Can you articulate what you, personally, find so aesthetically gross about Christian Rock?

I was reading Scott Miller's favorite songs blog that ILM posted months ago and this line stuck out: "...and odds are that any given piece of Christian rock will weird me out"

Now what is it about Christian rock that (in my opinion rightfully) turns off the vast majority of non-Christian music fans as well as Christians with some semblance of good taste? I know we've discussed this in segments before in various threads and maybe there are a few threads dedicated to this thing in particular, but I want to know what you personally find so distasteful and what causes in you the knee-jerk reaction that I'd estimate 70% of the board feels the second they hear the genre, or even the words, "Christian rock."

Potential theories that I have or have heard from others include but are not limited to:

- The music is just all awful by sheer coincidence.

- The wild romanticism built into the idea of "rock and roll" is a really bad mesh with the meekness and humility that is, at least ostensibly, supposed to go hand-in-hand with Christian sensibilities. Jesus Christ would never want to "rock." Why do they?

- It is a pathetic attempt to appeal to and infiltrate the sensibilities and mindset of non-Christians. It's "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

-The corny, white bible-bashers of Amerika are now co-opting the very music of the proletariat underclass that was supposed to help overthrow them. This is almost as bad as when the bourgeoisie made blue jeans universal.

- I only will only tolerate Jesus music from black people, poor white people who originally came from the mountains, and if the music comes from old scratchy 78s. Any other kind of Jesus music comes from a place of power or reminds me of Bush's America and dilutes the message.

Just a few theories out many more, but how many are strawmen and inaccurate?

Which theogeologist among us will dig deep and really articulate into words what none of us like about the Christian rock?

mr too-much-time-on-his-hands to thread

He already started it.

For me, the problem is that it sounds like they borrowed musical tropes from one genre (rock) and then just changed the lyrics/whatever to fit something new. It sounds out-of-place, de-contextualized, etc. There's a similar issue with Orthodox Jewish music -- it sounds wrong. I don't think this has anything to do with politics, or religion, etc. I think it has to do with it sounding forced and cheesy. It's not a phenomenon totally unlike 99% of parody songs. They're just lame.

My theory, anyhow, developed from years of listening to Charedi rock.

ave you ever thought about your soul - can it be saved?
Or perhaps you think that when you're dead you just stay in your grave
Is God just a thought within your head or is He a part of you?
Is Christ just a name that you read in a book when you were in school?

When you think about death do you lose your breath
Or do you keep your cool?
Would you like to see the Pope on the end of a rope
Do you think he's a fool?
Well I have seen the truth, yes I've seen the light
And I've changed my ways
And I'll be prepared when you're lonely and scared
At the end of our days

Could it be you're afraid of what your friends might say
If they knew you believe in God above?
They should realize before they criticize
That God is the only way to love

Is your mind so small that you have to fall
In with the pack wherever they run
Will you still sneer when death is near
And say they may as well worship the sun?

I think it was true it was people like you that crucified Christ
I think it is sad the opinion you had was the only one voiced
Will you be so sure when your day is near, say you don't believe?
You had the chance but you turned it down, now you can't retrieve

Perhaps you'll think before you say that God is dead and gone
Open your eyes, just realize that he's the one
The only one who can save you now from all this sin and hate
Or will you still jeer at all you hear?
Yes! I think it's too late.

was bo diddly an atheist?

Christian Rock is similar to American Idol Rock, NYC Hardcore, Broadway, Modern Country, New Age and Childrens' Music in that the performers seem to have motives in mind beyond and instead of making music as the basis for their careers and performances.

For the few Christian Rock performers that are musicians first, there is the sinking feeling that the ultimate answer to the questions posed lyrically will not be satisfying.

If you manage to satisfy me musically and I dive into the deeper truths of your philosophy, chances are your dead end shallow modern theology will leave me limp and questing.

Not absolutely true; likely, But whatever. After a night of drinking and watching tv fights, I'm up to considering the music of Keith Green just as readily as that of Richard Thompson.

Bo Diddley was a Gunslinger fool. Send your ass to Heaven.

i still play a five iron album every now and again, and i put on a supertones cd for a lol the other day

there's a hollowness about a lot of christian rock, or what explicitly calls itself that, and it's because it makes a categorical error. the best christian music, the best religious music of any kind, plays off the tension between the inescapably sensual nature of the musical experience and the larger spiritual aspirations of the players and singers and lyrics. you can call mahalia jackson heavenly all you want, but the pleasures of her voice and her timbre and her phrasing are corporeal and immediate -- and she is very aware of it, and uses that to make her case for transcendence and the higher plane and what have you. the reason she can make the argument so convincing is that she roots it in pleasure; you will follow her anywhere, including to church.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVXReRfZCM8&feature=related

"christian rock" and a lot of "christian pop" in general are afraid to commit to that much pleasure. they want the backbeat and the hands in the air and all, but they're also suspicious of them. it's like people who think cars are basically evil trying to win a nascar race. you can feel the discomfort, both within the music and, if you ever see it performed, in the similar ambivalence of the audience.

that said, a lot of contemporary christian rock isn't particularly more mediocre or less inspiring than a lot of other contemporary rock.

