0:07

Aksis Moondi Welcome

0:29

to Straight White American Jesus. My name is

0:31

Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San

0:34

Francisco. Our bonus episode, the exciting

0:36

time of the month where we sit down, we

0:38

answer questions, we tell stories, we

0:40

let it loose a little bit. Dan, I think

0:42

he's drinking a beer. Are you there, Dan, drinking

0:44

a beer? I am. I am here and I

0:46

cannot confirm or deny that I'm drinking a beer.

0:49

Alright, I'm not going to ask you what beer because then we're

0:51

going to get emails about people hate that beer or they love

0:53

it or then it's going to be a whole hipster

0:55

debate in the Discord. I don't want to do it.

0:59

I am drinking a nice coffee

1:01

because I went on a boba

1:03

overload last week. Some people

1:05

got hurt and I don't want to really go down

1:07

that road again. I'm trying to be better. We're joking

1:09

about me living on the edge. I'm just saying, like,

1:11

you know, got a cut back on the boba, go

1:13

back to the coffee. But

1:15

enough of this this

1:18

chicanery. We have a very special

1:20

guest today and that is

1:22

Dr. Leah Payne of Portland Seminary,

1:24

author of God Gave You Rock and Roll.

1:27

An amazing book we're going to talk about right now. Leah,

1:29

thanks for coming here. Thanks for being here. Oh,

1:32

thank you so much for having me. I am so honored

1:34

to be to be here. Thank you. So

1:37

one of the things about this show is like Dan and

1:39

I have always said, you know, we are scholars who study

1:41

this stuff just like you. You are the host of weird

1:43

religion. You've written extensively all

1:45

over the place about Pentecostals and

1:48

Charismatics. You had you just had

1:50

an amazing podcast

1:53

series run by Way of

1:55

PRX that was on Christian contemporary music

1:57

and the rock does the rock that

1:59

doesn't roll. I believe is the title

2:01

and I got to be part of one

2:03

of those episodes. So you've just done everything

2:05

You've written all over the place for NBC

2:08

for for WAPO for so many other outlets

2:11

One of the things we like to say on this show

2:13

is just like you we've lived it and now we study

2:15

it So I think we all three of us have a

2:17

kind of bifocal lens So we're

2:20

excited to talk about your book as scholars

2:22

and then we're gonna tell hilarious stories about

2:25

Dan and I being hella cringy as

2:28

As young I Say

2:31

hello. I live in the Bay Area Okay,

2:33

get over a dance dance like laughing

2:35

Dan's laughing in a way that I don't appreciate

2:37

right now And this might be the end

2:39

of the podcast if you keep it up Dan I don't I'm not

2:41

sure I'm gonna want to do this anymore. I'm

2:43

gonna edit it out. That's fine I'll just edit it out. You

2:46

guys want to make fun of me. I'll edit it out. That's

2:48

fine. Okay. Look, that's all right We

2:52

were very cringy Dan's gonna talk about breaking

2:54

someone's nose at a mosh pit We're

2:57

gonna have some tattoo reveals maybe and Leah's

3:00

gonna be the expert who's gonna like totally

3:02

help us understand all this So let's

3:04

start here. Your book is amazing in

3:07

some ways It feels a little like

3:09

a scholarly journey that started with a

3:11

personal history You're a P&W

3:13

person through and through but you moved

3:15

to Nashville as a young person and

3:17

you were like in the

3:19

epicenter of Contemporary Christian music so tell

3:21

us about that and how that like

3:24

very formative experience led to this book

3:27

Sure. Thank you so much for having

3:29

me. Yes and P&W, you know the

3:31

West Coast I love

3:33

I you know, so many scholars are

3:36

based in the East Coast So I

3:38

I do love you know, my

3:40

parents actually Lived in

3:42

the Bay Area Brad. I don't think I

3:45

don't know if I that's ever come up

3:47

in our conversation but they my parents were

3:49

a part of the charismatic revivals known as

3:51

the Jesus movement in the 1970s in the

3:54

Bay Area and They

3:57

had me raised me in Oregon And

4:00

so a lot of my earliest

4:02

memories, my dad was a pastor, I write

4:04

about this in the book. A lot of

4:06

my earliest memories were in very

4:09

charismatic church services wherein music called

4:11

Jesus Music, which was music made

4:13

by these hippieized Christians who became

4:15

a part of charismatic evangelicalism in

4:17

the late 20th century. Music produced

4:20

by those people, so well-known musicians

4:22

like Larry Norman and Second Chapter

4:24

of Acts and Keith Green and

4:26

stuff like that. So that was

4:28

just like a part of my

4:31

childhood and young adulthood. My

4:33

dad though did not like this

4:35

thing called contemporary Christian music. My

4:38

dad is very offline, so he hasn't heard

4:40

me talking about his curmudgeonly ways, but he

4:42

didn't like CCM. He thought it wasn't good.

4:44

He thought the quality was poor. He liked

4:46

Jesus Music though. So I grew

4:49

up on a lot of that stuff,

4:51

but you know just growing up in

4:53

a charismatic church, predominantly white charismatic church

4:55

in the Pacific Northwest. Of course I

4:57

knew what CCM was, what contemporary Christian

4:59

music was. And so for

5:01

those of you who don't know, contemporary

5:04

Christian music is, I define

5:07

it as popular music that

5:09

is made and made by

5:11

and sold to predominantly white

5:14

evangelical Christians in the United

5:16

States. It had a much bigger footprint

5:18

than that, but that is kind of

5:20

the market. It's my book, God Gave

5:22

Rock and Roll to you, is a

5:24

history of a market. And so it's

5:26

actually about a business mostly. But anyway,

5:28

so then when I graduated from college,

5:30

I married a musician who was an

5:32

aspiring contemporary Christian music

5:34

artist. So of course you

5:37

have to move to Nashville, Tennessee, and that

5:39

was early aughts. And at that time, that

5:41

was the height of the business. And so

5:44

the business in terms of its cultural power

5:46

as well as its financial stature. Of

5:49

course, none of us knew at the time

5:51

that the internet or the interweb, as my

5:53

mom used to call it, was going to

5:55

be changing everything about how music was done

5:57

as a business. And so

5:59

contemporary. Christian music is not as

6:01

prominent as it once was. My book

6:03

explores how that came to be. But

6:06

I just wanted to, you know,

6:09

eventually I went on to graduate school and I worked

6:11

in the music business for a little while and

6:13

then I went to grad school and I became

6:16

a historian and I thought that CCM contemporary Christian

6:18

music was just like in my rearview mirror. But

6:21

I kept coming back to it as a

6:23

very powerful thing because I think a lot

6:25

of people view it

6:27

as kitsch as a tertiary

6:31

part of the evangelical experience.

6:34

But my understanding of contemporary Christian music was

6:36

that it was often the core of understanding

6:38

evangelical identity. So the question of my

6:41

book is what do you learn about

6:43

evangelicalism if you look at the history

6:45

of this industry? And so it

6:47

does come from my personal experiences knowing a

6:50

lot of, I mean, pretty much

6:52

every kid I went to church with had

6:54

been to, you know, a music

6:56

festival, had been in a mosh pit,

6:59

had been, you know, it was just

7:01

a really big part of growing up

7:03

as evangelical. And it's oftentimes

7:05

been talked about as part of the

7:07

periphery but I wanted to look at

7:09

it, give it the leading role. So

7:12

anyway, and I understand that you two have

7:14

experiences with Christian music as well. So I

7:17

can't wait to hear about that. We do. We're gonna

7:19

try to keep the, we're gonna try

7:21

to keep it together here for a couple more minutes and

7:23

be serious hosts and scholars.

