God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics). Though the legendary apologist was referring specifically to books, the principle behind his comments may be applied to the realm of Christian music, and Christians in music.
For starters, consider the early history of the biggest rock band in the world. The year is 1982, and U2 is touring the U.S. in support of its second album, October (Island). Thanks to faith-evident songs such as "Gloria," "With a Shout," "Tomorrow" and "Rejoice," music journalists are starting to confront the band with a loaded question: "What are you, a bunch of Christians or something?"
"It's time to talk about it," U2's 19-year-old guitarist, The Edge, tells CCM Magazine's Terry Mattingly during an interview at the time. "We realize the band…is at a crossing point. For a long time, we haven't talked with interviewers about the fact we're Christians, because it's so easy for people to misunderstand. It's easy for people who are not Christians, especially writers who do not understand, to take what we say and misinterpret it."
As Mattingly writes in his CCM article ("U2: Rockers Finally Speak Out About Their Rumored Faith," August, 1982), "The four members of U2 ... are all scared of being stereotyped."
Regardless, as Bono, the band's 20-year-old singer and principal lyricist, explains to Mattingly, if critics want U2 to stop singing about the big subject or going after the deep emotion, they can forget about it. And if another group of folks wants the band to go after the "safe Christian subjects" and the "safe Christian crowd," they can forget that, too.
Sound familiar? Here we are 25 years later and such sentiments are still being expressed—not just by U2, but also by The Fray, Switchfoot, Sufjan Stevens, Underoath, Mindy Smith, Flyleaf and a host of others.
So, how much has changed?
In today's urban scene, artists like Mary Mary, Kirk Franklin and Smokie Norful are bridging the gap from gospel music to mainstream R&B. Rock acts such as Decyfer Down and Disciple are having their songs used by major media vehicles like the NFL. Major Christian artists such as tobyMac are seeing more than half of their total sales happening through mainstream retailers like Best Buy and Wal-Mart. Established Christian market acts such as Switchfoot and Relient K have moved from Christian labels to major mainstream labels, while other artists of faith like As I Lay Dying, The Fray, Sufjan Stevens and Thrice are not affiliated with the Christian market at all. From major names to unknowns and indies, artists are stretching the definitions and challenging the preconceptions of what it means to be a "Christian artist" as they impact our mainstream culture more than ever before. It seems an alternate reality is developing for artists of faith—one beyond the binary "Christian or Secular" options of the past. "It's time to move on," according to Relient K's Matt Thiessen. "It's time for Christian music to bleed into everything else."
REBIRTHING
Skillet's John Cooper grew up on Christian rockers such as Petra, DeGarmo & Key and Stryper. While his original pre-Skillet vision for his music was to reach the mainstream music scene, his strategy was to create "the most evangelistic rock band ever!" He did just that and became one of the top acts in Christian music. When mainstream ripples started to emanate from his band's singles at modern rock radio, Skillet came to the attention of Atlantic Records and re-tooled its approach to music and ministry. "I just started feeling like maybe what I should be doing is the biggest, best rock show I can do," Cooper explains, "and plant those seeds instead..."
As a result, Skillet is adjusting from headliner status to short opening sets and uninterested crowds, poor or non-paying gigs and long hours. "It's something we feel called to do, and we have long-term thinking. It's a step of faith out of our comfort zone," adds Cooper.
The approach is working. The band's latest release, Comatose, is turning heads in the rock scene, and the band's live show is winning people over. A recent opening slot in Albuquerque generated feverish kudos from the mainstream modern rock/ alternative station KTEG's music director "Buck" who gushed, "It's an amazing thing to see a basically unknown band play with two well-known nationals and steal the show. That's exactly what Skillet did playing with the Plain White T's and Army of Anyone."
BUSINESS UP FRONT
To say the members of the new buzz band Family Force 5 grew up exposed to Christian music would be an understatement. In fact, Jerome Olds—father of the 5's Jacob, Joshua and Solomon Olds—was a fairly prominent Christian artist during the '80s. And, believe it or not, the three siblings later formed 1995's Christian tween pop/ rock act The Brothers.
But when they launched Family Force 5, they started out off the reservation from day one. Growing up in Atlanta the band would alternate freely between church shows and bar shows, never changing a set list or making any other adjustments of any kind. Lead vocalist "Soul Glow Activator" (Solomon) tells CCM, "Ninety percent of the time, we are playing clubs to 250 or 300 people in a pretty nasty environment, trying to reach the lost." The other 10 percent of the time they are wowing large Christian audiences at festivals or tours like tobyMac's "Winter Wonderslam Tour." "When you play to a Christian crowd, there's a sense of family," Soul Glow explains. "We grew up in the church and with Christian music. We've been a part of this industry for a long time, and I would never want to turn my back on it. I don't consider it ‘Christian music'; I just call it ‘music.'" Family Force 5 signed with the mainstream label Maverick and has their music distributed into the Christian market by Gotee Records.
