The Story of a Subculture
A Feature Review of
God Gave Rock & Roll to You:
A History of Contemporary Christian Music
Leah Payne
Hardcover: Oxford UP, 2024
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Reviewed by Todd Edmondson
In one of his stand-up specials, comedian Nate Bargatze gives his audience a brief window into his childhood: “My parents became Christian when I was born. Everyone’s still Christian, but I got them when they were the most Christian. I had 80’s and 90’s Christian parents. Well, that’s the most Christian you can ever get of the Christian.” If that joke resonates with you as much as it does with me, then the same will probably be true of Leah Payne’s history of contemporary Christian music, God Gave Rock & Roll to You. I confess that I came to this text pretty convinced that this book was my story. My first concert was Petra at the 1988 Kentucky State Fair. I won a talent show in 6th grade with a performance of DC Talk’s “Heavenbound.” I saw Sixpence None the Richer play in a church basement, and I played bass in a ska band at a small Christian college (whether that made us a Christian ska band is a debate for another day), before becoming a Pedro the Lion superfan. My point is, when it comes to Christian music, I feel like my bona fides are pretty strong, and that in some sense, the story of contemporary Christian music could conceivably read like a narrative of my own faith journey, a soundtrack scoring my moments of enthusiasm, comfort, disillusionment and even angst about my place within God’s story over the past few decades.
Even so, this book is full of stuff I didn’t know, things I’d never heard about contemporary Christian music and the industry that sprang up around it. Each chapter revealed to me stories and statistics that shed light on the profound impact, both positive and negative, that this music has had on the church, as well as numerous unknown, or previously unconsidered, connections between this music and the broader culture. In doing so, Payne’s work also raises some important questions about art, faith, and commerce in a world where the cultural balance among these three realities is always in flux.
As a historian, Payne’s work in exploring the foundations of this genre of music is exemplary. She helps readers unpack the long, winding, and at times complicated narrative of how a musical style originally despised by white, Christian America—Rock & Roll—could eventually become a staple not only of family-friendly radio stations but also of church services, all within a few decades. She locates some familiar standouts within the story, figures like Billy Graham, Larry Norman, Keith Green, Sandy Patti, and Amy Grant, who all worked to lay the commercial and cultural foundations of the genre, either by lending their support and influence to artists, or by blazing trails in production, performance, and presentation of this medium and its message. In addition, Payne introduces an array of minor players, largely unknown artists like early Christian rockabilly performer Isabel Baker, or Christian surf-rock progenitors The Crusaders, revealing that later performers like DC Talk and Jars of Clay, who brought Christian rock to the mainstream through massive crossover success, stood on the shoulders of many whose names are completely lost to the casual listener.
While Payne’s engagement with the creative output of all of these artists, whether relatively unknown of colossally famous, is impressive, the book’s real contribution is in its analysis of the business practices and political sensibilities of the Contemporary Christian Music industry, and in the ways these practices and sensibilities so often intertwine. Payne articulates effectively what has long been a sort of open secret among those familiar with popular Christian music, the notion that this genre is at its worst when it functions solely as a “safe” alternative to secular music, an art form in which being derivative is more often a feature than a bug. As Payne highlights, the business model that drove much of the success of Christian music was built on the premise that Christian parents would gladly pay for music that delivers their kids a positive Christian message, wrapped up in the packaging of popular, secular music. Even when some artists (e.g. Stryper, “To Hell With the Devil”) pushed the boundaries of what this packaging might look like, this was a model largely embraced by many parents, to the financial benefit of the artists and the record labels that were promoting them. It provokes the question, however, of whether this was a subculture that offered anything more than “pop articulations of white evangelical ideals (91),” and whether such a subculture would help to nurture faith capable of withstanding real challenges.
The association of this music with “white evangelical ideals,” serves to frame the political thrust of Payne’s book. Even if there are times where the argument could be more clear or cohesive, as in a later section that draws connections between the January 6th insurrections and movements in popular Christian culture, overall Payne is very strong in this regard. She incisively interrogates at every stage the manner in which this genre has been limited to a specific demographic appeal and beholden to particular political and cultural commitments, so that, far from saying anything new or challenging, the way that the best art often does, much of the work produced by Christian artists has merely been appropriated as anthems in the culture wars. Further, so many of the artists who have not fallen in line with the larger cultural and political agendas embraced by the industry have become casualties in those same wars. And so readers of Payne’s work are encouraged to ask difficult questions about the effects of this intertwining of art, commerce, and politics on the church, questions that become all the more urgent when we consider how much of the contemporary Christian music currently being produced is for the purposes of congregational worship. These songs are not just meant for performance, but are designed to shape the common life of church communities as they gather. For those of us who care about the church, and who also believe that God has gifted artists to proclaim the Kingdom of God in all its variety and manifold glory, Payne’s book will provoke important questions about whether we have used these gifts faithfully, and how, rather than being assimilated to or swallowed up by larger culture industries, we might encourage art that challenges God’s people to embrace and embody the Kingdom in ways that aren’t necessarily safe.
Todd Edmondson
Todd Edmondsonis a pastor at First Christian Church in Erwin, Tennessee, and Associate Professor of Humanities and Composition at Milligan University. He lives in East Tennessee with his wife, three kids, and a golden retriever.
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