God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music
Leah Payne (Oxford University Press, 2024)
Review by Deanna Witkowski
As a teenager in the 1980s raised in the midst of evangelical Protestant subculture, I grew up listening to contemporary Christian music. In seventh grade, when my family did not have enough money to buy a Christmas tree, my sole Christmas present was Amy Grant’s 1982 platinum-selling album, Age to Age. As a developing musician, I supplemented classical piano and flute practice by playing and singing from songbooks that corresponded to several of Grant’s albums: Age to Age, Straight Ahead, and A Christmas Album. In high school, I joined the Word Book and Record Club, receiving monthly cassettes of new releases in the mail. (My favorite, which I still have, is Vision, by British songwriter Chris Eaton, perhaps best known for his co-write with Grant on the modern Christmas anthem “Breath of Heaven.”)
Forty-some years later, during a visit to my mother’s home this summer, I found Grant’s Age to Age album and songbook in a cabinet of vinyl LPs. I brought both items back to my home to listen anew with the ears of a professional pianist-composer-recording artist and as a liturgical jazz scholar (like Grant, I have my own songbooks of original sacred music). I also wanted to listen to Grant’s breakout album for the sake of writing this review of Leah Payne’s 2024 book, God Gave Rock and Roll to You: A History of Contemporary Christian Music. I mention all this background at the outset to clarify my relationship to some of the music that Payne discusses, as both a past consumer of that music and now a practicing musician who composes music for the church.
Payne’s work fits alongside recent books like Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne in telling a larger story of how conservative politics became wedded with Christian subculture—in this case, with the contemporary Christian music (CCM) industry. In her introduction, Payne puts forward a guiding question: “What can one learn about the development of evangelicalism by looking at CCM, one of the largest, most profitable forms of mass media produced in the twentieth century?” (4) By tracing the growth of sheet music publishers, Christian radio, and evangelical organizations with three-letter acronyms (CBA, Christian Booksellers Association; NAE, National Association of Evangelicals; and NRB, National Religious Broadcasters), Payne explains how the term “evangelical,” which became an umbrella term for white, Protestant, conservative activists in the 1930s and 1940s, coalesced into the political behemoth that it is today due in part to the influence of CCM (17).
Much of Payne’s narrative is intriguing and yet not surprising. Payne is clear at the outset that her work analyzes CCM as an industry, and she does this quite effectively. She describes how CCM became a tool for forming Christian youth, encouraging a particular political (read: Republican) brand of activism, and promoting the nuclear family, heterosexual relationships, and sexual abstinence outside of marriage (2). Payne connects the intense concern that evangelicals had for the “precarious spiritual state” of teenagers in the early days of CCM to the “cosmic importance” of CCM sales in the 1980s: the more that teens were listening to lyrics extolling the virtues of staying separate from the world, the more their lives and souls were being saved—and, in some cases, molded for future conservative political activism.
Payne’s history reaches as far back as the 1890s, identifying the roots of CCM as stemming from Holiness revival meetings. Outlining the history of gospel songbook companies such as those founded by John T. Benson and James D. Vaughan, she shows how these early music publishers laid the foundation for later Christian music labels such as Word Records. Payne also shows how racial segregation was embedded in Southern gospel via its song lyrics emphasizing an antebellum “old time religion” that did not include people of color. By tracing CCM’s roots this far back, rather than simply to the “Jesus music” of the 1970s, Payne effectively shows how the Christian music industry was primed to make an impact on fundamentalist Christianity via revivals, radio, and the formation of national, cross-denominational organizations such as the National Religious Broadcasters.
Payne convincingly details partnerships between evangelists and musicians, such as Billy Graham and his longtime associate George Beverly Shea. She also mentions Graham’s featuring of a wide range of artists in Explo ’72, which was sponsored by the Campus Crusade for Christ and marketed as an alternative to Woodstock. The preaching and musical event included Jesus-music rocker Larry Norman, Black gospel artist Andraé Crouch, and Johnny Cash. In and of itself, this musical—and racial—diversity could have represented the richness of the people of God. Yet as Payne points out, the musical lineup “demonstrated that the efforts of the National Association of Evangelicals to create a coalition of the faithful under the category of ‘evangelical’ were paying off” (49). This de-emphasis of specific denominational leanings under the umbrella term of “evangelical” became a tool—just as music was used as a tool—to form political activists for conservative, primarily Republican, agendas.
Payne also outlines gender and racial disparities in CCM and contemporary worship music. In so doing, her work complements that of congregational music scholars Anneli Loepp Thiessen and Sarah Kathleen Johnson. Payne’s history shows how CCM was produced mostly by white, evangelical men for white evangelicals and how white, evangelical mothers became a primary audience via Christian bookstores. As the popularity of CCM waned in the 2010s and became subsumed by a worship music industry, Payne shows how worship music—and particularly the writing of worship music lyrics influenced by theologians such as “New Calvinist” John Piper—became “an intellectual, theological enterprise meant to be an extension of the preached word, and as such fell under the God-ordained purview of men” (148).
