Joshua Watson:
How did “Strange Negotiations” (the upcoming album to be released in May 2011) get its name?

David Bazan:
It’s a phrase that had been kind of rolling around in my head for the past year or so. For instance, sometimes something will get expressed within culture that is just super asinine, but because enough people agree about it, then you have to take it seriously, so then you’re kind of negotiating with these people about this thing that you shouldn’t have to negotiate at all.

So, I started thinking of those aspects, as like, this is a strange negotiation we are involved in.

The example that I had in mind was that Obama wasn’t born here… “Where’s the birth certificate?” Because enough people believe that, then you have to take it seriously. That’s strange. It seems inappropriate. You should just be able to dismiss stupidity as such, but nonetheless, here we are.

Watson:
Are there questions you’re wrestling with on “Strange Negotiations?”

Bazan:
…The record is asking questions, but it’s not quite so grand as [“Curse Your Branches.”] The scale that “Branches” was on for me was personally pretty massive… I wouldn’t make another record like “Branches,” so I had to get it right [the first time.] So there is a lot less riding on “Strange Negotiations.” It’s just me shooting my mouth off.

Watson:
Who do you think makes the most compelling argument for the Christian faith?

Bazan:
There are Christians that I know that I find compelling as people. But I haven’t run into any Christian apologist that has really addressed my specific set of concerns…I’m mostly interested in finding out what’s true and what holds up…

I don’t [find any apologetic cases for Christianity compelling] and it’s an interesting question. Evangelical Christianity, as I grew up with it and as it seems to exist currently, seems preoccupied with the confession of Christianity.

That one would confess the right things, and that seems to be one of the main points of it. I find that so unsatisfying. To me, the best cases for Christianity are when people actually bear the fruit that they say they are going to bear. To me, that is the most compelling reason to think anything or do anything or to respect a confession.

A confession of belief on its own is just the most flaccid thing. In that sense, an academic book, self-help book or just a Christian apologetic book means so much less.
[They would say] “So this is what I think…” [I would respond,] “So you’re divorced three times, you’re estranged from you’re kids… who cares what you think about the universe? I want to be at peace. This peace that passes all understanding that you’re talking about, you don’t have it. You treat people badly. You misunderstand fundamental ideas of the world at large.”

These [bearing fruits] are far more compelling to me than, “You have to get the confession right or you’ll burn for eternity.” And I just think, “Yeah, that’s becoming less compelling by the minute too because everything else you say doesn’t seem to match up with reality, so why would I assume that would?”

Watson:
Do you miss God? (Or your previous perception of him?) Do you miss your naiveté? Would you go back and live in that if you could? Do you ever get tired of wrestling?

Bazan:
I do miss my previous conception of God. But I don’t miss the naiveté. People have complained about me in the past. [They say,] “How arrogant, he is the ultimate arbiter of what he finds, true or not true.”

It’s really nice to be able to evaluate ideas honestly and call a spade, a spade. Now that I’m out of the movement, without the threat of being kicked out of the movement, it seems like a basic pleasure, or right, to be able to think freely about ideas.

That is worth even major discomfort. To be allowed to be wrong and come back to that later and say, “You know, I was wrong about that,” and not have all this heavy stuff hanging over your head. It is better than the discomfort that comes along with the grief of losing one’s faith.

Which I did…it was something that needed to be grieved, maybe even more profoundly than the death of someone that I knew. It was a bummer. It was a really big bummer. But who’s to say what is lost and how long it’s lost for. I have impulses to express gratitude toward the unknown, to what is.

I’ve read that people say, “Well that is so encouraging — it’s just evidence that God is still at work in the hard heart.” Blah blah blah. It is what it is. Maybe there is something, maybe there is nothing.

But what I’ve fought for and what I’m happy to have, is the right to go with my gut. I’m going to do that as humbly and as earnestly as I know how. That’s the way I’ve gone about it up till now too.

Watson:
Could you see yourself coming back to the biblical account of God while rejecting the “personal Christianity” (modern-day American evangelicalism) that you seem to be so angry with?

Bazan:
I’ve always had concerns and conflicts with evangelical Christianity. Since I was 14, I’ve had major issues with the American evangelical expression, but from 14 to 24, that was never a deal breaker. It was what I perceived to be logical gaps in the biblical narrative in the foundation.

Starting with the fall, the character of God throughout the Old Testament. Jesus is interesting. But without the fall and without the required reconciliation, the atonement is not the answer to any question.

There is still a lot of study that I have to do, but as I go over it and over it and over it again… I couldn’t make sense of it.

It was specifically the biblical account of God that was the deal breaker. What’s nice now is that I still have a lot of gripes with collective action of American evangelicals. I don’t [need] to have any angst about any of the ones that I know and love.

People say and do shitty things, no matter what “stripe they are.” I can think of plenty of evangelicals, I can think of plenty Democratic politicians. It’s everybody.

Watson:
(The following are lyrics from Bazan’s song, “Curse Your Branches.”) “Red and orange, or red and yellow / in which of these do you believe? / If you’re not sure right now, /please take a moment, / cause I need your signature before you leave” ?

Bazan:
It’s a pretty flaccid attempt to make a metaphor of having to make a choice between relatively similar systems of belief when so much is at stake. I was not given the opportunity to evaluate the system that [I was] about to sign on to.

There are a lot of emotional pleas, “Do you feel empty inside?” “Yeah, absolutely.” So you sign on the dotted line and along with it comes this pork barrel of other things. It’s a reference to (snaps fingers): “Everything is at stake. You need to make a decision if you die tonight.”

Watson:
That was my guess actually.

Bazan:
(Laughs) You win.