Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Was looking forward to this, but found it dreadfully dull and poorly edited.
For instance, DJ Scott Ross is introduced no less than four (4) times, and each time the same copy is written about him. Frequently, the book is written as if each chapter is written on its own instead of part of a book, so there's no narrative thread. Musicians and newsworthy artists and events come and go and there's no connection drawn between them.
Most disappointing of all, the entire premise of the book--how CCM transformed American evangelism--is NEVER addressed! Just when the book ends, we're introduced to the Reagan era, but by then, "Jesus Music" in its purist form was over, and CCM as an industry was beginning to draw attention. But the connection is never made, other than some statistics that most men and women from the Jesus Movement tend to be conservative as they age.
Click Here to see more reviews about: No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism
In this cultural history of evangelical Christianity and popular music, David Stowe demonstrates how mainstream rock of the 1960s and 1970s has influenced conservative evangelical Christianity through the development of Christian pop music. For an earlier generation, the idea of combining conservative Christianity with rock--and its connotations of nonreligious, if not antireligious, attitudes--may have seemed impossible. Today, however, Christian rock and pop comprises the music of worship for millions of Christians in the United States, with recordings outselling classical, jazz, and New Age music combined.Shining a light on many of the artists and businesspeople key to the development of Christian rock, Stowe shows how evangelicals adapted rock and pop in ways that have significantly affected their religion's identity and practices. The chart-topping, spiritually inflected music created a space in popular culture for talk of Jesus, God, and Christianity, thus lessening for baby boomers and their children the stigma associated with religion while helping to fill churches and create new modes of worship. Stowe argues that, in the four decades since the Rolling Stones first unleashed their hit song, "Sympathy for the Devil," the increasing acceptance of Christian pop music by evangelicals ultimately has reinforced a variety of conservative cultural, economic, theological, and political messages.
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