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Hi Grant,
I believe, help thou my unbelief! Such a great article Grant and loved the conversation between Phillips and Lewis! Kind of galvinises you to think more deeply about that much maligned immoral thing called rock music. I hadn’t realised the ‘gospel’ roots in Phillips’ heart and mind.

Interesting how you perceived/felt Achtung Baby as a bad album that kinda grew on you. When I first heard it I loved that kind of ‘spiritual/otherness’ feel I got from it. There was only one song I hated, as I admit to hating Bono prattle on about losing his faith (again), or losing what he had when U2 first started out. That would be my only criticism of the album. A real epiphany for me was when With or Without You came out in the UK, at a time when Bono was talking about the charts being filled with wallpaper music. To hear the Edge’s guitar rattle away was an amazing experience. I’d stopped playing the radio because there was just the puss of self-indulgent wounds all over the airwaves, and then WoWY hit the playlists. Nothing in music has surpassed that moment yet. I know, I lead a sad typically English reserved life ,Grant!! Probably one of those moments that you just had to be there. What would it be for you?

Peace,

If we’re talking about U2, it was probably the wierdness of "Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses" on the radio, but the rock station in Chicago (Q101) I heard it on had just turned to Alternative radio and it all sounded pretty weird to me. After "Mysterious Ways", though, I was hooked and got every U2 album I could find. I haven’t been too excited about the more recent stuff, though I very much respect what they’re trying to do (change the world, I mean). Other moments like you mention outside of U2 include:

—1st time I heard the Smashing Pumpkins "Siamese Dream" album

—Listening to Trent Reznor’s alienation and despair from beginning to end of "The Downward Spiral" late at night. Now I think maybe I was captivated by how serious Reznor took God and the human condition, enough to spend a whole albume dealing with such a topic

—Tori Amos’ "Boys for Pele"

—Walking around campus at Dordt College with headphones on, listening to Wu-Tang Clan and Rage Against the Machine and feeling very very far away from Northwest Iowa

—Radiohead’s "OK Computer"

—Miles Davis "Bitches Brew"

—The Talking Heads "Remain in the Light". Crazy sounds all over the place.

—Discovery of Johnny Cash

—Discovery of gospel music (Goodbye, Babylon box set of original recordings from 20’s-30’s)

—Currently, Arcade Fire’s new album

Hi Grant,

Yeah, out side of U2, I’d have to say:

Part [/b:a0cb17c6ce]- Summa. Heard during a late-night driving trip from Plymouth to Bristol. Had to contact the radio station to see what I’d heard, it had such an amazing effect on me. Still does. Heads [/b:a0cb17c6ce]- Stop Making Sense – I think the film was/is fantastic and the beginning with Psycho Killer and the ghetto blaster, has to be one of the all time great starts to a concert. Groves [/b:a0cb17c6ce]- an english musician who you’ve probably never heard of. I don’t generally listen to Christian music, it seems so twee and angst-free, but I heard a track from Charlie’s new album ‘Searchlight’ called ‘Wounded Healer’ and there was a part in it where he rolls an A Major 7th chord on his piano at the start of an instrumental bit. For whatever reason that chord just resonated with me and I couldn’t stop playing the song. I had to email Charlie and ask what was happening, what was that chord! I thought I’d found my ‘soul chord’ if there is such a thing!

] – another UK band, whose album ‘Something to Die For’ got the creative juices flowing (for writing purposes) and tracks like ‘Soil’ and ‘To Die For’ and a few others, just have that edgy feeling that I like. Sums up life in little ’ol England!

] – There is a track of theirs, ‘Stupid Girl’ that I liked. The lyrics seemed too clever for the UK charts at the time and that one stuck out for me. Don’t think they’ve hit the mark since though, which is a shame. Wasn’t Butch Vig in the band?

] – Claire de Lune. This became my Dad’s favourite piece of ‘classical’ music. After WWII, he was posted in Vienna and given responsibility for guarding the Opera House, or what was left of it! It became a focal point in Vienna for musicians gathering in the city after the war. In one grand performance, someone started playing this piece. After everything he’d seen in the war, I think it was just such a contrast and it moved my Dad so much, that it kind of became ‘his’! For me, it is a beautiful composition and he wanted it played at his funeral. Always a special piece.

Peace,

Thought provoking article, Grant. Do you think the criteria for Christian music is whether it can be believed? You make the point that so much Christian music is comprised of happy Jesus songs, whereas true rock music is messy. So…since life in a world broken by sin is messy, rock can be believed. It fits; it resonates; its a believable interpretation. Christian music can’t be believed, because life isn’t so neat and tidy as many Christians pretend.

In an article I was reading recently J Gresham Machen (the late founder of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church) said one of the duties of Christians in culture is to re-work society’s plausibility structures in favor of Christianity. This statement has a lot of implications, but one thing it means is that Christians should engage culture in a way that can be believed, in a way that fits life in a broken world. In this sense music can genuinely serve evangelism: not by directly sharing the gospel but by being believable. For instance, for some people Christianity can’t be believed because Christians can’t be believed. Certainly their music can’t be believed: again, real life is not so neat and tidy. But the messy-ness of rock music can be believed.

