Review
Belief
Creed
Music
Wildness
5 min read

Did Nick Cave’s tour just take thousands to church?

He’s picking holes in the idea that religion is where freedom goes to die.

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A rock star prowls the stage while behind hundred of faces tined red star.
Cave and the congregation.
Instagram/nickcaveofficial.

I recently went to Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Wild God Tour.  

I was told that it would be a terrific show, and it was. I was told that Cave would be more charismatic and commanding than he’s been in decades, and he was. I was told that it would be some kind of spiritual experience, and it was… 

Kind of.  

Those who are likening it to a ‘spiritual’ (including ‘This Country’ actor, Charlie Cooper) experience are certainly onto something, the whole production is designed to be transcendent, it’s just that the adjective they’re opting for is a little too vague. Instead, I would suggest that the show is a religious experience.  

Now, hear me out - I know that we tend to feel nice and comfortable with the ambiguity of the former adjective, and much more cautious when it comes to rigidity of the word I’ve subbed it out for. If you just winced at the sight of the big, bad, R-Word, I get it. It comes with all kinds of wince-worthy connotations. A lot of it, deserved. Some of it, not. 

But, like it or not, I truly don’t think that Nick Cave is giving us the comfortable luxury of vague-ness.  

When I wrote about the Wild God album upon its release, I mentioned that the ‘Wild God’ to whom the record is an obvious ode is not abstract. Rather, the ‘wild god’ is the Christian god. The album attaches itself to a specific story, it finds its home within a specific paradigm. And the same is true of the tour. I would propose, if I may be so bold, that Cave and his Bad Seeds have spent the past few months telling the Jesus-story in every city they’ve found themselves, and subsequently, taking tens of thousands of people to church.  

I would hate for you to think that my objective here is to stick a flag on the hill of this album/tour/artist. It’s not my intention to claim Nick Cave for ‘team Christianity’; it’s not necessary, he speaks continuously and profoundly about his own faith. Rather, as someone who has lived her life according to the very same Jesus-story, I’m simply offering you a lens through which you can gaze upon this touring work of art.  

So, I’ll suggest it again – the Wild God tour is a religious experience.  

And I know that sounds too constrictive of an analysis, but I think that’s on us for ever kidding ourselves into thinking that ‘religious’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘church’ were small words.  

That’s certainly not the way Nick views them. In a recent issue of his Red Hand Files, he writes, 

‘ I experience a certain vague ‘spiritualness’ within the world’s chaos, an approximate understanding that God is implicit in some latent, metaphysical way, yet it is only really in church – that profoundly fallible human institution – that I become truly spiritually liberated. I am swept up in a poetic story that is both true and imaginative and fully participatory, where my spiritual imagination can be both contained and free. The church may appear to some as small, even stifling, its congregation herdlike, yet within its architecture, music, litanies, and stories, I find a place of immense spiritual recognition and liberation.’ 

Fascinating, isn’t it? The concept feels kind of upside down. How could confinement cultivate liberation? How could boundaries ever encourage freedom, or particularity somehow hold entirety?  

Can the ‘spiritual imagination’ truly be ‘both contained and free’? I think it can. In fact, I think that would be my own story, too. And, what’s more, I think the Wild God tour is some kind of proof of concept.  

Can art be bursting with rage and religion? I think Nick has just proved that it can. I think he is probing, once again, at the myth that faith and hope can’t sit alongside carnage. 

The whole show is framed by Cave’s joyous bewilderment at his own conversion – song by song, it tells the story of how he has been wading through the thickets of grief, his eyes steadily fixed on the God who rescued him ‘just in time’. 

 It’s specific. It’s religious.  

And here’s the funny thing: the show having such a specific story to tell doesn’t seem to have a narrowing effect. Instead, songs about storms in the tiny town of Tupelo and girls who live on Jubilee Street seem to be swept up into a story that’s big enough to hold them, big enough even, to imbue them with yet more meaning. Doubt also sits comfortably here. As does anger and profanity.  

Can something be sweary and sacred? Can art be bursting with rage and religion? 

I think Nick has just proved that it can. I think he is probing, once again, at the myth that faith and hope can’t sit alongside carnage. He’s finding holes in the idea that religion is a place where freedom goes to die, picking a fight with the claim that ambiguous spirituality, or even outright irreligion, is more freeing.  

It’s a big old fight he’s picked, one that’s been fought – in one way or another – since the beginning of time. I guess, as a Christian, it’s a fight that I have picked, too. I have placed my life (and, if we’re going to get weird with it, my afterlife) within the confines of a particular story. Am I certain that I’m right? Of course not – otherwise my faith would be faith-less, no? Nevertheless, I too have chosen to place my understanding of the eternal in the confines of the particular. I, too, am trusting that within the boundaries of the Christian story, there’s space for me to run free.  

