God Gave Rock and Roll to You

A History of Contemporary Christian Music

De: Leah Payne

Narrado por: Leah Payne

Few things frightened conservative white Protestant parents of the 1950s and the 1960s more than thought of their children falling prey to the "menace to Christendom" known as rock and roll. The raucous sounds of Elvis Presley and Little Richard seemed tailor-made to destroy the faith of their young and, in the process, undermine the moral foundations of the United States. Parents and pastors launched a crusade against rock music, but they were fighting an uphill battle.

Salvation came in a most unlikely form. When a revival swept through counterculture hippie communities of the West Coast in the 1960s and 1970s a new alternative emerged. Known as the Jesus Movement—and its members, more colloquially, as "Jesus freaks"—the revival was short-lived. But by combining the rock and folk music of the counterculture with religious ideas and aims of conservative white evangelicals, Jesus freaks and evangelical media moguls gave birth to an entire genre known as Contemporary Christian Music (CCM).

In this book, Leah Payne traces the history and trajectory of CCM in America and, in the process, demonstrates how the industry, its artists, and its fans shaped—and continue to shape—conservative, (mostly) white, evangelical Protestantism.

©2024 Oxford University Press (P)2024 eChristian

History can hurt, but the truth can set you free.

I remember my first CCM album; Phil Keaggy's " What a Day." It was probably '75 or '76. CCM has had a profound impact on my life since that album. I purchased many more in vinyl, moved to cassette, and finally CD. My music is now on Spotify. I saw most of the early artists Dr Payne spoke of in concert from Evie to Degarmo and Key, and I bet I have seen The Second Chapter of Acts at least 15-16 times. As a student at ORU in the eighties every major CCM artist was either in chapel or at The Mabee Center on campus. As a youth pastor in the nineties, I took my students to as many concerts and music festivals as possible and even hosted Geoff Moore and The Distance several times in my hometown. I even remember when Charlie Peacock, Out of the Grey, and Vince Ebo made a swing through N.C. I attended the Youth Specialties event in Charlotte right before Mike Yaconelli died and have experienced praise and worship music dominating Christian radio.

Dr Payne is a historian. She researches information about the past and then reports what she finds. Much of what she discovered about the CCM industry will make you uncomfortable. As a follower of Jesus, it should. Some of the things she said made me sad, others angry, At times I wanted her to stop. Stop unfolding a story that was about me. In some ways, it was and is me. She unexpectedly ends the book. The last few sentences are worth the admission. I was shocked, speechless. In just a few words she reminds us that when you strip away all the christianese and spiritual overtones CCM is a commodity to be bought and sold. Get the book. Read the book. Keep this young lady researching and writing. She will probably make this old southern white "evangelical" uncomfortable, I don't think she means any harm. God need always work on this heart and life.

In the end, God did give rock and roll to us and He put it in the soul of everyone.

Don’t judge a book by its title

As one who grew up on CCM, a follower of Christ and a teacher of US History I thought, based on the book’s title, that I’d be taken down Memory Lane. I grew up listening to Larry Norman, Daniel Amos, Any Grant, etc. and while not a seasoned music critic, found their sounds and lyrics something that encouraged me and my faith. Even as a teen, I perceived the artists I listened to as wholesome alternatives to what the world had to offer.

Payne does provide some nice context and history to that period of time and to the musicians which I appreciated in this book.

But the book progressively revealed what seemed to be the undercurrent of thought in Payne’s motive: Charismatic white evangelicals are/were a cultural parasite using CCM as a means by which to indoctrinate (white) (Conservative/GOP) Americans of an out-of-date orthodoxy.

Payne argues that fears of abortion and sex before marriage propelled white evangelical women (mainly, or “Beckys” as she called them) to head to their local Christian bookstore or tune the dial to Christian radio to shelter their kids from the world, the flesh and the devil. The CCM machine was happy to oblige to this demographic and reaped in high profits while inflicting the US with cultural decay.

As the book unfolds, Payne increasingly weilds the terminology of the Left (Latinx and ascent to preferred pronouns as two examples) and the book slips quietly into more cultural criticism than history. The climax of the book is its last chapter and a half - plus the epilogue - that focused on the Trump presidency, the January 6 insurrection, and the white evangelicals that supported him and the conspiracy theories of the far Right. What this had to do with the history of CCM was hard to understand, and other than mentioning how "blowing the Shofar" a time or two, had nothing to do with music, much less, CCM. Side-note: As a teacher of High School students, if my students had taken such a bird walk in an essay I would have returned it as “off topic.”

In the end, Payne is entitled to writing any book she wants to; that she could get Oxford University Press to approve of the tangential move at the end of the book is a win for her, I suppose.

Just beware, the book’s true intent I think is to add itself to a growing genre of books criticizing white evangelicals in the age of Trump. A more nuanced argument on CCM’s history was what I went looking for and sadly didn’t find