7:25

Scholars? Yes, before we get into

7:27

the archives. I

7:30

want to ask, you mentioned your dad not

7:32

loving CCM and I think there's a current in

7:35

your book in the sort of 60s, 70s and

7:37

80s of some

7:39

ministers being

7:41

not on board with the Christian

7:44

contemporary music scene. And

7:46

friends, if you're not somebody who grew up in the scene, we're

7:48

talking about people that range genres.

7:50

We're talking about everything from

7:52

punk rock to what

7:54

you might just call soft rock, the kind of stuff

7:57

you hear in a dentist's office. We're

7:59

talking about... Kenny G. like that,

8:01

that ending spectrum. Yeah.

8:04

Kenny J.C. Dan. So, and

8:08

I mean, we're talking about

8:11

heavy metal, we'll get into it in a minute. We're talking

8:13

about like big band, I mean,

8:16

just solo artists, Amy Grant, the whole

8:18

thing. I guess help

8:20

us understand your dad in historical context, because the whole

8:22

time I was reading your book, I was thinking, this

8:25

book is going to be so many things. It's going to be

8:27

such a contribution to 20th century

8:29

evangelical studies. It's a

8:31

contribution to our understanding of our contemporary moment.

8:34

It's a contribution to music studies, of course. But

8:37

it's also going to be this really, like,

8:40

it's going to place people in time and

8:43

space. Like Christin Cobay, Coba's DuBays book, places

8:45

a lot of people in time and space

8:47

in a way that is hard,

8:50

because like, oh, I lived this and it sucked. I think a

8:52

lot of people are going to read your book and be like, oh

8:54

yeah, this was me. Yep. I love

8:56

the era. I love those bands that she's talking about.

8:59

These are the people that got me through high school. These

9:01

are the people I listened to on the bus to summer

9:03

camp with my friends. But there's also your

9:06

dad who's like, nope, this is the devil's music or

9:08

this is not what Jesus wants. So

9:11

what was that tension? Well,

9:14

I, so the book starts,

9:16

you know, it's sort of hard to

9:18

know where to start a book like

9:20

this. I ended up choosing the beginning

9:22

of the business. And so if you

9:24

look at the major record labels that

9:26

produced a huge

9:29

percentage of what we call contemporary

9:31

Christian music, most of

9:33

them had roots in Southern

9:35

holiness and Baptist and Pentecostal

9:37

revivals in the early 20th

9:39

century. So that the

9:42

largest, one of the largest record

9:44

labels, for example, Benson, that the

9:47

people who created the

9:49

record label Benson, they,

9:53

it's a multi-generational family effort that started

9:55

in the late 19th century in a

9:58

tent revival meeting in an abandoned Law

10:00

in Nashville, Tennessee. And it

10:02

was a group of people who would go

10:04

on to become founding members of the Nazarene

10:06

Church, originally called the Pentecostal Church of the

10:08

Nazarene, but they took that first

10:12

part off once Pentecostal was associated with things

10:14

like speaking in tongues. But

10:16

the communities that created contemporary Christian

10:19

music were these white

10:21

revivalist networks. So an overwhelming

10:23

majority of people who charted

10:25

on what we call contemporary

10:27

Christian music are either

10:29

from the holiness tradition, so

10:31

people like Nazarenes, Westlands, Baptists,

10:33

mostly Southern Baptists, but other

10:36

forms of predominantly white Baptists.

10:39

And then Pentecostal and

10:41

Charismatic. And Pentecostals, of

10:44

course, are a really distinct group in a number

10:46

of ways, one

10:48

including the fact that they had an

10:50

interracial origin story in

10:52

the early 20th century. The

10:54

Pentecostals, and then their sort of sister

10:57

tradition that comes up about 50 or

11:00

60 years later, those people

11:04

create this form of music. They're

11:06

co-creators of a form of music

11:08

that is rooted in black culture

11:11

and also rooted in white holiness

11:13

and Pentecostal culture known as rock

11:15

and roll. And that

11:17

music, it's essentially church music

11:20

that is reappropriated in

11:22

the public sphere. And that becomes a

11:24

real sticking point for a lot

11:27

of white revivalists. So

11:29

they don't know what to do with it. In the book,

11:32

and other historians have written about this,

11:34

so I want to acknowledge their contributions

11:37

as well, but in the book I

11:39

talk about how white Baptist folks were

11:41

beside themselves

11:43

in part because the conversations about rock

11:45

and roll essentially became a proxy conversation

11:48

to talk about race and racism in

11:50

the United States and specifically anti-black racism

11:52

and civil rights and things like that.

11:55

For both black and white Pentecostals,

11:57

rock was a real sticking point

11:59

because it was in their minds

12:01

a denigration of holy music. So it's

12:03

like church music that's used in an

12:05

inappropriate way like you're talking about you

12:07

know great balls of fire you should be talking about the

12:09

Holy Spirit and now you're talking about sex. What

12:12

you know? So there's this constant

12:14

tension in these communities about what

12:16

to do with this music and

12:18

how to shape the young through

12:21

music. So in the early 20th

12:23

century revivalist hymns

12:25

were used to shape the young

12:27

in ways like for example temperance

12:29

hymns that encouraged young people

12:31

to stay away from alcohol. In

12:33

the later 20th century basically

12:36

you can chart what conservative

12:38

white revivalists and

12:40

really they kind of come together under

12:42

with an umbrella category of evangelical in

12:45

the mid 20th century you can see

12:47

what people who gather under that umbrella

12:49

care about by what they sing about

12:51

especially about music that's aimed at the

12:54

young so abortion prayer

12:56

in public schools. Any

12:59

hot topic they're wrestling

13:01

with it a lot of stuff about sexuality

13:03

so there you know if you

13:05

Brad you were on our podcast Rock That Doesn't

13:07

Roll where we talked about the

13:09

kind of topics that it's like you

13:12

know there would be mainstream music that

13:14

is about one thing and then contemporary

13:16

Christian music it's like it's another

13:18

conversation you know going on about how to

13:21

be young and so there's constantly like people

13:23

you know people in my dad's generation my

13:25

dad actually liked a band called Little Feet

13:28

he was just not into contemporary Christian music

13:30

at all he was like real isn't it

13:32

my 1970s music so he was

13:37

kind of an odd one that but a lot

13:39

of dads his age and especially a lot of

13:41

moms were like do not listen to quote

13:44

unquote secular music which just really means mainstream

13:46

music and then a

13:48

lot of people involved in contemporary Christian

13:51

music were trying to find ways to

13:54

create sound-alikes to mainstream

13:56

music that would be

13:58

imbued with. with conservative

14:01

evangelical messages. Sometimes it

14:03

worked all right. For

14:06

example, Christian, gory

14:08

details about the crucifixion could

14:10

actually fit pretty well in

14:12

a death metal song. It's

14:14

not completely foreign to the

14:16

genre, but if

14:19

you're going to have a pop song about

14:21

not having sex, it doesn't work quite as

14:23

well because most pop songs are actually about

14:25

having sex. So

14:27

some of it works better than others. I

14:32

promise we're going to keep it together. So for

14:34

me, very personal memories of that are

14:37

there's two. One is Sixpence, None the

14:39

Richer, Kiss Me. Oh yeah,

14:41

scandalous. And yet it was

14:43

somewhat sweet because it was like we're kissing. In

14:46

my mind, as a Southern Californian, evangelical

14:48

convert who didn't have parents who were directing the

14:51

show at home in terms of religion, that

14:53

was like, yeah, we're going to kiss, but we're not going

14:55

to do the stuff that

14:57

I hear all the secular people singing about, which

15:00

is way more explicit and sexual and

15:02

whatever. The other is A Walk

15:04

to Remember, Mandy Moore, who I think wants to

15:07

remake A Walk to Remember, get a reboot going.

