The historical effects of Jesus Music roll on and on
God Gave Rock & Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music by Leah Payne. Oxford University Press, 2024. 256 pp., $29.95
My parents were not fans of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), even though I was a preacher’s kid. The soundtrack of my childhood was Beethoven and Bach and, from December through Easter, the Messiah. In summer of 1985 I purchased a Steve Taylor cassette from a Christian bookstore and listened to it on my Sony Walkman—my own small act of rebellion. But I never became a real CCM fan—not even later, when a college roommate’s hard-core adoration for Sandi Patti and Keith Green filled our dorm room with praise songs around the clock.
Reading Leah Payne’s history of CCM, God Gave Rock & Roll to You, made me realize how different my childhood was from many of my white Christian peers, whose parents—especially their mothers—saw CCM as one potent tool they could use to raise righteous children. According to Payne, building a Contemporary Christian Music juggernaut leaned on the premise that “if music could be used by the devil to destroy American young adults . . . perhaps music—the right kind of music—could save them.”
Thus began a decades-long effort to secure young people’s salvation. Through CCM, pastors and other church leaders came to share their spiritual authority with rock bands and pop artists and folk singers—but also with record labels and music producers. No less key to the story were the marketers who knew exactly how to make the evangelical message palatable to teenagers. And more significantly, these marketers knew how to sell it to the teens’ mothers, who had money to spend and a burning desire to protect their children.
Payne begins her inquiry into the history of CCM by examining its roots in early twentieth-century tent revivals, followed by the marketing of songbooks and then, with the advent of radio, programming that reached multitudes. Even in the first chapters Payne makes a credible case for the nimble ability of white evangelicals to use available media as a means of propagating the gospel message—and doing so for profit. When rock and roll gained prominence in the 1950s, Christian media companies began offering a righteous alternative to the seemingly godless musicians who populated the airwaves and concert venues, and Christian record companies, like Word Records and The Benson Company, were born. “Rather than rebellion,” Payne writes, “recordings from those labels promoted patriotism and righteous living alongside end-times theology.”
The early chapters of God Gave Rock & Roll to You provide an excellent overview of twentieth-century evangelicalism, tracing the ascendance of CCM alongside the growing prominence of Billy Graham crusades in the 1950s and 60s, followed by Larry Norman and the Jesus People in the 1970s, and then the Moral Majority. Payne’s disciplinary knowledge as a professor of American Religious History at Portland Seminary (Oregon) is on full display throughout the book, as she deftly makes connections between American evangelicalism and what was unfolding in the Christian music scene, all culminating in the development of a magazine in 1979 and the burgeoning industry it covered, both called Contemporary Christian Music.
A child of the 1980s and young adult of the 1990s, I especially enjoyed Payne’s consideration of CCM’s flourishing during those decades. Almost anyone who grew up evangelical (or evangelical-adjacent, as I did) should find this section of Payne’s book fascinating, and perhaps a little nostalgic. Her analysis reminded me of tearfully singing along to Michael W. Smith’s “Friends” with my besties; having Amy Grant’s Christmas album on loop straight after Thanksgiving every year; and doing a college lip sync competition to Carmen’s “The Champion,” with Jesus as a boxer ultimately triumphing over Satan after the knockout (err, crucifixion).
I imagine this nostalgia especially drove interest in Payne’s enterprise, reflected in the substantial responses she received to her CCM survey; as of 2023, 1,263 people had shared their stories about the role CCM played in their lives. These surveys represent only a small piece of Payne’s research, and the book includes interviews with a number of significant CCM influencers, as well as some artists themselves, creating an impressively comprehensive study.
As I read, I realized how deeply ingrained CCM was in my day-to-day life as a teen and young adult; even if I wasn’t a CCM fan per se, the music was in the evangelical ether, its lyrics influencing my developing theology. And, as Payne suggests, beyond making money, this was CCM’s intent: to shape the hearts and minds of Christian young people, to raise up those who would faithfully adhere to evangelical dogma—a dogma distilled through the music they listened to and, to some extent, one modeled by the musicians themselves.
After all, someone like Amy Grant was perfectly worthy of aspiration—until she wasn’t. Her white-girl energy and beauty, and her embodiment of a traditional Christian housewife ethos (even before she had kids, and even though she was a professional artist) helped elevate her stature in evangelical circles while also putting “her body and her body of work” under considerable scrutiny, Payne writes. Some Christian bookstores refused to sell a Grant album featuring the singer in a V-neck shirt, which was considered too sensual. Still, Grant eventually found purchase in mainstream audiences. Her crossover Heart in Motion album (1991) suggested that CCM could extend its reach. It opened the doors for other CCM artists, including D.C. Talk and Jars of Clay, to do likewise.
Amy Grant, by the way, continued to be a divisive figure in CCM. First it was because of her divorce from singer Gary Chapman in 1999. Later it was because she departed from traditional evangelical teaching on LGBTQ+ issues. Her inclusionary stance did not really alienate fans, Payne notes, although it has made some Christian marketers “skeptical” of playing her work.
Throughout God Gave Rock & Roll to You, Payne’s central claim is that the promoters of CCM were and are overwhelmingly white and male, even if some of its best artists are not. This homogeneity had considerable influence on the industry—and, by extension, on the evangelical church itself. For many evangelicals, spreading the gospel message has often been intertwined with notions of political power, from the Moral Majority to the overwhelming support now for former President Donald Trump. One of many fascinating aspects in Payne’s book is how she traces the trajectory of evangelicalism’s current state and its backing of Trump through the music that was promoted on radio airwaves and in Christian bookstores.
This may be why the last chapter and epilogue of the book seem especially fitting. Payne ends her history by exploring the Christian backlash to Covid mandates and some Christians’ support of the January 6 insurrection. Sean Feucht and his “Let Us Worship” events offered an aggressive push-back to Covid restrictions in 2020 and 2021, as Feucht defied government orders in a number of states (including my own Oregon) inviting believers to sing praise choruses in mass gatherings, hoping to stoke revival in young people stuck at home. Feucht became an ardent and vocal supporter of Trump, who has relied on a similar religious fervor among his faithful to gain considerable power in today’s GOP. At the insurrection, Payne notes, a group of charismatics performed praise choruses, asserting that “God is not dead,” and that good will triumph over evil with a knock-out blow from their leader. In this case, of course, they were talking about Trump.
God Gave Rock & Roll to You is well-written, accessible, and exhaustive in its consideration of CCM as a historical movement and as an industry built and rebuilt by those with marketing savvy who could package faith for the masses. Whether CCM continues to shape the theology of its listeners remains unclear, especially considering Gen Z’s well-documented drift away from organized Christianity. Still, it will be interesting to see what happens next in the history of CCM and in evangelicalism itself. I hope that Payne will take up writing that next chapter—or book—too.Â
Melanie Springer Mock is Professor of English at George Fox University. Her books include Finding Our Way Forward: When the Children We Love Become Adults (2023), Worthy: Finding Yourself in a World Expecting Someone Else (2018), and If Eve Only Knew: Freeing Yourself from Biblical Womanhood to Become Who God Expected You to Be (2015). Her essays have appeared in Christian Feminism Today, Literary Mama, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Brain, Child, and Runner’s World, among other places. Much of her work focuses on her experiences parenting, feminism within Christian context, and social justice.