to hugely successful bands that crossed beyond the alt Christian scene and into stardom in their general genres. Tooth & Nail Records and its imprint Solid State Records have left monumental impacts in both the Christian and alternative camps.
In our interview, Mennenga and I discussed the mindset behind his podcast, how he discusses progressive theology in conservative spaces, and his social media trolling.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
On the podcast BlackSheep, you and your cohost Cullen cover alternative Christian music — heavy metal, indie, punk rock. For listeners who mostly know “Christian music” to mean contemporary Christian music like Michael W. Smith and the Newsboys, what are cultural differences between CCM and the alt Christian scene?
The CCM world was really exclusively marketed to a Christian audience. If a CCM artist like Amy Grant, for example, got big enough to transcend the CCM world, that was by accident.
Tooth & Nail, Solid State Records, [and the rest of the] alternative Christian music scene was also marketing to a Christian audience — in fact, they were trying to market to the Christian moms who then would approve of their — typically— sons listening. But there was a lot of marketing in that world, especially if a band got popular enough — Underøath, for example — that it was also being marketed outside of the Christian music world.
Underøath became a headliner for Warped Tour. They were being sold in Hot Topic. Underøath was on MTV. They had a commercial on ESPN. You would never see that from, like, an Amy Grant or a Steven Curtis Chapman or Newsboys.
Part of what you’re saying is that the marketing, branding, and tenor of these bands gave kids an opportunity to say to their friends, “Oh, you like this band? They’re Christian,” as a sort of smug surprise.
A lot of the bands that I’ve interviewed generally have this sentiment of, “Yeah we grew up Christians. We were youth group kids. We started this band as a sort of Christian band.” But they quickly realized they didn’t want to be marketed as a Christian band. In fact, you saw a lot of bands in the 2000s start to say, “We’re not a Christian band. We’re Christians in a band.”
They wanted to wear their faith proudly but also be marketed outside of a Christian music audience.
How did the podcast start?
Cullen and I grew up best friends in a small town in South Dakota. In a small town in South Dakota, even though a lot of people are culturally Christian, there’s very few people that take their faith as seriously as we did as evangelical teens.
I was one of those kids that only listened to Tooth & Nail and Solid State Records, because I knew it was music that my mom would approve of. I was already a weirdo, not only for really taking my faith seriously, but also only listening to music from Christians. Even my culturally Christian friends would have made fun of me for only listening to Christian music.
Cullen’s a couple years older than me; I met him on a youth group trip, and he noticed that I was sitting alone, and he invited me back to the back of the bus to hang out with him. I noticed he was listening on his iPod to Blindside and I had literally never met anybody that listened to a band like Blindside. So we got to know each other through that and quickly became best friends.
The podcast technically started in 2017 … the first number of years, we didn’t ever really interview artists at all. [Eventually], my stuff on Twitter was starting to grow. I was starting to get to know people from the bands [I followed]. So, I started inviting some of those folks on the podcast and we realized really quickly that we enjoy that format more and people actually listened to those episodes.
HM Magazine is this very important publication in the Christian alternative world. Started in 1985 by Doug Van Pelt, they were looking for a podcast but didn’t have the bandwidth to create their own. Cullen and I both had the bandwidth, but we don’t have a lot of the connections in the industry. So, they started sending us press releases from bands and we would interview them. And we’ve been doing that for over four years now.
Most people know that CCM is a theologically and politically conservative space. How does that compare with the Christian alternative scene that you cover?
It [the alt scene] has changed over the years from where it was when Tooth & Nail started in 1994, for example. I would imagine a lot of the bands at that time were just as conservative theologically as a lot of the CCM artists and maybe politically as conservative, or at least as quiet about it [politics].
That has changed over the years. More of the artists are leaving the alternative Christian realm. They may still be Christian, but they’re leaving evangelicalism.
One of the [reasons specific to the genre] is authenticity. There is this level of authenticity that is very pronounced in alternative music genres like punk, hardcore, and metal that is different than in CCM.
The CCM world is meant to create music that is easy to listen to, catchy, and meant to be sung by a large group of people. Whereas, in the alternative realm, there is such a primacy of authenticity flowing out of the artist. I still remember the very first people I ever heard expressing doubt in their faith were Christian alternative bands.
