THE JESUS MUSIC: Providing Context For Contemporary Christian Music

There was a time in the 2000s where Contemporary Christian Music seemed to be at its zenith along with Christian bookstores, Precious Moments figurines, Veggie Tales, and the like. I can say this because in my youth I was very much immersed in this Christian subculture, insulated from the outside world, and thereby creating its own ecosystem of art and culture. Some of it was vapid, a form of mimicry, but a lot of it I look back on fondly. There are pieces that even remain resonant in my life.

It’s important to distinguish Contemporary Christian Music (CCM for short) as its own industry with its own history, Billboard charts, and hitmakers. A couple of decades later, although I’m no longer as deeply ensconced in this world – and I would like to believe industry boxes and barriers have incrementally been broken down – it’s hard not to admit the impact this world has had on many, including myself.

But it’s also become a consolidated billion-dollar business for a very specific establishment. It’s come a long way from when a couple of its patron saints started out: Amy Grant sang at the local Konoinia coffeehouse in Tennessee and Toby Mac took the Christian music world by storm with a couple of college acquaintances before setting off on his own lucrative career. 

What I appreciate about The Jesus Music is how it attempts to document this living, breathing phenomenon and place it within a broader context.

Jesus Music Movement

Ironically, the Jesus Music industry bloomed out of the Hippies and social unrest of the 1960s and early 70s. Glenn Kaiser and Greg Laurie share how, in the context of rampant racism, earth-shattering assassinations, and tumultuous student protests, an “Eat, Drink and be Merry for tomorrow we die” mentality was the easiest outlet, drugs included.

Even after the Utopia of Woodstock and the shadow of Altamont, many of the generational heroes, from Jimi Hendrix to Jim Morrison, and Janis Joplin, were lost. The war raging inside their young disciples didn’t go away nor did the social unrest. Conservative American Christianity hardly seemed like a salve, and yet in places like Calvary Chapel in Orange County, California, Hippies looking for direction were welcomed in, thanks to charismatic figures like Chuck Smith and Lonnie Frisbee. But what about the music?

Performers like Love Song, Andrae Crouch, and Larry Norman (“The Father of Christian Rock”) came to represent an emerging movement shifting away from traditional choirs singing hymns. If it’s not evident already, there was something fresh and organic about all this eclectic music being formed on a grassroots level. Norman was case and point with honest lyrics that might have scandalized the church and a vocalness about his faith that might have turned off members of the counterculture. He was a rebel within both traditions.

One moment hoisted up as a turning point – a bit like a Christian Woodstock – is Explo ’72 in Dallas. It was given a stamp of endorsement by famed evangelist Billy Graham and brought together thousands of students with a wide-ranging list of performers including Love Song, Larry Norman, and even Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson!

But this is only the beginning of the story. It seems to me the ensuing generations of Contemporary Christian Music somehow mirror the Bourgeois Bohemians (BoBo) phenomenon. You had upper-middle-class folks who inherited their values from countercultural movements of their youth and yet they eventually became more complacent as they settled down and started families. If their religious faith didn’t change, then some of their other values might have, as they slowly assimilated into the American church. 

Cracks in The Christian Music Machine

Flash forward to the 1980s and Amy Grant was the newest star of the growing CCM industry. She seemed like the perfect figurehead of traditional values, and yet even she was a kind of “trojan horse.” She made a calculated decision to go mainstream and her song “Baby Baby” was a chart-topper outside of Christian circles. Bands like Stryper would follow suit in the hard rock MTV age having their own share of success.

The 1990s saw the emergence of DC Talk known for their emblematic anthem “Jesus Freak,” and then Kirk Franklin‘s “Stomp” had success similar to Grant breaking into the popular consciousness. This music wasn’t simply a Christian version of something else. An interesting point is made about how “Stomp” got so big in pop culture it finally had to be acknowledged by white Christian culture.

Dr. King is evoked when  he famously said “11 o’clock on Sunday is the most segregated hour of the week.” Because it teases out one of the primary fractures through the entire industry (and the church). This was a space I wasn’t sure The Erwin Brothers would be willing to acknowledge, but I laud them for at least beginning the conversation. The rapper Lecrae speaks very briefly about how he was driven to clinical depression. He felt like an exile, lacking a sense of belonging. And he’s not the only example. Michael Tait of DC Talk recounts how at the height of their fame he was threatened in the South by a man who said he’d better get home before dark or else they’d go hang him. It’s chilling to hear.

Against this landscape, Kirk Franklin‘s plea for racial reconciliation feels imperative. He acknowledges Christians are supposed to be light in a dark world, and yet the church’s light is so fragmented. Few issues make this more evident than the history of segregation and racial division in the church. If it’s not apparent already, Christians, ironically, given their beliefs, often are not very forgiving. Just ask Amy Grant, after she got a divorce…

Conclusion: Jesus Music

After watching The Jesus Music, I feel vindicated in thinking the early 2000s and the sweet spot of my childhood was one of the peaks of the Christian music industry. However, with all the changes over the decades, there’s definitely a sense that the movement was not able to retain its original DNA. This isn’t necessarily bad, but it does beg some questions.

Praise and Worship music is the latest iteration. The likes of Delirious, Chris Tomlin, and now Hillsong have birthed a new brand of movements based around songs and less identified with the individual (to a degree). And, certainly, conversations of racial reconciliation still are percolating, among many others. We can only continue to watch what happens.  

I remain most interested in the doc as a bit of an anthropological record. It helps me to understand where I’ve come from and the culture that was so integral to my early years. It was a movement that sparked in my own backyard, and it feels like the documentary provides a deeper understanding of my own history – a framework for the cultural space I grew up in.

However, I’m less inclined to engage when it wants to become a profoundly emotional experience. In this way, I feel like it will be less compelling especially for those who don’t hold name recognition with many of the people who flash upon the screen. These are folks I’ve known since childhood, listening to the radio, and a few like Lecrae and Lauren Daigle I still gladly listen to. But if you don’t have this kind of context, I can understand how the latter half could lack a great deal of viewer identification.

I couldn’t stop thinking how Johnny Cash would never make it on a contemporary Christian radio station today or for that matter Larry Norman. They had too much rebellion in them. They were too countercultural. Hopefully, this irony isn’t lost, especially now that we know where this movement all began.

Were you aware of the context and history behind Contemporary Christian Music? Let us know in the comments below!

The Jesus Music was released on October 1, 2021!