Sufjan’s religious upbringing, he says, was a mix of untraditional Midwestern beliefs encouraged by his hippie parents: “Amway, self-realization training, methods camp, Catholic school, macrobiotic diets, yoga—we jumped from thing to thing.” He landed on protestant Christianity because he found it grounding, “so simple and stable.”
What he sees in the Christianity of “red state” American politics however, of the moral standards of “the religious right” and the Christian Coalition, is something else entirely, amounting to nothing more than “a political lobbying group.”
“Morals, principles and laws are when faith is reduced to standards and those standards basically just bind us, and we become prejudicial, racist, self-serving when we’re guided by these laws... When a developed country uses Christianity in its policies, in government, in maintaining corporate wealth, that’s a bastardized rendering of a faith.”
For his part, Sufjan is keeping the faith by remaining faithful to the music he’s been making since the oboe in middle school, since the dog days of “Readers Digest renderings of famous classical works.” If he’s not writing arrangements for his new album on the piano, he’s tuning his banjo or tapping a beat on the computer, an instrument he learned could be “really musical.” Evidence can be found on his electro-acoustic opus, “Enjoy Your Rabbit,” which he recorded while getting his masters in writing at the New School of Social Research in New York. And like most artists who live in Brooklyn, he practices freelance graphic design on the side.
And then there’s Sufjan’s new record label, called Asthmatic Kitty. While he’s doing “a lot right now” for the label, he’s definitely looking forward to doing less organizational work and more finding new bands with his friends. “It’s not quite a cooperative situation, but everyone has a certain stock in the label. It’s a very social thing.”
The social aspect is part of his whole vision too, what gives his music humanity—and humaneness. Despite the size of his ideas or his concerns or his devotion, Sufjan always wanders back to the local level.
“This election was about big issues which have no impact on our day-to-day lives,” he says on Nov. 5, “but we’re about the small things. We should care about caring for each other; TV is ruining us; sometimes I get depressed and feel like this is the decline of civilization. Politicians aren’t interested in what the people want: they’re interested in their careers.”
Even though Sufjan’s own career is pretty well established, you’d be hard pressed to say that’s all he was interested in, if he is at all. “If there’s anything to say, if there’s anything to do,” he sings on the Michigan album, “If there’s any other way, I’ll do anything for you.” His real interest is in what his God wants, and what a lot of people in Michigan and all the other states want too: some beautiful home-grown harmonious love.
—Staff writer Alex L. Pasternack can be reached at apastern@fas.harvard.edu.