15:10

And that was like

15:12

such a love story. They were like very

15:15

tender, but they were not sexual. You know what I

15:17

mean? And so there was attempts

15:19

to do the like pop thing without it being sexual,

15:21

but you're right, it's hard to do. I

15:23

have so many questions, but Dan, I know that

15:26

Leah mentioned death metal. I know

15:28

you have a bunch of things you want to ask. So

15:30

yeah, I'll throw it to you, go ahead. Well, of course,

15:32

I want to pick up on this theme because this is

15:34

something we've talked about a lot. I talk about this with

15:37

students, was the

15:40

sort of evangelical creation of this like

15:42

parallel subculture, right? And this whole like,

15:45

I don't know, like one-to-one correspondence of what

15:48

quote unquote the secular world can do. And

15:50

as you highlight in your book, I think

15:52

it was a very white middle class kind

15:54

of subcultural sort of parallel, but

15:57

that's what always stood out to me. I was way over

15:59

online. the metal side. We were the ones

16:01

that looked down at everybody who listened to Carmen

16:03

or Amy Grant or something like that. But

16:06

I think that notion that you tied in

16:08

of saying this was really central, I think

16:10

it was. Number one, it ties in, I

16:13

think, with, and it'd be

16:15

interesting, your thoughts on this,

16:17

this long-standing first early neo-fundamentalist

16:19

coming out of the post-war

16:22

period, evolving into contemporary

16:24

evangelicalism. Evangelicals were always

16:29

into whatever at the

16:31

time felt like the best way to communicate.

16:33

So it was radio and then it was

16:35

TV. And I think that I feel like

16:37

the whole Christian music is its own

16:40

sort of genre was one of those things. The

16:43

marketing, the marketing of faith and spirituality. I

16:45

mean, that has figured in, I'm thinking of

16:47

Sopranos, right? If anybody remembers Tony Soprano's sister

16:49

was like, we're going to make a Christian

16:51

album because it's just easier to get in

16:54

the market. It's a South Park episode where

16:56

they start like a Christian band, like

16:58

sort of that piece of it. But

17:01

I think also for me, like,

17:03

so when I was in that

17:05

evangelical world, Brad mentioned cringeworthy

17:07

stuff. Here comes something sort of cringeworthy.

17:10

One of my selling points, because

17:12

I was this big, burly, like,

17:15

badass Christian guy. So I was like the

17:18

guy that was like, looked tough and looked

17:20

whatever, but I could receive Greek and Hebrew.

17:22

And I was like a Bible major and

17:24

like, you know, whatever. But I

17:27

had this line where I was like, well, the only

17:29

thing you can't do as a Christian, you know, you

17:31

can do as a secular person is sin. Like, you

17:33

know, like you can be as cool. I know that's

17:35

awful. Like anything you

17:37

can do, we can do. And so I

17:39

had, I like, like I said,

17:41

the metal side is mine, like sort of

17:43

all genres except Scott just never did Scott,

17:45

but from like alt metal, punk,

17:48

bradkin shrug all he wants in

17:50

and out, ska, whatever. I'll get

17:52

the shots in while I can. All the way

17:54

over like death metal, hardcore, like you name it.

17:57

I had like hundreds of Christian CDs. I

17:59

would. make the monthly circuit of like the

18:01

Christian bookstores and for people who live in

18:03

a different era like the whole phenomenon

18:06

of the Christian bookstore

18:09

all of that but I mean for me it really was

18:11

it was like whatever band you were into like I can

18:14

find somebody who's doing that I can find somebody who can

18:16

like match that and they

18:18

often didn't I was

18:20

an intellectual guy so it was like it was all

18:22

about the lyrics like let's look at the lyrics and

18:24

it was yeah as you said some of the really

18:26

gory details about the spear stabbing Jesus or you know

18:28

all these different kinds of things but

18:31

if I don't know I'm curious if

18:34

you have more thoughts on that this

18:36

creation of this parallel subculture and I

18:38

feel like that's why at least

18:41

in part it was as you say such

18:43

a central piece for a lot of people

18:46

within that kind of Christian world and not

18:48

sort of a peripheral thing because it really

18:50

was this we live in

18:52

this world and and we can

18:56

sanctify it's like a sanctified

18:58

form of the secular world yes

19:01

and I'm so glad you brought up even

19:03

just the word sanctified I think is

19:07

is perfect because it shows the holiness

19:09

impulse so one of the things that

19:11

I observe is how

19:13

those three groups for if you

19:16

count charismatic citizens as well and

19:18

I do but how those groups

19:20

become constitutive of

19:22

quote-unquote evangelicalism so holiness

19:25

so the idea that that

19:27

it is the Christian duty to go

19:29

out into the public sphere and to make

19:31

it holy is is like

19:34

a you know a core

19:36

Nazarene idea and and the idea

19:38

that that you

19:40

would create I think

19:43

of this as a pretty

19:46

large-scale experiment with

19:49

catechesis or you

19:51

know training up Christians through

19:54

mass media and through

19:56

consumerism And of course it's

19:58

There's no, there's no. Surprise that

20:00

it it happens during the American

20:03

century, right? So. The only

20:05

reason why we have these communities

20:07

these predominantly white baptists, pentecostal and

20:09

and holiness people in the early

20:11

twentieth century gone read my we

20:13

we know their songs is because

20:15

there were some tech innovations that

20:17

happened to wear Southern middle class

20:20

people had access. To. Creating

20:22

mass media could prior to that it

20:24

was too expensive to print, so really

20:26

only like these elite hugs to Philadelphia

20:28

and New York were producing most of

20:30

the. The. Mean, you know, like printed

20:33

music? But all the sudden in the early

20:35

twentieth century you have this opportunity. Where.

20:37

Are these groups are able to actually

20:40

create. Very. Specific

20:42

visions of the Christian life and

20:44

then to sell them. And

20:46

I you know, I.

20:49

Wish I could have written about all the other

20:51

forms of media that were happening at the same

20:53

time. I try to nod to them here and

20:55

there and the book, but one of the things

20:57

that you brought up was the Christian Bookstore and.

21:00

I. Think you can't underestimate the I

21:02

have to give a shoutout to Daniel

21:04

Voce as work on the Evangelical. Print.

21:07

Business he talks about you know, print

21:10

publishing and in a book called the

21:12

Jealous was incorporated. I'd love for in

21:14

our books to be read together, but

21:16

and in the you can't underestimate the.

21:19

Central. Nature that that

21:21

media hub played in

21:23

creating Evangelical isn't so.

21:25

You. Know very few people just went into

21:27

a bookstore and bought books they bought. All.

21:30

Kinds of other things they bite film a little

21:32

bit of film. the film business. really

21:34

has developed i think since the the

21:36

early aughts in the twenty tens it's

21:38

really offended by it you know there

21:40

are lots of vhs tapes you can

21:42

go in and and get a a

21:44

you know instead of watching sesame street

21:46

you could watch a dobson sponsored film

21:49

or even and this is to be

21:51

a latter day saints sponsored film they

21:53

did really well in the film business

21:55

of the whole other story but then

21:57

you would buy a t shirt you

21:59

would buy a self help book book,

22:01

in novel. I found a way

22:03

to squeeze in some stuff about

22:05

evangelical Amish novels. That became a

22:07

huge thing for... So I think of

22:09

it as an attempt

22:12

to... There are traditional

22:14

Christian ways of making other Christians, and

22:16

this is a new way. The idea

22:18

that you raise them

22:20

in a hopefully discrete world,

22:23

media world, which of course

22:25

that's never going to last

22:27

because media technology continues to

22:29

develop. One of the most devastating developments,

22:31

of course, was the internet and file

22:35

sharing. Then of course streaming technology has

22:37

disrupted that even more to the point

22:39

where it's really not possible. But in

22:41

the late 80s and early 90s

22:43

for many young people who

22:45

were raised in that world, it wasn't

22:48

possible to live in

22:51

a fairly discrete world. In

22:53

fact, it was encouraged to be

22:55

in a discrete bubble while in

22:57

the wider world. For

22:59

example, there's tons of songs and

23:01

books about existing in a public

23:04

school, being in the

23:06

world but not of it.

