…Consumerism, music and Christianity

CCM: Selling Jesus by the pound?

By

Marc Alton-Cooper

Introduction

The aim of this document is to understand where cash and the cross within Contemporary Christian Music. In an increasingly westernised civilization the lines between the Christian world and the Western world appear blurred and this document hopes to shed some focus on that.

Defining consumerism

Consumerism focus’s is on this world and what we might like or want but not necessarily need. Consumer adverts bombard us with promises of well being and happiness through material goods and possession.

The power of personal choice and making oneself the centre of life is now becoming the new Gospel. As Nike say ‘just do it’.

And with the introduction of the market economy companies are now more than ever competing in a customer war to see who can entice the public into buying their products.

Service has become a consumer byword and yet whom do we really serve?

We seem to chase the tail of the material promise, of happiness by finally expressing ourselves through our choices. And through our right to have and want and our given right to have what we want when we want it.

Music

We’re going to look at music and some aspects of the consumerism that has crept into Contemporary Christian Music (CCM as I shall now refer to it as) in recent years but first a brief history.

• ‘Larry Norman – A true pioneer in Christian alternative rock since the 1960′s, he is called the “father of Christian rock” by many’ Jones, K 2006 The Changing face of Christian Music (www) http://christianmusic.about.com/library/weekly/aa031903b.htm

Larry Norman was the leader in what was then called the ‘Jesus Music’ in the late 1960’s; he along with other spawned a new musical genre called CCM.  CCM was written by Christians who wanted worship songs and lyrics in their particular style that made songs relevant to them and the generation that they were part of at the time.

Because of the overtly faith based lyrics record companies were unwilling to sign musicians to labels and therefore making it very difficult to get any airplay which was the key to getting a bigger audience and thus to spreading the word of the Gospel.

• ‘Christian only labels sprang up to record, release and market Christian recording artists. For most of the 1960s through 1980s, Word was the distributor of choice to Christian bookstores, and distributed at various times such later giants as Light, Star Song, and Reunion, as well as dozens of smaller labels like NewPax, Good News, Seed, Solid Rock, and others. In late 1974, Word negotiated a major deal with A&M to distribute Word products in the secular market on an unprecedented scale’. Callahan, M et al Word Records Story 2001 (www) http://www.bsnpubs.com/word/wordstory.html

Word records signed a deal with secular distributors A&M records in 1974. They have since carried on their books The Carpenters, The Police, Sex Pistols, REM and many more. A&M Records were sold to Polygram Records in 1989 for half a billion dollars.

By the 1980s and due to record companies like Word, CCM artists like Amy Grant were selling millions of units of records. There had been an explosion in the CCM genre and there was massive financial gain to be made by marketing such artists in the very same way as the major secular bands of the time.

In the last 10 years CCM in many ways has a spawned a youth sub-culture like so many other types of music. It is not that really surprising as it has borrowed many of its ideas from secular music and it’s interesting to note that artists like Toby Mac (formally of DC Talk one of the best known American CCM artists) have continued from Larry Norman left off, taking hold of their secular sub-culture roots and injecting in some cases, overtly Christian lyrics into it to overtly secular music.

• Move out of my way, Give up the mic, X to me is extremely Christ, Livin up in me, Like it or not, Put an X on my chest, Cuz X marks the spot. Mac, T. Extreme Days Momentum 2003 (www) http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/t/tobymac3900/extremedays185237.html
• Hush little baby, don’t you cry, Daddy’s gonna sing you a lullaby, everything’s gonna be alright, The Lords gonna answer your prayers tonight. Mac, T. Irene Momentum 2003 (www) http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/t/tobymac3900/irene185225.html

The lyrics used in many CCM songs like Irene and Extreme Days can define that artist’s faith viewpoint.

 In essence it may mean that music itself is neither secular nor Christian and it is the words that put the artists into the CCM/Christian music sub-culture but the question has to be asked here what the music is for.

Is it for worship it always has been in both the traditional and modern churches? Or is it for spreading the gospel message? Or are we seeing in this sub-culture its own brand of popular music which is just an echo of the secular sub-culture music around it?

It seems to be a mixture of all three, certainly the line between CCM, modern Worship and secular music has blurred. More so with well know Artists at the forefront on CCM like Delirious they have songs which fall into either camp although recently they appeared to struggle between the secular and Christian music world as secular success beckoned.

