Punk Spirituality: Harnessing Holy Anger with the ALTAR PUNK Zine

Cover of ALTAR PUNK.

BY EMMA CIESLIK October 18, 2025

The last weekend in September, Ron Padrón hosted a table at Pagan Pride Day in Frederick, Maryland with Enfys Book, author of Queer Rites: A Magical Grimoire to Honor Your Milestones with Pride. There, Book is one of many nonbinary and queer pagan leaders reshaping the future of covens by releasing limiting gendered pathways to leadership. 

I first met Padrón, a Gay Hispanic hedge priest, social justice necromancer, and LGBTQ and disability activist when we were both panelists for the Pride in Religious Pluralism Seminar hosted by the National LGBTQ+ Task Force this past June. Padrón spearheads a radical new form of spirituality rooted in punk aesthetics and shares it through his zine ALTAR PUNK. He edits the zine along with John-Marx and Asma Neblett. 

All three co-editors are queer, and at his table at Pagan Pride this past weekend, Padrón had brought black and white copies of the zine to share with visitors. Before the celebration, I sat down with Padrón to learn more about the history and aesthetics of ALTAR PUNK that “sees Fuck as a sacred word for both celebration as well as righteous anger." 

ALTAR PUNK’s history

ALTAR PUNK first began, John-Marx recalls, while they were doing dishes. Listening to Green Day, Bad Religion, and Flogging Molly, they realized that there was something pointedly religious about the music. “My interest really comes from both the religious nature I see and feel in it,” John-Marx said, “and the liberative nature of the initial and various sub-movements that still exist today.” 

Neblett, co-editor of the zine, agrees acknowledging the radical history of zines. “At a time of big tech, I think AP is especially important as well. When Padron invited me as a co-editor, we talked about why a Zine was necessary,” Neblett said. “The history of Zines is linked to 20th century punk subculture so creating one made sense. It’s free of cost, DIY, accessible via the web, and it lives beyond social media, which is distinct when you think about the way big tech shapes access to information and how information appears. Few publications can survive outside of massive digital platforms, but Zines make it possible. It demonstrates what’s possible beyond social media algorithms.“

John-Marx continued exploring punk theology when they founded an online church community in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The community brought together pagans, occultists, Christians, and many others, and each week, they would introduce a guest speaker. John-Marx met Padrón on Twitter. Both of them were in seminary--Padrón at Cherry Hill Seminary doing community ministry, and connected over a shared interest in spiritual activism and liberation theology--and being elder punks. Padrón spoke as a guest in John-Marx’s community and both dove deeper into punk theology. 

Reflecting on punk history, John-Marx developed an interest in the philosophies of Queercore, Riot Grrrl, and early British working-class punk movements. 

This punk subculture informed their burgeoning “Punk Theology,” reclaiming spiritual meaning from Chrisitan nationalists in the United States today, but Padrón is quick to caveat in his piece in the zine, “Queercore Witchcraft: A DIY Salvation,” that early punk spaces were often deeply homophobic--”queer artists who were attracted to this alternative social space found themselves on the receiving end of beer bottles and worse being thrown on stage.”

Punk aesthetics as religious material culture

But queer punk creators carved out their own space--taking the punk aesthetic and removing the pieces that harmed their communities. Padrón knows this well, raised Roman Catholic in South Florida. The eldest boy of a mixed Cuban/American household, he followed his father’s footsteps to become an altar boy in elementary school and fostered a deep love of the spiritual. 

But when he was transplanted to a more White, conservative community, he discovered that he was part of the demonized Other. “To say the realization of my sexual identity brought with it a crisis of faith would be an understatement.”

He found strength among spiritual outsiders and later a distinctly punk spirituality. “I’m already relegated to the fringes of mainstream spiritual society by identifying as a witch, pursuing ordination as a pagan clergy, and hanging out with a bunch of bonafide heathens. And while those spaces are increasingly welcoming of the LGBTQ+ community that isn’t enough for me.”

