| A Review of No Sympathy For The Devil: Reviewed by Adam P. Newton. |
Being both a science-fiction geek and political science nerd, I’m a proponent of any thinker or scholar who proposes any sort of unified field theory. It’s not because I think that there will ever be one set idea or school of thought that will be able to provide a baseline explanation of the world. Instead, I like such theorizing simply because I’m a systems thinker who does long to make sense of the world around me (as unending and unsatisfactory as such searching can be at times). Couple this tendency of mine with my long personal history of working in and writing about the Christian music world, and I found myself quite enamored with foundational tenets driving the new book written by David Stowe.
At its root, No Sympathy For The Devil serves as a both history text and a sociological investigation into the early world of how the Baby Boomer generation created the industry that became Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and introduced the burgeoning culture of modern evangelicalism to America. It is a copiously researched study that focuses heavily upon interviews with key players both lauded and forgotten, along with parsing the finer details and perspectives presented in the biographies and autobiographies of genre-crossing artists like Keith Green, Al Green, Johnny Cash, and Marvin Gaye. More than that, it is a long-overdue exploration in how the Western/American low Protestant church progressed from the hippie Jesus People of Calvary Chapel, Vineyard, and JPUSA to the overtly political Moral Majority in under fifteen years’ time.
A significant amount of text is given towards presenting the stories of characters from across the evangelical spectrum, whether they’re preachers, thinkers, leaders, or musicians. As much as these players probably did have the Gospel in mind in all they did, a relative cult of personality did arise around a host of people, including Chuck Smith, Lonnie Frisbee, Bill Bright, and Hal Lindsey. Many of these men investigated (and they were almost exclusively men) weren’t ever directly aligned with the core Jesus People movement and its offshoots, but they were directly influential because of how appealing their conservative interpretations of Scripture and prophecy were to former stoners and burnouts looking for answers as to why their world was so broken and scary.
For all of the important focus placed upon how artists like Barry McGuire, Larry Norman, Matthew Ward (and Second Chapter Of Acts), Andrae Crouch, Bob Dylan, and the aforementioned Keith Green spoke to young Christians throughout the 1970’s (the principal decade covered in the book), my primary sticking point with the thrust of Stowe’s theory is that the musicians themselves were the ones being most heavily influenced. Yes, I do understand that Baby Boomers have a special relationship with the popular music of their era (something they passed along in spades to Generation X and subsequent generations), but more attention and weight is placed upon the finer theological nuances of how preachers and para-church leaders co-opted early Christian music for the purposes of advancing the Gospel. Almost from the beginning, figures like Billy Graham realized that music would be a great vehicle for drawing these kids into churches and rallies in order to instruct and teach them about Jesus and then how to evangelize to others.
Moreover, when Stowe talks up pop culture’s latent fascination with Jesus and religious concepts in general during the ‘70s, he never truly ties them back into the overall theory. He talks at length about Godspell, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Gospel Road, alongside the church roots of Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Marvin Gaye, and Maurice White (of Earth, Wind & Fire). Yet, though I appreciate the inclusion of such trends of the time into the discussion, they typically only serve as a meek foil to the unabated march of the Baby Boomer generation from its whimsical, “all you need is love” Jesus People roots to the staunchly conservative middle-class white evangelical collective it became.
Overall, my primary concerns about the overall conclusions reached in No Sympathy For The Devil revolve around the apparent fact that Christian pop, folk, and rock music of the ‘70s didn’t actually transform American evangelicalism at all. Stowe’s research instead leads me to believe that Contemporary Christian Music has been a mere tool (though a very attractive and welcoming one) that drove the extremely rapid growth of low Protestant, nondenominational churches across America since the early 1980’s. And maybe that is his theory, and I just didn’t understand it clearly, because for all of the heady idealism of the early days of Calvary Chapel, Vineyard, and the like, it didn’t take the professional religious types very long to incorporate the music and communal spirit of those early gatherings into something much more rigid and organized.
I did enjoy Stowe’s attitude and approach to the book. He comes across as a principled journalist-scholar who has come across a fascinating story that needs to be told. Even more importantly, he presents himself as being very interested in the tale, but without being overly tied to any certain party or specific outcome. As he alludes to in the epilogue, this generation of musicians and church leaders is directly responsible for the industry that is CCM, as well as both the mega-church and house-church movements.
Thus, while No Sympathy For The Devil somewhat falters in its attempt to present a cogent, cohesive theory regarding how Christian pop music created and fostered the development of American evangelicalism, it does tell a compelling story. I would very much like to see Stowe (or someone like him) write a companion text that follows the story into the ‘80s and ‘90s, only if to see what happens when the former hippies grow up and really push their ideas and music into the forefront of American culture.
C. Christopher Smith is the founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books. He is also author of a number of books, including most recently How the Body of Christ Talks: Recovering the Practice of Conversation in the Church (Brazos Press, 2019). Connect with him online at: C-Christopher-Smith.com
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I appreciate your careful and critical reading of the book, Adam.u00a0 When I write about a transformation of American evangelicalism I mean both that worship styles have changed drastically–not just music but the popularity of informal, concert-style services in which music is highlighted–AND that Christian pop music helped evangelical churches hang on to Boomers who might otherwise have lost interest deserted the pews.u00a0 Whether or not the music was being used as a tool, the experience and cultural position of being an evangelical Christian changed. So I don’t think our interpretations of what happened over the past 40 years are so divergent.
Professor Stowe –nThanks so much for your comment. I greatly appreciate your feedback on my review. I enjoyed your book immensely, as I was enthralled by the intense scholarship. And I do agree that our interpretations are not that different.