Professor of american religious history at portland seminary. Shes also. 2022 to 2023 public fellow at Public Religion Research institute. And her research has been supported by the Louisville Institute in the wabash center, teaching in theology and religion. Her first book, gender pentecostal revivalism making a female ministry in the early 20th century, won new rma. The journal of the society for pentecostal studies twice and 16 book award paines work analyzing religion, politics and popular as appeared in the Washington Post nbc news religion service and christianity today. Shes also cohost of weird religion, a podcast about religion, Popular Culture and rock that doesnt roll a podcast about christian rock. I would like to remind everyone, please silence your phones after leah a talk. We will have a question and session if you would then come up to this microphone here, please join me in welcoming you. Thank you oops. Oh, thats right. Well i, i, i googled what you do at. An author meet and greet a bookstore. So what they said was, well google told me was you read an excerpt and then you fielded questions. So i will be reading an excerpt for, you all. And then i look forward talking with you and seeing what what kinds of questions that this may bring up. So im going to start with the beginning. Cc and the industry of american. 14 year old David Shields. Nervous, really nervous. Nope mike okay. Oh. Okay. There you go. There you go. There you go. Oh, boy, this is me. Im booktv having a mike. Mike, feel moment. Im to go with it. Thank you so much for telling me that because i was kind of questioning about the lab. So okay. All right. So im going to go go back. Go back and just say i googled to do at a book event and reading an excerpt and then questions is what you do. And so what im here to do and thank you so much for being here. 14 year old David Shields was nervous really nervous it was 2005 and his death metal band skull was about to play a big show in lexington, nebraska. Skull crushers may not sound like an unusual name for a death metal band, and perhaps its not. But what made it somewhat unusual was that it was inspired by a passage in the bible romans 1620, the god of peace will soon crush satan under your feet. Skull crushers aim to crush heck out of the devil that night. Theyre tools biblically based lyrics screamed over distorted guitars. The band book by davids cool skater youth pastor played in the youth building of a Southern Baptist church by davids dad. We were absolutely, david recalled years later. But the small crowd of evangelicals cheered for more Southern Baptist churches. Of the 2000s. Were not widely known for being death metal tastemakers, but david and his bandmates did not see their work as metal per through the power of music they were spreading the gospel in a performance that was part rock concert, part religious Revival School crushers sought to entertain and to bring audiences to christ our yelling unintelligible lyrics were suddenly holy work, he remembered, because the lyrics were Christian David in the school crushers were not unique. They were among thousands of and artists who in the second half of the 20th century performed on sanctuary three stages in youth rooms and basements, at Music Festivals denominational meetings, colleges, coffee shops and camps around, the nation, these performers, along with Record Company executives, publicists, booking agents, radio deejays, journalists and many more, were part of the thriving industry of contemporary christian music, commonly called ccm. Cc, encompassed many genres, and often sounded like mainstream, but what made it distinctive is that it was created by and for sold almost exclusively to evangelicals. Consume by millions. Ccm was the soundtrack of evangelical conversions worship adolescence, marriage, child rearing and activism. Few services, youth, all nighters sporting events, holiday gatherings or political protests were complete without ccm accompaniment by the time school crushers took the stage. However, ccm was in a precarious position once an almost billion dollar industry with culture power. By the early aughts the genre was in decline. This book analyzes contemporary christian music as, an industry born from early 20th century southern white revivalist tim singing networks stoked by 1960s and 1970s baby boomer converts on the coast and fueled in the late 20th century by a vast network of evangelical media makers and marketers, booksellers, denominations congregations, parish, church organization, educational institutions, lobbying and advocacy as contemporary music grew enterprising conservative white protestants recognize that songs of revival were and are powerful portable vehicles for ideology. Gene, the following pages trace how come produced music that served as a sonic shorthand for white evangelical orthodoxy. Social action prized for its capacity to disseminate evangelical messages about. What it means to be christian and ccm songs often reflected and drove evangelical conversations pressing social and political like abortion, prayer in Public Schools or, teen abstinence. At the turn of the 20th century. However, contemporary christian music was by many of the Market Forces and cultural norms that built even though the industry declined precipitously in the early thousands. However, the theological visions and political ambitions of cms leading music makers and the Media Networks that connect them continue to shape evangelicalism in the United States and abroad. Contemporary christian served adults and young children, to be sure. But the industrys core customers were suburban middle class White American adolescent. Ccm marketers were certainly not alone in recognizing the buying power of american teens, but evangelicals became convinced that teens were in a poetic, precarious state, which meant that ccm sales had cosmic importance for evangelical. The teen years were a must win battlefield in the war for the future of the christian faith, the nation and even the mass media they