THE COOL CHRISTIAN
wrote for GQ magazine about his
own trip to the Creation Festival.
“Every successful crappy secular
group has its Christian off-brand,
and that’s proper, because culturally speaking, it’s supposed to
serve as a stand-in for, not an alternative to or an improvement on,
those very groups. In this it succeeds wonderfully. If you think it
profoundly sucks, that’s because
your priorities are not its priorities; you want to hear something
cool and new, it needs to play
something proven to please …
while praising Jesus Christ. That’s
Christian rock,” Sullivan wrote.
Or as Cartman, of South Park,
put it: “All right guys, this is going to be so easy. All we have to
do to make Christian songs is
take regular old songs and add
Jesus stuff to them. See? All we
have to do is cross out words like
‘baby’ and ‘darling’ and replace
them with, ‘Jeeesus.’”
This subculture was created
by the belief throughout much of
American evangelicalism that all
Christians were required to verbally proselytize for their faith as often as possible. Music wasn’t good
— or in other words, approved of
— unless it was didactic.
“There’s this whole subtle idea
HUFFINGTON
03.09.14
behind Christian music that you
always have to be telling people
about Jesus. It’s ludicrous, because no one who isn’t a Christian would ever want to listen to
that music,” David Bazan, a musician who performs under the
name Pedro the Lion, told Andrew Beaujon for the 2004 book
Body Piercing Saved My Life.
“THERE’S THIS WHOLE
SUBTLE IDEA BEHIND
CHRISTIAN MUSIC THAT YOU
ALWAYS HAVE TO BE TELLING
PEOPLE ABOUT JESUS. IT’S
LUDICROUS, BECAUSE NO
ONE WHO ISN’T A CHRISTIAN
WOULD EVER WANT TO
LISTEN TO THAT MUSIC.”
Lecrae’s goal is to deliver a message of faith and hope to a non-believing audience. But a “faith stigma” can prevent that audience from
ever hearing him in the first place,
he said. So endorsements from influentials like Sway are a big step
toward gaining wider acceptance.
Lecrae “makes being a Christian
cool,” Griffin, the BET director, said.