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But now it was increasingly being embraced by the faithful masses.īut let’s fast-forward to the early-mid aughts, when Rick Warren was singing Jimi Hendrix in church. Switchfoot’s 2000 hit “Dare You To Move” dominated both Christian and secular radio, helped along by its presence on the A Walk To Remember soundtrack.Ĭhristian artists were straightforwardly copying secular trends and catering to secular tastes, which was not necessarily new (the origins of Christian rock can be traced to 1969, when a musician named Larry Norman made what was essentially Jesus-themed hippie music).
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DC Talk’s 1995 hit “Jesus Freak” - an unmistakable Nirvana rip-off - went double-platinum. Wholesome CCM star Amy Grant’s “Baby, Baby” enjoyed popularity on non-Christian radio, and was condemned for its worldliness and sensuality. This was irrelevant to the genre’s detractors, once it could not be detangled from eroticism and freedom of expression - the pelvic thrust of no return.)īy the 1990s, Contemporary Christian Music - including Christian Rock - was an uncontested genre, garnering some degree of mainstream acceptance. (The irony of all this controversy, of course, is that the sound of rock and roll, like the blues before it, was built on gospel music. The ability of rock music to excite and loosen the inhibitions of listeners was viewed with suspicion by those (including King) who believed worship should be a more dignified affair (all of this is detailed in religious historian Randall J. It is no coincidence that Jerry Lee Lewis came out of the Pentecostal Church, where dancing, shouting aloud, and speaking in tongues are all hallmarks of worship. And what’s in a sound? To Warren, one of the most influential pastors in American history, basically nothing.Įxcept certain sounds do evoke certain feelings, certain states of being. Rock and roll has since lost its power as a concept once affiliated with drugs and sex, it is now little more than a sound. But rock and roll was such a fresh threat then - Elvis Presley had only just thrust his hips on the Ed Sullivan Show - its novelty and popularity lending it the sinister edge that our moral-minded elders now project onto gender-bending and the perceived sensitivity of college students.
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That Christianity and rock could be compatible was once a taboo stance - the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., in 1957, was very firm on the matter, arguing that rock and roll “so often plunges men’s minds into degrading and immoral depths,” the opposite of the uplifting gospel he favored. There are no spiritual tunes.” Warren - pro-Creationism, pro-Prop 8, pro-Hobby Lobby - is also staunchly pro-rock and roll, an avowed Jimi Hendrix fan, who once belted out the opening verses of “Purple Haze” to an auditorium packed with his church congregants. “It is the words that make a song sacred, not the tune. What does the act of worship sound like? Evangelical megachurch pastor Rick Warren, in his book The Purpose Driven Life, contends that sound itself is beside the point: “There is no such thing as ‘Christian’ music there are only Christian lyrics,” he writes.
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Dirt is a daily email about entertainment.Īs worship music from Circuit Riders goes viral on TikTok, Allegra Hobbs recounts her own history with “spiritual” sounds.