Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music? by Gregory Thornbury

Author:Gregory Thornbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2018-03-20T04:00:00+00:00

Eventually, Larry’s Bible study merged with another group, led by Christian musician Chuck Girard (of Love Song, the Calvary Chapel band) at the instigation of fellow church planter Kenn Gulliksen. Prior to the Vineyard, Gulliksen had been attending Chuck Smith’s Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa.17 The Vineyard became a haven for artists, and received kudos from the likes of Martin Sheen.18 For a brief moment in time it seemed as though Norman’s brand of Christianity was not so countercultural after all, but rather right in line with the zeitgeist. One of the trendiest and most exclusive discotheques in Beverly Hills at the time, for instance, was the Daisy Club. This was the establishment where Frank Sinatra was first seen with Mia Farrow, and where the Jackson Five played their first gigs.19 It had also been the go-to spot for dropping acid in the ’60s. In Larry and Pam’s view, it was therefore a great place to hold a fund-raiser for the Vineyard.

Martin Sheen and Academy Award winner Julie Harris performed in support of Larry Norman’s Bible study in 1977. The event took place on January 5 at the Daisy, and Debby Boone came in tow to sing her number-one Billboard single “You Light Up My Life.” Larry described the benefit as “a small, intelligent event in support of our artistic, culture-based outreach.”

It was a heady time for Christianity in America. Newsweek magazine had declared 1976 “The Year of the Evangelical,” thanks largely in part to Jimmy Carter being so unabashedly open about the fact that he was a Sunday school teacher in his local Southern Baptist church. A slice of Larry’s handwritten personal daily planning calendar reveals his own investment in the new administration. On Thursday, January 20, sandwiched between appointments such as “Meeting with Randy over April Blackwood contract for ‘Love Broke Through’ at Diamond Jim’s” and “Pam started acting class with Gerald O’Loughlin,” the following is written in all caps: “JIMMY CARTER IS NOW PRESIDENT.”20

After the success of the Daisy Club event, the Vineyard Bible study through word of mouth even caught the attention of a Canadian travel agency that sold packages to young Christians: “Fly to California. Go to Disneyland. Attend Larry Norman’s Bible Study. See the Hollywood Walk of Fame.” But as the Vineyard grew, Larry knew what to do with it less and less. More and more, Kenn Gulliksen took center stage. Larry claimed that the transition to Kenn’s leadership of the Bible study took place on the grounds that Larry was touring too frequently to provide adequate leadership from Sunday to Sunday. Before too long, however, Larry groused at his replacement. He complained that Gulliksen would simply plagiarize notes from sermons he had heard Chuck Smith preach, and represent them as his own. More important, Larry expressed concern that the teaching seemed to be unorthodox, bordering on crazy:

The thing that bothers me the most consistently are somewhat small, but possibly destructive statements he makes. One night he is teaching about Jesus’s birth and says that Jesus was God because he had no human blood.

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