The word ‘religion’ is roomier than we are often urged to believe. Need convincing? Nick Cave is your man.  

Review
Books
Culture
Podcasts
Re-enchanting
4 min read

Find your next holiday read with the top picks of the Re-Enchanting guests

Recommendations across the genres.

Tom Rippon is Assistant Editor at Roots for Churches, an ecumenical charity.

A person lying on a beach holds a book up to read.
'It was the best of times.'
Dan Dumitriu on Unsplash.

Summertime is well and truly here and with the UK currently sweltering under one of the driest years on record, you would be well advised to seek out indoor activities to occupy the hottest hours of the day. But what to do with this time? So many options jostle for our attention and, as Rachel Luckett recently reflected for Seen & Unseen, reading is losing out with the number of readers steadily dropping year on year. Luckett reminds us that what we read is as important as how much we read; recommendations which intrigue and stimulate us are essential and the best place to get such recommendations is stimulating conversation.  

Where do I find these conversations, I hear you ask. Well, look no further than the Re-enchanting podcast from Seen & Unseen with its perennial opening question: what are you reading? To kick start your holiday reading, here’s a round-up of our guests’ choices from season six of Re-Enchanting. 

In retrospect, our guests seem to have a pronounced inclination towards biography and memoir. Earlier this year, Re-enchanting welcomed the notable forensic scientist, Sue Black, onto the show to discuss her (scientific) fascination with all things living and dead. Despite, or perhaps because of, a life spent looking death in the face, Black begins our summer reading with Richard Holloway’s meditation on a fading life, Waiting for the Last Bus

Whilst Black’s distinct lack of squeamishness may be not be shared by all, her desire to piece together the lives and stories of those she meets seems to be a common thread linking many of our guests. Those contemplating a continental get-away might wish to search for inspiration in Paris, a memoir of life in the French capital by Julian Green, recommended by Andrew Davison, Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford University. For those planning holidays further afield, then perhaps a biography of Australian opera singer Nellie Melba, recommended by Kate Flaherty, would add a touch of glamour, along with the autobiography of Melba’s friend and fellow performer, Ellen Terry.  

Also falling into the memoir genre is this season’s stand-out recommendation: Helen McDonald’s H for Hawk, which is currently sitting on the bedside tables of Tyler Staton, pastor of Bridgetown Church, Portland, Graham Tomlin and Belle Tindell. Whilst processing the death of her father, McDonald attempts her long-held ambition to train a hawk, and crafts a surprising and poignant book from the twin experiences. 

McDonald is not the only writer to twist multiple strands and genres into her work; many of our guests’ choices defy definite categorisation. Flaherty, a Senior Lecturer in English and Drama at the Australian National University, also recommends Ali Smith’s Artful, which contemplates art, faith, and fiction, and Murriyang: Song of Time, a ‘psalter’ according to its author, Stan Grant, combining Christian and Australian aboriginal spirituality.   

Changing spiritualities are also on the mind of Chine McDonald, the Director of Theos think tank and the first guest to return to Re-enchanting following her initial appearance more than a year ago. On McDonald’s reading list is The Afternoon of Christianity: The Courage to Change by Tomas Halik, who ponders Christianity’s midlife era and what lies ahead for the faith and faithful alike. One way in which the world has changed over the last century is through the withdrawal of ritual from Western society, according to the German-Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, whose book The Fading of Ritual—or Vom Verschwinden der Rituale for any German speakers among us—comes with a recommendation from Esther Maria Magnis. Is the pairing of Halik and Han the literary match that reflections on modern Christianity have been waiting for? 

If imagining the future of the Christian faith sounds too heavy for the summer holiday, then why not dip into some of our guests’ fiction suggestions? From Jo Swinney, Director of Communications at A Rocha, comes the modern classic, A House for Mr Biswas, by Nobel laureate, V. S. Naipaul, whilst Rupert Shortt, who, as a former editor of the TLS, knows a thing or two about books, currently reading S. J. Naudé’s Fathers and Fugitives, which takes us on a journey from London to South Africa into a complex story of family, sexuality and relationships.  Readers looking for short form fiction could opt for either Ben Judah’s This is London: Life and Death in the World City, or for a more international perspective, Dream Count, the latest novel by renowned Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 

And, finally, Les Isaac, the founder of Street Pastors, reminds us of the importance of responding to the Bible itself. So, if you’re looking for gut-wrenching narratives and a sense of wonder playing out through characters who are just all-too-human, then look no further than the book which in the Middle Ages was known as a bibliotheca, a whole library in itself. 

  

And some additional suggestions: 

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe 

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh 

The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning by Jonathan Sacks 

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