It’s halfway through the concert, and David Bazan of Pedro the Lion is taking questions.

Much like a classroom, Bazan is up front formulating a complex theory: It’s easier if people raise their hands before they talk.

From the back someone yells, without raising a hand, “Hey Dave, tell us about your essay.”

Bazan responds with a series of incomplete sentences that amount to something like:
“Well, I was going to write this essay. But … well … I’ll probably never get around to it.”

An hour earlier, sitting in front of Chapel Hill’s Cat’s Cradle, Bazan minced no words while talking about the essay he plans to compile — an essay summarizing his views about how he views his relationship with God.

He was also very clear about one other thing — talking about his faith in God from the stage.

“I feel uncomfortable talking about that from stage and I actually feel like it’s rather inappropriate,” he said.

While there are some things the 25-year-old Bazan doesn’t like talking about on stage, it turns out he does have a lot to say when it comes to issues like his faith and his future.

“With Pedro the Lion everything is kind of a gamble. I don’t know how long I’m going to be doing this. Hopefully, once the band kind of fizzles out, I’ll have the option to do engineering by that point.”

Bazan spent October and November in the studio recording songs for Pedro the Lion’s new record that will probably be in stores in the spring. Bazan said this album would feature the keyboards of Seldom’s Yuuki Matthews, in addition to Trey Many (drums) and Casey Wescott.

Since Bazan started writing songs under the name Pedro the Lion in 1995, his faith and his understanding of God and Christianity have changed. Being such a popular artist has focused a critical spotlight on Bazan, whose lifestyle and outspoken ideas about God and other believers might make some Christians cringe.

“When I started Pedro the Lion I had grown up in church, but it still hadn’t really come together for me. I was in the process of trying to figure it out, trying to be a better Christian and this and that. At that point in time I was really failing miserably at it.”

It wasn’t until 1998 that Bazan really started to understand what he considers the true Gospel.

The true Gospel, Bazan said, is having his faith inform every aspect and action of his life. He said the Gospel of love can be summed up in compassion and humility.

“If those aren’t the things that define a person’s life I don’t think that it’s possible they know God,” he said. “There’s no other response that’s possible when you’re cognizant of God’s presence.”

Love, compassion and humility, Bazan said, were not necessarily how he remembers learning about Christianity.

“There’s this set of ideas I had growing up: Drinking alcohol is bad, saying swear words is bad, watching rated R movies is bad, not hanging around Christian people all the time is not necessarily bad, because they want you to tell other people so you have to.

“Creatively, writing music that isn’t also subservient to the American idea of evangelism is bad.”

As Bazan began questioning these strict rules and looking for something more genuine, he began to question the religion he grew up with. That led to other questions.

“What else is inaccurate? And who decides that?” asked Bazan.

Questioning what he grew up with was a crucial turning point for Bazan – one that he said led to a closer personal relationship with God that is reflected in his music. Bazan said that it has been a challenge to divorce himself from the idea that he had to write music that most people would call praise songs.

“But all of (my songs), I’m hoping, are informed by the thorough application of what I believe, which is the Gospel.”

The Gospel that Bazan, and many others, he adds, pursue, is not a set of rules and societal pressures.

“There are a number of people who are seeking something real, and have found possibly something real, in the Bible and in Christ,” he said. “But it’s of a different color than the normal popular Christian expression. What we believe is so different, although it’s subtle, there’s a really profound – it was the subtle difference between what the Pharisees believed and what Jesus came saying. And that’s what’s ironic to me.”

He said the Christian Church in general has a view of itself that “we are good people.”
“It’s a righteousness-based, or a performance-based, achievement-based religious expression.”

“You don’t want to be in a position where you are constantly judging whether other people are Christians or not, but it’s really difficult. The same way the Pharisees said ‘how can that be?’

Despite how things may sound, Bazan does not claim to have things figured out, even for himself.

“I’m constantly humbled by the fact that, I misunderstand so much still.”

And other people often, both Christians and non-Christians, misunderstand a lot about Bazan.

“There are a lot of things that I do – like I drink alcohol,” he said. “And ever since I was in 7th grade, I loved swear words. I’m relatively passionate – and I’m a fan of hearing and saying swear words. There are just a lot of things that would traditionally brand me of being backsliden.”

Bazan said basing one’s faith on simply behaving a certain way is an easy mistake for Christians to make.

“There’s such a near counterfeit of what the truth is. There’s such a close counterfeit that it’s so often mistaken for the true Gospel. And they’re like “oh I believe the same thing as you do” and I’d like to believe that you do but I don’t really think so. What’s the difference? There’s a really profound difference.

“And it really is about the proof- how it works out in a person’s life. And that’s so funny because they would look at me and say ‘well your fruit is alcohol and swearing and rated R movies and my fruit is not alcohol and not swearing."


Bazan’s career has featured some confrontation with both non-Christians who assume things about his beliefs and with Christians who have different views of evangelism that he does.

“Over the last couple weeks, there’s been pretty steadily a lot of Christians who are pretty upset over a lot of things and are wanting to validate what we do because they like the band and want to feel like they can listen to us.”

Bazan is also strongly opposed to the traditional style of American evangelism that encourages people to “run at the mouth” about their faith.

“People are so flippant in the way that they discuss it and take every opportunity to spout off at the mouth about it,” he said. “It’s a lot easier, but I think that it’s far less effective than living in a world of compassion and humility from Christ. It’s too scattershot of a way to do things.

“People are at different places. Not everybody’s ready to hear that part of it, they might not have any frame of reference all the time for it. Until you’re at the end of your rope, it doesn’t matter, any of that stuff. That’s another thing Pedro the Lion has tried to do, not so heavy-handed, but I like discussing what I think the harsh reality of everything is. When it’s all laid bare, when we’re not using flowery language to cover things up, people are going to get to the end of their rope quicker and I feel like that’s a good thing.”

This topic brings Bazan to his essay.

“I’m actually trying to put together an essay. I’d like to present it at Cornerstone (Music Festival) in a seminar, and then distribute it over the internet to people, just more than anything to create about a dialogue about those things.

“There are certain people who haven’t really contemplated the way that how Christianity has interacted with culture over the past 30 years is absolute bullshit - the antithesis of the way I really feel we are responsible to interact with culture.”

[Dec. 8, 2001]