23:08

Your friends are listening to... I'll date myself

23:11

here, but your friends are listening to

23:13

Nirvana, but you are listening to this

23:16

other band. It might be Audio Adrenaline. It

23:18

might be Stars of Clay or something

23:20

like that. Never apologize for mentioning Nirvana.

23:22

Come on. Don't apologize. I'm from the

23:24

Pacific Northwest. You're listening to Alison James

23:26

or something like that. No, but there's

23:28

bands to apologize for from our youth,

23:30

but Nirvana is not one of them.

23:33

So... Yeah, come on. Come on.

23:35

Yeah. Just tied in with that thing.

23:38

I think another piece of it for me, I

23:40

feel like I'm going to be all

23:42

about the cringe this entire segment.

23:44

I love cringe. The role in

23:46

proselytizing, because we've talked about that,

23:49

Brad and I, a lot. You

23:51

know this, this evangelical stuff. It's

23:53

this huge imperative need to

23:55

win converts. One of the passages,

23:58

it probably motivated everybody. that was,

24:00

you know, it was this passage where the Apostle

24:02

Paul says he's become all things to all people

24:04

so that he can win some to Christ. And

24:07

I remember when I would run into the people who are

24:09

like, well, you can't listen to that. That's bad music, whatever.

24:11

And you know, I'd be like, I'm just

24:13

it's just it's just me and Paul. I'm just being all

24:15

things to all people. These people won't listen to Amy Grant.

24:17

They're not going to listen like whatever, but they'll

24:20

listen to they'll listen to Steve Zaker, they'll listen to

24:22

Strong Arm, they'll listen to like, you know, whatever.

24:25

They'll talk to the guy with like the big burly

24:27

guy with the shaved head. I've

24:29

talked about this other times. I had a

24:31

wallet chain on one side and a Bible

24:33

with a chain on the other that I

24:35

wore. And like two chains, two chains, Leah.

24:39

He was the original two chains before

24:41

the hip hop artist. Yeah. Is

24:43

there a picture of you? I don't I don't think

24:46

that I don't think that there is. And

24:49

even I would buy a little or just like a

24:51

new test. It was no, it was a whole. But

24:53

it was like I shopped around to find one that

24:55

was like kind of small enough that it would work.

24:58

Yeah, it's yeah, it's a I've

25:01

got to own who I was, who I am. I

25:03

just got to live with it. But but that

25:06

that that dimension of recreating

25:08

the culture, the way I would look at it now

25:10

is it was almost like you can convert, but you

25:12

don't have to change or like not

25:14

too much. And of course, the sociologists of religion and,

25:16

you know, an evangelical who hasn't looked for a long

25:18

time about, you know, creating this

25:21

this in group identity that's not so

25:24

divergent from broader culture that you just

25:26

feel weird or you get labeled as

25:28

a cult or like whatever. And

25:31

I feel like it was a huge tool for

25:33

that of drawing others in as well. So creating

25:35

evangelical identity, but trying to win others over to

25:37

that within those contexts

25:39

in which individuals existed. You

25:42

know, I'm glad you brought that up.

25:44

I had two thoughts in response to

25:46

that. One is that the music of

25:48

contemporary Christian music was

25:51

a really efficient way of drawing.

25:53

It's overwhelmingly Christian. Of course, it's American.

25:56

And so for most of the 20th

25:58

century, most Americans would identify. Christian in

26:00

some way, shape, or form. But

26:03

a lot of mainline young

26:05

people were brought

26:07

into the evangelical fold

26:10

through this media, through

26:12

the culture of it. This is very anecdotal,

26:14

but I had a lot of, I talked to a

26:16

lot of people who were, for example,

26:19

raised Presbyterian or

26:21

something, but went to a summer camp

26:24

where they saw some band and then

26:26

I had one funny

26:28

story from a listener who said, I

26:30

had a Methodist mother and a

26:32

Catholic father. I went to a Baptist

26:34

summer camp, then came home worried that

26:36

my dad wasn't a Christian, that he

26:38

wasn't saved. And my mom was like,

26:41

what happened to you here? So contemporary

26:43

Christian music was a really efficient

26:46

way of evangelicalizing

26:48

a lot of

26:50

mainline kids, people

26:52

from more traditions

26:55

that were not familiar with the

26:57

norms of Baptists and Helliness people

27:00

and Pentecostals and Charismatics, but they

27:02

became a part of that through

27:04

the music first. I

27:07

never went to a Christian music festival. I have

27:09

to say, the cringe stuff, I think

27:11

I've thought about it recently. I

27:13

think the reason why I have

27:15

a huge appreciation for cringe is

27:17

because while everyone else was listening

27:19

to pop music, really in my

27:22

formative years, I was such a big theater

27:24

geek and I was huge into Broadway music,

27:26

which is another strange little

27:28

community that is high on

27:30

cringe. So when people tell me

27:33

their contemporary Christian stories, I'm like, that is

27:35

so sweet because my

27:37

friends and I were like, we were

27:39

in the back room singing show tunes

27:42

when everybody else was having a normal

27:44

late 20th century team adolescence. So I

27:47

don't feel, you know, you like

27:49

what you like is what I'm saying. You shouldn't

27:51

feel ashamed of your two chains. I

27:53

love that so much. I love that you tried to say

27:55

it with a straight face. Like I

27:57

appreciate the effort. It's a, there's no giving

27:59

up. We're honest though, that's so

28:01

sweet. Let

28:04

me ask you one more question, Leah, before we

28:06

go into the very personal stories here. Oh,

28:09

I understand that. It's really about things

28:11

going the other way. On one hand, you

28:13

really gave us, and the book does a

28:15

wonderful job of this, of this history of

28:18

what is really charismatic Christian music

28:20

becoming rock and roll, and

28:23

then a kind of feeling of we lost

28:25

what we created to the secular world. Some

28:28

people got on board and said, well, we got

28:30

to just keep going, and the Jesus people, the

28:33

mid 20th century evangelicals, Southern California,

28:36

Bay Area, all over the country,

28:39

they take rock and roll, they take contemporary music, and

28:41

they run with it. Okay. Others

28:43

like your dad said, nope, that's ...

28:45

I'm out. I'm out because they took what is

28:47

God's music and they defiled it, so I'm out.