“My spirituality is queer. My faith centers queerness. After spending a decade feeling myself torn apart I had the opportunity to put myself back together on my own terms.”

“Punk spirituality,” he wrote, “is a salvation you build for yourself. It is the shelter we build out of discarded bits and personal interpretations that we call our temple. It is an unapologetic reclamation of space and the resurrection of fatih as a thing we do to take care of each other instead of a thing we claim to have.”

“In the United States specifically whenever there’s any conversation about religiosity or faith,” Padrón said, the default assumption is that the person who is speaking on it is probably conservative but also that there’s an implicit relationship between the idea of faith and the right, especially over the last twenty years, the far right.”

Padrón wanted to push back on this assumption and expectation that spirituality has been ceded to the far right, has been ceded to nationalist movements, admitting that there is an incredible power within spirituality to motivate queer and trans liberation. This goal is at the root of his work as a gay hedge priest operating White Rose Witching, named after the White Rose Movement in Nazi Germany. 

White Rose Movement

Founded by Hans Scholff in 1942, the White Rose Movement was a non-violence intellectual rebellion against Nazi genocidal violence. Along with some of his fellow medical students, Scholl wrote, transported, and mailed leaflets denouncing the regime. Identifying themselves as “your bad conscience,” the White Rose drew on tenets of justice within German Christianity and aimed for “a renewal from within the severely wounded German spirit.” 

Hitler was deeply concerned about these pamphlets and ordered their immediate capture, but it wasn’t until a university janitor reported them to the Gestapo in February 1943, that all of them were arrested and executed. They managed to produce four pamphlets, and the fifth one was smuggled out to Britain, where it was mass produced and dropped over Germany to fuel public discontent among German citizens. 

“I just loved the idea that they made such an impact that the regime was worried about them and all they did was print flyers,” Padrón said, “and so for us, that translates to this idea of zines.” It makes sense as zines have long served as vital tools in underground organization and queer knowledge sharing in the LGBTQ+ liberation movement. 

Padrón wanted ALTAR PUNK to build on this transgressive and transformative histories of zines, conjoining his own street spirituality with punk aesthetics. For the first issue, Padrón, John-Marx, and Asma reached out to friends to contribute art and writing that visualized and verbalized what punk spirituality meant to them. “What is ‘Punk Spirituality’?” was both the guiding tenet and title for the first issue of the zine that is publicly accessible online.  

Digital illustration by Padrón.

Punk spiritual art

For the three co-editors, Padrón said, “what we meant by punk spirituality and the ethos behind the zine being reclaiming the idea of being a spiritual or religious or faithful person from the far right as a reason why I invest in social justice, the reason why I am anti-fascist. The reason why I am what have you is faith driven or spirituality driven.”

Ormechea and Padrón answered the question of what punk theology is further in the first issue’s introduction. “Like punk, it is critical of both itself as well as the institutions it rallies against. It says sacraments and sacred ritual are found in sharing the eucharist using a bagel and a can of your favorite beer or shot of your favorite whiskey, or the way you get dressed and do your hair intentionally for a punk show. It says that Mutual Aid is the real path towards salvation and reconciliation.”

Digital collage by John-Marx. John-Marx said “there is something of a liminal space between destructive and constructive, which I think has been a part of my religious journey throughout my life. This is just a place where I can allow this Holy and Sacred mess that I am, spill onto a page, either in an amateur collage (before I learned how to use Canva) or through poetry and pose and even cover art!”

Michael M. Hughes dug further in his essay in the issue titled “Punk Spirituality” explaining that it is DIY spirituality. Hughes, who created the spell to bind Donald Trump that went globally viral in 2017, writes that it "has always existed, because orthodoxy always creates heretics. Conformity gives birth to cultural dissidents. Stale album-oriented rock stations gave birth to punk and new wave, just as mainstream, milquetoast Christianity led to the rise of DIY spirituality of the new age, neopaganism, and the many flavors of witchcraft.”

