by undo Sun Aug 15, 2021 2:01 pm
I was deep into Christian rock as a teenager and unfortunately into my early 20s just because it was what my friends were obsessed with. It was huge, there was something for everyone, 99% of it sucked but to be real, that's not too far off from the usual distribution when it came to secular music (95% of it being irredeemable garbage). About ten years ago I took a look around and... it seemed like Christian rock just didn't exist anymore? Well that just can't be!
I didn't just have this impression simply because Cornerstone Festival ceased to be after 2012. It just seemed like there were no new bands coming up and taking the place of the old bands that had been fucking huge mainstays throughout the 90s and 00s. The fact that anyone was even talking about Newsboys or DC Talk or Audio Adrenaline at this point at all, bands filled with dudes in their 50s and 60s, was straight up embarrassing. Who were the new Christian festival bands? And where were all the bands that were selling 10,000 copies per album but still barely getting by as the "Christian [secular band]" or making Christian shoegaze, Christian rap, Christian industrial rock, etc.? I know, there is at least one Christian rapper who actually charts, but his appeal has been falling year after year with every release and kids want to listen to other kids rapping, not some guy in his 40s.
Reading various articles about what happened to this entire industry, it seems that Christian music was hot AF in the 90s and all the little labels that made Christian rock a thing were snatched up by the majors. And then when the entire record industry collapsed at the turn of the century, all of these acts and labels were straight up dumped to try to stop the bleeding. This effectively killed the entire subculture. (This was touched on in the recent review of Jesus Freak in Pitchfork). Shitty hack bands like my friends' favorite Third Day jumped ship around this time to make "worship music," which seemed like a natural step towards maturity or something but really it was just professionals seeing the writing on the wall and pivoting to a new approach that would allow them to keep their careers running for another 30 years. Fuck them so hard.
Christian rock is dead? Good, I hear you saying. But was it?
I lived through that shit and I watched it completely subsume my friends' and peers' adolescent stirrings and healthy streaks of rebellion. They were bonkers for Christian ska, they lived for the stupid concerts and high production youth group events. The outside world rarely poked through their little bubble and whenever it did--usually from me wanting to watch some R rated movie or just a little bit of affirmation that, hey, this secular music I'm listening to is actually good please come and enjoy it with me I'm so fucking lonely--I'd find out they were primed to effortlessly resist its temptations. This should be awful, right? What if it wasn't?
What if this Christian consumerist culture kept them at arms length from forces that would have loved to hijack their black & white worldview, their sense of identity, their moldable and weaponizeable sense of Duty for the Lord? What if it kept them from getting mixed up in the stupid culture wars that were targeting their parents (Promise Keepers, etc.) or getting them interested in politics? This was all before social media so yeah, it was a different world. But what if that culture was still with us? What do Christian teens turn to now that it's completely gone?
Is all this a moot point? Do today's Christian parents just not care what music their kids listen to anymore? Are religious young people just co-existing in culture alongside all of us, going to Church on Sundays and youth group every Wednesday night but otherwise swimming in the same extremely online toxic world that we're all trapped in?
This worries me because teens need to feel like they're rebelling against something, and Trumpism/the alt right/far right religious leaders that they never would have been exposed to in the past but are probably just ending up in their recommendations these days all provide that outlet and it probably feels just as cathartic and real and purposeful and exciting as the harmless bullshit that used to be a stand in for it.
I realize that this board is really not the most appropriate place for me to make this post. I'm struggling to even imagine where this could ostensibly be discussed in a critical way because Christians would never engage with this issue honestly. And I guarantee you that RYM members would respond to the topic with "Christian music is dead? Haha Good!" and then go put on some Neutral Milk Hotel or some shit.
This stuff kept kids suspended in a permanent childhood, eternal Sunday School segregated from the world and completely ill-equipped to ever interact with it on its own terms. While it was indoctrinating kids, it was incredibly useful for keeping them at bay and neutering their sense of mischief. Without this alternative to the dog-eat-dog world of the Internet and the euphoric joys that fascism promises for the in-group, I'm concerned for the future. This seemed like a totally inconsequential fantasy world that was fun to laugh at but I worry that without its influence on impressionable Christian kids, they're going to find other rebellious idols to imitate.