Skip to content

Log Out

×

Good Letters

I have been writing about the intersection of pop music and religion for as long as I can remember. As I teenager, I made four issues of a zine (never published outside an old Macintosh computer) called Toxic Chalk, which balanced my love of rocking out with a lot of complaining about Christian music. I’m still proud of a sentence I wrote comparing a syndicated Christian radio show to the experience of being gagged with a gardening tool.

Some years hence, though I no longer listen to Christian rock, music and faith are both still very important to me, and writing is how I figure things out, so I am still at it. I like to write about bands who are what Greg Wolfe calls “grapplers,” with faith and belief artists like Iron and Wine, the Danielson Famile, Sixpence None the Richer, Kanye West, to name a scant few. Some are professing people of faith, some not, and most are not involved with “Christian music.”

And this is where I get into trouble.

Bands that flit around the dark edges of faith tend to be anxious about being associated with CCM and the evangelical Christian subculture—because the words “Christian,” and “music,” when they get too close to each other in a sentence, create all kinds of weird, unpleasant associations, and no serious artist, even one in a medium as allegedly commercial and ephemeral as pop music, wants anybody to think that their records should be shelved alongside Sandi Patti and Carman.

When I write about these artists, I tread lightly, because I am pulling for them; I, too, would prefer less cultural isolation and fewer lines drawn in the sand when it comes to this stuff. On the other hand, I am genuinely interested in not only how faith and pop music work together but how the cultural implications play out: I really do want to know what makes somebody choose to sign to, say, Tooth and Nail records, and then what makes them want to get the hell out. I want to know why former singers of Christian metal bands become atheists. I want to explain how a song about a yeti is actually a song about the power of belief (It’s “Bigfoot!” by the Weakerthans).

And so I run into problems.

I’ve had bands back out of interviews because I asked too many questions about religion, seen letters to the editor calling me stupid for making fun of Christian culture, gotten incoherent blog comments that suggested I didn’t know the Bible as well as I should or that the band I’d lovingly written a 1000-word elegy for had “denied Christ” because they went mainstream.

Recently, I had a fifteen-email tete-a-tete with a band’s manager who didn’t want me to write about the group for a Christian magazine because, he wrote, they had worked very hard to keep the band’s name away from anything approaching CCM. They had built a positive reputation in a very specific subgenre of modern music and were not about to jeopardize it by being mentioned in a publication that might let slip that they were a Christian grunge band ten years ago.

The band epitomized the theme of my piece, and to write the article without them would be irresponsible. I told the manager as much in an email and essentially threatened to mention the band whether they wanted to talk to me or not. They gave the interview, and although I don’t expect you’ll be seeing mention of it on the band’s website any time soon, I’m glad it worked out.

I am drawn to the nexus of faith and pop music because they both seem to get at the same thing. Religion seeks to explain the big human dilemmas, and gives shape to the answers. Rock music seeks a way of living the questions—a process, a movement, full of body and sound and urgency. I do write about that.

But really, what I write about when I write about music and religion is myself, the confused teenager I was. I had MxPx posters on my bedroom wall, but wondered if it was OK to be listening to a Superdrag record that seemed to be arguing against the afterlife. I wore my Jars of Clay t-shirt to school, but was afraid someone would ask who they were, and that I’d have to talk about Jesus without having any idea what to say. I sang along to Joan Osborne on rock radio when she said “yeah, yeah, God is good,” but felt I really ought to switch to the Christian pop station. I wrote a zine for nobody about the absurdities of Christian culture and the brilliance of obscure rock bands. You get the idea.

I write for that kid; to help him, to change him, even, maybe—but mostly, I think, because I am him.

Image depends on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today.

+ Click here to make a donation.

+ Click here to subscribe to Image.


The Image archive is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Receive ImageUpdate, our free weekly newsletter featuring the best from Image and the world of arts & faith

* indicates required