I mentioned in an earlier post that I have recently begun work on a new album. This particular musical project — my second full length “solo” record, if I could arrogantly claim that term — is the most “theological” of the various musical projects of which I have been a part. It is also the first serious recording project that I have undertaken since I joined the Rock and Theology project. So I can’t help but be reflective in the process of making this record; perhaps more reflective than I have ever been about “what I’m doing” with these particular songs in this particular band. In this post I’d simply like to throw out some very tentative reflections and questions, to “think out loud.” (Can I get a little more of me in my monitor?)

Although my “solo” material has for a long time featured overtly “religious” language, especially Christian imagery and references, I have always emphatically rejected the notion that what I am doing is “Christian rock.” (I have never been interested in “Christian rock,” with the exception of a couple very fringey “Christian metal” bands long ago.) And though no one, to my knowledge, has ever “accused” me of making “Christian rock,” a few listeners have come pretty close. A friend of mine told me once after a show that when he saw my band play he felt like he was at church — “In a good way,” he added. I believe my response was “Thanks?”

After another show, a solo set at a local coffeehouse, the owner stopped me and said he’d like to have me back — if I would stop playing “Jesus songs.” I had played a strange country version of the Roman Catholic liturgical hymn “I Am the Bread of Life” in what I had intended as a sort of tongue-in-cheek version. The owner apologized, insisting he didn’t want to interfere with my “ministry,” but he didn’t want any customers to be turned off by songs like that. Ministry? I turned down his offer to play there in the future.

For a long time I have thought about my “solo” project as inhabiting some sort of ambiguous “middle” area between “religious” and “secular” rock. There are quite a few artists that seem to inhabit this complex space, perhaps leaning to one side more than the other. I think of artists like Sufjan Stevens, Rosie Thomas, and Pedro the Lion on the “religious” end and artists like Will Oldham, Nick Cave, Sinead O’Connor, and Daniel Higgs/Lungfish and countless others on the “secular” side. But lately I’ve come to think that the way some of these artists talk about what they do bear traces of problematic ideas about “religion,” particularly those artists who publicly identify as “Christians” but who shy away from the label “Christian rock.”

Sufjan Stevens – “For The Widows In Paradise, For The Fatherless In Ypsilanti” (live)

For example, one frequent claim made by such artists/bands is the following: “We’re not a Christian rock band; we are just Christians who happen to be in a band.” I have heard this claim made by bands (who-happen-to-be-Christian) who openly refer to Christianity in their music. I have certainly made this claim before. But I fear that this claim sometimes rests on the assumption of the modern understanding of “religion” that privatizes faith, relegating it to an “interior” realm. Faith, according to this understanding, is not meant to be “public.” Not in politics, and especially not in rock and roll. I certainly agree with the allergy to the term “Christian rock” and all that comes with it. But I think it is important to question the modern assumption, alive and well in the rock world, that religion can be separated from life and from art, that faith must be “private.”

Will Oldham – “Death to Everyone” (live)

Another reason why many have rejected the label “Christian rock” is the idea that music that contains critical views of religion, of Christianity or of Christians should not be called “Christian rock.” “Christian rock” tends to be unapologetically devotional, such that much of it ends up accompanying liturgies of one kind or another. There is rarely anything “raw” or “real” about “Christian rock,” neither in its production values nor in its theologies. It is understandable, then, that Christian artists — er, artists who happen to be Christian — who wrestle with issues of, say, doubt would insist that they are not makers of “Christian rock.” They do, they say, something else. This is another view to which I am sympathetic. But here again we can discern a troubling presumption, namely the notion that “Christian rock” cannot be critical of Christianity. At its root is the idea that Christians really cannot or should not be critical of their faith communities. This is an assumption that seems to me not only false but very dangerous.

And aside from the assumptions about “religion” contained in these positions, something about them also seems, on a very basic level, to be kind of evasive or dishonest. Very different from, say, the very public and very honest — yet very fluid — spirituality of someone like Nick Cave, seen here in a short interview clip before a television performance of “God is In the House”:

Nick Cave – “God is In the House” (live)

Let me return to reflection on my own music making for a moment. Sometimes I look at my lyrics, and for all of the critical and borderline blasphemous images that I use, I can’t help but feel that what I am doing is ultimately “Christian.” In much of my current crop of songs I am critical of Christian faith ultimately because that is my faith. I criticize the church because I am part of that church. I even occasionally quote theologians and scripture (albeit in sometimes twisted and decontextualized ways) in order to make points or, better, to provoke questions about religious faith and life. I have been known to play covers of liturgical songs like “Take, Lord, Receive” and “I Am The Bread of Life” at indie rock and punk shows.

If what I am doing in my solo work is not “Christian” rock, what else is it? Some may hear my music (or read my descriptions of it) and reply, “Who are you kidding, man? You’re making Christian rock.” Others would hear it and insist that it is not. And I would agree with the latter, primarily because I do not think of my music being “for” Christians — “Christian rock” seems to be music by Christians for Christians and anyone who might be “evangelized” by it by accident — and because the “Christian rock” tradition is not the tradition from which I come.

Still others would likely ask why such a question really matters, why I would feel the need to claim a “religious” identity in the context of my music making one way or the other. But that question could be bounced over to interrogate my life in the context of academic theology: Why do I feel the need to claim the identity of a Christian or Catholic theologian? Why claim a theological “genre”? And then, of course, the question follows: why would it be appropriate to claim that kind of identity in this area of life, but not in my musical life?

