The Florida State University

College of Arts and Sciences

ROMANTIC ALLEGORY IN CHRISTIAN ROCK MUSIC

By

MICHAEL BLAISE DENTON

A Thesis submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major

Degree Awarded

Spring 2016

Romantic and Physical Metaphor in Jesus Movement Music

Introduction/Overview

Jesus Music is filled with romantic and physical metaphors. The genre is marked by the combination of Christian Evangelical themes, romantic images and allusions, and an engagement with secular music (intentionally or accidentally). This tension between sacred and profane, religious and secular can actually be considered central to the identity of this type of religious song (Flinker, 1). The bands associated with the genre use romantic imagery for a number of reasons which mostly fall into three categories: (1) because of its complicated relationship with secular rock music, (2) because lyrically many bands hope to allude to the romantic imagery found in the Bible, and finally (3) because romantic language adds sentimental strength to a song’s narrative. This essay will look at the way bands within Jesus Music tradition talk about God in romantic and physical terms, and show why and how it works as a rhetorical device.

History and Context

Across cultures and religions we see romantic and physical metaphor used to describe the worshipers relationship with the divine. From the Gita Govinda (Jayadeva) to Sufi Ghazals (Lewisohn) to Ancient Jewish religious writings (Flinker, P.2), to the modern popular Christian music I will be writing about, we see the sacred packaged in profane and physical terms. The romantic language of Christian rock music is then not some strange outlier, but instead a modern, easily accessible case study in the way religious worshippers understand their emotional relationship with God and how they use romantic allegory to express that relationship.

Christian rock music is an amalgamation of earlier Christian worship styles and rock and roll music, itself an amalgamation of earlier, typically religious, styles. Starting with the Jesus People Movement, Christians, primarily but not exclusively Evangelical Christians, began a concerted effort to engage youth culture through music. At the same time, converts to Christianity were bringing in secular rock music and an emotional, existential sort of Christianity. Rockers who had sung about love and peace and drugs now sang about Love of God, eternal peace, and tripping on Jesus (Eskridge, 30). The Jesus Movement was a counter-culture to a counter-culture which taught radical Christian values coupled with an anti-establishment, apocalyptic vibe. The movement started in the late 1960s and the first Christian rock bands started recording their music around 1968. Christian rock music challenged not only the hippie culture, directly confronted in songs like “Peace, Love, and Rock n’ Roll” by the All Saved Freak Band, but also more traditional Christians who were offended by the “devil music” rock and roll style and the off-beat personalities and beliefs of many of the early Christian rockers. The Jesus Movement focused in a more intense way on the apocolypes and a “personal Jesus” than many of the older denominations, and many of its members lived in communes much like the hippies. The Movement also spawned some new religious movements, a handful of cults, and some less than orthodox Christian rockers (Eskridge, 179-180).

Many mainstream Christians had some misgivings about this Rock and Roll. The music was often seen as overly sexual or as promoting uncouth behavior. The strong connections between rock music, and even Christian rock music (Eskridge, 14), and drug culture strengthened this animosity. The irreligious or anti-religious nature of many secular rock bands, along with the revolutionary tenor of much of the rock music scene, was at odds with the more conservative American Christianity. In 1966 John Lennon had said that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus,” which led to mass Christian protests (Thompson, 26).

The Jesus Movement was formed by open minded Evangelicals and ex-hippies (Eskridge, 28). Perhaps because of the cultural and sexual upheaval of the 60s, or because of the “debauchery” of the hippie movement, the Jesus Movement took on a distinctly apocalyptic tint. Many songs directly or indirectly address the sexual climate of the times. Books like The Late, Great Planet Earth, published in 1970 at the beginning of the Jesus Movement, sold well, and brought up a new interest in The Revelation of Saint John, the last book of the Christian Bible which many Evangelicals read as a literal account of the end of the world (Eskridge, 87). This new interest was of course mostly focused on the book’s more apocalyptic elements, but many people also noticed the romantic allegory seen throughout the book.

