Julien Baker: “I saw music as religion” - New Statesman

Posted: 17 Feb 2021 12:00 AM PST

Julien Baker doesn't believe in hell any more. She doesn't believe in original sin either, or in predeterminism. She doesn't believe that people are born "saved" or "reprobate". "Those things seem obvious now, and I think they were always obvious to me," Baker told me in early February, "but there was an ingrained unwillingness to deviate too far from the canon because it would be perceived as doubt. But I don't doubt God. I am, in fact, certain that there's something out there, even if it's just God manifested in the dignity of other human beings."

Baker wore a bandanna around her neck and a black T-shirt when she spoke to me over Zoom from her apartment in Nashville, Tennessee. The 25-year-old songwriter was raised in a deeply Christian family across the state in Memphis. She writes emotional, guitar-led indie-rock songs with raw, exposing lyrics. Across the course of three solo records – the latest of which, Little Oblivions, is released this month – Baker has become known for the clarity with which she expresses her vulnerabilities and her flaws. "Cause if I didn't have a mean bone in my body, I'd find some other way to cause you pain/I won't bother telling you I'm sorry for something that I'm gonna do again," she sings over broken piano chords on "Relative Fiction". As part of the supergroup Boygenius, she – alongside her fellow acclaimed US songwriters Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus – proved that an instinct for ruthless self-examination can be resolutely cool too.

[See also: The fight over Britney Spears]

Baker has tattoos on both arms, and when we spoke, had Biro scrawls on the back of one hand. Early in her career, interviewers would note how she addressed them as "Sir" or "Ma'am", a quirk she seems to have moved on from, though when she occasionally paused our conversation to retrieve pieces of "trash" from her dog's mouth – a minor disturbance – she apologised with a profuse, and typically Southern, politeness.

Her Christian faith is not simply a theme in her music, but a lens through which she views much of her life – from her queer identity (she came out to her devout parents at 17 years old; they embraced her), to her teenage struggles with substance abuse. But that faith has, over the past few years, changed – not because of one "paradigm-shifting event", she explained, but a gradual loss of any "emotional, mental attachment to liturgy and tradition". She doesn't attend church any more, or pray as such. "I think the church is super-flawed." Organised Christianity in the US, she said, "has extrapolated some really harmful things from a text that's theoretically about how to treat people, how to live in a loving community with each other". Worship, for her, has taken on new forms. "I just really think about human beings. I sit around and think about my friends. I think about my behaviours and I try to do better things with my time and with my energy, that will serve a body – not the people in my church, but the people in my city."

Baker's earliest relationships with music were formed at church, where she played in a band every week. Even when she played outside church, her band mates were people she had met there. As an only child, she didn't have older siblings to pass down "contraband" music to her, she said, and without her own money, she relied on her parents to approve artists before she could listen to them. So she sought out Christian hardcore that she knew they would permit. "Well look," she would say. "There's this band that is a metal band or a screamo band, and they're singing about Jesus! So you should let me listen to this."

[See also: How a new campaign aims to fix a broken music industry]

The access to music that church offered Baker was exciting: it gave her a place, every week, to play with a full band. But discovering new music in such a religious context also complicated the experience. "Instead of seeing church as a group of people using this non-religious tool, music, as part of a collaborative ritual, I saw music as religion," she said. When she started going to local post-punk house shows as a teenager, she found a different sort of musical community, but it was still one in which she knew the crowd, and where the crowd always sang along, "super-loud" – just like in church.

When Baker's fan base began to expand beyond her local community – an emo-folk record she made as a student was picked up and formally released as her debut, Sprained Ankle, in 2015 – the atmosphere at her live shows shifted. In contrast to her punk days, her new audience would listen quietly while she played: Baker grew concerned with how "one-sided" the dynamic had become. Realising she had a platform, Baker decided her music would be "noble" or "honest", she said. "Songwriting fell into a moral realm for me. I had always imagined music as conversation; if it couldn't be that, then it had at least to be a vehicle for ideology."

But when Baker's relationship with her faith changed, her songwriting had to change, too. Writing Little Oblivions, she sought to free herself from "the weight of trying to say something true or good, something loving or righteous". Her new songs are more expansive and complex than ever before: on "Highlight Reel" murky synths undercut Baker's vocals, leaving her lyrics difficult to make out. "Faith Healer", a song about how easy it is to relapse into addiction, is driven by a burgeoning rhythm section which, for just moments at a time, she allows to roll over the listener like a wave.

This period of change was significant for Baker. Throughout it, she resisted thinking of herself in binary terms of the devout teenager she once was and the wiser, more sceptical adult she is now. "That's something that's taught by church: this prodigal and reconciled nature. But when you stop thinking about that ultimatum, it's really helpful. I don't want to think of 'old' and 'new' me; I'm the same me. I have the same tendencies and personality traits – I just changed the way that I thought about God.

"And even though I have felt a personal resentment towards those institutions, I have no interest in othering or eliminating that part of myself," she added. "I don't want to villainise a self that does wrong in order to try to love a self that's doing better."

"Little Oblivions" is released on 26 February on Matador Records

[See also: Virginia Wing's Private Life: chaotic, dream-like pop]

Joyful faith fills the congregants of Bethel Rock House of Prayer in Newark - The Newark Advocate

Posted: 07 Feb 2021 12:00 AM PST

Minister Mary Jane Miflin speaks at Bethel Rock in Newark.

(Photo: Submitted)

Editor's Note: This story is the first part of a series of written and audio stories called Black Lives in Licking County, a collaboration between the NAACP of Licking County, The Reporting Project at Denison University and The Advocate.

NEWARK - On Christmas Eve four years ago, Sister Bertha Stigger stood poised in front of a wooden cross at Bethel Rock House of Prayer in Newark, ready to sing the gospel. Stigger began to sing in her warm, brassy tones, a gentle piano accompanying her. Slowly, as the music crescendoed, emotional cries welled up from the pews.