28:50

I'm thinking of my mom who raised us on Elvis

28:52

Presley, and this

28:54

summer is going to the Elvis Vigil

28:56

at Graceland, as thousands

28:58

and thousands of people continue to do

29:00

every year, as I used to live

29:02

in Memphis. Anyway, I'm very familiar with

29:05

all that. I want to talk

29:07

about the 90s and the early

29:09

2000s of Christian artists going the other way,

29:11

because when we were growing up in the

29:13

90s, it was always like, hey, what if one

29:15

of these Christian bands made it big in the

29:17

secular world? Wouldn't they do the work Dan just

29:20

talked about? Wouldn't they convert so many? It

29:24

created a lot of problems. We

29:26

can talk about Amy Grant, we can talk about

29:28

Switchfoot, we can talk about all of

29:31

the Disney young

29:33

women, like the Britney Spears,

29:35

Jessica Simpson, Mandy Moore, Katy

29:38

Perry is one of these that people don't

29:40

realize. Anyway, could you help us understand

29:43

what happened when these Christian stars

29:46

broke out of the

29:48

sanctified realm of the contemporary Christian

29:50

music scene, burst onto the popular

29:52

music scene? Instead of converting everyone,

29:55

in fact, there was just a lot of turmoil

29:57

for most of the time. Save for,

29:59

I mean, the most probably influential,

30:02

informative band for all three of us, Creed, which

30:04

I'm sure to this day is still in all

30:06

top ... Okay. All right. I'll

30:08

edit it out, Dan. Fine. I'll edit

30:10

it out. Fine. Okay. Dan

30:14

was probably listening to Creed on the way

30:17

to work today is my guess. But anyway,

30:19

okay. So sorry, Leah. Serious question. Serious

30:21

question. Yeah. Right. Okay.

30:24

So I started working in the business, contemporary Christian

30:27

music. Actually one of the most serendipitous

30:31

things to ever happen to me is when

30:33

I lived in Nashville, I first got a

30:35

job working at a coffee shop. And at

30:38

that coffee shop, one of my

30:40

regular customers was a music producer whose

30:42

name is Charlie Peacock. And

30:44

Charlie and his spouse, Andy Ashworth, were

30:46

my regulars. And eventually Charlie asked me

30:48

to be his assistant. And I

30:51

didn't really know ... I'm embarrassed to say I didn't know

30:53

who he was at the time. I

30:55

learned really quickly. His career

30:57

is much broader than contemporary Christian music, but

30:59

he's a very thoughtful artist

31:01

and producer who's worked in that business.

31:03

And when I started the book, I

31:07

had a really long, fun dinner

31:09

with Charlie and Andy, and I was running kind

31:11

of the big ideas by then. And

31:14

we were talking about the issue of crossover,

31:16

because if you don't know who Charlie Peacock

31:18

is, he developed the band Switchfoot. So that's

31:20

one of the most prominent crossover bands in

31:22

the early odds. So

31:24

we were just going back and forth talking about this. And

31:28

we were talking about Bob Dylan. And

31:30

so for those of you who don't,

31:32

your listeners who don't know, Bob Dylan

31:34

went through a very evangelical, a very

31:36

charismatic experience. And

31:39

he was trained

31:41

in the Christian tradition by a lot of

31:44

the same people who were creating music that

31:46

would go on to be contemporary Christian music.

31:48

And he essentially created a contemporary

31:50

Christian music album. And

31:53

Charlie and I were talking about how the

31:56

expectation at that time was that

31:58

if Dylan was had

32:00

converted, all of his fans would

32:02

convert too, which, you know, he's

32:04

arguably, and I say arguably, the

32:07

greatest songwriter in, I know people could argue

32:09

with that, but he's in there. You

32:11

know, you always have to talk about Dylan if you're going to say that. And

32:13

so he had a huge fan base is what I'm saying. And

32:16

at the time, a lot of people in contemporary

32:18

Christian music hoped that that would mean that their

32:21

fans, his fans would convert. And of course we

32:23

know that they didn't as a whole. I mean,

32:25

maybe a few did, but it

32:27

wasn't like this massive, you know, like if

32:29

you have, and Charlie said at

32:31

that time, you know, it's funny that we

32:34

thought that that, you know, a lot of

32:36

people at that time thought that that's what

32:38

would happen. And really, that's the model that

32:40

went the dominant model of contemporary Christian music,

32:42

which is that if you have this celebrity

32:45

figure, you know, who's big

32:47

enough. And when when Amy Grant had, I

32:49

think she's arguably one of the

32:51

only true crossover stars, meaning

32:54

that she had a base in evangelicalism and

32:56

she took it into the mainstream. Most

32:59

conservative evangelicals, including people like

33:01

Pat Robertson, were super proud

33:03

of her because they felt

33:05

that her success was their

33:07

success, that she was going

33:09

out into the public sphere,

33:11

taking the worldly secular world

33:13

back for Christ. And

33:15

of course, that didn't happen. There

33:17

weren't mass conversions associated with Amy

33:19

Grant concerts or anything like that.

33:22

But by the time you get

33:24

to the 1990s and the early

33:26

aughts, one of the things that

33:28

I write about in the book is that

33:30

the model was ultimately unsustainable for

33:33

several reasons. And one of the reasons

33:35

was that young people in

33:37

the 1990s and early

33:39

aughts started wanting to make

33:42

music that was in the

33:44

mainstream world. So

33:48

I have a kind of a funny section where I

33:51

actually cite an Onion article, which is hilarious

33:53

that talks about a guy

33:55

who mistakenly thinks he's mistakenly

33:57

joined a Christian band. understand

34:00

that they are Christian. And so he talks about

34:02

like, yeah, I keep wondering why

34:04

we're not going to, like, where are the groupies

34:06

and they're like, Oh no, I'm saving myself. You

34:08

know, so he's confused. And that, I think the

34:10

only reason why the onion could write an article

34:13

like that and people would think it was funny

34:15

related. Same thing with like the Simpsons making fun

34:17

of Christian music or family guy or whatever is

34:19

because everyone knew what it was. It was like

34:21

a thing in that era, but

34:23

a lot of young people understood.

34:27

So the core customer, the core

34:29

consumer of most of contemporary Christian

34:31

music was thought to be evangelical

34:34

teens, but the core

34:36

customer, the person actually buying it

34:38

was the mother of said evangelical

34:40

teens and moms. I'm

34:43

a mom. My children, I

34:45

do not have cool taste. I'm like

34:48

literally listening to very depressing 1990s grunge

34:51

rock because that's the music of my youth. I

34:54

love it, you know, but my kids are not going to stop. Apologize.

34:57

Great music. Stop a pop. It's

34:59

great. Universally great. There's some things

35:01

you could apologize. That's great music. We're not

35:03

denigrating that on this podcast. So I'm sorry

35:05

to interrupt you. Having been in the Pacific

35:08

Northwest, you can play the authenticity card, right?

35:10

You can be like, these are my bands.

35:12

I know. My bands, my

35:14

band. You're there. And also Broadway

35:16

music. But anyway, so yeah, I

35:18

mean, like you can't, moms, you

35:20

know, youth culture, American

35:23

youth culture and American pop music

35:26

are like parenting and

35:28

parent culture is the oppositional other,

35:30

you know, to that. So

35:33

there was something within the model of making contemporary

35:35

Christian music. It was just never very sustainable. A

35:37

lot of people grew out of it. I would

35:39

argue, Dan, and I'd love to hear your thoughts

35:41

about this, but in the book I argue that

35:44

a lot of the fringe music, like the death

35:46

metal, ska, punk, that kind

35:48

of, and early forms of Christian

35:50

hip hop were successful

35:53

because they existed outside of that model.

35:55

I mean, they were never as successful

35:57

at sales. So Carmen, all of that.

36:00

always outsold death metal, for

36:02

example. But the reason why

36:04

it was more sustainable over time because

36:06

it was essentially peer to peer music.

