• Wide angle.Iowa triggers the presidential campaign in the US

Starting a rock concert at nine in the morning on a Saturday is, at least, an act, if not unnatural, but countercultural.

True: Jimi Hendrix took the Woodstock stage at nine in the morning on August 18, 1969 to perform one of the most celebrated interpretations of popular music. But it is no less true that he did it preceded by 31 groups and soloists who had been playing for two days and 10 hours in an event that would go down to the history of rock through mud, traffic jams, and LSD.

None of that occurs in the auditorium of the hotel of the Holiday Inn chain of Urbandale. There, the rock group 100 White Flags has played three days - Friday, Saturday, and Sunday - at nine in the morning before about 200 people. All of them sober, and probably abstemies. Just one year and one month after his performance at Woodstock, Hendrix died after taking the recommended dose of sleeping pills 18 times at his girlfriend's house. Everything seems to indicate that Paul Tietjen, the singer and solo guitar of 100 White Flags, will die of age in the bed of his house on the outskirts of Minneapolis.

Tietjen and his companions have traveled the 400 kilometers from Minneapolis to Urbandale, in Iowa, for an amount that they do not reveal, although, they say, it is small, in order to convey the message of Jesus Christ. Because 100 White Flags is a Christian rock group, a very American phenomenon.

Every year, the Life Events religious organization hires this group to give, between Christmas and Easter, about 10 bowling around the country. Each show is part of a larger initiative, the so-called Quake ( Tremor ): three days of talks, community events and religious events aimed at children between 12 and 18 years old and their families. In turn, Quake is part of Life Events, an evangelical Protestant church that every summer celebrates LifeFest in the state of Wisconsin, a three-day Christian rock festival.

LifeFest "usually go between 26,000 and 28,000 people," explains Quake director Lucas Tuttle, a friendly 37-year-old boy who is single, which, he says, "is lucky, because it allows me to be 12 weeks in the road every year, "on tour with Christian rock groups. Tuttle has driven eight hours from the town of Appleton, in the state of Michigan, where Life Events has its headquarters. His work is half manager , half promoter, half event organizer. And it is not simple. "This weekend there are two simultaneous Quakes , this one in Iowa and another one in the city of Wichita, in Kansas," Tuttle recounts in a break from the thunderous performance of '100 White Flags', while in the auditorium the Music, Media, and Mind conference.

The leader of White Flags is the bass player, Jeromy Dorsing, 43, Bethe's husband, who plays the rhythm guitar and shares vocal tasks with Tietjen. Dorsing are evangelical; Zack Harder, the drummer, is a Baptist; and Tietjen is Lutheran. Church names can be a bit confusing. But all of them bear certain similarities. A Lutheran from the Midwest of the USA has little or nothing to do with one from Germany, and a lot with an evangelical from Latin America. All are charismatic, and belong to congregations that are formed, break and join each other constantly. The important thing is not theology, but the feeling of community.

That means that, in theory, this is a group of voters who massively support Donald Trump. On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence participated in an event in the city of Sioux City in Northern Iowa, organized by the Evangelical group by Trump. According to the Pew Research Center public studies center, 85% of US evangelicals voted for the president in 2016 . In 2020, the percentage may be even higher. Issues such as Trump's support for Israel, for example, have won more support for the president among evangelicals - many of them self-proclaimed "Zionist Christians" - than among Jews, who traditionally vote for a Democrat.

But the reality is more complex. "In 2016, I voted for the Libertarian Party candidate," explains Dorsing. Libertarians are what we would call "ultraliberal" in Spain, that is, supporters of reducing the State to a minimum, although in practice they tend to be closer to Republicans than to Democrats. Dorsing acknowledges that he doesn't know who he will vote for this year. Even so, their orientation is directed more to one side than to another. After all, in 2014, the Gungar rock group fell off the Power of One poster, another of the Life Events festivals, when its members said that Genesis should not be interpreted - the Bible book that explains that Yahweh created the universe in six days, and the slavery of the Israelites in Egypt - literally. Today, these ideas only find some acceptance in republican sectors. Christian rock is evangelical. And the evangelicals are from Trump.

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