as preached April 26, 2026 at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston
This Sunday was First Unitarian Universalist’s annual spring music service. For it, our Director of Music and Arts Dr. Loneka Wilkinson Battiste did something a bit different. She organized a service celebrating punk rock! To get the full effect you need to watch the livestream:
Reflection: Punk
You might remember a famous scene from the 1953 Marlon Brando movie “The Wild One.” In it, Brando’s character, a motorcycle club member, is surrounded by a group of couples dancing in a bar. The men are bikers, the women largely locals. Brando is alone standing in the corner, not quite brooding. One of the women asks him, “Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?” “Whaddaya got?,” Brando snarls.
Whaddaya got? It is a sentiment that captures something of the spirit of punk rock. A movement that coalesced from regional music scenes in Cleveland, Detroit, New York, and England, it emerged as rebellion against an early generation of self-styled rebels. Objecting to the ways in which rock ‘n roll of the 1950s and 1960s had become commercialized, punks sought to recapture the rebellious energy that many thought had been lost when the first rock ‘n’ rollers achieved mass-market success.
Artists like Patti Smith and the Clash sought to place punk in a tradition of dissent. In a poem Smith invoked a litany of rebels:
brian jones bones. jim morrison’s friend.
jimi hendrix bandana. sweatband angel.
the starched collar of baudelaire.
the sculptured cap of voltaire.
And she re-interpreted Pablo Picasso, then, as now, one of the most famous artists in the world, in her own terms. She planned a “hoax” and said “don’t nobody tell when he dies.” Then she imagined, “picasso laughing. picasso dancing. / picasso do the fishback. picasso do the cadillac.”
Meanwhile, the Clash paid homage to Spanish anarchists and celebrated robbing banks:
My daddy was a bank robber
But he never hurt nobody
He just loved to live that way
And he loved to steal your money
We are lifting up punk rock today as part of our yearlong exploration of what it means to be a dissenting religious tradition. The trajectory of the music is a reminder that the spirit of dissent, the spirit of rebellion, is reborn anew in each generation. As Smith’s poem reminds us, punk began, before it began, with the urban rebels of the late nineteenth century. It is found in the words of French bohemian poets like Charles Baudelaire, “And into my bewildered eyes … Visions of festering wounds and filthy clothes,” and Arthur Rimbaud, “How far away are the birds and the fountains! / To go on can lead only to the end of the world.”
The end of the world, just as we do today, early punks found themselves living amid the possibility of nuclear Armageddon. Bewildered, visions of the world’s wounds before them, they believed that something was wrong with humanity. That something needed to change, needed to be rebelled against. Exactly what that something was, well, punk was never an ideologically coherent movement. Sometimes punk rockers were deeply political. Other times they just leaned into the Brandoesque spirit of “Whatdaya got.” Occasionally, they even rebelled against punk, as when the band Crass sang:
Yes that’s right, punk is dead
It’s just another cheap product for the consumer’s head
At its best, punk music asks us two of the same questions that we find in our dissenting religious tradition. The first, what should this generation–which is to say those of us who are alive today–be rebelling against? The second, what can we do to create a culture of dissent?
We will get to that second question in the next part of my reflection. But for now, a brief word about our choral music. It comes from the Commoners Choir, an English choral group formed by Boff Whalley, a member of the punk band Chumbawamba. It is a testament to the power of continual reinvention found in punk. The lyrics of our first of their’s, “Walk with Me,” though ableist, capture the sentiment of something that is as much a movement as it is an act of individual expression. They speak to the rejection of what has been and a demand to create the world anew:
The past is yours but the future’s ours
Walk with me, walk with me
People singing truth to power
Walk with me, walk with me
Our choir sang, let us hear them sing again.
Reflection: Rock
‘create’ is another word for kicking up a fuss
to make something of the nothing that isn’t even given to us.
If “Whatdaya got,” captures something of punk’s rebellion then Boff Whalley’s words summarize another important element of the tradition. In garages, at outlaw venues, among decrepit warehouses, in the back of poorly lit clubs, the philosophy of D.I.Y.—do it yourself—has shaped generations across the globe. The idea was simple: it is possible for us to create our own culture. We can act for ourselves.
This sentiment is found in the song the choir just sang. “One Breath at a Time” is a reminder that the antidote to the epidemics of loneliness and mental health crises are uncovered, at least partially, through the creation of community. The piece offers advice for those who are “losing contact bit by bit.” Join a gym, join a book group, share with a friend “the superpower … [of] talk and tea,” the words tell us.
The message is simple and very punk. No one is coming to save us. We need to save ourselves. We can create the culture, together, that can revive us. It is another testament to what I sometimes call the resurrection of the living, the waking up to the world as it is, the acknowledgment that so much of what is before us is a human creation. We are blessed with the power to bring love where there is hate and justice where there is injustice.
That D.I.Y. spirit is very much part of our congregation. In our dissenting Unitarian Universalist tradition, the congregation belongs to, is created by, its members. In each generation the members of First Unitarian Universalist are invited to take up the responsibility of doing it yourself. Today that means considering what songs, what types of music, what forms of worship, what communal events, best embody our spiritual legacy of dissent. How best can we help each other uncover the real wealth of the world, love, in a time of war, climate crisis and rising authoritarianism?
Our collective efforts to best answer that question is one of the things I love most about Unitarian Universalism. Responsibility is not assigned to any one person—neither minister nor Board President. Instead, it belongs to all of us.
Consider how this pertains to our upcoming UU the Vote effort. If you have been part of this congregation for a while, you likely know that we go all out for voting justice. In the 2024 election we mobilized more than 170 volunteers, registered close to 1,000 voters, and made more than 40,000 contacts to get people to the polls. We will do it again for the 2026 midterms.
When we do, it will not because of any one person. Instead, it will be a result of each of us making the decision to do something. The Justice Coordinating Council, in conjunction with our partner organizations, will develop a strategy. Staff will provide support. The ministry—by which I mean me and whomever we hopefully hire as our next Assistant Minister—will preach sermons calling for the living of democracy as a religious practice. D.I.Y. will mean block walking, phone calling, postcard mailing, rallying, coming together and reimagining. In response to an unjust war, the assault on our democracy, all of the things that “Whatdaya got” might signify in the present moment, we will do our best to bring about a more democratic culture.
There are many ways that culture might manifest itself beyond the ballot box. Punk teaches us that we are the ones that have capacity to create the community we want to see. Whether that is through the voting justice, community gardening, participating in next week’s May Day strikes, organizing book groups, or developing an even deeper sense of congregational life, well, it is for you to do yourself is the message of both punk and our dissenting tradition. Whatever your D.I.Y., whatever our D.I.Y., is, though, I think Boff Whalley has a good sense of where it should lead:
and if I can’t dance to it, it’s not my revolution
and if there’s no humour in it, it’s not my revolution
and if love takes a back seat, it’s not my revolution
and if I ever stop wanting it: then it’s no revolution at all.
In that spirit, I invite the congregation to say Amen, and now, join together in singing that punk anthem, “I Fought the Law.”