recognized was an effective weapon. Be employed in that fight and they set out to save young souls and shape the nation through the pages. Trace how these evangelical caregivers in the United States came to see christian spins on american popular music. Even genres like death metal as invaluable tools molding their children socially spiritually and politically as the industry grew, so did confidence in kims ability to encourage teen citizens to conform to conservative norms and strengthen nation. It hard to overstate the power of contemporary christian music and its ubiquity in the late 20th century evangelical life as the ambient sound of white evangelicalism. It felt it certainly was for me growing up in the 1990s as a pentecostal pastors kid in a working class town in rural, my father had no love for ccm. He thought the quality of the music poor and he did not play it. My childhood home. He did not allow. Im editorializing here. But yes, he didnt want it in his home. And as a family we didnt the means to participate in the middle class, suburban Consumption Patterns of ccm, the concerts, festivals, albums and other merchandise. But many young people around were immersed in the world of youth groups and christian Music Festivals. And almost everyone i knew had either heard an immigrant song or performed live action version of a carmen in college, i was introduced to revivalist by derrick johnson, a conductor, vocal arranger and creator of a vocal ensemble that laid the foundation of what would become ccm. Derrick and his vocalist Debbie Johnson expand my understanding of sacred music beyond the boundaries of the pentecostal praise and worship tunes of my upbringing. He taught me to appreciate recognize west coast pop and jazz harmonies along with black gospel and southern gospel standards. After i graduated, i married an aspiring ccm artist and moved to nashville, tennessee in 2001, when ccm at its pinnacle in terms of prosperity and cultural influence as a new nashville in, i found myself doing what a lot of peers with humanities degrees did, working at a coffee shop. Two of my favorite customers were charlie and andy ashworth, whom i only knew as west coast fellow west coast transplants. I discovered eventually that charlie was an Award Winning singer songwriter, jazz artist, pianist, producer and record label executive who had also written a really important book about ccm. Charlie ended up offering me a job as his assistant. And i worked at charlie and andys legendary art house studio for several years. I did understand, as a 21 year old barista, the scope of charlies influence and work. Nor did i grasp in the early 2000 that i was bearing witness to a transformative moment in the Music Industry in general and ccm in particular. Eventually, i went to graduate at vanderbilt divinity school, became a religious historian, and i thought that my short, youthful stint in ccm was over. As i studied american religion, however, my perspective on ccm began to change. I began to regard contemporary christian music performances as more than just quirky evangelical entertainment. Instead, i to see them concerts as sites where power is created and negotiated at ccma performances exerted influence over attendees by soliciting public conversions, stoking political action, and seeking for social causes. In these performances, best selling ccm artists and audiences also performed and enforced strict evangelical ideals about gender sexual race, ethnicity and class. Women who could and would be womanly to straight, middle class, white ideals were adored. Men who could and would be manly, according to straight, white, middle class evangelical norms admired. Those who could not or would not adhere such standards were often marginalized used for many participants and observers. The trappings ccm the evangelical pop stars, interpretive dancers and puppeteers and mimes and bodybuilders. These are silly expressions of kitsch or, an embarrassing remnant of an evangelical. Silly things, however, can be deadly serious to devoted. Just ask anyone who has angered online fans of beyonce or taylor swift see them have the capacity to be both. So question that guides this book is what can one learn about the development evangelicalism by looking at contemporary arie christian music, one of the largest, most profitable forms of mass media produced in the 20th century. I treat ccm charts as representing of a conversation among but not exclusively white about what kind of people they wanted to be, what sort of world they wanted to create, what kind of actions they thought would honor god . To listen to that conversation, i analyzed the music of 20th century songbooks, early recordings and radio programs, tracked the top selling ccm through the pages of contemporary christian magazine and the billboard christian music charts, and listened carefully to the top 25 ccm albums from the late 1970s to 2023 as the soundtrack of white evangelical culture. Contempt arie christian music carried in music and merchandise, decades of musical conversation about evangelical identity and ideology because it was produced mostly by white evangelical men and marketed en masse to white evangelical mothers and youth pastors for consumption. White evangelical children. It is also a large scale, multigenerational conversation about evangelical values in. The United States. Converse about what music ought to be made. Who ought to make it and . What messages it should include. Reveal how evangelicals aim to their children to be idealistic. Sons of the kingdom of god. And of course, the United States part business, part devotional activity, part religious instruction. The trajectory of ccm also shows how the marketplace and technological innovations, evangelical identity and ideology. The story of ccm is the of how white evangelicals to the marketplace for signs of gods work in the world. While there were always notable dissenters, for the most part, those within the industry regarded prophets as a sign of gods blessing. The top selling