Why I Don’t Listen to Christian Music… Pt. 2

Hello All,

I am returning to you all with part two of my blog series indicting the Contemporary Christian Music industry. The first order of business today is to prove that it is most certainly an industry and a market, and this market indeed has a product to sell. Despite the evangelical subculture’s rather blind insistence that it is an outlet of the Gospel and one of the most effective, relevant means of witnessing to culture we have, it is in reality about getting “more creative about the products they deliver and the ways they deliver them“. That was a quote from an article from CCM magazine’s website, an article that I will be referring back to in this post. In the article, Charlie Peacock, a man who’s been as deep in the industry as one can get, writes about the future of CCM. This future was less than bright. In his words, “The music business, Christian and otherwise, has been a wealth-creation mechanism for a small, elite group of executives, songwriters, producers and artists.” In regards to the treatment of the goal of true art and beauty, he says, “Unfortunately, the majority of the recordings created over the last 35+ years were “youth targeted” mainstream music knock-offs at their conception and designed to get past a host of gatekeepers with agendas other than the promotion of good music.“

This is all that is needed for this post in the realm of citations. As a side-bar disclaimer, for those who are wondering what exactly I listen to, this problem is also existent in the “secular” music industry. Music is not an art form in either market today; it is instead a product that is more dependent on the general sound, look, and attitude that some marketing exec foresees as the best persona.

That is the reality of what the CCM industry has become, granted, I do believe that it was not originally intended to be that way. But let’s instead focus more on what the average evangelical thinks CCM is all about. It was hinted in one of the previous quotes, that CCM was made to be “youth targeted” mainstream music knock-offs. This is the ideological goal that the promoters of CCM believe in. It is an evangelical tool that supposedly enables the Christian subculture to “meet teens where they’re at” and “speak to them in their own language”. However, the actual propagation of the Gospel complete with the truths of sin and redemption are slowly being replaced with that which is “Positive. Encouraging. K-Love” (wish I could say that Truth is always positive and encouraging). But that is another issue. Back to the beliefs behind the industry. All this stems from a false belief in cultural dualism which believes that there’s a distinct “secular” world and “sacred” world. Now, don’t get me wrong, as a growing believer in covenant theology, I definitely appreciate the existence of the covenant community in Christ, the catholic (little “c” = universal) Church, whatever name you choose. However, that is the Church, this is the evangelical subculture and they are different.

An analogy that might help explain this distinction better is this: Imagine that the Church is a castle and the surrounding land is culture. In this circumstance, the Church can directly engage culture with Truth and nurture truly Christian beauty by creating just as our Creator did. However, imagine installing a 10 mile-wide moat in between the castle and the lands, and this is the evangelical subculture. In America, we Christians get to live in a world complete with everything imaginable with a “Christian” label slapped onto it. We have our own music, our own t-shirts, our own GodTube, our own movies, our own books contained in our own bookstores, ad nauseam. This is supposed to be the best way to convert America? By making knock-offs of everything? By selling “Abreadcrumb and Fish” t-shirts as a “cool” alternative to Abercrombie?

I doubt it. No, besides the music execs who really know it’s all about the money, CCM is about Christian coziness. It’s about constructing a subcultural environment where mediocrity is produced, and subsequently heralded. While we blindly either absorb the continuous drone of CCM, or think that it is the only outlet in which true Christians make music, irony slams us hard.  In striving to be relevant, we are instead becoming disposable.

If a band really wanted to impact culture, why in the world would they choose a path beginning with building a fan-base through youth group shows with the hope of getting signed to Word, Forefront, or Sparrow, and getting their songs on Air1 or K-Love? The only way that could effectively witness is if some unbeliever in their right mind would actually choose to listen to CCM of their own accord. No, this path is a path within a secure, cozy, bubble where an artist will be cuddled even when talent is absent, because hey, “at least they’re a Christian band”.  Or as Derek Webb, singer/songwriter and former member of Caedmon’s Call, says in a manner better than I:

“Right now in the music world, the “marketplace and town squares” is the Billboard Top 200. Yet you see few Christian artists really working hard enough and doing good enough art to be in that bigger worldview conversation that’s happening. Instead you see them sort of relegated to this kind of meaningless little Christian chart, well it’s like since we’re not good enough to compete with the real music, the real general market music, the big worldview discussions happening. We’re going to have our own awards ceremonies, the Dove Awards, or our little radio stations, our own little charts, and our own little world to make ourselves feel significant because ultimately the art we’re making just isn’t earning ourselves a seat at the table to really communicate what we believe by way of great art.”

If a Christian artist truly is talented and bent on impact, then I say get out there and prove it by being the best without the crutches of CCM. Create beauty, answer the world’s questions with your lyrics as you continually improve in your poetry.  The solution to this problem is not an easy one, but a solution does in fact exist.  I agree wholeheartedly with these words of Derek Webb, and I’ll leave you and close this series with them.

“I think it’d be a great thing to see the whole Christian music industry go away, and have to see all these so-called Christian artists kind of scatter and find for themselves a place to make music in the real world, or discover that if they’re not good enough to make it, maybe someone’s been enabling them for some years by allowing them to have a career in Christian music when they couldn’t have a music career outside of it.”

Citations:  CCM Magazine Website, Patrol Magazine