Can a guitar be used as a tool for evangelization?

Father Brian John Zuelke, OP, a Dominican priest who recently recorded a music video while serving in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, thinks the answer is yes.

“I belong to what’s called the Order of Preachers, founded by St. Dominic 800 years ago,” said Father Zuelke, 41, who this year celebrated his 10-year jubilee as a Dominican (he was ordained a Dominican priest in 2019). “We’re also known as the Dominicans. And, as preachers, we are always trying to figure out: How do we live out our charism of preaching the Gospel in the world today?”

The starting point is taking inventory of one’s gifts and talents and thinking about how they can be used for God’s work. Father Zuelke has a background in electrical engineering, which he used on an assignment for the Dominicans in the engineering department at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.

“I did things like teach on theology and science, (and) I helped advise senior design teams over at the engineering college,” he said of his time at St. Thomas from 2019 to 2022, which also included campus ministry. “It was a great experience.”

As he did that, he got to thinking about another gift that he might use for ministry.

“I’ve long had an interest in music,” he said. “I’ve played electric guitar since I was a teenager, always wanted to be in a band. I did some very amateur recording when I was in college, but nothing ever really came of it.”

While working as an engineer in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he grew up, he met with the director of vocations for the Dominicans of the St. Albert the Great Province. The director saw his musical equipment and said, “You should keep that,” Zuelke recalled. “So, I did.”

It lay in storage for the next 10 years, “but I had lots of ideas about what could be done in a more creative way to appeal to the underground rock music scene that I’ve been into since I was in college,” he said. “Because I kind of know these (types of) people. I know what they’re looking for. And most of them, I think, are ultimately looking for God.”

He began to wonder if he could use rock music to reach them. Finally, within the last two years, he decided to explore the idea of producing and recording a rock music video. He found support within his order, and from “many people” in the Twin Cities for what he calls “an evangelizing music project.”

“The idea is not to make this music for Catholics or even other Christians, but actually to make it so that it could be played and enjoyed by very secular people within any sort of concert setting,” he said. “The music is meant to be harder-edged, very intense sonically, but it’s supposed to be beautiful as well. And the basic idea is to combine the Church’s sacred music traditions — going all the way back to the medieval period — with kind of harder-edged popular music forms of today (like punk rock and heavy metal). Those two, the sacred and the secular, if (they) were to be played in a concert venue, could act for some people as a conduit from the secular to the sacred — a bridge. And so, that’s the idea of the evangelical aspect of all this.”

His original idea was to perform a live concert, but “logistically, that was going to be too hard,” he said. So, he found a local music studio, SignatureTone Recording in Minneapolis, to help him produce a music video, which he released on Nov. 1, All Saints’ Day. He has named the band Aeternum (“Eternal”) and the video “Domine refugium,” which are Latin words found at the beginning of Psalm 90: “Lord, you have been our refuge.”

The video can be found on the website Father Zuelke created: aeternumband.org. It features an array of instruments, including electric guitar and violin, and Father Zuelke wearing his white Dominican habit while playing lead guitar in the recording. A total of 11 musicians perform in the video, which is 13-and-a-half minutes long and is a musical rendition of Psalm 90. The musicians, all volunteers, completed the recording in three sessions of three to four hours each.

“I’m hoping that this will turn into a longer running project that ends up getting funded by people who are interested in supporting it long term,” said Father Zuelke, who moved from the Twin Cities in August to pursue graduate school in Washington, D.C. and also served at St. Odilia in Shoreview while he was here.

“Music taps into the emotions in a powerful way,” he said. “The hope is that the beauty and power of the song will be able to reach certain people” who might not want to listen to any type of music that mentions God.

The entire song is sung in Latin, so audiences, not knowing what the words mean, “won’t put up the guard walls immediately,” and tune out, Father Zuelke said. If they listen to the end and like it, they can explore the words and, hopefully, be drawn to Psalm 90, he said.

William Gomes and his wife, Teresa, who belong to St. Mark in St. Paul, both participated in the project, she as a vocalist and he as a consultant who helped with the composition of the song, including vocals and violin parts. William first met Father Zuelke while studying music composition at St. Thomas.

Father Zuelke and William got to know each other through attending Mass on campus, and Father Zuelke helped William with some music projects. They stayed in touch after William graduated in 2021, and Father Zuelke reached out to him for help with the music video.

William was not familiar with Psalm 90 when the project started, but he found it to be a fitting text for this video.

“It does make a lot of sense for this mission, with Psalm 90 being about an aching desire for God,” William said. “Augustine says, ‘Our hearts are restless until they rest in you, my God.’ … This is what we appeal to as evangelists, that we’re all aching for happiness, and there’s only one who can give it to us.”

So, will the video work as an evangelistic tool?

“I think it will be effective,” William said. “This is a really wonderful (recording) track. It’s a really wonderful song, really wonderful instruments, really powerful energy that’s coming from it that I think a lot of people will find appealing.”

Father Zuelke is hopeful, but unsure how it will fare with secular viewers.

“I don’t know if it will be successful, but I had to try it, at least,” he said. “I look at this music as a vector for transmission of the Gospel into a territory that would otherwise not welcome it, but who may be forced to look into it deeper because they enjoy it.”