My grandmother's religion, as reimagined by Millions of Dead Cops

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My grandmother's religion, as reimagined by Millions of Dead Cops

Written by Greg Mills

Live and Proud from the Bastard of A and C.

I came across a truly awe inspiring religious website, Death to the World. It's a the site of a Russian Orthodox Hardcore 'zine based here in Cali, and it is blowing my poor cracked little mind.

I was raised Russian Orthodox, and the church I attended was more Russian than Orthodox. The joke was Russian Orthodox Christian, in that order.

The Russian Orthodox Church I grew up in was full of pinched faced little old ladies (one of whom spit on the exposed toes of my then-sister-in-law, who had the satanic-inspired chutzpah to wear sandals in church, driving the men to distraction with her ingrown toenail). It was sighing about a Russia that never existed by people who had never been there, or were last there when there was a Tzar and St. Petersburg was called Petrograd.

The kids were pale, puffy kids from the Avenues in black derby jackets, -- the official jacket of Bay Area rockers/stoners/low rider/cholos, c. 1982 -- with discreet AC/DC patches. They spoke with Russian accents, despite being born in California.

We suffered through lent, through liturgies and vespers chanted in Slavonic, through weird feast days on which you weren't allowed to eat anything. It was old, old, old, not American, not fun, kind of seedy and tired.

It was not punk rock.

That's why this site is so jarring.

Interestingly enough, two members of the best Stoner Metal band in the universe, San Jose's very own Sleep were Orthodox monks at different times.

Now, the monastic aspect of the Orthodox faith IS deeply profound and aspects of the theology (which I didn't pick up on until after I stopped going to church) emphasize a break with the world. It's sort of Augustine, but more Russian -- the world of human is damaged and broken, so human institutions are naturally corrupt. We are all sinners, no getting around it, but we can indirectly experience the holy through reflection. That's why Russian churches tend to be so otherworldly; to force a conceptual break with the world.

I've met a few monks growing up, mostly at a church camp run by a more liberal branch of the Church (more liberal? Hard to believe, I know) and they were the real deal: beatific guys with ZZ Top beards leading simple lives. I remember one was actually a Romanov and a wicked first base man in softball. He played in his hassock.

It's interesting that someone Orthodox had the idea to draw the in the teen angst rejection of the world (I'm being flip. I'm sure the kids that are involved are smart and earnest) into an ancient spiritual traditional.

Who knows how it would have affected me if someone had made that connection when I was listening to hardcore. I might be sporting a ZZ Top beard right now.