blogging – Page 17 – Andrew Careaga

Essay: Joe Strummer, punk prophet

Reposting an old essay on the 23rd anniversary of The Clash front man’s death

NOTE: Soon after Joe Strummer’s death of an apparent heart attack on this date in 2002, I wrote about The Clash co-founder’s influence as a prophetic voice in the world of punk rock and beyond. My attempts to connect Strummer’s musicianship with Christian theology might be a stretch, but it was a fun thought experiment and I enjoyed exploring those tenuous connections on the page (or the screen). I offer it here as my tribute to Strummer, who, in my opinion, embodied the spirit of ’77 punk rock and infused it with global sounds and a politically progressive worldview that is as needed today as ever.

Earlier versions of the essay below were published in 2003 in the online Christian/emerging church publications RELEVANT and The Phantom Tollbooth.

Friday Five: favorite short fiction of 2025

There are so many great short stories being published these days that it’s hard to keep track of them all. So many deserve to be read and savored. Maybe you’ve read some of the five below that I’ve selected as my favorites of 2025. If not, I hope you’ll give each of them a read. And if you’ve read any of them, maybe give them another read.

All of these stories were published during the 2025 calendar year in online literary magazines and are publicly accessible at the time of this writing. I present them here unranked and in no particular order.