2022 to 2023 public fellow at public religion research institute. and her research has been supported by the louisville 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 paine's work analyzing religion, politics and popular as appeared in the waington post nbc news religion service and christianity today. she's also co-host of weird religion, a podcast about religion, popular culture and rock that doesn't 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, that's right. well i, i, i googled what you do at. an author meet and greet a bookstore. well google told me was you read an excerpt and thenou 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 i'm going to start with the beginning. cc and the industry of american. 14 year old david shields. nervous, really nervous. nope mike okay. oh. go. there you go. oh, boy, this is me. i'm booktv having a mike. mike, feel moment. i'm 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 i'm 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 i'm here to do and thank yoso being here. 14 year old david 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 it's 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. they're tools biblically based lyrics screamed over distorted the band book by david's cool skater youth pastor played in the youth building of a southern baptist church by david's dad. we were absolutely, david recalled years later. but the small crowd of evangelicals cheered southern baptist churches. ofhe 2000s. we're not widely known for being death metal tastemakers, but david ans bandmates did not see their work as metal per 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 ■pschool crushers were not uniq. they were among thousands of and artists who in the second half of the 20th century performed on sanctuary three stages in youth roomsfestivals denominational meetings, 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 time school crushers took the stage. however, ccm was in a precarious position once an 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 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 producedusic 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 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 vions 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 industry's core customers were suburban middle class white american adolescent. ccm marketers were certainly not alone in recognizi 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 children socially spiritually anditically as the industry grew, so did confidence in kim's 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 the ambient sound of white evangelicalism. it felt it certainly was for me growing up in as a pentecostal pastor's 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. i'm editorializing here. but yes, he didn't want it in his home. and as a family we didn'9&t the means to participate in the middle class, suburban consumption patter the concerts, festivals, albums and other merchandise. but many young people around were immersed in the world of youth groups and christian music festivals. i knew had either heard aim or performed live action version of a carmen in college, i was introduced to revivalist by derrick johnson, a conductor, vocal arranger andl ensemble 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 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 coee 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 andy's legendary art house studio for several years. i did understand, as a 21 year old barista, the scope of charlie's 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 chiamore 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 straigh middle class, white ideals were adored. men who could and would be manly, according to straight, white, mide 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 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 billboardarts, and listd 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 whit marn masse to white evangelical mothers and youth pastors for consumption. white evangelical children. it is also a large scale, multigenerational conversation about angelical 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 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 god's work in the world. while there were always notable dissenters, for the most part, those within the industry regarded prophets as a sign of god's 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 beevangelical. 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 official denominational congregational teaching. not through the market, consumers overturnee 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 journalists, publishers, producers and, artists as well as businesspeople, church leaders, politicians and activists in and around the industry. 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■i strict ideological boundaries around ccm. those who asked their comments to remain off the record did so understandableeasons. people who work in evangelical and then publiclyow evangelical norms risk their livelihood along with their social,us and sometimes familial networks. i'm profoundly who are willing to speak to me about the industry and the thate the commercial religion that is evangelicalism in the united states t silliness,he 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 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, i've included representative observations and comments from those listeners. indeed, there is a main character in this book. it is the ccmie ccm listener, real and. the biographies oparticular 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 s the situation was even more stark when it came to race. nonwhite artists and entertainers represented more than 10% of th singles even as m musicians appropriated black gospel music. hip hop and rap. and even as non-core christian charts diversified in late 20th century. the demographics of ccm artists remained remarkably like american as a whole. the ccmld segregated. that segregation goes back to the industry's earliest days. ccm grew out of early 20th century white revivalism. the networks ofredominantly, not exclusively white churches can't meetings and bible colleges served as the tracks upon which ccm would travel the nation. many of these institutions desegregation well into the 20th centur tastes buying habits of e 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 this book starts, with those 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 cms's roots in theusiness 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 you'll 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. that's a great question. so you music ichthys, which is right from rit kentucky and k is fascinating about this as a festival is that it is rooted in those early 20th century revivals right. it's a christian mu festival that was essentially an version of a camp meeting, adfashioned o this was one of the earlier versions of of christian festivals that got started in 1970s and then really peaked in the early 2000 where they got to be huge, hundreds of thousands of people would come to christian music festivals and the mainstream ones, the that had the the top charting artists were were festivals the creation festival but cornerstone festival is a really interesting kind of quirky festival that represented, i think, acircles. so the bands who were invited to cornerstone festival were that may or may not conform to the kind of strict boundary around what was so christian music and and cornerstone because. it had a reputation for being ff big bands got their start at that festival and then they would go on to stardom in other venues. but i, i do find that people who were fans and since you are here, i'm going to guess that you're going to know everything that i'm about to say because a rattles and stuff, but people who are fans of music from labels like tooth and nail record or five minute walk records, those kind of scalloped metal music cornerstone was was sort of the annual family gathering where people would get together and celebrate that those kind of e of music and yes that that'e thing that i, i try to capture in this book that there is a mainstream conversation and then there's always dissenting voices and really people if you if you look at conversation about that music, you can see them talking about, well, who are we and who are we going to be? and most importantly, what do we want for our children. and so cornerstone festival hosted bands and young kids wh would do you think you know very wild things like where weird colored hair earrings and tattoos things like that that were a pretty and evangelical circles. so did you did you ever go to cornerstone? yes. my my youth pastort fully dressh and was like chasing as they were driving their golf carts and down the i wore free hugs t shirt and just gave out all the free hugs and it's definitely like just kind of reminisced back on that now since it's been probably like ten years since it has even been in existence. mm hmm. just it was a wonderful festival. yes. and, you know, it's it's roots are in a a essentially like a christian hippie commune called jesus people usage ofhose f or those who who know which was the host of that festival. so it always had hippie flair to it that other more mainstream festivals■ never, never had. and i think for, you know, i think a lot mo people, a lot fewer people went to cornerstone, but a lot more people, remember, have vibrant of that. then then, you know, those bigger festivals. so you so much. that's a great question. hey megan. hi, dr. park. hi, megan. megan is my student i'm so happy to see her. my questio
Related Keywords