Overwhelmed with joy, congregants raised their hands in praise, one by one, and then joined in unison singing, "Holy one." Stigger bellowed the gospel tune, "Holy one, holy one, we worship you, we bow down, we worship you, holy one," as the spirit moved among the congregation.

Previously:Black churches look to find their place in Newark

It's this spirit and emotional experience of a worship service that brings folks together at Bethel Rock, and has helped build this tight-knit but welcoming community, a place open to all comers, according to church member Desiree Blake.

"I could stay home and watch television all day every day and go about my day," says Minister Mary Jane Heflin, of Bethel Rock House of Prayer. "But it's just something about coming together in church and worshiping, spiritually."

Part 2: Heath's Jyheim Harden starts young on road to activism in Licking County

Part 3: Black History Month: Book club re-discovers Newark author Gertrude Dorsey Brown

A visitor to the church posted on Facebook that when he attended in 2018, "We were all ages, from infant to eighty plus, and all colors of the rainbow. We sang, prayed, and laughed and even cried tears of joy. There was no judgement, no fashion show, no gossip, politics, racism, homophobia, or negativity of any kind...Why can't we just do that every day?" He sensed that this church was a special place.

The pandemic has made it harder for the congregation to gather. The church has been limited to only having services on Sundays, with social distancing and masks required. Pastor Reecior Puryear is currently recovering from illness, but is expected to be back behind the pulpit soon. Despite these challenges, they have gathered in song and continued the traditions of this church, long a part of Newark's Black community.

Following a vision from God

Bethel Rock, located on 219 East Main St., was founded by Pastor Reecior Puryear in 1984 in response to a vision that she said she had received from God. Heflin says "God gave [Pastor Puryear] that vision [to start the church]. God spoke to her and said, 'Don't keep my people waiting.'' Soon, Puryear formed a charter of about five or six people around the table in her home.

Heflin says that founding and fostering this church community has been Puryear's life's work.

Pastor Puryear told the Newark Advocate in 2017 that people come and go from the church, which has about 50 to 70 members, but she is more concerned about God meeting the spiritual needs of the people who are there.

"My main concern is people bettering themselves by being obedient to the spirit of God," Puryear said.

More: Greg Jones: The joys and challenges of growing up Black in Newark in the 1960s

During the first service on Oct. 14, 1984, the church house overflowed with people who wanted to see the young Pastor Puryear preach the power of the Gospel. Bethel started in an old theater building on the corner of Wildwood Avenue and Poplar Avenue in Newark. The people in the community banded together and helped fix it up for use. They donated a piano, an organ, and more to get the church started. After the service was over, they had a potluck dinner in the backyard, with many more to follow.

Buy Photo

Bethel Rock House of Prayer on East Main Street in Newark.

(Photo: Sara C. Tobias/The Advocate)

Years ago, a storm ruined the first church location, but this didn't stop the worshippers. They hopped to different locations for services: "We had church in the home, we had it downtown," says Heflin. "We went from there to an abandoned bar out east… After that, the Lord made a way for us to get a loan from the bank, and we built a church."

Spirit remains, but locations change

Over the years, the church has changed locations, but the spirit within the congregation has remained steadfast and Sunday mornings a time for congregants to connect with their faith. The name Bethel Rock has its roots in the story of God speaking to Jacob in Genesis 35:1: "Let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went…"

Members say that Bethel Rock House of Prayer is a place of solace when in distress, but it's the moments of hope and praise that make this church unique.

"When you walk into Bethel, you can feel the spirit of the Lord and the people," says Blake. "You feel comfortable. You know there's something there."

Blake, mother of Newark City Councilman Jeremy Blake, has found her place at Bethel Rock because, she said, Pastor Puryear is "a good woman of God…. [saying] right what the Lord wants her to say to her congregation. And I just felt that's where I need to be."

Minister Heflin says there is freedom in worship here, "We believe in just letting go and let God. We believe in just lifting our hands and just praising God in worship, singing and worshiping and just praising God, dancing in the spirit."

At Bethel, anyone can have a role in the church community. Blake used to help watch the kids, lead a Bible study, but now she just enjoys going to church, praising the Lord, and fellowshipping. Hefflin, with a calming presence, fills in wherever she's needed--from Sunday school to prayer hour to singing with the praise team.

Mrs. Blake said that Bethel's young people and children don't go to services as much as they used to. Across the nation, there has been a trend of religious disaffiliation. And according to a 2020 study by the Pew Research Center, even though most teens in the United States share the religious views of their parents, they're more likely to say they're less religious than their parents.

Minister Harold Lene Choice speaks at Bethel Rock in Newark.

(Photo: Submitted)

But Blake and Heflin believe this church will carry on well into the future.

Heflin wants Bethel's legacy "to be that light that's set on the hill that cannot be hidden, to let them know that Christ is the way, the truth, and the life… That we could be that light to the world."

And Heflin adds, a church that continues to say, "When you accept Jesus Christ…. You will know. It just feels different. You will know that your life is not the same as it was….Because the Spirit of the Lord will lead you, it will guide you, it will direct you, it will instruct you, it will teach you the way to go, how to live."

On that Christmas Eve four years ago, as Sister Bertha Stigger's soulful song drew to a close, the congregation lingered with their hands raised in praise to the Lord, a holy moment altogether.

The pianist played a final note as everyone broke into applause.

"Yes, praise Jesus," said an onlooker.

Read or Share this story: https://www.newarkadvocate.com/story/news/local/2021/02/07/joyful-faith-fills-congregants-bethel-rock-house-prayer-newark/4373737001/

Search This Blog

Festival Portal