Well articulated insights within the first hour. I especially like what you just posted, mothra.

"The wild romanticism built into the idea of "rock and roll" is a really bad mesh with the meekness and humility that is, at least ostensibly, supposed to go hand-in-hand with Christian sensibilities. Jesus Christ would never want to "rock." Why do they?"

^i pick this one. there's some pretty bad form/content contradiction going on in most of the christian rock i've heard. but if people wanna rock out about god i'm not gonna hate. see also: what tipsy mothra said.

Low are a great example of a Christian rock band that started out interrogating/harrowing/withering the notion of "rocking out", evaluating it critically, and then they seemed to kind of work through that critique and the minimalist counter-response it implied and then, after lots of skill proving that they could do that, they kind of just wound up rocking out after all.

IF Christ means passivity and suffering then Low's take on rock represents that. Trouble is, Christ is a sufficiently complex node of meanings and feelings and aesthetic choices that he/it can accommodate a wildly incompatible galaxy of artistic manners and stances (see: the history of Western painting and sculpture and architecture from 900 to 1900). Rock is a narrower playing field, but not a necessarily and inherently incompatible one.

x-post

Add a few more reasons:

- Proselytizing is creepy.

- The generic, lifeless music implies some specific motives to me: 1. That the message is really all they are pushing, with the music itself a distant second priority. 2. In presenting music that few people could find objectionable, they are making a deliberate effort to insinuate their message in an almost subliminal way.

- As an atheist, I feel odd agreeing with something that American conservative commentators have suggested, but I agree that, in a lot of ways, non-fundamentalist society and media operate from a standpoint that it is "uncool" to be openly religious. Christian rock is automatically seen as gauche.

- At least gospel has some open emotion, joy and despair. With its unobjectionable, unpassionate music, Christian rock doesn't seduce me.

- If proselytizing is the goal, then I don't get it--how many people are so unformed that proselytizing has any chance of working on them? (That's my atheism speaking; obviously there are plenty of people susceptible to the lure of the message.)

- If proselytizing is not the goal, and they're not interested in projecting the sort of emotion that gospel does, then the music just seems like a self-satisfied celebration of their fundamentalist clique.

- It's judgmental and condescending toward anyone who doesn't agree with their view. And are they really concerned about my forthcoming eternal damnation, or is this just self-congratulatory way of saying "I told you so"?

Any other kind of Jesus music comes from a place of power or reminds me of Bush's America and dilutes the message.

I'll definitely cop to this prejudice (and it is a prejudice)--I'm more inclined to a knee-jerk rejection of a Christian message than other religions because Christianity has a tremendous influence in America that the other religions don't. So I don't have an automatic emotional rejection of other religious music, although intellectually I have to reject all religions as a sad or silly waste of time.

"Fight the real enemy!" *Tears up picture of Pope*

Thank God us Orthodox have liturgical chant instead of this cacophonic junk.

Jesus Christ would never want to "rock."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iihsBmfAhsQ

xpost

Oh and by Orthodox I mean Eastern Orthodoxy, not to confuse Mordy et al.

Another issue for me is that I have this l'art pour l'art bias, and so even art that deals with religion (and I'm stretching back to hymnals or Renaissance art) tends to be reaching for something beyond just being "god art." Like maybe the religion is important to the artist, her experience, her work, etc, and is intrinsic, but its never the only thing there. But with Christian Rock it sounds often like the argument pre-exists, there's no discovery or revelation in the music. This seems slightly ironic to me since religion is often about moments of revelation or transcendence, but I can't think of anything less so than Christian Rock.

xp It's cool, man. I assumed you didn't mean Orthodox Jewish when you said "liturgical chant," since we don't really do those.

it's all about the message. the music is incidental at best; it's the cherry coating for the medicine the band wants to give you. i remember back when jars of clay had their hit song, in 96 or 97. on the pop stations they'd have the regular mix, but on the hard rock station i once heard a rocked up version of it. i remember finding something incredibly smarmy about that. the song could be a poppy acoustic song or a rocked up "alternative" song -- doesn't matter. so long as it gets the message across to as many people as possible. and plenty of non-christian music shares this attitude, and it's just as boring. any musician (or listener, really) will tell you the music -- the chords and beats and melody and harmony and all that -- isn't just a receptacle for the lyrics. it's as much a part or more of what the song is and means. christian rock -- what i've heard, anyway -- seems to simply not care about the music, and i find that really offensive.

