Rapture Ready! by Daniel Radosh

Author:Daniel Radosh
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2008-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

In the 2006 book Body Piercing Saved My Life, a lively and indispensable survey of the contemporary Christian music scene, author Andrew Beaujon observes that many CCM songs “tend to evince an adolescent theology, one that just can’t get over how darn cool it is that Jesus sacrificed himself for the world.” Beaujon is drawn up short by the music’s shallowness. “It’s self-centered in a way that reflects evangelicalism’s near-obsession with having a personal relationship with Christ,” he writes. “It’s me Jesus died for. I just gotta praise the Lord.” I thought about how Powell singled out Petra and Jars of Clay as the quintessential band names of the 1980s and 1990s, and it occurred to me that one of the biggest Christian bands of this decade is Mercy Me.

“People often ask me, ‘As a trained theologian, what do you think of the music theologically?’” Powell told me when we first met in his office. “My short answer is: Heresy is rare and so is profundity. Rarely do these songs make theological errors, but they don’t usually have a lot to say.”

“Are the two connected?” I asked. “Maybe they just don’t get adventurous enough to make errors?”

“That could be. It’s also somewhat the medium,” he said. “Just as one does not usually listen to Top 40 radio to learn to navigate the complexities of romantic relationships, the complexities of a spiritual life are not usually the topic of Christian radio.”

I started to speak, but Powell was ahead of me. “What I think you were about to say is, ‘There are those poetic artists who have some pretty profound things to say about romantic love.’ And there are, I think, Christian artists who have some pretty profound things to say about spirituality. They don’t dominate the Christian radio charts. Nor would the other be true in secular radio. I think that’s a fair analogy, to say that Christian music deals with spirituality in a way that’s equivalent to how secular music deals with romance.”

“What about political or social issues?” I asked. I told Powell about a conversation that Dustin had had with another kid at SHOUTfest. The boy had remarked that Dustin looked like the singer from Green Day (it was the eye shadow, I think) and Dustin replied that he used to like the band before they started cursing so much. “Also,” he said, “a lot of their stuff is very political.” The other guy nodded. “They’re hard-core Democrats. You can tell.”

Like Dustin, a number of Christian teenagers had told me they don’t like any politics in music, but I wondered if that was just because the politics of mainstream musicians tended to be liberal. “Does Christian music reinforce conservative politics?” I asked Powell.

“The claim would be that they try to avoid it,” he answered. “But in fact, what they avoid is very selective.” He listed some of the two dozen antiabortion songs that have been major hits. “Some of them I think have actually been quite good and quite effective.

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