Christian Punk Chronicles: Living that JCHC (Jesus Christ Hardcore) Life

At 18, I wanted to break the rules and weird out the normies all in the name of Jesus

This post’s recommended playlist (here if ya don’t have Spotify):

Greetings subscribers new and old! This month’s post sort of felt like pulling teeth—not because I didn’t want to write it, but because it was difficult to organize my thoughts about this particular aspect of my life: my Christian punk days. I spent decades steeped in the punk scene, and for a chunk of that time I considered myself a devout Christian punk. It was a time full of friends and sober fun, but also lots of judgment and darkness. While I have more than a handful of tales from this time, I won’t lay them on you all at once. Instead, every once in a while I may pepper in a new story or post from what I’ll call the Christian Punk Chronicles. We’ll see how I feel after this first one…

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I had a bit of a reputation when I first entered college. It was a small, private college in Wilkes Barre, PA, and with my torn fishnets, forest green Dr. Martens, and permanent sneer, I stuck out like a sore thumb. I was called many things throughout that stage in my life—scary, intense, a lot to handle. The idea that I could strike fear into anyone seemed funny to me due to my petite frame and almost crippling level of shyness, but looking back now, I kind of get it.

A digital camera selfie during one of my first days at college. It’s hard to see in this picture, but my eyes were rimmed in black and pink eyeshadow in an attempt to look undead.

I entered Wilkes University as an 18-year-old virgin that didn’t swear, didn’t drink, and didn’t smoke. I didn’t watch rated R movies, I didn’t watch porn, and I even thought masturbation was a horrible sin thanks to a very convincing pamphlet by the now-defunct Christian organization Porn-Free Youth. All things considered, you’d probably think I was brought up in some sort of ultra-conservative household—that my parents put all these restrictions on me. But no, all those rules were my own doing.

In my early teens, my mother, brother, and I started attending a bonkers Christian church located on a quiet wooded road in the Poconos. It was a “non-denominational” church, which meant they could make up whatever rules they wanted without any oversight from a larger governing body. This was the kind of church where people writhed around on the floor speaking in tongues. A place where people routinely saw demons and heard the voice of Satan tempting them. The kind of church that convinced me the end of the world was definitely going to happen in my lifetime and when that time came I’d better be squeaky clean or else I’d spend the rest of eternity burning in the fiery depths of hell.

After a few years, it dawned on my mother that this place was very bad news. After one guest pastor popped into town to explain the merits of “beating the sin” out of your child, my mom immediately said hell no, we’re outta here. Once we severed ties, my mother was fortunately able to put all that madness behind her and develop a far more healthy, balanced relationship with religion. Unfortunately for me; however, the seeds from that church were planted deep within me and I was ride or die for Jesus in the most intense way possible for many years to come.

I say all of this to explain that I entered college a woman of seemingly endless contradictions. Between the hardline beliefs I’d developed at church and my rapidly-growing love of the punk scene, I became this unique combination of devout, angry, and misguided. I was amped up to rebel, fuck with the status quo, and weird out the normies (Christians and non-Christians alike), but all in the name of Jesus.

I quickly became known as “the Christian punk girl” around the Wilkes-Barre music scene. Here I am with my dear friend who similarly was known as “the Christian metal girl.”

I kicked things off by “testing” all the local churches in my college town. One by one I’d show up Sunday morning in my combat boots, my torn up jeans, or maybe even a leopard miniskirt, and wait for someone to say something. While it wouldn’t always happen immediately, or even directly—it could be a dirty look from an old lady or a pastor making an awkward joke about my outfit—the moment I felt anything less than 100% acceptance, that church was dead to me. Judge not, lest ye be judged, fuckin hypocrites.

I was also that girl in my campus food court—the girl who bowed her head to pray before every single meal. Sure, part of it was genuine, but about 50% of it was definitely performative. If anyone dared to lock eyes with me before or after my prayer, I’d make them regret it. Hey normie, have you never seen a girl pray before? WHAT, am I weirding you out, square? A few weeks into my first semester my roommate confessed she’d thought I’d been praying to Satan.

