YOUNG, Shawn David. Gray Sabbath: Jesus People USA, the Evangelical Left, and the Evolution of Christian Rock

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-237
Author(s):  
Richard Bustraan
Keyword(s):  
Christian Rock

scholarly journals Christian rock concerts as a meeting between religion and popular culture

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 36-55
Author(s):  
Andreas Häger
Keyword(s):  
Rock Music ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Evangelical Christianity ◽  
Religious Service ◽  
Christian Music ◽  
Religious Music ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Christian Rock ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The 1960S

Different forms of artistic expression play a vital role in religious practices of the most diverse traditions. One very important such expression is music. This paper deals with a contemporary form of religious music, Christian rock. Rock or popular music has been used within Christianity as a means for evangelization and worship since the end of the 1960s. The genre of "contemporary Christian music", or Christian rock, stands by definition with one foot in established institutional (in practicality often evangelical) Christianity, and the other in the commercial rock musicindustry. The subject of this paper is to study how this intermediate position is manifested and negotiated in Christian rock concerts. Such a performance of Christian rock music is here assumed to be both a rock concert and a religious service. The paper will examine how this duality is expressed in practices at Christian rock concerts.

Evangelical Worship

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie C. Ross
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Religious Right ◽  
First Century ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Liturgical Studies ◽  
Academic Trajectories ◽  
Eyes Closed ◽  
Corporate Worship ◽  
Christian Rock ◽  
American Evangelicalism

Almost invariably, media stories with the word evangelical in their headlines are accompanied by a familiar stock photo: a mass of middle-class worshippers with eyes closed, faces tilted upward, and hands raised to the sky. Yet, despite the fact that worship has become symbolic of evangelicalism’s identity in the twenty-first century, it remains an understudied locus of academic inquiry. Historians of American evangelicalism tend to define the movement by its political entanglements (the “rise of the religious Right”), and academic trajectories (the formation of the “evangelical mind”), not its ecclesial practices. Theological scholars frequently dismiss evangelical worship as a reiteration of nineteenth-century revivalism or a derivative imitation of secular entertainment (three Christian rock songs and a spiritual TED talk). But by failing to engage this worship seriously, we miss vital insights into a form of Protestantism that exerts widespread influence in the United States and around the world. Evangelical Worship: An American Mosaic models a new way forward. Drawing together insights from American religious history and liturgical studies, and putting both in conversation with ethnographic fieldwork in seven congregations, this book argues that corporate worship is not a peripheral “extra” tacked onto a fully formed spiritual/political/cultural movement, but rather the crucible through which congregations forge and negotiate the contours of evangelicalism’s contested theological identity.

scholarly journals 'What These Cryptic Symbols Mean': Quotation, Allusion, and John Darnielle's Biblical Interpretation

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-128
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Mountain Goats ◽  
The World ◽  
Interpretive Methods ◽  
Christian Rock ◽  
Biblical Songs

AbstractThe Mountain Goats' repertoire of biblically-themed songs displays a salutary resistance to oversimplifying dichotomies. Their catalogue defies the imperative to fit into the "Christian rock"-vs.- mainstream "secular rock" market niches while at the same time it does not fit conveniently into the biblical-critical world's fascination with characterising certain interpretive methods as "legitimate" and others as "illegitimate." The Mountain Goats' songs don't challenge these dichotomies head-on, but they demonstrate the allusive richness available to an interpreter freed from rigid obeisance to these idols of the market and the library. Whereas in many popular interpretations, the Bible figures as an oracular repository of sacred law, or as a textbook of science and metaphysics, or a sourcebook for general spirituality, the Mountain Goats' biblical songs draw on the Bible as an all-too-human expression of how the world is (and will be), even when the appearances suggest otherwise. In cultivating a wide range of songs that reflects the Bible's characteristic underdetermination, the Mountain Goats make the moral and theological ambivalence of the Bible audible again without resolving that ambivalence into consoling or deplorable platitudes, theological dogmas or historical facts.

scholarly journals Salsa and Santeria: to the Problem of Desacralization of a Ritual

2015 ◽  
pp. 52-58
Author(s):  
O. A. Platonova
Keyword(s):  
Spiritual Experience ◽  
Christian Rock ◽  
Color Symbolism

Salsa and Santeria: to the Problem of Desacralization of a Ritual (by Olesia Platonova) is dedicated to the dialogue between a popular genre (salsa) and a religion (Santeria) in the context of desacralization of a ritual. Comparing salsa and other genres, like gospel, spiritual, Christian rock, the author notes a profound connection between a song and a personal spiritual experience of the musician, analyses some examples of the genre: subject symbolism, color symbolism, bilingualism of texts (the Spanish and Yoruba languages), music quotations of Santeria’s hymns.

scholarly journals Russian rock music: “Orthodox art”, new religion or “lovely paganism”?

2020 ◽  
pp. 10-28
Author(s):  
Andrey Beskov
Keyword(s):  
Rock Music ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Russian Orthodox ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Russian Orthodox Church ◽  
Rock Bands ◽  
Christian Rock ◽  
Song Lyrics ◽  
Scientific Periodicals ◽  
New Religion

This article is dedicated to examination of the art of several famous Russian rock bands, which leaders have repeatedly declared their religiosity and to some extent are engaged in missionary activity of the Russian Orthodox Church. The author covers the questions whether it is appropriate to attribute the art of such rock bands to the genre of “Christian rock”, and do the rock musicians contribute to popularization of Orthodox doctrine and churching of their fans, or rather to desecration of religious values and ideals. For solution of the set tasks, the author analyzed song lyrics of the prominent Russian rock bands, as well as interviews of their leaders and other publications in mass media and scientific periodicals that touch upon a religious aspect in rock music. The art of various Russian rock bands often attracted the attention of researchers, who noticed religious (primarily Christian) symbolism in the song lyrics. However, there has not been previously raised a question of whether it is possible to define the art of such rock bands as “Christian rock” or “Orthodox art” based on existence of references to Christian symbolism. It is demonstrated that leaning on the comprehensive analysis of the art of several Russian rock bands that use religious symbols and allusions in their lyrics, there are no grounds to attribute them to the genre of “Christian rock”. Despite the fact that the majority of leaders of these bands and the authors of texts are Orthodox, the lyrics, visual arrangements and videos often have the elements of Neo-Paganism.

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