Reflections on Sufjan and Sydney

I'm a relatively recent convert to the music of Sufjan Stevens - J bought me Songs for Christmas in 2009 and my appreciation has grown rapidly from there. I love his combination of earnest Christian discipleship with musical and lyrical eloquence, irrepressible creativity and shockingly honest, deeply human vulnerability.

His show at the Opera House last night was out-of-this-world amazing. One freaking genuis, backed by ten mad musicians and a massive screen of weird space-theme imagery transporting the whole audience to another dimension.

Sufjan explained the inspiriation for his latest album, The Age of Adz, and had me rivetted. He talked about the self-proclaimed prophet Royal Robertson - an American artist whose poster-board creations have a decidedly futuristic, comic-book look, and reflect Robertson's deep interest in numerology, the Book of Revelation and the apocalypse more generally. Sufjan discussed this stuff very seriously, emphasising Robertson's significance to his own recent thinking and repeating Robertson's 'prophet' epithet without a hint of either irony or scepticism.

The audience didn't know what to make of it. Sydneysiders aren't exactly famous for being comfortable with spiritual topics, and most Christians in this big bad city wouldn't be caught dead admitting an openness to this kind of thing. I mean, what kind of Christian gets guidance from a crazy like Robertson? Or indeed from anything other than a sermon and bible studies? Sufjan sure wouldn't pass muster as a Sydney Anglican.

I'm being a little facetious. But Sufjan did make me think about religious culture in this city, and particularly the flavour of its church communities. Christians in Sydney tend to have a seige mentality: the world out there is not simply corrupt, it's a threat. It has to be resisted, rejected, called to repentence. Historian Stuart Piggin suggests this mentality is a legacy of our convict origins: the Anglican church was on the back foot from the very first moments of British settlement.

Don't hear me say that this mentality is utterly without value. But it often leads to a world-denying defensiveness, an almost fearful refusal to acknowledge - let alone engage with - other ways of seeing things. Even within the community of Christians, there is often a felt need to defend one's own orthodoxy. People certainly don't go round saying 'Hey, this random prophet artist guy from the trailer park is really inspiring' - or at least, not in my hearing :-)

Such fear, such defensiveness, is deeply troubling. I am no theologian,but surely we - Christians - have lost something crucial if we bunker down so tightly that we are no longer life affirming, if we lose the ability to ask real, potentially heretical questions and go on a bit of a journey. I'd be interested to know what you think.

(Sufjan, unsurprisingly, recently said some fascinating things about his own journey as a Christian, and what the whole deal means to him. Thanks for the ref, Richard).

P.S. Mr Stevens' encore from the Opera House last night - Chicago - is already on youtube here. There are also plenty of vids from earlier (north american) shows from the Age of Adz tour, if you care to go looking for them.

Pics: taken from my seat! couldn't fit the other eight band members into the top one (SS is top left).