‘Jesus Loves Goths’: Inside Asylum, the Bible Study Group For Metalheads
Credit to Author: Jak Hutchcraft| Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2019 13:06:32 +0000
“Jesus, you’re the ultimate alternative person. A creative alien who made us in your image,” said Billie Sylvian, founder of the Asylum fellowship. “Thank you for sharing yourself with us.”
I was sitting at a table in an 18th century vestry in central London, surrounded by goths, punks and metalheads. We were discussing life, death and faith, while eating crisps and biscuits. Christian industrial metal music – namely Circle of Dust – played at a low volume in the background as I thumbed through a copy of the New Age Bible.
Asylum is a registered charity and Christian group specifically set up for London’s alternative community. Their promo poster, which hangs just off Denmark Street in Soho, reads: “Asylum Fellowship. Sharing Christ’s Love With Goths, Metallers, Punks etc.” They host a weekly Sunday Bible study, a monthly club night (“The Crypt”) that specialises in Christian rock, metal and industrial music, and monthly “praise parties”, where members are invited to share items or music that aids them in their praise – a sort of spiritual show-and-tell.
Archangel De La Vallette – a dentist who makes fangs for London’s “vampire community”, alongside his more regular dental work – has been attending the fellowship since the early-2000s, and personified the welcoming nature of Asylum when he invited me to his flat one winter night for pizza and champagne.
“I was really happy to move away from the Pope, because I felt that he was hijacking Christianity,” he said, about his younger years as a Catholic. “I didn’t meet any Christians in the alternative scene until I started going to Asylum. When I got there we had common points of view and we shared our faith, which was really cool.”
A song that was played at one of Asylum’s monthly “praise parties”.
For veteran members like Jon and Billie, Asylum reaffirms their faith and aids them in their praise, as they get to explore their spirituality with like-minded people. For others, like Paul and Julian, it just seems to provide a safe and friendly space to hang out. One where they can discuss life on a deeper level without the fear of judgment or ridicule. With such uncertainty and chaos in the atheist world, it makes sense that people are drawn to groups like this, searching for answers that can’t be found elsewhere. I know this, because it’s the same compulsion that led me to knock on Asylum’s door.
“Asylum reaches out to the whole alternative community and says, ‘If you believe in God, or Allah, or if you’re a witch, or even if you don’t believe in anything, it doesn’t matter,'” Paul explained. “We’re here to discuss and listen, and that’s what makes Asylum unique.”
During my time with the fellowship, I felt like I was part of something quietly revolutionary. A group representing connection and openness that felt both mystical and yet very human. Perhaps I felt this way because I was experiencing religion from the inside as opposed to peering in curiously from afar. The Asylum group reframed religion and spirituality, making it more accessible and inclusive than any church I’d witnessed before.
This article originally appeared on VICE UK.