Around this time I also became obsessed with anarchy. Like any young punk, I hated authority and loved the idea of anarchy, but of course struggled to reconcile that with my faith. That is, until I discovered Christian anarchy. I have no clue how I found it, but after stumbling upon Tolstoy’s Christian anarchy treatise The Kingdom of God Is Within You, I absolutely could not shut up about it. Just ask me about my ideological beliefs, I fucking dare you! I believe in no rules, no system, no laws but God’s laws! Hoo-boy…

It should come as no surprise that around that time I was desperately craving the most hard-hitting tunes I could find. It was easy enough to find brash, aggressive secular punk bands, but a little more tricky to find that kind of music on the Christian scene. I already listened to some Christian pop punk bands like Element 101, Slick Shoes, and MxPx, but none of that came close to matching my vibe.

As luck would have it, the year I started college was about the same time that MySpace really started taking off. All it took was a couple of awkward selfies and a quick bio to connect me with a whole new world I never even knew existed—the world of Christian street punks. Before long, my Myspace inbox was full of friend requests, messages, and band recommendations from like-minded Christians sporting mohawks, skin-tight jeans, and leather jackets spraypainted with the letters “JCHC” (Jesus Christ Hardcore).

I thiiiink this is one of my first Myspace selfies. Man, why didn’t we just ask our friends to take our pictures?

“JCHC” was a well-known song in the scene by Christian punk band Officer Negative, and it was also so much more. JCHC was like our rally cry, a way of life for us Christian punks. Here are some of the lyrics:

Living for Christ is what we do
That’s the definition of our hardcore
We don’t need drugs or booze
Christian punks we won’t lose

Jesus Christ Hardcore

Kick satan in the face
With our steel toe boots
We are in the army of God
With salvation as our roots

Jesus Christ Hardcore

Just know that I was this close to getting JCHC knuckle tats… Anyhow, Officer Negative was my gateway drug, and from there I went on to discover a whole slew of other hard-hitting Christian bands, including The Havoc, Headnoise, One-21, and most notably, Blaster the Rocketboy.

Blaster the Rocketboy was probably the band that had the largest impact on me in college. Their blend of Christian themes with horror and sci-fi imagery was like nothing I’d ever heard before—and it blew my mind at the time. They delivered Christian allegories through lyrics about vampires, werewolves, and flesh-eating monsters, which felt edgy and subversive instead of lame and preachy. Plus, a lot of their lyrics were pro-Jesus but anti-religion, which, as someone who rarely felt at home in any church, spoke to me deeply. Perhaps most importantly, the band absolutely weirded out my conservative roommate, which is precisely why I played their S.S.F.F.T.V. album on repeat for my entire freshman year.

Here’s a picture I submitted to my college’s art and lit magazine (which I no doubt thought was the epitome of artsy) of a bloodied robot standing atop Blaster the Rocketboy’s S.S.F.F.T.V. album.

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As happens with most kids that go away to college, after a couple of years being exposed to new ideas and new people outside my hometown, my mind opened up and my personal beliefs evolved. I eventually broke free from the mental prison of religious thought and I became markedly less intense and rage-fueled. But even though I’ve left most of my old beliefs behind, I do still kind of love some of the bands. I still have a Havoc shirt that I wear pretty regularly and their song “Death Comes Fast” remains one of my favorite punk tracks. Also, about 20 years ago I created an eyelinerdiner@gmail.com email account which was inspired by a lyric in Blaster the Rocketboy’s song “All the Way to the Bloodbank.” I still use that account for things like coupons and newsletters, so every day when I check my emails I get the tiniest little flashback to my hardcore Christian punk days.

Were you ever a part of the Christian punk or other Christian music scene? If so, what kind of memories do those times bring up? Do you have any favorite bands?

Alternatively, does this all sound completely foreign to you? Did you even know there was a Christian punk scene?