Reflecting On "The Day Christian Music Died"

This blog is a reflection on a 2010 article from RelevantMagazine.com by Joel Heng Hartse —
http://www.relevantmagazine.com/culture/music/features/23822-the-day-christian-music-died

Hartse wrote about his disillusionment after seeing a band member from Audio Adrenaline—one of his favorite 90s-era Christian rock bands—drop the mic toward the end of a concert to tell the mostly-Christian audience that, “This music that we play—it’s a trick.” This AudioA band member told the audience that the music was secondary and that it didn't matter. The message that they were there to share, Jesus Christ, was the main point.

And while both I and the author of that article understand what the band member was trying to do, it still confused fans like Hartse. What we Christian music fans needed wasn't a sermon, for we'd heard it only a few thousand times before. We needed rock role models who lived and sung about our shared faith. We didn't need fakes to tell us their music is a front; that they're really 'evangelists' with prop guitars.

Now not every Christian band went the evangelism route that Audio Adrenaline did. But plenty of those bands did that very same thing, night after night. I saw quite a few bands pitch similar plugs at the end of their shows.

For me, "the day Christian music died" was a bit more subtle. It came in the mid-2000s, when bands that I had previously loved—Third Day, Sarah Kelly, Jennifer Knapp, dc Talk, Superchick—either quit making music or put out CDs that seemed to lack that initial 'pop' that drew me to them in the first place. It was kind of hard. I wanted to be excited about these bands I once loved, but would find very few songs on their albums that inspired me as before.

Of course, this all points to the unreal standards to which we hold entertainers. It's not fair to them. Maybe, just maybe, this 'standard' is what caused Joel Heng Hartse's dilemma to begin with. Maybe Christian artists feel the power and temptation of fame, and rightly guard against it by proclaiming, "It's not about us, people! It's all about God!" But Hartse's dilemma with artists like Audio Adrenaline speaks to an authentic faith for which a lot of Christians seek. We don't want imposters, or actors. We don't want fake musicians who only want to preach at us. We want authentic people to simply live out their faith and let us watch and observe. No one's perfect, but we know that already. And we also already know the gospel story. Let us simply watch you live out your faith in ways that show the real messiness of life—not the polished, "we've got it all together" façade. Those end-of-show altar calls often feel like that polished façade. They don't show real believers who just want to make real, faith-focused, rock music.

And this applies to people, to Christian bands, to everyone who desires to live a faithful life devoted to God. We can't be fake. We can only be honest.