About Jack

Jack Amos Holloway is a writer, music producer, film director, activist, minister, and dog-sitter based in Brooklyn, NY. They are the author of Hands of Doom: The Apocalyptic Imagination of Black Sabbath, and Founder and Creative Director of Morbid Instinct, a film and music collective. Jack performs lead vocals and guitar for Psychic Terror, and drums and bass for Mauve Toad. They have over a hundred original songs to their name. They also wrote and directed a short film called The Prisoner, and they organize for prison abolition under the name Act for Abolition. 

Jack is an elder at Old First Reformed Church in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where they host Despair Sanctuary, a nighttime drone music vigil which provides a public space to hold negative emotions in community. You can read about Despair Sanctuary in Harper's Bazaar. Jack has also served on the Anti-Racism Committee of the the Metro-New York Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and preached at a friend's congregation in Esslingen, Germany, named Johanneskirche. 

Jack received a Master of Divinity from Union Theological Seminary in 2018, and a Bachelor of Arts from Regent University in 2013. They master's thesis looked at two leading anti-fascist thinkers of the 20th century (Theodor Adorno and Karl Barth), putting critical theory in conversation with liberation theology. At UTS, they studied with such legendary scholars as theologian James Cone, philosopher Cornel West, and Old Testament philologist Phyllis Trible.

Jack's research interests range from philosophy, religion, literature, and science, to art, music, comics, and film. They have written and edited for academic journals, presented papers at over a dozen conferences, and also served as Secretary-Treasurer for the International Society for Heresy Studies. They have contributed online articles to the Critical Dictionary of Apocalyptic and Millenarian Movements, Popular Culture and Theology, Narrative Muse,   Directed by Women, and And Philosophy.

Having been inspired to activism by the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of Eric Garner's murder, Jack regularly protests, marches, and organizes. They volunteered as a researcher for the activist group Black Womxn's March, as a music teacher for the youth development services center The Door, and as a fundraiser for both the Prison Library Support Network and a local political campaign for NYC Councilwoman Sandy Nurse.

Jack married their partner, Debbie, in 2013. She is a writer, editor, music teacher, minister, gardener, and zero-waste expert. They are said to "make quite a team!" and are invested in many of the same pursuits. 

Beyond their academic, artistic, and social work, Jack walks dogs in Greenwich Village, and has many dog pals.

Follow Jack on Instagram @jack.amos.holloway