God Gave Rock and Roll to You

November 20, 2023
Payne (Gender and Pentecostal Revivalism), an associate professor of American religious history at Portland Seminary, provides a meticulous history of contemporary Christian music (CCM), a genre “created by and for, and sold almost exclusively to, white evangelicals” and worth nearly $1 billion at its 2000 apex. Tracing the genre’s roots to the music of early 20th-century revival meetings, Payne explains how attempts to lure teens away from rock (“the devil’s music”) coalesced in the 1960s and early ’70s, as Larry Norman and other musicians fused rock and folk with evangelical messages. Initially sold at Christian bookstores and bought primarily by mothers for their children, the success of CCM made clear that there was a “growing market for music created to teach Christian principles to kids,” though the manner in which those lessons were imparted sometimes seemed paradoxical. For example, Payne notes that songs about purity were particularly popular in the late 1990s and aughts as female singers aimed to “show chastity was the real way to be sexy.” Payne’s portraits of the audiences who consumed CCM, the personalities that populated the genre, and the cultural forces that shaped it are rich and robust yet sometimes marred by tangents, as in a discussion of Pentecostal performer Carman that segues somewhat abruptly into a summary of Frank Peretti’s 1986 book This Present Darkness and the “battle between spiritual principalities and local government powers” it depicts. Still, this is a comprehensive and fascinating survey of a much-maligned yet influential musical genre.