From CCM's February 2007 issue. Get the full magazine digitally for only $1.99. Follow This Link!
THE RECKONING
For its second release, metal band The Showdown —- signed to Mono Vs. Stereo —- teamed up with producer Paul Ebersold (3 Doors Down, Sister Hazel) and has set its sites completely on the mainstream. That goal often means some serious sacrificing when it comes to life on the road. Poor amenities, a fraction of the money and absolutely no special treatment are the cost of admission to the working class world of mainstream rock. Vocalist David Bunton elaborates, "Whenever we do club shows, nobody really cares about us. At the level we're at, you don't get catered to that much. But the Christian venues—the clubs and churches—make it easy. They give you everything you want." But there are different fish to fry for The Showdown, and they have counted the cost.
The same goes for Josh Caterer, who had already achieved significant success with his '90s alternative band the Smoking Popes when he came to faith in Christ. After breaking up the Popes, Caterer formed Duvall, an off-center alternative group that he could freely explore his own faith journey through. Duvall experimented with Christian market distribution and touring, but never really clicked with the industry or its fans. "After being in Duvall for a couple years," Caterer tells CCM, "I became pretty aware that what we were doing didn't fit into any existing boxes in the ‘ccm' world and that we were sort of on a fence. That made it difficult because the Christian message that was coming forth in our lyrics was slightly too overt for us to be a crossover band, but the style of our music was slightly too quirky to be embraced in the Christian music world. So, I came to the conclusion that there wasn't really a definite place for us, except for among our strange following."
Caterer eventually decided to reunite his original band. Though the Smoking Popes isn't a "Christian" band, Caterer finds frequent opportunities to let his light shine. Even though he considers the Popes' music to be "just for fun," he is realizing that even in that, God seems to be up to something more. "I have faith that the Lord has a plan for glorifying Himself through me, and part of that involves the Smoking Popes. I've already seen that happen to a certain extent in the press that has surrounded our reunion. I've had a lot of opportunities to talk about my faith in publications that don't normally have a religion section."
CHRISTIAN BY FAITH, NOT GENRE
One common experience for artists of faith has been relegation. Once an artist is branded a "Christian artist," especially if it is by his or her association with the Christian music business, it can seem impossible to shake the rap and be taken seriously. Thus, many have been tentative when it comes to talking about how their faith influences their music and have downright avoided Christian music media altogether. (Several mainstream artists who have at one time or another publicly identified themselves as Christians declined to talk with CCM for this very article.) Having experienced some of that pressure himself, tobyMac sympathizes with their reticence. "It's understandable," he says. "There are bands that have been burnt along the way. I think Jars of Clay experienced some of that. dcTalk definitely did. There have been bands that have crossed over and gotten this big hit, and, then, people realize that they were in the Christian market, and they get kind of kicked to the curb."
Toby sees the tide changing though. "I think we're in a place where [the music is] coming from everywhere. They don't define this market from that market." He continues, "Family Force 5 is there; they're here; they're on the Internet; they're on MySpace; they're in the Christian market and the mainstream market. You can't even keep up with where it's coming from. So I don't think it's one of these things where, when you begin to cross over, you'll be so labeled a ‘Christian Band.'"
Chasing Victory's Adam Harell, meanwhile, sees his band's faith as a parallel to other issues and beliefs held by artists. "Being in a band these days is obviously more than just music," he explains. "Most musicians, Christian or secular, seem to have something to say. Whether it be political views or religious views or anything else, they want to be heard. Other musicians generally respect that."
That being the case, musicians seem to be more inclusive than the industry's gatekeepers. Consider singer/songwriter Mindy Smith's experience. She migrated to Nashville via a songwriting deal with a Christian publisher, but signed with a mainstream label (Vanguard) for her debut release, 2004's One Moment More. Though she performed mostly in bars and clubs, Smith's breakthrough debut single was a Triple-A barnburner about struggle, doubt, fear and faith called, believe it or not, "Come to Jesus." The old prejudices reared their heads when the single was first sent to radio stations. "We got a lot of initial reaction," Smith explains, "which was ‘Oh, we don't play hymns, sorry,' and they passed when they hadn't even heard it; just by the title alone. Then they started testing it." Once the song got out there, it was public demand that got it heard on a wider level. "The phones started ringing off the hook," she recalls. People were either really ticked off at it or were ecstatically saying ‘Oh, I needed to hear that today.'" Ironically, one of the most obviously faith-based songs of the year was rarely—if ever—played on Christian radio.
