Punk Rock is my Religion

Abstract

Social theorists of religion such as Durkheim, Evans-Pritchard, Lynch and Taylor have all demonstrated that awareness of, and engagement with, concepts of the divine, the spiritual and the community are not understood or accessed in a universal way. Nor are they expressed in universal ways, especially amongst those individuals partaking in the current trend of nomadic or syncretic religious beliefs and practices. Thus if we as researchers and theorists are to fully understand the religious beliefs and practices of such individuals and indeed the theological landscape of modern western societies, we must be prepared to explore new and expanding methodologies and means of expression of religious and spiritual identity.My PhD is focused on the spiritual identity and practices of Straight Edge punks, a subset of hardcore punk. During field work in both the US and the UK I utilised visual methodology, primarily though not exclusively, based on the proclivity of adherents to wearing tattoos, to enable interviewees and informants to explore and express their spiritual identity and practises.This paper will use the visual results - photographs, tattoos, flash, and video - garnered to explicit the spiritual identity and practises of Straight Edge adherents, linked strongly to the work of Gordon Lynch and Charles Taylor. From that point the work will argue that instead of focusing on a binary of religious / secular we should instead look to one composed of authenticity / profane / sacred to provide a more accurate understanding of interaction and relationship between religion and modern Western society.