Members of the Jesus Movement, labeled “Jesus Freaks” (Eskridge, 3) funcitoned outside this Christian mainstream. Often, these freaks did not hold to the most orthodox beliefs and practices, as seen in the lyrics of bands like Azitis or seminal freaks like Lonnie Frisbee (Eskridge, 33). Azitis embraced a more universalist, Unitarian Christianity, while Lonnie Frisbee along with many other freaks found Jesus amidst the drugs and free love of the Hippie movement, while tripping on LSD and raving about Jesus on street corners. All Saved Freak Band founder Markko said: “While people in the street seemed to appreciate what we were doing, the Churches didn’t care for us, at all. Which was OK with us since we didn’t feel like our music was intended for ‘church’ people” (Markko). Early Christian rockers dressed and look almost exactly like their secular counterparts, with the long beards and dirty clothing. Michael Card, an early Christian rock musician whose lyrics, mostly retelling Bible stories to folkish rock music, are calm and Biblically centered, remembers the early days of Christian rock saying: "I couldn't play in my own church (Christianity Today)." Even today, many far right Christians are wary of Christian rock. Several online blogs and forums discuss the relationship between rock music, no matter the lyrical content, and the devil. The Jesus-Is-Savior website, a far right, fundamentalist Christian website says that all rock and roll, including Christian rock, is inherently Satanic (Stewart), while David Noebel’s book, Rhythm, Riots and Revolution argues that rock was intentionally designed by the Soviets to lead America’s youth astray (Noebel). The early Jesus Music rockers were both chastened by the mainstream church and ignored by the music industry which did not, at first, see a market for their music (Thompson, 38).

Even as Christian rock, which would expand into the wider genre Contemporary Christian Music, became more popular, there was resistance to the music in churches. For decades, the debate between those who preferred the older hymns and those who liked the more modern worship music raged on. While the debate has lost a lot of its fierceness, many churches still exclude one or the other type of music. Often this debate rides along age lines, with the older members of the congregation preferring older hymns and the younger members liking the simpler and more emotionally charged worship music (Galli). After the Jesus Movement its progeny, Christian Rock and Christian Contemporary Music, became big business. Records that fall under the CCM umbrella sold seventeen million records in 2014 (Huckabee), almost 7% of all records sold in the US (Statista) (Though all record sales are down, CCM has kept its market share around 7-10% of the market for years).

The Jesus Music rides an odd divide between earlier, primarily live musical experiences and later, primarily recorded and mass media music. Because of the high cost and low quality of most of the recording equipment small independant artists had to work with in the late 1960s many Jesus Musicians did not record their music, or the recordings we have are fairly poor. Thus Jesus Music was primarily a live phenomenon. The recordings that we have are mostly the most popular of the Jesus Music bands, or bands that lasted past the Jesus Movement and recorded their songs later (Thompson, 41). As we look at the Jesus music songs we have to realize that for every song we have a recording of, there are many that never made it out of the coffee shops, parks, garages and nightclubs these acts called home. Jesus Music bands split how and what they play: bands like Love Song play an intentionally physical and communal, worship/folk style music because, for the most part, they were playing at churches and coffee houses where the audience was expected to in some ways participate (Eskridge, 218). Other bands like Agape or Resurrection Band mostly played in clubs and for recordings, and their music, and the romantic allegories they use, reflect that.

Jesus Music owes much of its style to rock and roll (Thompson, 17-39). This similarity in style extends beyond the four piece bands and the crazy hairdos, to the lyrics and themes Christian rockers sing about. Often, only half in jest, Christian rockers have been accused of taking secular rock music and replacing “Baby,” or “lover,” with “Jesus.” South Park, a popular, satirical cartoon show, mocked this element of Christian rock in their episode “Christian Rock Hard (Parker).” And when listening to Christian rock secular phrases will be coupled with religious reference. But Christians have always phrased the relationship between the worshipper and the divine in this erotic language. The Song of Songs, by far the most obviously sexual book in the Bible, stands at the center of Medieval Christian mysticism. It is one of the most translated books, and is one of the most influential books on later western poetry, both romantic and religious (Flinker).