36:09

So it was young people making music

36:11

for other young people, not

36:14

parental figures making

36:17

substitutes for their children. And

36:19

so it just, it came across, it was

36:21

more successful over time, I think, because it

36:24

conformed to mainstream

36:26

pop music norms. It needs to

36:28

be young people. It's why Taylor

36:31

Swift, I saw this thing that

36:33

younger teens maybe aren't as into Taylor

36:35

Swift. Why? Because

36:37

their mothers love Taylor Swift. Is this always going to be, that's

36:39

always going to be a part of it? Sorry,

36:43

just one more irony of all of this that I

36:45

feel like ties in with that pop culture thing. Your

36:48

point about the metal, I think, is really interesting, just

36:50

as a side thing that there's still some of that.

36:52

I mean, everything streams now, but you still have bands

36:54

that they're never going to get played on the radio,

36:56

right? So you can find them on Spotify and stuff,

36:59

but you're still hearing about them through other

37:01

pathways, right? And so there isn't the

37:03

same kind of thing. But the

37:05

other one is the attractiveness

37:07

of artists. Like a

37:09

piece of purity culture, if we map

37:11

the purity culture onto the Christian music

37:13

piece, is that the purity

37:15

culture cell only worked if they were

37:18

hot people that could have sex. Well,

37:21

Amy Grant and Michael W. Smith are

37:23

the examples you really use. Anyway, sorry,

37:25

Dan. Yeah, just go ahead. That

37:28

sort of notion that it had to

37:30

be somebody ... So you still have

37:32

the same sort of attractiveness factor that

37:34

you had in regular pop music,

37:36

which means you also had the

37:38

sexism that you get in regular

37:40

pop music. You had a form

37:42

of ageism, especially for female identified

37:45

artists, right? To kind of age

37:47

out of that kind of heteronormative fantasy

37:49

model or whatever. So I think all

37:51

of those factors were in there as

37:53

well, impacting a lot of that music

37:56

and a lot of those artists of that era. many

38:00

times in the book, Sarah Mosliner, who

38:02

I know I have to give a

38:04

shout out to the multiverse of your

38:08

scholars, your scholar friends. But

38:11

yes, purity culture, it's really

38:13

interesting. One of the things that I tried to

38:15

show is how if you wed

38:18

evangelical Christianity to marketing

38:20

and marketing culture, you

38:23

see the theology doing what markets

38:25

do, which is as they prosper,

38:27

they consolidate and they homogenize over

38:29

time. So where there is, I would

38:32

argue that there was more ideological diversity

38:35

in the early years of the industry,

38:37

but as it gets more and more

38:39

profitable, those more fringe voices find their

38:41

way outside of the industry. They're

38:44

still out there saying things and making music,

38:47

but you're not going to see them

38:49

selling a lot of records over time.

38:51

You see the consolidated version

38:53

of that. You really see that

38:55

when it comes to commentary about

38:57

evangelical women and their bodies. There

39:01

was an early trend where you'd have a

39:03

song about waiting for marriage, but

39:06

as the business grew and as evangelicals

39:08

started to really hone ideas about purity

39:10

and purity culture in the 1990s,

39:13

the message gets even more extreme

39:15

and even more pointed. For

39:18

example, it's not just that you want

39:20

to be a virgin before you're married,

39:22

which was like a common value among

39:25

many, not just evangelicals in

39:27

the early 20th century, mid-20th

39:30

century. But once you get to the 1990s

39:32

and the early aughts, you have messaging

39:35

about you don't even want to

39:37

date a person. I write in the book

39:39

about how the creator of one

39:41

of the most profitable books about purity culture,

39:43

I Kiss Dating Goodbye, Joshua Harris. I

39:46

talked with him for the book and he

39:48

shared with me about how he was at

39:50

a contemporary Christian music concert that was a

39:52

part of a True Love Waits event in

39:55

Washington, D.C. and he was so stirred by

39:58

what he heard and what he experienced. as

40:00

a teenager that he was like, I

40:02

need to write about this. And so

40:04

he wrote a book that became a

40:06

really, really important part of creating purity

40:08

culture at a CCN event.

40:12

But as his work

40:15

developed, the restrictions around

40:17

how teens should behave

40:19

with one another, especially young women, got

40:21

more and more tight. So

40:24

yeah, it's fascinating to watch how

40:26

those ideas grow

40:28

with the market itself. And

40:31

eventually, like many

40:33

markets, they doubled down on

40:35

a customer that was a

40:38

shrinking demographic. So

40:43

conservative white suburban moms that were

40:45

known as the marketing percent of

40:47

Beckys, Beckys didn't

40:49

replace themselves demographically. So there just

40:51

aren't as many of them. And

40:54

so when that happens, of course,

40:56

markets decline. And that's essentially what happened

40:58

with contemporary Christian music. But the Charismatics,

41:00

of course, found another place for that.

41:02

And the book that, toward the end

41:05

of the book, I chart how worship

41:07

music has found new

41:11

heights of prosperity. So the

41:13

media making and the idea that you create

41:16

Christians through media lives on. It's just not

41:18

in this business as much anymore. I

41:20

think that's one of the great features

41:24

of the book, is that you really begin in

41:26

the charismatic universe,

41:28

and then you end there January

41:30

6th and other ways that it's

41:32

manifest how the

41:35

Charismatic... Oh, man,

41:37

too much iced coffee. Charismaticization

41:42

of evangelicalism and American Christianity is on full

41:44

display in the music today. Matt

41:46

Taylor talks about this with the popularity of

41:48

the NAR and the spiritual warfare motifs. But

41:51

I think you see this in the music

41:53

and the style of phrase and worship, the

41:55

ways that people are demonstrative, the

41:58

ways that people are willing to experience. express themselves

42:00

in bodily form when they sing

42:03

church songs. That is

42:05

a sign of the charismatic influence

42:07

on American Christianity writ large.

42:10

You do a fantastic

42:12

job as a scholar of Pentecostalism,

42:15

fleshing that out in the book. One

42:17

more point is also that those

42:19

peer-to-peer groups that were

42:21

not selling to Becky, the punk groups,

42:23

the skog bands that were playing in

42:25

the basements of churches, they

42:28

were often the ones with the

42:30

anti-American imperialism message, whether it's Five

42:33

Iron Frenzy or MXPX, they were a

42:35

little bit anti-Americanism, which you would never

42:38

find at LifeWay Bookstore. You

42:41

were never going to walk into LifeWay

42:43

and see prominently displayed a punk band

42:45

singing about how the

42:47

American empire is a problem. I

42:51

think that's something else here that's

42:53

really interesting. Thank you. Well,

42:55

that part was really funny. You talked

42:57

to Leonore Ortega-Till, who is otherwise

43:00

known as Jeff from Five Iron Frenzy. I

43:03

asked her, they have a

43:05

song that's basically just an

43:07

outright repudiation of

43:09

manifest destiny and

43:11

American imperialism. I asked her, how did you all

43:13

were playing youth groups? How did you even get

43:15

away with that? She said

43:17

something funny. She said,

43:20

I don't know that moms liked the sounds of

43:22

the music, but also she said a lot of

43:24

times they were listening with headphones. They

43:26

got around it, but you would never have

43:28

music meant for a minivan. That

43:31

would have been around the same

43:34

time that Steven Curtis Chapman was

43:36

singing The Great Adventure, which uses

43:38

all kinds of American-Western romanticism to

43:40

talk about the evangelical gospel. You

43:43

have these two songs going on at the same time. I

43:46

think she speculated. The only reason why

43:48

is because the kids were wearing headphones.

