Goths for Jesus: An alternative witness
His black-dyed hair, shaven at the base, was pulled up into a bun pierced by thin black sticks. All of his clothing was black: an ankle-length skirt accompanied by a zip-down leather vest with fishnet sleeves. Six silver rings of various shapes cluttered his fingers, and his nails were painted pale green to match both his eye shadow and the jewel set in the large Celtic cross hanging from his neck. With his hands folded and held just below his chest, this slight, pale young man seemed to float into view while a high school girl and a college-aged woman tried to explain the culture of Christian Goth to two adults.
One of the adults pointed to the elaborately dressed young man and commented that, no offense, but this guy looks, well, not like a guy, and well, that's a problem for me. The college-aged Goth offered: "I look at him and I think, 'He's beautiful.'"
This intra-Christian encounter was one of many fascinating scenes that took place at the Cornerstone Music Festival, probably the largest venue for Christian alternative music (and alternative culture) in the nation. The festival is sponsored by Cornerstone magazine, whose masthead challenges readers "to look out the window of biblical reality and break the 'normal Christian' mold with a stance that has cultural relevancy." The magazine is a publication of Jesus People USA (known as JPUSA, and pronounced "ja-poo-za"), based in Chicago. The first Cornerstone festival was held in 1984 with 5,000 participants. In early July, close to 22,000 campers, most of them evangelical Christians, converged on the 579-acre Cornerstone-owned campground in western Illinois.