Hughes' words and others appear alongside a photo collage of nuns smoking, doves carrying molotov cocktails, and a drag Virgin Mary made by John-Marx, a digital illustration of a skull-headed Lady of Guadalupe with a mohawk hairstyle standing among cathedral ruins by Padrón, and a found word poem by Seth Anderson-Matz reading: “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. Psalm 118: 22.”

As Padrón and Omachea share, art is deep parts of the punk spirituality movement, and ALTAR PUNK itself. In fact, the first issue’s cover titled “Above & Below, Within & Without” was created by Laura Tempest Zakroff, an artist and practicing witch whose work in sigil witchcraft blends art and magic together. “In my practice,” Zakroff said, “I see the body as our most powerful magical tool, an altar of action and connection. I create sacred space through gestures and movement that help connect my body to the elements of the world around me,” which she creates in art using multiple, overlapping lines. 

“Above and below, within and without are both directional and conceptual energies that align the body/altar with the seen and unseen worlds,” Zakroff said. “The drawing translates the brief physical movements and energetic experience into a sigilized capsule.”

Above & Below, Within & Without, by Laura Tempest Zakroff. Cover art, pen and ink drawing with digital layering. 

Found word poem by Seth Anderson-Matz.

A sacred art you can hold

The three co-editors published a second issue titled “All of You Fascists Bound to Lose,” and are now working on their third--build around the idea of idolatry. Padrón is excited to dig into the tradition of punishing saint statues within Catholicism--Padrón was raised Catholic. Both he and I enjoyed talking about burying statues of St. Joseph in the backyard to get houses to sell. 

Padrón hopes this upcoming issue will explore further the politics of loving and leaving things that no longer serve us, a reflection on how they changed the name of their second zine after Neblett told him and John-Marx about the controversy behind the lead singer of the Dead Kennedys. She prompted Padrón and John-Marx to really reflect on the values of the zine and what it would look like for us to truly live them. They had planned for the second issue to be titled and formed around their lyric “Nazi Punks Fuck Off.”

Neblett appreciates the structural power of ALTAR PUNK. “You can learn a lot about what’s baseline or at stake for a publication in its shape,” Neblett said, “and I think ALTAR PUNK has the power to reach an array of people across faith and other categories for identity because it cares about that. I appreciate how AP really prioritizes form in tandem with other publication processes. Ron and John-Marc are sculptural when it comes to that aspect.“

Alongside ALTAR PUNK, Padrón also curates the PaganPunk Community Grimoire, a cross between a zine and a grimoire (or book of magic) that takes the form of small, mutual aid knowledge sharing pamphlets. “So much about paganism and folk magic, especially if you're Earth-centered like those in Druidry, is so hyperregional,” Padrón said.” “

“It’s about relationship with your community, the land you are on, the spirits that you’re around, and the way that even though you might be part of the same Wiccan tradition or whatever, the way it shows is so variable, and also when I am going into space with my friends, I am bringing my particular family cohort with me. You lose that in the mass marketing publishing stuff because they try to iron all the wrinkles out, so the PaganPunk Community Grimoire brought together the idea of a grimoire which is a collection of magical recipes forming rituals but also community knowledge sharing, so it’s all free.”

Padrón designs all of the two-page leaflets, complete with digital illustrations of artichokes, skateboards, skulls, and fists alongside rituals and rites for protection during protests and connecting with queer and trans ancestors.  

As someone deeply fascinated in the intersections of gender, sexuality, and religion, the ALTAR PUNK zine was an artistic exploration and extrapolation of punk spirituality. While zines are not traditionally displayed in galleries or collected by museums and archives, Padrón sees their purpose and existence as fitting well with his own street spirituality--informal knowledge sharing networks pushing towards reclaiming spirituality and religion for trans and queer liberation.