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Has contemporary Christian music's mission of evangelism failed?
by Christian Bell
Editor in Chief
Evangelicals are noted for their attempts to build Christian inroads into secular culture. One of the ways that they have done this is to establish a type of Christian music that parallels the secular music industry. This movement, known collectively as contemporary Christian music (or CCM) has in mind a few goals: to show that Christians can do things like music as well as secular artists, to give Christians (especially Christian youth) a more ‘wholesome’ source of music to listen to, and finally to spread the Gospel message through the use of music. These are all admirable goals; unfortunately, the CCM industry is lacking in all three areas.
As an artistic form of music, CCM is a disaster. Contemporary Christian artists have long been reviled for their inability to create new distinct genres or flavors of music. The methodology of the CCM industry is to look sideways at what secular bands are doing, see what’s successful, and duplicate that.
Of course, mimicry is the method by which many groups are formed; CCM artists are in no way alone in their duplication of what’s hot and what’s not. But whereas secular groups imitate a style of music (sometimes ad nauseum) there’s at least a sense in which they’re attempting to join and contribute to the genre rather than simply copying and “Christianizing” it.
Although many CCM groups deny the charge that they simply “Christianize” secular music, it would be difficult to show that many of the “Christian alternatives” to secular music are not simply derivative works, and poorly organized ones at that.
This was humorously exemplified at our bookstore by a poster for the checkout lanes that one of the major CCM music companies sent out. Its copy was something to this effect: “Like such-and-such a secular band? Try these great Christian alternatives!” It then gave four broad music categories, with comparisons such as “Like Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera? Try Virtue or Out of Eden!” and “Like the Foo Fighters, U2, Third Eye Blind or the Smashing Pumpkins? Try Luna Halo, Deliriou5, or Juliana Theory!”
Nevermind that the four secular artists in the latter example have completely different musical styles, a fact that the Christian company apparently failed to appreciate; even so, there’s apparently a catch-all Christian category that matches them all.
Meanwhile, the CCM substitutes are turning into the same shallow product that some of their secular counterparts are: the women dress sexily and strike provocative poses, and the men have the typical gel-spiked hair and one-size-too-small ribbed cotton shirts of secular pop icons.
This issue has come to a pinnacle, with the industry making an unapologetic push to completely duplicate the major secular groups (but do so “Christianly”). A classic example: it was observed that many teenage girls were in love with N*Sync and the Backstreet Boys. The response? ‘Plus One,’ a Christian boyband that was put together for explicitly commericial purposes. When the label had five good-looking twenty-somethings, they hooked them up with a songwriter and producer and several months later, there was the CCM boyband Plus One, every bit as shallow and pretentious and their secular counterparts, but at least they said ‘Jesus.’
Plus One’s biography website proudly proclaims, “It’s not just the funkier clothes and sharp haircuts that lend them the air of precociously seasoned musicians. It’s something intangible - a tested sense of commitment and purpose.”
If Plus One was a secular band, or if they were intentionally selling a watered-down spirituality, this might not be note-worthy. But what the group – or rather, their label – is pushing is the idea that a spiritualized, gnosticized Christianity is an acceptable pop culture substitute for the real Gospel message. This ought to come across as very unacceptable.
By contrast, in the past few years there has been an upswing in the quantity and quality of secular rock music with intelligent and emotional lyrics. Contra the epicurean tendencies of popular music of the early and late 90s, there now exists a genuine interest in music that deals with real events, emotions, and people.
The weight of this new trend has been carried on the shoulders of some interesting and diverse bands: Creed, Lifehouse, P.O.D., Live, Linkin Park, and Evanescence, just to name a few off the top of my head.
These groups, in a few lines of some of their songs, bring a more meaningful message – and to a wider audience – than the entire cadre of CCM could hope to.
Why?
Chiefly, I content, because the secular groups with genuine message aren’t out to perpetuate a particular view or belief. They simply present their own thoughts, and package it in a form the listening can appreciate. Thus, the message is not thrust upon listeners; the message can be heard, or the music can simply be enjoyed for what it is – music.
Many have accused some of the aforementioned bands of being closet Christian artists, and it is true that some of their members are indeed Christian. But the groups themselves hastily reject this notion, and fight bitterly to keep from being lumped in with the contemporary Christian genre. Creed, for instance, says right on their website, “No, we are not a Christian band. A Christian band has an agenda to lead others to believe in their specific religious beliefs. We have no agenda!”
Yet their music clearly carries in which real human emotions such as hope and despair come through. This change in the tone of popular music points to a trend that suggests that listeners of music want a meaningful message. What they don’t want, however, are all the hokey pretensions that come with contemporary Christian music’s representation of absolute truth as strictly an American evangelical belief.
To be fair, there is one area that CCM has definitely exceeded in: making money. The CCM industry is quickly becoming a major commercial force in the modern music scene. According to ChristianityToday, the CCM industry sold 44 million albums in 2000, and the CCM industry in total is a half-billion dollar market. It should be no wonder, then, that secular labels want a piece of the pie. Warner Brothers music recently opened ‘WB Christian,’ a Christian extension of their musical label collection. What do secular labels know about representing true Christianity? Very little, but what they do know is that with the right blend of spirituality and the word ‘Jesus,’ big money can be easily made.
There is something profoundly upsetting about an entire branch of the Evangelical movement that is co-opting the art of music and shoehorning into it a reductionist version of the Gospel message. Even more vulgar is that this already-pruned spirituality is made to fit some kind of an odd formula that demands it take on the form of a fallen secular culture, yet still meet the criteria to make its production commercially viable.
It’s hard for me to find many ways in which the CCM industry is having a far-reaching positive impact on society; doubtless it has influenced the social trends of evangelicalism, but its performance as a form of true Gospel evangelism needs to be questioned.
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