I found Dave Tompkins "Permission to Land" article from a few years ago really great at contextualizing the Christian Rock movement for me. One nice thing is had was a lot of sympathy for the bands and the audience involved in the movement. So even as I explain the reasons I dislike Christian Rock, I can't help but imagine that what sounds corny and bogus to me is really moving and powerful for other people. It almost makes me want to find some Christian Rock albums and try to hear what they're hearing, because I can't believe people are buying all those records if they find the music that repellent. (Which isn't to say it's good music, or that those people have good taste -- only that I'm curious if they are hearing something beautiful and authentic in the music.)

WRONG ARTICLE.

It was John Jeremiah Sullivan's Upon this Rock.

No idea why I got the two confused.

Perhaps some you may see this ancient hymn as an example of what true Christian music is: <object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MvjiVam2HO4&hl=en&fs=1&";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MvjiVam2HO4&hl=en&fs=1&"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

my senior year of high school i dated a girl who was dabbling in christianity, and i went with her to her youth group meetings. once i went with her to this christian rock concert (right after she gave me my first bj). one band was fronted by a guy who had to be in his mid-forties, wore a tie, and said a mini-prayer before their set started. this was in the spring of 97, and so they were playing alt rock in the vein of, i dunno, sponge or foo fighters or something. one song had a tuneless chorus that went "nobody told meeeeeeee" -- sung, i guess, from the pov of a sinner who failed to repent and found himself in hell after he died. i just remember feeling something tremendously false about all of it, and now i wonder what those guys sound like now. did they try to sound like the strokes in 2001? (or 2004, probably.) the best band of the night was a band called secret agent abe, and, importantly, about half their set was instrumentals in a surfy b 52's style. they were fun.

huh. hadn't thought about that in a while. thanks, thread.

Listen to these songs, or don't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=em5gL0Rw4Aw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZYf6rckl0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KoidOt4Cms

you have to draw a line between christian rock and rock made by people who happen to be christians. as the person up there noted: BLACK SABBATH. contained christians that surely rock. but generally most of the stuff in the first post makes general sense despite tons of exceptions.

Has ILM ever talked about Andrew Beaujon's book about Christian Rock? It's pretty good, he seems to have a good handle on it (to an extent I might be swayed by the fact he's coming from more or less the same angle as me; folks in the CCM 'scene' no doubt felt differently)

actually my main problem with christian rock is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytCvoWxfjag

It's the Devil's music. Leave unto Satan that which is his.

don't know about christian rock, but i love christian synth pop

Is Crunk christian funk?

x-post -- A fellow Joy Electric fan, I see.

What is "Christian Rock" anyway?

I mean, I guess some of U2's lyrics make sense, because they describe the writer's own religious thoughts rather than being some lame attempt to "Go into all the world and make disciples" just because Jesus said so according to the Bible.

And, I guess, that is the main problem about most Christian rock, that it is just recycling the same lame ideas you hear again and again from the same preachers, instead of actually bringing some new thoughts into the game. Musically, Christian rock also tends to be bad copies of other acts, that are musically better but "spiritually inferior" to Christian fundamentalists because they dare sing about something else than Jesus.

I do enjoy some of Neal Morse's music though, because I like Spock's Beard and musically he does basically the same stuff he did with them back then. But I just have to ignore the lyrics, because they are as described.

And, well, along with U2, add Leonard Cohen, who has made some brilliant religious lyrics. Same with Nick Cave.

Some interesting points here. Definitely agree with Jamie that there is a difference between 'Christian Rock' and rock music made by Christians, so my dismissal of the genre may be as simple as my dismissal of, say, nu-metal or crabcore or whatever. I think there is something incredibly distasteful about it beyond that, though - the idea that it is made by parents to bind their children yet more into a narrow world-view is definitely there.

Also, have you guys seen this? GUITAR PRAISE:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2467/3604615789_0987835dab.jpg

Cave's inarguably well-versed in the Bible, but I believe he views the faith with a pointedly (and, to my mind, healthy) degree of skepticism.

