How Christian Rock Fed the Culture Wars

Culture Study Podcast

Anne Helen Petersen

Fashion & Beauty, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 637 Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2024

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you grew up in or adjacent to evangelical culture, the sounds of ‘90s and early 2000s Christian Rock are as familiar to you as the beginning bars of Britney Spears “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” The Newsboys, dcTalk, Jars of Clay, Third Day, Jennifer Knapp, Caedmon’s Call — these groups peaked just twenty years ago, but the sound and vibe feels like an archeological find. Same for the crossover “secular” hits from Creed, Lifehouse, Sixpence None the Richer, and Switchfoot. Where did Christian rock go? Did it just get devoured by Nickelback and Noah Kahan? Was it actually good? And what purpose did it actually serve in what we now understand as the evangelical culture war?

Leah Payne, author of a God Gave Rock & Roll To You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music joins us to root the rise of Christian rock in history — and consider the ways it was wielded to control teens. If you grew up in this culture, there will be a lot of nostalgic groaning; if you didn’t, we’ve worked hard to make it as accessible as possible — and help connect some dots about how evangelical ideologies work their way into the mainstream.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	What do Bridgerton, Star Wars, the term goblin mode, and the Barbie movie all have in common?
0:08.6	That's right, the discourse, the constant, constant online discourse. They're also all episode topics from my new favorite show, Material Girls, a pop culture podcast that uses critical theory to understand
0:21.9	the zeitgeist. If you like Culture Study, you have to check out this bi-weekly show hosted by two
0:27.0	queer Canadian academics who love to get to the bottom of why certain things become popular
0:31.8	and what that popularity tells us about society. Each episode, they tackle a piece of pop culture, whether that's a book
0:38.6	or a movie, a meme, or a song, and ask why this and why now. And guess what? I was on a recent
0:45.7	episode all about athleisure. And let me tell you, these hosts, they do their research. We talked
0:50.5	about post-World War II manufacturing, second wave feminism, the neoliberal collapse
0:55.9	of work and leisure, the rise of Chip Wilson's Lulu Lemon Empire, and so much more.
1:01.7	Be sure to check out Material Girls wherever you get your podcasts or head to materialgirlspod.com
1:07.5	to learn more. That's material girlspod.com.
1:12.6	Okay, I am so excited for this episode.
1:15.9	And Melody has a song queued up that she's going to play for you, Leah.
1:19.9	And then you're going to explain this song and what it means to someone who has no context for it.
1:27.4	Okay, this is great.
1:28.3	This is a good challenge.
1:29.9	So I made with a tack on his big fat belly.
1:32.5	It wriggled around like Mother Lake Kelly.
1:34.9	It took me a while and catch what it said because I had to match a red the bumbers belly with my head.
1:39.6	Jesus saved is what is waved and a typical tattooed.
1:43.9	He stood on a box in the middle of the city and he claimed he had to pray.
1:49.0	Oh, so people think when they hear that I'm a Jesus freak.
	...

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