When rock first became popular, one of the most common ways to denounce it was to call it “the devil’s music.” Many parents and conservatives feared that the swiveling hips and sex appeal of artists like Elvis Presley, James Brown and Little Richard were corrupting the souls of many American teenagers. Ironically enough though, these artists borrowed liberally from gospel music traditions as well as country and blues: Elvis regularly recorded gospel music albums, while James Brown and Little Richard’s performances exuded energy similar to that of a evangelical revival. Clearly, God and rock are closer than many people think.
Which makes the critical indifference paid to Christian rock and pop music all the more puzzling. What is commonly called Christian Contemporary Music, or CCM, was born and grew up in the late ’60s to early ’70s. Artists like Andrae Crouch and Richie Furay (a review of his first CD by Ron Moore coined the term CCM, according to wikipedia.org) took folk and gospel-tinged music out of the churches and into record stores, magazines and TV appearances.
Since then, Christian music has grown in fits and starts, but steadily it has grown. From Amy Grant’s emergence in the late 1970s to Christian hair-metal band Stryper (yes, Christian hair-metal, complete with bumblebee- striped outfits) in the 1980s, the CCM genre has walked a fine line between preaching the word of God and experimenting with various genres, from standard pop to rock to rap. The Grammies began handing out a best pop gospel and rock/contemporary gospel album awards in 1990.
Yet even this music, ostensibly written and produced with the best of religious intentions, is still ostracized by many religious conservatives. Many pastors decried it – it was too close to mainstream rock music, too worldly and thus tainted by the evils of the world. Steve Camp, a more traditional Christian recording artist, wrote a heavily critical piece on Christian Contemporary Music, accusing many of its artists of watering down the Christian themes in their music in hopes of increasing sales.
It hasn’t helped that one of the premier CCM artists, Amy Grant, was forced into the mainstream by her alleged affair and marriage with country artist Vince Gill and her divorce with previous husband and Christian artist Gary Chapman. It also doesn’t help that the ’90s have seen many of the major CCM labels get bought, merge or work closely with major record companies.
And those of us who don’t immediately identify with the evangelical Christian beliefs frequently espoused in CCM are equally quick to dismiss Christian rock as an inferior art form. Yes, there is a lot of Christian rock that is boring, trite and flat-out terrible. But that’s par for the course in just about every genre of music. Dismissing Christian rock outright unfairly ignores a significant number of artists who have taken the lyrical limitations of the genre and still created substantial bodies of work.
Jars of Clay, who touched off the first of what became increasingly frequent revivals of interest in Christian music with its self-titled debut (and its mainstream radio hit “Flood”), has consistently been rewarded with Grammies for its albums. Jars of Clay has received three Grammies for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album and deserve them for its reworking and tweaking of folk music. DC Talk, whose 1998 release “Supernatural” had the highest debut ever for a CCM album on the main Billboard album charts at fourth, evolved beyond generic late ’80s rap and formulated a unique combination of those rap elements with alternative rock, spawning an equally important mainstream rock single, “Between You and Me.”
The fact that these bands ocassionally sing, sometimes explicitly, about Christian doctrine doesn’t turn me off in the least. The Christian rock bands that turn me off belong to the most recent waves of the movement. Having finally given into the major record labels’ pushes to dumb down and defang the Christian principles that lend their works so much of their deep, emotional value, bands like Creed, Lifehouse, Chevelle and Switchfoot not only sold out their lyrical standards, but dumbed down their music. Creed and Lifehouse blandly borrowed from the classic rock mold while frequently dodging the “Christian” label whenever possible. Chevelle originally debuted on now-defunct Squint Records (the same label that mainstream breakthrough artist Sixpence None the Richer were on), but have since moved on to create a thudding, dull nu metal sound. Most disappointing is Switchfoot, who went from being a weird little alternative band to today’s AOR power ballads as they muscled in on secular radio play.
These bands don’t realize removing your faith from songs is unnecessary to sell records. DC Talk did it, Jars of Clay did it and with the right amount of talent and buzz, any Christian band can overcome the seemingly overwhelming odds of success in a secular world – without selling their musical soul.
Benjamin Nanamaker is a senior in English and journalism who believes Christian punk is an oxymoron. E-mail him at [email protected] and ask him why.