Has ILM ever talked about Andrew Beaujon's book about Christian Rock? It's pretty good, he seems to have a good handle on it (to an extent I might be swayed by the fact he's coming from more or less the same angle as me; folks in the CCM 'scene' no doubt felt differently)

I'll give this book a hearty endorsement. Kept my attention the whole way. Very interesting book.

http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/14740000/14743102.JPG

how does someone go from forming a rock band or singing a buncha songs to having a profile as 'christian rock'? what kind of open mic nights do you play?

it's a bit like christian bookshop-lit, isn't it? there's nothing to stop you from making art and having a religion and trying to reconcile the two, but when there's a whole marketing and distribution system based around not having to truly deal with the contradictions ...

i mean, i don't know.

Come on, guys, is nobody else excited about GUITAR PRAISE? It is Guitar Hero for Christian Rockers!

^^^I'm with emil.y, come and join us guys

Strap on the guitar and play along with your favorite bands—tobyMac, Relient K, Flyleaf, Newsboys —and more. SHRED the riffs…THUMP the bass…BLAST that solid Christian Rock!

SHRED THUMP BLAST

"BLAST that solid Christian Rock" is in fact what Satan will be saying when his latest dastardly scheme is vanquished by this combo of righteousness and rudimentary powerchords

I find the music anodyne; I find the theology half-baked and poorly considered.

Setting it up as a distinction between Christian Rock and Regular Radio Rock doesn't really work for me—most radio rock I find really boring too. And with Christian Rock, it's like asking why I don't like more advertising jingles.

Christian New Jack Swing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh81XnoZvSA

I should mention that one of the original Christian rock bands, The New Creation, is still the greatest:

http://allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:3pfuxqrkldhe~T1

The album sounds like a combination of the Shaggs and the first White Noise album.

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This, for being unintentionally hilarious. The anti-ZZ Top, Xtian rock with a Taliban-like objection to women who speak in church, who are heard as well as seen.

Good resource for Christian psych:
http://heavenly-grooves.blogspot.com/

The big obvious thing that leaps out when you compare Christian rock to older religious/popular music is that the old stuff was a genuine component of religious practice -- you look at gospel or something and you find singing and playing that are an actual outgrowth of what people did and heard, every week, in their churches, in a community where those churches were a central and important social space. In comparison, Christian rock is pretty weird! This has sort of been mentioned upthread -- it's not really a part of religious practice, except maybe as a youth-outreach tool. If people actually went to church a few times a week and played and listened to Christian rock -- if it were a real part of worship -- I'd bet anything a lot of it would be awesome. As a sort of side project, it's a lot more likely to self-select for mediocrity.

There's also that common feeling, mentioned upthread, that you know what's at the core of the music; you feel all too familiar with what its thrust is, and unless you share certain assumptions with it, that makes it very difficult to approach it in any kind of curious way and expect to be shown something interesting.

A lot of it, though, can probably just be explained in terms of demographics. There are social spaces in this country where combining committed Christianity and committed musicianship might seem natural and great; there are social spaces in this country where it's distrusted or unfashionable. It stands to reason that the tastes and aesthetics in those social spaces would just plain be different from one another.

I mean, when I find some instance of Christian rock "aesthetically gross" it's usually because it feels like some kind of awkward burlesque of actual existing rock music -- but then I think a lot of "actual existing rock music" sounds like an awkward burlesque without even bringing Christianity into it, and I generally get the feeling that this sort of awkward-burlesque rock, Christian or not, is appreciated by people in whole other social spheres and with whole other mindsets than mine.

Because the lyrics should always be the least important component of any song, while Christian rock makes them (as does any other didactic music, of course) the most important. The most offensive thing about any Christian rock song would be most obvious, paradoxically, were you to take away the lyrics and de-Christianize the song, leaving the insipid afterthought of the music to stand on its own.

Gospel/Spirituals + Blues + Country/Folk/Bluegrass + Rhythm & Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_veQRT7bus&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkje4FiH9Qc

jcs owns. but weren't rice and webber atheists when they wrote it?

reasons why I dislike christian rock:
the bald shallowness of the emotions expressed
musical aesthetic adopted from the worst elements of MOR adult contemporary

http://www.thefishatlanta.com/images/footers.jpg

take for example the remarkable ability of chris tomlin to destroy one of the greatest, simplest gospel melodies of all time by turning it into some unnecessarily dressed-up sarah mclachlan shit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqJsBRFdrA0

Since rock & roll has some roots in religious expression, I would hate to see all religious/spiritual inclinations persecuted, especially if it were based on some some political/social aesthetic reason.

To answer the question, what I find so aesthetically gross about "christian rock," is how they seem to be selling like the late-night "new & improved" adverts you see on television. They are trying to squeeze in as much propaganda as time allows.