Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell aren’t the only devout Christian radicals out there — Christian band and activist group Psalters can also be put in this category.

The jam band seeks to glorify God through its music, says Psalters’ main percussionist Jay Beck. It follows in the footsteps of the original Psalters — temple musicians who performed the Psalms thousands of years ago.

“Our music is the cry of the exodus,” says vocalist Scott Krueger. “Every culture has oppressions that pull them away from God, and we want to be banner wavers of the exodus from that.

“As singers and songwriters, we lead that rally cry.”

Psalters are self-proclaimed gypsies of the Silk Road, a reference to the trade route from China to Europe through the Middle East, a region whence the Psalters draw a much their musical influence.

“We draw a lot from gypsy music, old Jewish music and Middle-Eastern music,” Beck says.

The group members are also radical activists, he says, or anti-establishment nomads in a quest to subvert the system.

Yet Psalters doesn’t consider itself political. The group doesn’t believe in any system — Democratic, Republican, Socialist or anything else, says Krueger, whose other role in the band is playing robot, a machine with two projectors for eyes that projects lyrics and images.

That doesn’t mean Psalters is refraining itself from acting out in political forums.

Although jail isn’t the first place one would expect to find a deeply religious Christian group, because of the group’s activism, that is exactly where Psalters has ended up in the past.

Just before the Iraq war, the Senate was set to vote on a bill on whether the United States would go to war, and members of Psalters wanted their senator to know their opinion.

“We wanted to tell him that we disagreed with this decision, and we just wanted our senator to know that before he voted … so we set up a meeting with him,” Beck says.

“He didn’t show up, so we all went down to his office and refused to leave until he would talk to us. He never showed up and never came to his office, so we stayed there.”

The senator, Beck says, did not appreciate the group hanging around his office, so he had a call placed that ended with group members on their way to jail for trespassing.

Beck says Psalters embraces the radical label that has been placed on it.

“This is what you would call a radical lifestyle, in terms of political descriptions,” Beck says. “We don’t recognize the government’s authority.”

Who: Psalters with Madison Greene and The Restorations Project

Where: Vaudeville Mews, 212 4th St., Des Moines

When: 9 p.m. Tuesday

Cost: $7