The romantic language of the Jesus movement was shaped by the sentimental of contemporary Christianity. That is, they wrote their music to intentionally stir up strong emotions and sentiments. Some of this more emotional music was a carryover from the hippie movement. Many of the earliest Jesus musicians were recent converts who had been a part of secular bands. Often whole bands would convert. This type of music, which I feel typifies the whole of the Jesus Movement, is best summed up in the quote by Fred Caban of Agape:

We were basically a secular rock band that became Christians. When we got on stage we played it as hard as we did before. But where we had previously been selfish and desiring fortune and fame, we now sang about our faith in Jesus Christ. Nothing on the outside changed. We had been transformed from within.

-Fred Caban, Agape (All Saved Freak Band Website)

Methodology

This essay will document and interpret the way a few important Jesus Movement bands use physical and romantic allegory to talk about the worshippers’ relationship with God. I will do this by taking songs by some of the most popular Christian bands from the era that display romantic or physical metaphors and pick apart why they are written like that. There are three main influences on Jesus Music’s use of Romantic allegory:

Biblical Allusion: The Bible is full of physical and romantic metaphors. Song of Songs, a poem about a couple in love which is also seen as a metaphor for man’s relationship with God, is the longest related section in the Bible, but Ephesians 5, which compares the relationship between a husband and wife to the relationship of Christ and the church is also used. Perhaps the source most of the early Christian rockers pull from is The Revelation of Saint John, because of the Jesus Movement’s focus on the apocalypse. Revelations has a large section about the metaphorical romantic relationship between Christ and the Church.

Secular Influence: Many Christian musicians were converts who brought rock and roll style to Christian subject matter. Converts also brought in popular music’s focus on love and relationships, now often turned towards God or Christ.

Sentimentality: Nothing stirs the blood like physical allusion. Often Christian artists use physical or romantic metaphors to evoke strong emotions we normally associate with love songs.

Most songs will mix all three of these elements. With each band and each song I will attempt to show the way they have used romantic allegory and why/how it works within the song.

While this essay does refer to history, and attempts to discuss change in the way romantic allusion has been used in Christian rock over time, this is hardly a history of Christian rock, or even a conclusive history of romantic allusion within the genre. I have chosen to look at bands and songs within a fairly specific time period, The Jesus Movement, to see how they use romantic allusion. I have then attempted to connect the songs and bands to each other, showing similarity and difference within and between different bands.

This essay was also influenced by The Song of Songs in Renaissance Literature, the Kisses of Their Mouths (Flinker). Using Noam Flinker’s model of the balance between dialectic opposites, I will discuss how the imagery present in these songs is produced by and influences these dialectic pairs. I have chosen a slightly different set of pairs from Flinker: performed and recorded music, religious and secular origins, and physical and spiritual. These pairs work together to produce the sound of the Jesus Music.

Love Song

Love Song is one of the most iconic bands of the Jesus Movement. The band members have a story typical of the Jesus Movement. They started as a bunch of hippies, living off the land and using LSD. They took to touring around, preaching peace, love, and drugs as the way to God. They began to hear the early rumblings of the Jesus movement: “rumors of hippies getting saved… rumors of a hippie preacher at Calvary Chapel (Frisbee), about the Blue Top Christian commune, and of hitchhikers inviting people to church (From the Band Bio).” They started discussing the Bible, and slowly each of the members converted. They joined Calvary Chapel, a center for the early Jesus bands, and started playing church functions and, ironically, anti-drug rallies. They went on to become one of the most popular and iconic Jesus Movement bands (Eskridge, 217).