artists and entertainers then reflect a consensus consumers about what constituted right christian teaching about god, the people of god and their place in public life. Certain ideas thrived in part because they appeal to white evangelical. Other ideas because they could not be easily sold in this. The history of the ccm charts is a history of how consumers, their theological and opinions unofficially through their buying practices year after year. Why are evangelical denominations and churches published official treatises and position papers and public statements. And all the while, the people who constituted these organizations purchased music that they came to believe represented true Christian Life charts represented rank and file white evangelical about what sorts people evangelicals believed be credible messengers of the gospel. And the charts displayed. What sort of ideas about god, the world and the people of god were bankable theologies. Sometimes these off the books ideas aligned with official denominational congregational teaching. Sometimes they did not through the market, consumers challenged and in some cases overturned the traditional Institutional Authority of their pastors congregations and denomination. Because many white evangelicals viewed kim as a distillation of christian orthodoxy, a purveyor of godly activity, and a form of christian parenting. Contemporary christian music was and is a very high stakes industry. I interviewed dozens of journalists, publishers, producers and, artists as well as businesspeople, church leaders, politicians and activists in and around the industry. Not all wanted to be quoted. The record, and many of those who willing were no longer heavily involved in the business. Some were retired. Others left of their own accord. And some were no longer welcome in the fold because they had rejected some of the strict ideological boundaries around ccm. Those who asked their comments to remain off the record did so understandable reasons. People who work in evangelical and then publicly disavow evangelical norms risk their livelihood along with their social, religious and sometimes familial networks. Im profoundly grateful to those who are willing to speak to me about the industry and the dense of organizations that constitute the commercial religion that is evangelicalism in the United States to capture the silliness, the seriousness of ccm among its listenership, i created ccm contemporary christian music, a survey in 2020. The survey invited respondents to reflect on how. They first started listening to ccm. Their favorite and least favorite and entertainers. How they participated in the industry. How may or may not have shaped their identities . What people unfamiliar with contemporary christian music should know about it and . Their formative memories that involved christian music. Some wrote that ccm was a peripheral part of their young adulthood, but most claimed that ccm had shaped their lives profoundly, for better and for worse. Now, i had hoped to somewhere between 50 and 100 responses, but i was soon overwhelmed. As of 2023, and i should say now 2024, i have more than 1200 ccm listeners from more than a dozen countries have participated in the survey. They shared stories of nostalgia, humor and joy and also stories of alienation, anger and despair. Through this book, ive included representative observations and comments from those listeners. Indeed, there is a main character in this book. It is the ccm audience, ccm listener, real and. The biographies of particular ccm figures are material as they were used to sell music to consumers and to serve models for christian living. Those models and the people who sold them have been always overwhelmingly white and male like mainstream popular music. Ccm is a male dominated business, both behind scenes and on the charts, where women occupied more than 20 of the top spots. The situation was even more stark when it came to race. Nonwhite artists and entertainers represented more than 10 of the top 25 albums and singles even as ccm listeners, ccm singers and musicians appropriated black gospel music. Hip hop and rap. And even as noncore christian charts diversified in late 20th century. The demographics of ccm artists remained remarkably like american as a whole. The ccm world was segregated. That segregation goes back to the industrys earliest days. Ccm grew out of early 20th century white revivalism. The networks of predominantly, not exclusively white churches cant meetings and bible colleges served as the tracks upon which ccm would travel the nation. Many of these institutions desegregation well into the 20th century. The tastes buying habits of the consumers that were embedded in these networks along with the racial hierarchies embedded within and expressed through these habits, also allowed the industry to remain homogenous for decades. This book starts, with those networks. Most books about contemporary christian music begin with the stories of bands or begin the story of bands. The school crushers with the sounds of rock. This book instead begins with cmss roots in the business of early 20th century revival. So thank you so much. All right. Thank you. Oh, thank you. This a tougher for for class. I would love to field. Any questions you have or comments. And should people come to this microphone over here, i guess i guess youll have to brave the microphone over there. Oh, oh. Hi, please. Yes, thank you. Thank. I wondering in your research, if you looked some of the festivals like cornerstone ichthys, which i know a lot of people around here probably went to a lot. Kind of the effect that that had on ccm. Thats a great question. So you you mentioned to christian music ichthys, which is right from right here in kentucky and is a a what i think is fascinating about this as a festival is that it is rooted in those early 20th century revivals right. Its a christian Music Festival that was essentially an version of a camp meeting, an Old Fashioned camp meeting, and so this was one of the earli