I have been wondering this for a while… I know that rock and roll has some of its roots in Gospel, but rock music in the 50s and 60s was considered as blasphemous and perverse, and when rock singers became rock idols like Elvis and the Beatles, rock was regarded as the music of the devil.
Didn’t radical Christians burn the Beatles’ albums when Lennon said the Beatles were more popular than Jesus? It was provocation, but that’s what rock music was supposed to be, provocative, disobedient and challenging.
Rock was associated with decadent lifestyle, and the overused ‘sex drugs and rock and roll’ cliché, which was and still is somewhat accurate.
So how this life of sins, this abomination, and these sexual-charged moves became Christian music??
Christian rock was actually born in the late 60s, as a marginal part of Christian music, but it exploded in the 90s, and this is probably why it happened: as the church memberships were declining, churches began to modernize their hymns in order to have an impact on their recruitment. They went backwards, whereas Ray Charles had removed God from his gospel-rock songs, they were ready to reincorporate God back into rock again… A way to make the uncool (church music), very cool again.
The problem is that rock is rebellion, anti-establishment, anti-dogma, anti propaganda, the total opposite of religion, a established dogma, which preaches its propaganda to docile masses. These riffs, these loud guitars, they first belong to rebellious rock!
And if Christian rock is a genre, should we label other bands that have lyrics against religion, as atheist rock? That would be ridiculous.
And what can be the identity of Christian rock? What defines Christian rock? Mötley Crüe has an album called ‘Shout at the Devil’, it is pretty anti-satan, does this qualify for Christian rock?
But the genre has grown, and now there are also Christian metal, Christian hardcore, Christian rap…
So what’s wrong with it? After all music belongs to everyone…
The problem is that some of these bands have a awful agenda, they play in high schools and preach to children a weird abstinence-themed-anti-condom songs, and even tunes that imply that homosexuality and abortions are sins!
But apparently, Christian rock is there to stay.