Contemporary Christian Music

Christian music has a long and storied tradition throughout the course of the history of the faith and the Western, European world in general. For much of this history, in fact, the concept of what could be considered to properly constitute “Contemporary Christian music” would have been inextricable from contemporary music in general, as religious belief and practice has furnished a basic engine behind the creation of music for much of human history, perhaps only rivaled by the secular function of providing for social gatherings, which in its most primal form might be reasonably considered to constitute a kind of religious activity as well. Popular as opposed to “serious” or academic music consumed by cultural elites has often been found to be less tied to prevailing cultural prohibitions and restrictions and thus can at times throughout history has been related more problematically to religious doctrines. During the 20th century, when the growth of the time available as leisure became more widely accessible to a larger segment of the population than ever before, coinciding with a weakening in societal norms and religious values, popular music as defined as being essentially secular gained rapidly over religious music, which came to be associated with traditional forms restricted in their airing to the environment of places of worship.

During the late 1960s, as popular forms of music such as rock & roll assumed a decided preeminence in cultural life, the concept of contemporary Christian music first arose as a planned response to and defense against the effects of this cultural shift. The idealism of the sixties counterculture, which was often directed in directions considered secular such as leftist activism and experimentation with drugs, often led to a new interest in the figure of Christ, and thus to a new potential source for listeners to and creators of Christian music. One consideration taken into account by Christian church leaders at this time was the growing popularity of rock music across a wide spectrum of the culture, transcending people with lifestyles incompatible with or beliefs directed against the adherence to a Christian lifestyle. An early book about Christian music to consider the possible effects of this trend was Rethinking the Church, by Paul Wohlegumuth, who predicted that in the 1970s contemporary Christian music would become more compatible with rock instrumentation and composition as the genre became more conservative with age.

In the community devoted to issues of Christian music, opinions vary on the issue of the direction taken by contemporary Christian music in the direction of the styles of rock and pop. It is a visible issue due to the strength of the contemporary Christian world as a viable market for the recording industry, which in the 1980s became a multimillion dollar business after a long period of being less visible. Some people feel, however, that Christian music should have the ability to stand against the practices of popular culture, while others have celebrated the present day popularity of contemporary Christian music among many young members of Christian congregations.