"God Gave Rock & Roll To You" - by Leah Payne
Reflections upon her History of Contemporary Christian Music
Leah Payne’s God Gave Rock & Roll To You is a must-read for anyone who was as invested in CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) as I was growing up. It pairs nicely with her co-produced podcast (Rock That Doesn’t Roll) and her nostalgia-laden social media streams. I will be returning to this book again & again in the years ahead as a reference point, similarly to Lim & Ruth’s History Of Contemporary Praise & Worship.
Do I agree with everything in the book? Not entirely, no, but that’s not because I’ve done my own research or possess anywhere near the skills necessary to do so. Some of the things in the book challenge some of my own beliefs & presuppositions, and whenever that happens (for me, at least) I have to admit that I find it difficult to approach the conclusions with an open mind. This is not all good, but nor is it all bad. It is, however, neither here nor there, because I’m not writing a review of this book. I’m merely gonna quickly list off a handful of quotes that stood out to me, and comment upon why.
“Through popular music, the peculiarities of three white Protestant groups - Holiness people, Southern Baptists, and Pentecostals (as well as, eventually, their younger siblings, Charismatics) - became synonymous with the term ‘evangelicalism’.” (pg 19)
Music has long been a catalyzer / creator of church culture, but this coalition-building being attributed to shared songs & shared styles of worship is significant. As the research that I’m a part of continues to wrestle today with the ways music unites & divides, these reflections from history are helpful.
“The same music we worship by, pray by, weep by, believe and rejoice by … is being used by Dixieland jazz bands in the nightclubs - used to get gain, entertain, deceive, defraud, and divide - to mock God. The actor on the stage mimics the Pentecostal and teases the audience.” (Bennie Triplett quote, pg 27)
The relationship between “holy” and “secular” music has always been complicated, but I’ve long-thought of the flow between them to have been largely one-sided; culture creates, the church adopts. But Payne brings to light an understanding of the broader culture appropriating “church music” (as cited above, particularly “Pentecostal” music) for their own use. In fact, on the same page as the above quote she says: “Jerry Lee Lewis scandalously turned the Southern Pentecostal phrase for encountering the Holy Spirit, ‘Great Balls of Fire’, into a very thinly veiled reference to sex.” I blushed just typing that sentence.
“CCM figures were marketed as public testimonies to the power of the evangelical gospel, which meant that the artists were subjected to an additional level of scrutiny for their conformity to white evangelical ideals. Record labels included morality clauses that would ensure their roster would live up to evangelical moral standards, which usually included faithfulness in marriage, modest clothing, and abstaining from drugs and drunkenness.” (pg 64)
If you need to have an important & difficult conversation with someone in your life, it is likely best to do so face-to-face. Failing that, a voice call can work. Probably don’t text, though, right? It is notoriously difficult to interpret the tone of text. I bring this up because there are times in this book (like all books) where you have to read between the lines to try and understand the tone in which certain pieces of information are being presented. I do not know for certain, but it seems to me we could be led to interpret the reality of things like “morality clauses” in a negative light. Maybe we should, I’m not sure.
I myself was a largely unsuccessful & conflicted member of the CCM community. All along I knew that being a Christian musician (or a “musician who happens to be a Christian”) doesn’t necessarily make you cut out for what we might think of as Christian ministry. But looking back on those days, I can’t seem to escape the related notion that being supported by the Church does (kind of?) make you tantamount to clergy. I won’t take the time here to delve too deeply into the mechanics of how CCM stars were “supported by the church”, but I’ll just say that though my band played mainstream events, it was youth groups & Christian festivals that put Big Macs on our tables.
“The concerts and pledges and workbooks and conferences and dress codes did not lead to abstinence – they led to shame.” (pg 143)
I never read I Kissed Dating Goodbye, but I think I got the gist. To be sure, that was a pretty weird time in the life of the North American church, and it certainly seems to have been fueled by beliefs that I and my faith tradition do not share (namely that women are the problem). Purity culture had some significant downsides. With all of the backlash to it and deconstruction of it in recent years, though, I’ve yet to see a positive vision put forward.
“Classifying congregational singing as a conduit to the truth of God elevated songwriting to the status of preaching, which was, for Neo-Reformed thinkers, the purview of men. Unsurprisingly, worship songs written by women plummeted in the early aughts.” (pg 149)
This was a real surprise for me. The streams of the church that are cited here are the ones that I’d have described as considering music to be “women’s work”, but I guess that was a misunderstanding on my part. Rather, they were more likely to have bemoaned the “feminization” of church music rather than accepted or promoted it.
“...In the early 2000s it became clear that youth ministers had less use for CCM than they did in previous years. ‘We found that worship music transcended the individual tastes of youth leaders,’ [Mark Ostreicher] recalled; ‘if you were booking entertainment, you'd have to think about whether you want rock or rap or whatever, but if you were leading worship, everyone would join in and stay engaged.’” (pg 171)
Video killed the radio star, and worship music killed CCM. Oversimplifying? Yes. True? Also (probably) yes.
“As evangelical congregations chafed under Covid-19 regulations, Elevation Worship and Maverick City released live worship songs that found global audiences. The comforting, beautifully shot worship experiences provided the devout with credible substitutes for the megachurch worship experiences they were missing.” (pg 188)
As we drove towards in this WLR article, there’s something about actively engaging with music rather than passively observing it that makes it much more powerful. Likely the best way to do that is by “being there” (in a live venue). The next-best thing to being there is probably being immersed in media that can approximate being there. The big-budget sound equipment and cameras (complete with not-so-steady steadicam shots that approximate what it looks like to actually be there) capture not only the leaders on the platform but also those being passionately led. The season Payne describes here was an epochal shift in how evangelical churches worship, and we are not done living through the consequences thereof.
“In 2021, Fender, one of the largest guitar companies in the United States, estimated that one out of every three guitars sold - around $600 million of product - was sold to churches for praise-and-worship music.” (pg 188)
The church is keeping guitar alive. Over a long enough timeline, could electric guitar become like the organ? I highly specialized liturgical instrument? If not the electric guitar, surely the 3’ x 2’ pedalboard.
I could easily make reflections about at least a dozen other sections of the book (like how much I laughed at the reference to “jpms” – Jesus-per-minute – on pg 94, or how my Canadian soul never felt the jingoistic vibes Payne describes), but I’ll end here. As I said, I’ll keep coming back to this book, and would encourage you to consider doing the same. The audiobook version is read by the author, which is almost always a significant plus for me.
What about you? Do you have any particular memories about CCM?
this isn't substantive but..... bro I gotta admit just reading that title had me wanting to put on the makeup and belt it out like Kiss LOL