The second thing is there is an inherent marginalization in the alternative music realm. We literally call it “alternative” versus “mainstream.”
For a lot of people that were in the alternative Christian music scene, a lot of them grew up in fairly affluent, white communities. Even though it’s nowhere near the level of marginalization of racism or sexism or homophobia, there’s still a level of marginalization that opens them up to realize, “Oh wait, if I’m like starting to feel this marginalization in the music industry that I work in, maybe there are also other forms of marginalization that exist.”
Third, there are ethical demands inherent to each of those genres that you just don’t see in mainstream realm. A lot of that is due, especially in the punk world, to straight-edge ethics — no drinking, no casual sex, no drugs. Some bands will even take it to the extreme of veganism. There’s a really important hardcore band called Earth Crisis that did a lot of work around, like, climate change back in the ’80s and ’90s.
Those ethical concerns carried over to a lot of the artists in the Christian alternative realm. Even if they themselves weren’t directly influenced by straight edge, they were in proximity to a lot of those bands [with vegan ethics, climate justice concerns, etc.].
A really great counter example of this is Skillet. Skillet started out as this really weird, alternative, kind of nu metal band. As they gained fans, as they got more popular, their sound changed to a much more mainstream sound.
Appearance wise, John Cooper [the lead singer of Skillet] used to wear makeup and had tight pants and dyed hair. Now he looks like every conservative theo bro that you’ve ever seen.
As their sound became more mainstream, they moved into genres that were more mainstream and became more rooted in conservative politics and theology.
“Monster,” a single from the 2009 album Awake, was used in sports promos. Now their music is about defending their “faith, family, freedom.” So that makes me wonder, why invite John Cooper on your podcast?
For a lot of people who know me and my work, they probably would find me having a conversation with John Cooper to be one of the most unlikely things. I saw it as this great opportunity. Either this goes south and it becomes really entertaining, or it could actually be super productive and actually maybe helps John rethink some of the things that he said in the past.
I’ve been pretty explicit about how annoyed I am by John Cooper. And going into that interview, I had the idea of, “If he decides to be an a--hole, he’s not going to out a--hole me.” John Cooper is not going to be able to outdo me. His ridiculousness is not going to outdo my ridiculousness. I’ll fight fire with fire. I’m sort of his kryptonite.
What do you mean you’re John Cooper’s kryptonite?
He’s explicitly said he wants to start a war on these deconstructing Christians. He’s really crass with the way he talks about that. And people would see me as equally as crass on the other side. In a lot of ways, I probably am viewed by others as the John Cooper of the Christian left — I’m just willing to be very crass in the same way that he’s been very crass.
So maybe his Wario rather than his Kryptonite.
That’s a much better way to describe that. I’m John Cooper’s Wario.
But he ended up [being] very genuine. The John Cooper on stage saying, “We need to start a war on deconstructionists,” is not the John Cooper that was talking with me. I tried to be very clear with him that I’m probably the kind of person you want to start a war with.
Why do you think it didn’t devolve into ridiculousness?
Knowing that he knows nothing about us, we wanted to set the expectation that we’ve known of Skillet; we’ve cared about Skillet for over 20 years. We’re not just some random interviewer from some random publication that doesn’t care about him at all. We’ve cared about Skillet for a long time.
One of the tough things about this interview is we were given a 30-minute time limit. We wanted to get as much in as possible but also respect his time. We didn’t even get to the point of him saying that he wants to have a war on deconstructionists.
He did say that there are probably a number of things in his life that he has regretted saying, that he probably was a little too crass. I think he was really pleasantly surprised that two people that really disagree with him were willing to actually sit down and talk with him and have a productive conversation.
After we got done recording, he told us, “Hey I’d really love to continue this kind of conversation.” In fact, he invited me to meet with him backstage, which I did.
I don’t feel like I have the kind of power to be able to convince John Cooper to become a leftist. I don’t think that’s happening in this lifetime. But I do think him starting to get to know somebody and be able to put a name and face to somebody who he’s often criticized, I think is really important.
