Christian Rock

I realize we have already talked about religious music and the impact it can have on people, especially when they go to mass. A mass with great music is a more exciting mass than one with bad music. However, I want to talk about the other form of religious music. The mainstream kind, such as Christian rock. I have listened to a lot of Christian rock in preparation for this post, and if there is one thing I have noticed is how "normal" this music sounds. Seriously, go youtube the bands Red, Pillar, or Skillet and you will see what I am talking about. All there music is incredibly good and sounds just like the music I listen to in my free time (heck it might even be better than my music...really!).



Before I started listening to Christian rock I had a sense of what it was going to sound like. Some guy singing about god and Jesus with a "cool" sounding guitar riff in the background. This is just not true (it may be for the crap Christian rock bands) the lyrics are actually quite good dealing with mortality and love and things like that and not just about god and Jesus.

Alan Wolfe states in The Transformation of American Religion " Rock music-or,as it is frequently called, contemporary Christian music-is now a featured part of Sunday services at evangelical churches throughout the United States" (Wofle 28). Wolfe here calls the music we hear in church the Christian rock. But the thing is that the music you hear in church is nothing like these real Christian rock bands.

After I got recognized to the real Christian rock I started to wonder why I had this misconception about the music. Was it because I just wasn't aware of how the music really was and I was using church as my jumping off point to guess. Or was it because I was thinking all Christian rock bands would be singing really "lame" music because they are religious.

I also learned that a lot of world famous bands first started off as Christian rock bands before they made the jump to real mainstream music. Jessica Simpson first started her career trying to be a Christian rock artist, way before she hit the big time.

Could this then relate to how we perceive other religions? I think that may be a real possibility. We have all these conceptions about things we don't understand. If we don't understand what something is really like we tend to think of it in a real stereotypical manner. This only hurts ourselves because then we don't get to experience and learn things from these things we don't understand.

After learning this I can't help but feel a little stupid. Why would I think something about Christian rock and not even give it a chance before? Were my feelings just too strong to overcome that I just assumed no matter what the band is, if it is Christian rock it has got to suck. Well now I know the truth, and I urge all of you to see it too.

Citation:

Wolfe, Alan. The Transformation of American Religion. New York: Free Press, 2003. Print.