43:51

That seemed actually like a pretty good explanation

43:53

to me. Well, I feel

43:55

like just because we lived so much of this, if

43:57

we're not careful, we're going to keep you here for

43:59

a while. way longer than we

44:01

asked you to be here. So we need to wrap up,

44:04

but we do need to get to Dan. So

44:07

every bonus episode we do, we have a story. The

44:10

first one was about Dan getting arrested. Dan

44:13

two chains Miller getting arrested in a parking

44:15

lot wearing his two chains. Another

44:18

one- I'm just referring for my deliverance. Don't

44:20

forget about that. Oh, wow. What a

44:22

story. Another one was me as a

44:24

youth pastor launching live fish

44:27

with a water balloon launcher in a

44:29

way that really was a mix of Antigone, the

44:32

book of Ezekiel, and Lord

44:35

of the Flies. Wow, that's high art. That

44:37

is wow. Yeah, at the time, that's what

44:39

I thought as a 20 year old person

44:41

in North County, California. Tonight

44:44

or today we want to get into Dan Miller. Before you

44:46

have to go, Lee, if you can stick around because Dan

44:48

Miller was a death metal guy. Dan

44:51

Miller is still a death metal guy. Dan,

44:53

were you, are you old enough to

44:56

have been in the Striper or no? No. Yeah,

44:58

so yeah, the same thing that killed the hair bands,

45:01

the secular hair metal stuff kind of came along with

45:03

Petra and Striper and that kind of thing. Were you

45:05

into Petra or no? Only

45:07

when I converted it was reaching for music

45:10

I was, but then I went into heavier

45:13

kinds of things and hardcore was kind

45:15

of my hardcore, what we now would

45:17

call groove metal. That was my- Love

45:19

it. ... main cup of tea.

45:22

Those of you who've never shared a room with

45:24

Dan, like a space, you've never

45:26

been with him in a room physically. Don't

45:29

know that when you stand up next to each other,

45:31

I am five seven

45:34

and however many pounds I don't really want to talk about right

45:36

now, I have a new baby. I don't get

45:38

out much. And Dan is, what

45:40

are you Dan, six one? Right about

45:42

six, yeah. In

45:44

terms of your width, you're much burlier

45:47

than I am. My brothers

45:49

and I have my mom's family's

45:51

jeans. We're basically refrigerator shaped people.

45:55

If I saw the Miller brothers walking toward me, I

45:57

would think twice. about

46:00

it. So here's where I'm setting this up

46:02

everybody. You are a very

46:05

eager participant in mosh pits in high

46:07

school. I don't think I would have gone

46:09

into mosh pit if I saw you in there. I'd have been

46:11

like, nope, this is not my weight class. This is not a

46:13

mosh pit I go in. I need the welter weight. So

46:16

what happened? So

46:18

yeah, so it was really like high school, but like

46:22

you were at a safe-saker concert. Things

46:25

got out of control. You have like

46:27

nine Diet Cokes. What happened? Every piece

46:29

of like this evangelical subculture flows together

46:31

here. I went to college in Oklahoma

46:34

and was way into this music. And there was

46:37

this like venue out by Tulsa that I don't

46:39

know that it only did Christian music, but like

46:41

lots of Christian metal acts would be there. I

46:43

don't remember how in the world we found out

46:45

about stuff before the internet at this point. Like

46:47

I honestly have no recollection of how you would

46:49

find out. But yeah, so I went to like

46:51

lots of shows there. There was this one, it was the one

46:53

eventful night where there's like some band playing. It was kind of

46:55

the opening act and I'm in there and there's

46:57

this dude just standing like right next to me,

47:00

you know, with the hoodie and the hood up

47:02

and the shaved head, the kind of standard, you

47:05

know, that was the kind of the standard

47:07

metal core look. And yeah, and

47:09

I realized after a while that he's the lead

47:11

singer of this band called Staves Acre, which was

47:13

this like kind of metal super group from different

47:15

metal. They were a big deal, man. They think

47:17

it was a big deal. Yeah. So I was

47:19

like hanging out with him or just kind of

47:21

whatever. But then they go up. Yes, I go

47:23

into mosh pit. I was like not only was

47:25

I big, but I was actually solid then. Now

47:27

I'm kind of marshmallowy and you know, middle age

47:29

and you know, all that stuff. But

47:31

I could like literally lift the end of a

47:34

small car at that time. Dan Miller used to

47:36

be able to bend for 400 pounds. True or

47:38

false? That

47:40

is true. Okay. You've been in the power

47:43

team. Is that what you're saying? That's right.

47:45

Yeah. I could never tear a phone. Yes.

47:47

That was my limitation. Help. But yeah, and

47:49

we would mosh around. We tried out. Everything

47:51

about this evangelical weird parallel things. We'd mosh

47:53

and there was one time when like there

47:55

was a hard collision, not intentional, whatever, but

47:57

like this guy's nose just like blows up.

48:00

Oh my god. And I'm feeling so bad.

48:02

But I mean, we're like all Christian brothers

48:04

hugging it out, like helping each other. There

48:06

was no picking on anybody who's down or

48:08

anything like that. But it was this

48:11

whole weird parallel

48:15

subculture. And I was fully immersed in

48:17

it. It was, like I say, every

48:19

band, hundreds of CDs. But

48:22

yeah, and I had these random things I was

48:24

telling Brad another really random story.

48:27

One summer in college, I had this

48:29

job through the Southern Baptist Convention. And basically,

48:31

I moved around to different churches all summer

48:33

helping them with programs and stuff. And

48:35

we were housed with local church people. And there

48:38

was this elderly couple that me and the person

48:40

I was partnered with for the summer were staying

48:42

with. And her

48:44

grandson was the lead singer of this

48:46

Christian metal band that I was way

48:48

into. She had the CD sleeve on

48:51

the refrigerator and the magnet. I

48:53

kind of dated. Dated is probably a strong

48:56

term. This girl for a

48:58

while whose cousin was the lead singer of

49:00

Prayer Chain. And so that was like, you

49:02

know, yeah, we got these like, you know,

49:04

prayer chain. So yeah, it was

49:07

this whole like parallel world. I just grew

49:09

up Brad again. I like how

49:12

you were still flexing like 25 years later. Yeah,

49:14

it's kind of dated girls. No, no, no, no. I

49:19

considered it dating. It was kind of informed

49:21

over time that we weren't. Like

49:23

it was kind of. Yeah, it was that.

49:26

It was there's no there's no flexing.

49:28

There's just cowering in the corner and like, you

49:30

know, the Lord was leading her another direction. The

49:32

Lord letter in very different directions. Yeah. Basically

49:35

Lord letter in the opposite direction is what

49:37

happened. But yeah, so like like

49:40

looking at your book, everything about it is

49:42

like this was me. And you highlight this

49:44

time frame of like the, you know, early

49:46

90s, early aughts is like the sweet spot.

49:49

That's when I was I was in all of it. So

49:52

do you have any I have a story I

49:54

can tell, but I also want to know. Do

49:56

you have any stories from you were in like

49:58

the inner sanctum of CC? For a while

50:01

you have a window in the CC and there's probably

50:03

a lot of stories You're not allowed to tell so

50:05

we're not asking you to tell stories You're not allowed

50:07

to tell the NDAs right but my guess is you

50:09

saw some stars and some big names and you

50:12

know Did you give six year old Taylor Swift? Lollipop

50:15

or something or you know, you probably

50:17

can't say I'll tell you what I

50:19

used to sit behind the

50:22

Cyrus family in church

50:24

and In front

50:26

of us was a very little girl who would go

50:28

on to become Miley Cyrus Of

50:30

course at the time her dad was the

50:32

big star. I have tons of stories, you

50:34

know, my favorite was I was

50:37

a huge Ben Folds fan in High

50:39

school and Ben Folds used to come into the

50:42

21st Avenue Starbucks, which is where I was a

50:44

barista and was Super

50:46

funny and fun. So I liked being in

50:49

my mind. I was Ben Folds

50:51

barista You know like in that

50:53

setting you would never remember that but Nashville

50:55

is a kind of fun place to live

50:57

because there are so many People that you

51:00

know, I was for the vast majority that time

51:02

I was in grad school But you

51:04

know you you see stars and it's like

51:06

a different vibe than LA For

51:09

sure. So it's a little less, you

51:12

know, the kind of celebrity culture is a

51:14

little less heightened See people in more normal

51:16

circumstances, but I think I'm trying to think

51:18

of you know, the wildest

51:21

Okay, here's just a weird one. I used to wait on this

51:23

one guy who it turned out I'm

51:25

pretty sure and maybe I'm wrong about this but the

51:28

legend in the restaurant was he was the one who

51:30

wrote eight six Seven five

51:32

three, oh nine. Yeah, and

51:34

we would always be like Jenny Jenny I don't

51:36

even know if that's true, but that's the kind

51:38

of city it is where you're like, oh look,

51:40

here's the guy Here's the guy he wrote that

51:42

song Could be true and

51:45

that's all the matter. Oh gosh, I love it.