This leads into a question I want to ask you about when you are more of a troll online. I notice a lot of patience on the podcast when you interview conservative Christians, and I don’t know that I see that same patience on social media. What is the difference?
For me, it all comes down to whether somebody is wanting to engage in good faith and [have a] conversation or not.
If somebody is interested in good faith, I will gladly have a good-faith conversation with them. Whether it’s through direct messages or public replies. In some cases, I’ve invited people to have a Zoom conversation.
However, so many people do not want that. They just want to just win whatever conservative argument points that they can win. For that, I’m not going to give it the time of day. I can see through that bulls--- right away.
Usually it comes down to, Can I see any level of curiosity in your initial post or your initial message? If there’s any level of curiosity … I’m more than down to engage in that conversation.
99.9% of people [on social media] are not wanting to engage in that. In that case, I’m just going to be silly with you, and I’m not going to take you seriously. I’m not going to engage in good faith when it’s a bad-faith battle.
What do you make of the fact that if you encountered Cooper online, he would only give you bad faith trolling, but when you got him face to face it opened him up to a good-faith conversation?
I think about this frequently because there are peers of mine that do engage in that way. And almost every time it still ends up being fairly ineffective.
Maybe part of it is just my temperament. I can be a little hot-headed. Like I told you, if John Cooper immediately would have gotten very crass with us, you would have seen a way different side of me.
But I think engaging in good faith with Joel Berry from The Babylon Bee is not worthwhile for anyone. When I’m engaging in a way where I’m just going to be sarcastic, it forces him to disarm himself. Engaging [bad-faith arguments] in a sarcastic or humorous way is a really helpful way to disarm people.
People that I really respect think what I do is not helpful at all to the progressive Christian movement. That may or may not be the case. I have no idea.
For me personally, it’s really helpful for me to process these things. If I engage every one of these people in good faith, I’m going to expend so much emotional energy. If I can just say whatever dumb, silly thing comes to mind right away is way less expenditure in terms of my emotional energy. It’s a self-preserving thing.
Whether it’s helpful for a broader movement? I don’t know. I do think more progressive left people probably should engage in humor more often.
What’s the starter pack of music for someone who has never listened to the Christian alt scene? Give me five albums.
I’m going to keep it to just Tooth & Nail and Solid State Records, [otherwise] it could be too much. Also, admittedly, I became really influenced by this music from especially the years 2004 to 2009. So, my list will certainly be a little too narrow and between those years.
Come Now Sleep by As Cities Burn. It probably is my favorite album of all time. It is one of the most beautifully made albums of all time. It’s just absolutely gorgeous. Cody Bonnette, who was the lead person for As Cities Burn, his friend [Timothy Anderson Jordan II] — who actually used to be in the band All-American Rejects — died by suicide a year or two prior to the album. The whole album is about this heartbreak and journey of trying to navigate doubts and faith and heartbreak and suicide.
Define The Great Line by Underøath is truly a defining — pun intended — album of alternative music in the 2000s. That album charted at number two on the Billboard 200 charts behind Nelly Furtado. It blows my mind that an album that was probably fractions as marketed as Nelly was still in the stratosphere.
You Are My Sunshine, by Copeland. The fact that Tooth & Nail could have a death metal band on their record label and also have an indie, piano rock band [like Copeland] … there’s no other label that could have done that.
Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child by Norma Jean. It’s genre defining. If you were 18 years old in 2002 or somewhere around there, and you grew up in youth group, you listened to that album. It truly changed music generally, not just the Christian alt scene; it changed metalcore.
Cities by Anberlin is an incredible album. When I think of the best representation of alternative music, I think of Cities. Anberlin, in that era, had just unbelievable production. I don’t even know if it’s my favorite Anberlin album, but it’s just really well done.
We’ve missed out on another great Tooth & Nail record in that time frame.
We’re not going with Dance or Die by Family Force 5.
It’s right there!
As much as I love making fun of Family Force 5 — and I think rightfully so — I have defended them on the podcast, many times, as one of the few Christian bands to ever start a genre. I will go to my grave saying Family Force 5 was the first crunkcore band.
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