Is a Christian Reading of Deicide Lyrics Still Possible? And do the Hoffman Brothers Still Matter? (A Neo-Freudian View.)

Abstract Many readers will justifiably cringe on reading this article’s title. The article is not a lazy, convenient way to reclaim Deicide’s Glen Benton for Christendom as some in the Christian heavy metal community might hope for or even believe has already happened. He was not ‘really’ a ‘secret Christian’ from the beginning. Lyrics cannot just be inverted, and the real Christian appears. However, arguably, Benton refuses to let go of what he once knew, and perhaps valued, both in his father’s Christianity and in his aunt’s spiritualism. Christ is present, but in a deformed and defamed way as Benton teases Christ to respond to his taunts, to show some aggression back. His is like continual rejoicing over the demise of an originally cherished elder brother who has died or moved away. I theorize the elder-brother aspect using Connell’s explication of Freudianism and invoke Klein’s 1957 work Envy and Gratitude .