• Did you feel the mountains tremble? Did you hear the oceans roar? When the people rose to sing of Jesus Christ the risen one. Did you feel the people tremble? Did you hear the singers roar? When the lost began to sing of Jesus Christ the saving one. Delirious, Cutting Edge did you feel the mountains tremble? 1998 (www) http://www.stlyrics.com/songs/d/delirious6377/didyoufeelthemountainstremble889302.html

 However they re-released did you feel the mountains tremble? This reached number 40 in the UK records charts and was on the back on their success at number 26 with Waiting for the summer. Was this an opportunity to spread the Gospel story outside their particular sub-culture because of some secular success or as a cynical switch and bait scenario?

 Merchandising

In order to attract those who are outside the CCM sub-culture Christian record companies appear to have looked at the large secular labels in terms of marketing and consumerism.

With smaller Christian labels comes a smaller budget and therefore it makes it much more difficult to advertise an artist and thus seek a wider audience. With a secular artist the objective is to sell as many units in as many regions of the world as possible. It is done to simply make money for the record company and the artists, to make them a viable in a financial sense for future returns. Along with the promotional advertising of the product (this can be referring to both Artist and artists work) has grown up an industry with an industry producing promotional products.

Initially promotional products were given away to record shops to promote artists like the Beatles and with the rise of their popularity their images started to appear on hundreds of items and it has really continued in that vein. Consumers collect mugs, t-shirts, posters, calendars etc with these they are essentially buying into or consuming the artist, it tends to make the fans feel closer to the artists and it makes them very much part of their world.

Increasingly CCM artists are adopting this approach. Swithfoot for instance have their own store online as many artists do http://store.bandfarm.com/switchfoot/. Here you can buy a limited array of merchandise (due to the financial backing this particular band has): mainly T-Shirts, sweatshirts but also badges, hats, DVDs, posters and of course CD’s.

How different is this to secular bands sites?

In the Motorhead Shop http://www.imotorhead.com/index_flash.htm  you can buy T-Shirts, Jackets, Various Accessories, Caps/Beanies, Posters, Rare Collectibles and even Baby Wear.

So a fan of popular sub-culture genre buys very similar merchandise to that of the Christian sub-culture. If so is it for the very same reasons and what of the outcome?

Outcome

As we earlier discussed some fans buy the aforementioned merchandise to feel closer to their bands and to help them identify with them. This appears to the same for both the secular music sub-culture and the CCM sub-culture although there is a difference.

Lyrics are generally regarded as important by most artists but especially by CCM artists. The lyrics are considered by some as the line that is drawn between CCM and the secular world. Whilst the secular sub-culture sings about guns, sex, love, hate and realistically anything the imagination can think of.

• Why don’t you tell everybody what the fuck you gotta say? Fuck tha police, Comin straight from the underground Young nigga got it bad cuz I’m brown And not the other color so police think, They have the authority to kill a minority. Fuck that shit, cuz I ain’t tha one, For a punk muthafucka with a badge and a gun, To be beatin on, and throwin in jail, We could go toe to toe in the middle of a cell N.W.A. Straight Outta Compton F**K tha Police http://www.lyricsdepot.com/n-w-a/fuck-tha-police.html

CCM artist’s words are used by many as a ministry to inspire and to help spread the Gospel story. The artists doing this need financing as in general the labels are very small. To be self financing they must sell either large quantities of units or use secular consumerism to sell merchandise which in turn sponsors’ their ministry and helps spread the gospel message or does it?

• “80% of the more pop-oriented stuff (in CCM) has little or no content or impact at all! We have become an echo of the world, not a prophetic voice.” Chuck Girard, CCM pioneer of “Love Song” fame

If what Chuck Girard claims is true, are fans of CCM just buying into the artists in exactly the same way as secular sub-culture bands and what does that say about the lyrical content of CCM sub-culture artists?

Is the CCM sub-culture an alternative in today’s secular world or is really just another sub-culture with the same consumerism, the same ideals and the same influence on our youth?

Conclusion

I think there is a genuine musical Christian sub-culture at work, especially with leading bands like Delirious. But here in the UK CCM is incredibly small with very few bands and little or no financial backing for struggling artists.

If we are intent on using music and the talents given from God to our musicians as part of our ministry to our youth, then this will have to be financially viable for musicians to be able to put the time an effort into their art. And it may be only by selling merchandise that this is possible, for instance if an artists sells 20 T-Shirts at a concert that money will go back into financing the artist, their recordings and more merchandise.

I believe this may be one way for us to support our CCM artists who put much time and energy into their ministry which should be seen as equal to any other out reach ministry.

So in many ways we are echoing the culture around us and it seems we are using it to further the Kingdom of God but I can’t help feeling a little uneasy being this close to world of consumerism and I do wonder in my heart…are we selling Jesus by the pound?