Christians should develop rock music in a believable, honest way, which tends to promote Christian truth simply be being believable. So again, do you think the question is whether our music can be believed? Is there a better question to ask of Christian music?

To clarify there are two separate questions (if not more). One deals with the quality of music: its creative genius, its ability to please and dazzle the ear or to move us in some striking way. The other deals with Christian music in particular, whether it tends to shift society’s plausibility structures in favor of or against Christianity. It’s really this question I’m interested in, not the general one about quality of music.

I’m not sure I understand the question. Are you suggesting that since rock music is more authentic, more real, more true to everyday experience than CCM, it might be easier to believe by non-christians?

If so, I don’t disagree, even though I believe CCM is sincere in what it does and might have a purpose to a point. But I’m trying to do something else with this article. My article is based on the assumption that the role of art is to express our condition in whatever age we find ourselves. As Christians, then, we see ourselves in a sinful world on the way to the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom which has already come and is still coming. My article expresses the possibility that rock’n’roll might be a gift from God for people stuck in the tensions of modern society. Its purpose may be to express the particular emotions felt first by adolescents of the 50’s generation and then matured into the music of college students in the 60’s and beyond. Other kinds of music may do this in their own way but I think rock is a unique vehicle for certain emotions that perhaps rise up in a modern society. I trust that God has given rock music to us or allowed us to discover it for this purpose, as a means of coping with or transcending the difficulties of modern adolescence (which is lasting longer, I understand, long into the mid to late 20’s now by many psychologist’s accounts).

Now rock music is here to stay and what are Christians doing about it? I am trying to persuade other Christians to embrace the rock spirit, to see the potential of the punk rock attitude for expressing the inexpressible. One possibility for true Christian rock is to express the tension between sin and salvation that we all face. Or to just scream out the angst of waiting for God’s Kingdom to fully come. I am glad to see so many excellent Christian musicians in the folk (lyrics focused) tradition (Pedro the Lion, Sufjan Stevens), but find it alarming that the Christian community is not currently turning out great rock or hip hop music in the punk attitude (a few exceptions include the Danielson Familie, MeWithoutYou, Kanye West, Common and Arcade Fire). We need more early U2, the Pixies, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins types and we need them with the conviction and excellence of the groups highlighted in places like Paste Magazine.

In other words, I’m sick and tired of emo!

I’m not sure I understand my question either! I’m still wrestling with it. I think I’m trying to figure out something you get at in the article, which is: Why ought we to be alarmed that the Christian community is not currently turning out great rock or hip hop music in the punk attitude? My answer is that otherwise Christianity is less believable.

As Christians we do struggle with the same emotional tensions of modern society, but much of our music gives the impression that we don’t. It’s as though we live in an entirely different world; we appear to outsiders like martians from a different planet. In one sense we are from a different place, because we live in the hope-filled Kingdom of God. But we struggle like everyone else with the old way of life. More than that, we struggle with the grief and suffering, bitterness and frustration, bewilderment and angst of life lived in a world broken by sin. As Christians we too can say with conviction: things are NOT the way they’re supposed to be! Even though I’m saved, I still feel the hurt of modern sin-cursed society. I still struggle with wondering what God’s up to. I don’t have all the answers; with you (non-believers) I have pressing questions.

In your article you provoked in me the question of whether rock music can help tell the story of the Christian community a little more credable way. It seems much CCM resolves the tension in an un-credible way.

Yeah, it doesn’t bother me if non-believers think Christians are foolish but it bothers me when Christians think non-believers say we’re foolish because we make morally upright movies or music without swear words or sexual content. Usually the attacks against "Christian" music or movies are not because there’s no foul language or nudity, but because the quality of the art work is subpar. I so believe there might be a place for something identified as Christian music but I feel like the current version of this concept (CCM) is guided by a philosophy of purism that assumes Christian music must necessarily be devoid of the reality that sin still is a force in our lives. In a word, I’d like Christian music to be more confessional than inspirational.

Recognition of our own sin allows us to love others better because we know the wonders of God’s grace and we want others to feel that too. Inspiration without confession does not have the ring of truth to it.

In other words, I’m sick and tired of emo!

Oh, my brother….[size=24:f73482fef5]TESTIFY!!!!!!!!!!!![/size:f73482fef5]

I’m watching Martin Scorsese’s [i:23d27af5f8]No Direction Home: Bob Dylan[/i:23d27af5f8] and this quote from Bob Johnson, the producer of [i:23d27af5f8]Highway 61 Revisited[/i:23d27af5f8], seemed pretty wild and relevant to this discussion:

"I believe in giving credit where credit’s due. I don’t think Dylan had a lot to do with it. I think God—instead of touching him on the shoulder—he kicked ‘em in the ass. Really! And that’s where all that came from. He can’t help what he’s doin’! I mean, he’s got the Holy Spirit about him—you can look at ’em and tell that."