I have always rejected the term “Christian rock” and I cannot see myself embracing the term at any point in the future. But I want to make sure I oppose that categorization based on what “Christian rock” is, has been, and represents concretely and historically, rather than on an abstract, “principled” allergy to the idea. And I want to express that opposition in ways that do not perpetuate dangerous ideas about religion and its relationship to art, to politics, and to everyday life. “Christian rock” is not just an idea but a historically trackable phenomenon with its own concrete theologies and economies. It is on these grounds that I reject the term “Christian rock” to describe my own music making.

And I also want, in the manner of Nick Cave, to be honest about my music making and the “space” from which it comes, no matter how that space might look at any given time. And in all honesty, despite my severe allergy to the “genre” of “Christian rock,” if I were asked if I make “Christian” rock, I might have to, honestly, say “Yes and no.” And then repeat, firmly, the “no.”

The terms “Christian” and “rock” have been brought together in problematic ways, to be sure. Can that encounter be imagined otherwise? Is it worth thinking about, at least for the sake of problematizing our assumptions and instinctual allergies?

Daniel Higgs (of Lungfish) – “Holy Bible Time” and other songs (live)

Michael Iafrate
Morgantown, West Virginia

6 Comments »

1. 

   25 + yrs at this. I here ya.

   Comment by Dale Ray — May 30, 2010 @ 11:16 am

2. 

   What seems to end up defining Christian rock, in many churches (at least in my youth group experience in the 1990s), is whether or not the label that signed the band is overtly Christian or not. Of course there is so much integration and consolidation in the music industry that the “Christian” labels are really just subsidiaries of the four majors. It’s hard not to be cynical about the music industry.

   Comment by Dan — May 30, 2010 @ 10:09 pm

3. 

   On one hand, I want to be a stickler about grammar (e.g. Wittgenstein) and say that “Christian” rock is as nonsensical as a “Christian” dog. As a modifier, it presumes agency on the part of its object. But we can’t ask whether the “rock” under consideration is “saved”, whether has it been baptized and/or confirmed, whether it accepted the Lord Jesus into its heart, etc. That’s nonsense.

   On the other hand, the use of the term serves a specific use, at which Dan’s comment below hints: It determines the shelf on which the record store places the CD, or the hyperlink with which iTunes tags the track, all in order to market to a specific demographic. As much as I (like you, Mike) would like to quibble with the ontology of it all, the term serves a unique function. But the narrowness of that function has unfortunately defined its ontology.

   To answer your final question, yes, this issue is very much worth our consideration here, the pragmatisms of marketing notwithstanding. Perhaps we could distinguish between the term as a marketing one or an ontological one? Though I imagine the proprietor of your coffee shop might not appreciate the distinction.

   Comment by Andy Edwards — May 31, 2010 @ 11:27 am

4. 

   It seems to me that you can identify “Christian rock” by one easy test: can you replace the name “Jesus” with “baby” and make a regular, cheesy rock song? If so, then you’ve got “Christian rock” (which is essentially the same as “Christian pop,” but with louder electric guitar).

   Also, I have yet to hear of anyone being evangelized by “Christian rock,” since it’s mostly warm and fuzzy and all about how great it is to love Jesus (I’m not saying it’s not great to love Jesus, I just don’t love him with rainbows and sparkles, since he will come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, I think he deserves a little more respect than that). I guess that would be another way to identify whether or not you’re playing “Christian rock,” one which you’ve mulled over in your post; the non-critical nature of “Christian rock.” That’s actually one of the things that gets me about the evangelical movement (broadly construed in a gross caricature): their complete inability to be critical. Why is it so wrong to question God? Why can’t we be confused and unsure? That’s why this so-called “Christian rock” isn’t worth my time – are they going to go to Folsom Prison to play to murderers and rapists? If not, then they ain’t Christian. So, there’s my two cents, maybe you’re music is more rightly to be called Christian than theirs.

   Comment by Sean — June 1, 2010 @ 7:52 am

5. 

   I tend to ask whether a particular recording needs a given modifier to justify its existence; that is, George Harrison earned very few (if any) of his listeners because of his repertoire exemplifying “Krishna Rock.” Harrison just plain rocked, and you liked his arrangements or not, his songwriting or not. I don’t buy The Hold Steady because they’re “Christian” (I don’t even know that any of them are Christians), I buy it because they play excellent rock music. I still listen to many of the performers who wrote and recorded under the influence of Sri Chinmoy, and have always appreciated Pete Townshend (at least before the Broadway phase) as musician/performers, without questions relative to the theo-spiritual modifer that might most appropriately hang from their sales racks.
    
   So, if one needs to be categorised as “Christian rock” in order to win an audience, there’s a problem — and you’re right to want not to be judged by that standard if you’d rather earn attention on your merits as a musician simpliciter.
    
   That’s a different question from whether you, as a musician, understand yourself as bearing witness to the gospel (whether explicitly or obliquely). One can certainly testify to beauty and truth without moaning about how awesome Jesus is. One can bring listeners to a place where they’re in the crosshairs of the Holy Spirit (as it were). One can stand as a public figure who adheres to ideals of integrity, justice, responsibility, and so on. Against such things as this there is no law, and they do not need the category-label “Christian.”

   Comment by AKMA — June 2, 2010 @ 2:43 am

6. 

   I agree with the position of not wanting to be identified with as a “Christian rock band”. I am in a fledgling rock band myself and I personally identify with being a Christian but I have decided to be of no particular denomination. I started off so but found I have more solace and the peace of God outside denominations. Besides that our band is divided by secular members and Christian members, and we get on extremely well together. I write the lyrics always with the principals of Christianity in mind but they are not overtly done; as I leave them open to interpretation. I believe its okay to give a sign and point others in a better direction but not to ram biblical stuff down throats. This way I hope our music can be enjoyed by both Christian and non-Christian alike.

   Comment by Lou Lou — April 28, 2011 @ 11:09 pm

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