Smith, Thrice and The Fray have all dealt openly and deeply with specific Christian ideas through their music, without any help from the Christian music industry. Relient K's Thiessen sees it as a very good sign. "Bands don't have to go through the Christian music door," he says, "to express what they believe in through song."
Flyleaf's soft-spoken but hard rocking front woman, Lacey Mosely, has a very straight-forward explanation of the phenomenon. "When people find out what we're about, they are very respectful, as long as we're not hypocritical about it. A lot of them look for that and watch everything we do and everything we say, and, then, they ask us what's different; why we are the way we are. We tell them and are really honest about who we are. We don't act like we have it all together. We're not Jesus. We're screwed up people that have been saved by Jesus. We have a reason to try to love, and we didn't before. As soon as they see that, they're like, ‘Yeah, I wish I'd heard that before.'"
From CCM's February 2007 issue. Get the full magazine digitally for only $1.99. Follow This Link!
DIVERSE CITY OR BUST
Regardless of any possible increase in generosity toward Christian artists, the most common refrain CCM heard in the discussions for this article was a desire that they not be pigeonholed. Songwriters trying to wrap their heads around the difficult amalgam of faith, relationships, modern life and deeper truths are never interested in tags. "You're not necessarily trying to walk the fence," Mindy Smith explains of the balancing act she does daily. "You're just trying to make music. I don't want to be a 'Christian artist' or a ‘country artist,' I just want to make music that I believe in."
Even tobyMac politely chides people for needing to brand music as "Christian" or "Secular." Having been tagged and relegated both as a member of dcTalk and as a solo artist, his enduring desire is for his music to be taken at face value. "That's all any of us want," he says. "I understand labels. I get it. But don't put me in such a box. Come listen to me. Come check my show out. I've preached that for 15 years. Listen to my music with an open mind, and you tell me what it is."
Switchfoot's Jon Foreman has always gotten philosophical about the semantics, insisting that as difficult as words are to use, they do matter. "I heard a really interesting definition of a true Christian," he said during an interview with CCM last year. "To be a Christian means to say you're Christ-like. It begins to be a little bit, almost boastful to say you're a Christian, especially when that's the tagline you're putting on a product that's being sold and bought by consumers. It's never been any sort of hesitancy on the idea of saying, ‘Label me along with the man who lived 2,000 years ago and fed the poor and the sick and the broken and the hungry and needy.' Well, 2,000 years later, now it's a product on the shelf alongside all these other products and people that I might agree or disagree with."
U2, who continues to be a huge influence to countless artists of faith, still dismisses the term "Christian band" in regards to its own calling. In an interview just last year, Bono fielded a question about it from CCM's editor and explained his decades-long aversion to the tagline saying, "I have a hard time getting my head around the cultural terms. I've never seen why there should be a separation. Much of my life, I've been asked, ‘Why doesn't your music proclaim Christ?' I say it does!" Then he asked, "Does nature scream the name of Christ? Creation has its own proclamation within the majesty of it. I'd like to think our music has the same qualities to it.
"I always got shifty with that [label]," he continued, "like there were [supposed to be] compartments in your life. When I read Scripture, there are no compartments to your life."
FORWARD MOTION
While the mainstream market may be warming up to the idea that Christians are capable of making excellent music, the scene is a long way from filling in the mote completely. Christian artists are still relegated to the "Christian/Gospel" bins in Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Target stores. And though Christian pop radio's more progressive stations have recently embraced The Fray and Carrie Underwood, the format generally remains reluctant to experiment with songs of faith from the likes of U2, Brad Paisley, Mindy Smith, Alice Cooper or other professed Christians in the general market.
But it seems the wheels are in motion toward a time when songs about various subjects with artists' Christianity "latent" will be easily available to the masses, and the very definition of what makes something "Christian" will have more to do with the heart of Jesus and what's being communicated than the marketing strategies of any of His followers. "That's what Christianity is all about," Thiessen adds. "C.S. Lewis wasn't about just writing to Christians to make them better. He was about writing books that everyone could read and expand their minds. That's what music is all about, too. [Not long] ago it was absurd that P.O.D. was doing Oz Fest or that Sixpence None the Richer was all over the radio. Then, all of a sudden, it's all changed." ccm
From CCM's February 2007 issue. Get the full magazine digitally for only $1.99. Follow This Link!