Besides the lack of non-white-male, worship-music songwriters, Payne details the gender issues surrounding CCM women artists’ physical bodies as well as their bodies of work. Album covers depicting recording artists such as Amy Grant were scrutinized as to whether or not they were too sexy. (Payne describes the “three-button controversy” regarding the cover of Grant’s sophomore album, the 1979 My Father’s Eyes.) Christian orthodoxy was often measured by the number of times that “Jesus” or “God” was mentioned within a song’s lyrics. In Grant’s case, controversies became increasingly pronounced once she received recording distribution outside of the Christian bookstore world, signing with A&M Records. With her crossover hits such as “Baby Baby” or “The Next Time I Fall” performed with Chicago lead singer Peter Cetera, fans had to decide whether or not they could accept an artist who was a Christian—and a woman—making pop songs about romantic love.
While Payne elucidates some of the major issues surrounding the CCM industry and effectively deals with the larger Christian subculture of which it is part and parcel, her treatment suffers from two things: a dismissal of CCM as music, and a lack of nuance about some of the history of the music itself. At the outset of the book, Payne writes: “I began to regard Contemporary Christian Music performances as more than quirky evangelical entertainment. Instead, I came to see CCM concerts as sites where power is created and negotiated” (3). While Payne does not claim to approach this subject as a musician or musicologist, such dismissive descriptions of CCM as “quirky evangelical entertainment” demean the music itself.
At one point, Payne likens vocalist Sandi Patty’s singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration gala in 1997 to Grant’s “continuing to release cozy Christmas albums” (101). Listening again both to Grant’s 1982 Age to Age and its follow-up, the 1983 A Christmas Album, there is no reason to call Grant’s music “cozy.” This characterization misses both the musical sophistication of these recordings—in their songwriting, musicianship, and production—and the actual history of the albums themselves.
The history of CCM . . . includes an important story of how an artist and her manager together changed the perception of what a musical recording artist who happened to be a woman could achieve.
In a May 2024 presentation at Grant’s farm, Grant’s first manager Mike Blanton narrated the beginnings of his work with Grant as an A&R (artists and repertoire) person for Word Records. Blanton recalled Grant performing as a bandleader at a Christian music gathering in Estes Park, Colorado, in 1981, after having released a string of early recordings that focused on her work as a solo singer-songwriter (including My Father’s Eyes). In Estes Park, Blanton was shocked that the audience did not clap for Grant but did applaud for Christian rock group DeGarmo and Key. Blanton realized that the audience was ready to celebrate Grant as a young woman with just her voice and guitar, but not as a bandleader—and, though he did not specify as such, likely even less as a bandleader with male instrumentalists. Blanton decided that Grant’s next record needed to change direction to show her versatility as a bandleader and musician who could effectively perform in a variety of styles. That album was Age to Age, the first CCM recording to certify platinum sales (as Payne mentions). With orchestrations including top-shelf session players on strings, alto saxophone, and electric bass, the album ranged from Michael Card and John Thompson’s “El-Shaddai” to Brown Bannister, Shane Keister, Michael W. Smith, Gary Chapman, and Grant’s “Got to Let it Go,” complete with a vocal backup quartet with jazz-influenced harmonies. The album is a testament to Blanton’s vision and Grant’s strength as a musician. While it could be said that this album came from a white, male vision, it must also be acknowledged that the larger Christian subculture was not accustomed or willing to accept a woman fronting a band that included male musicians. Moreover, artists—including Grant—rarely break out into the mainstream without the guidance of a dedicated manager. The history of CCM, therefore, includes an important story of how an artist and her manager together changed the perception of what a musical recording artist who happened to be a woman could achieve.1
Regarding the history of CCM, Payne oversimplifies the story of the teenaged Amy Grant bringing her guitar to Nashville’s Belmont Avenue Church of Christ in 1976 for her debut performance. Payne writes that even though the Church of Christ did not allow instruments to be used in worship, after hearing Grant, “Belmont Church promptly left the Church of Christ and became a non-denominational Charismatic congregation” (55). She further states that Grant’s church youth leader, Brown Bannister, helped Grant make a demo recording that caught the attention of executives at Word Records. Payne’s reductive story makes it sound like Grant’s performance shattered the denominational affiliation of Belmont Church. Yet it was three years earlier, in 1973, when the Belmont Church-sponsored Koinonia Coffeehouse began hosting “Jesus Music” artists, including Bannister. In addition, Bannister, who was a professional musician and taught at Belmont University, offered Grant studio time to make her demo; he was not just a church youth group director.
Portions of the text seem to be missing footnotes, making further research difficult. Particularly in chapter 8, which deals with CCM and national politics in the 2010s, references are not provided for many quotations, leaving the reader to wonder whether they come from interviews conducted by the author or other sources. Closer editing could also have helpfully caught multiple distracting misspellings (Clair Cloniger, Mariah Carrey, Tim LeHaye, Tod Beamer—instead of Claire Cloninger, Mariah Carey, Tim LaHaye, and Todd Beamer).
All this said, in terms of the development of evangelicalism via its musical subculture, God Gave Rock and Roll to You is an important addition to the study of white Christian nationalism and how CCM influenced the theologies of its listeners.
Deanna Witkowski is a pianist, composer, and author of Mary Lou Williams: Music for the Soul (Liturgical Press, 2021). She completed her Ph.D. in jazz studies from the University of Pittsburgh in 2024 and is adjunct professor of jazz piano at Elmhurst University.
This review appears in the fall 2024 issue of the American Catholic Studies Newsletter.
Notes
1 “Amy Grant & Guest Speakers on the Farm 2024.” May 12, 2024. https://youtu.be/preJE1xAsJU.