One Punk's Guide to Christian Punk—Kurt Morris/One Punk’s Guide to Bizarro Fiction—MP Johnson

This “One Punk’s Guide” series is produced by Razorcake, an LA based zine, whose contributors “share their love for a topic that is not traditionally considered punk.” I have been picking up a few of these on my latest trips to Atomic Books here in Baltimore and so far, it’s all pretty solid.

I’ll begin with the Bizarro Fiction issue.
I’ve been writing fiction for most of my life and from time to time I’ve put words and stories on paper that mainstream types would consider “weird.” But after reading this issue exploring the genre of Bizarro Fiction, Novels that are pumped out relatively quickly and are guerilla marketed like zines, well, I feel a little traditional.

Somewhere out there people are writing stories about Haunted vaginas or masturbating walruses and here I am, a 43 year old man writing about poop and coffee and getting blasted by the Goodreads public for being “too weird.”

Obviously I’m doing something wrong.

Meanwhile, Bizarro Fiction writers have been flourishing and have formed their own community with no marketing and no budget but lots of success and demand for their product.

I’d say I want in, but I just really get the feeling they wouldn’t want me...

One Punks Guide to Christian Punk may seem like a contradiction, but somewhere out there is another group doing something I never heard of. While Christian Rock is well-established, Christian Punk is less so. It is another subculture with bizarro world versions of bands you might know, like MXPX and the Altar Boys and (maybe you’ve heard of) As I Lay Dying.

Morris delves into his experience with it, growing up as a Christian in Indiana, but also fostering an interest in punk, and then discovering this whole world out there of music that was made for him. “Jesus was the original punk.”

His story of working in a Christian record store leads to his realization that it was becoming more of a corporate product. As secular punk was co-opted by the mainstream, so went its Christian cousin.

It’s a corner of the punk world that is probably not very well known and it is for this reason that this zine is worth a look.