51:47

I love the magic of that Yeah, but

51:49

I want to hear in one of your stories

51:51

Brad Well, I really want there to be a

51:53

story where Billy Ray Cyrus preaches like on Palm

51:55

Sunday And it's about the garden that gets somebody

51:57

and an achy-breaky heart. That's what I want. Okay,

51:59

you know Say this about him his

52:01

hair looked fantastic Well life that's what

52:03

you would that's what you want. That's what you

52:05

want right there meet your heroes. Yeah, yeah Well,

52:10

yeah could have been Mitt Romney, but I'm 5 7

52:13

and not Mormon. Okay, so here's

52:15

it so I'm at Oxford

52:17

I'm in them in the throes of

52:19

deconverting. I'm like 24 years old.

52:21

I'm getting divorced I am not

52:23

sure if I'm gonna be like a high

52:25

church Anglican Episcopalian if I'm gonna be

52:27

a Like a Baptist a Methodist.

52:30

I don't know where I'm gonna land My

52:33

mom my and so I go home to visit

52:35

one summer and my friend who's still one of

52:37

my best friends in the whole world It says

52:39

hey Isaiah our friend from around high

52:41

school in the old days is playing

52:44

at hyper room and Isaiah

52:46

came from your worldly Isaiah and and

52:48

my other friend grew up in at

52:51

John Wember's Church in your Belinda basically Okay,

52:53

okay now I can yeah, okay and at

52:55

the vineyard the original vineyard So they were

52:57

they they were these folks who were from

53:00

charismatic spaces, but ended up in rock and

53:02

roll So this guy Isaiah ends

53:04

up being like just a savant of a guitar

53:06

player So he at by age 12 was like

53:08

going to Hollywood to play in clubs because there

53:10

was bands I wanted him to play and all

53:12

that So by the time we're

53:14

in our 20s It was like no big deal

53:17

for Isaiah that kind of have been playing a

53:19

dingy club here there So we go to the

53:21

Viper room, which is famous because this is where

53:23

Joaquin Phoenix Overdo not walking one of the Phoenix

53:25

River River River Phoenix overdosed and it's

53:28

kind of a Hollywood place So it's like

53:30

alright. I'll go that sounds fun. Let's do it We

53:33

go and he plays in this band. There's

53:35

a really charismatic beautiful

53:40

Dominant lead singer and she was the

53:42

sort of the whole band and everyone

53:44

else is relegated to kind of just

53:47

Stand behind me and play. Yeah, and

53:49

that's who he was dating at the time and So

53:52

after the thing, you know, I'm

53:54

kind of the friend of the friend and there's a couple of

53:56

friend of friends there We kind of get invited but we're like

53:58

sitting at the table like kind of adjacent to everyone,

54:00

but we're not really part of the crew,

54:02

but we're trying to throw in a comment

54:05

to the adult table. That

54:08

person was Katy Perry. Oh, wow. I

54:10

love to hear that. She

54:13

was one or two years out of

54:15

Christian pop land and was just trying

54:17

to be pop. So she

54:20

was about to go big. We

54:22

were six months from Katy being

54:25

the thing. You

54:27

would have never known it because there was probably 75 people at that

54:29

show. The

54:31

dinner we went to, I think, I mean, if you told me it

54:34

was Denny's, I believe you. I don't know if it was Denny's, but

54:36

I think that's where we went at like 2 a.m. after the show.

54:38

Love it. And the conversation was

54:41

some of the most grotesque

54:43

and not safe for work humor I've

54:46

ever heard in my entire life. You

54:49

know what? You know? The

54:51

thing you got to know about Pentecostals and

54:53

Charismatics, we party hard. Yeah. We

54:56

go one way or the other, but you go

54:58

big or go home. Okay, I have one last

55:00

story. So when I was at Vanderbilt Divinity School,

55:02

one of my first friends that I made, there was a guy named

55:04

Marcus. And Marcus told me, you

55:08

know, when we first started, you know, you're just kind of

55:10

like getting to know people. And

55:12

he was also raised Pentecostal. I was raised Pentecostal.

55:14

We kind of found each other in a place

55:16

like Vanderbilt. And he said, we

55:18

were talking just like getting to know people. And he

55:20

said, yeah, you know, I have

55:23

some friends from church and they are,

55:25

I've been helping manage their tour, you

55:27

know, they're rock stars. And

55:29

you just kind of, in Nashville, it's like, oh, sure, everyone

55:31

is, you know, everyone. And I was like, well, who are

55:33

they? And this is before anyone had heard

55:35

of them. He said, oh, they're called the Kings of

55:37

Leon. And it's true. It's

55:39

true. And they were right about to go

55:41

really big if you... So

55:44

anyway, but I remember being a little bit irol when Marcus

55:46

told me that. I was really wrong. But

55:48

that's another set

55:51

of Pentecostals that party hard. That made

55:53

it. Yeah. And I was like, I think

55:55

go big or go home. All right.

55:57

Go halfway. I feel like we could do

55:59

this forever. and I'm really sorry

56:01

if we've taken up more time than you have. Oh,

56:04

so fun. But the book is called

56:06

God Gave Rock and Roll to You. It's out

56:08

now, Oxford University Press. It's a great read. If

56:10

you're somebody who didn't grow up with this, you're

56:12

going to learn so much about American culture, American

56:14

religion, the ways that

56:17

white conservative Christianity really had

56:19

a huge influence in ways

56:21

you probably don't know. And

56:23

if you did live this stuff, this will be a

56:25

trip down memory lane. It will help you place yourself

56:28

in history. It will help you place your experience in

56:30

a movement that was

56:32

really important in a lot of ways and still

56:34

is. And so it's

56:36

a one of a kind book and so thankful you wrote

56:39

it. Your series is also

56:41

out. Rock That Doesn't Roll and everybody can

56:43

find that on PRX, which is great and

56:45

fantastic and your podcast

56:47

is Weird Religion. So anyway, lots of ways to

56:50

link up with you and everything you're doing. And

56:53

thanks so much for stopping by. Thank

56:55

you all. I'm such a huge fan of both of

56:57

you and your work. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thanks so much.

57:00

It was great. We didn't even get to dance

57:03

tattoo, but we'll do it next time. All

57:06

right. Thanks, Leah. Talk to

57:08

you later. Thanks

57:24

for listening to this free part of

57:26

our swag episode. We have another hour

57:28

left. We

57:30

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57:33

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57:38

into the weeds about some really distressing

57:40

news out of the UK

57:43

and trans healthcare in

57:45

the NHS and how that is going to come

57:47

across the pond and affect people

57:49

here in the United States. It's

57:52

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