The Glorious Rise Of Christian Pop

Are you ready to rip the face off this place?" screams the lead singer of Pillar. A hyped-up crowd of teens--6,000 strong--goes nuts. The aggressive rap-rock band launches into a pummeling kickoff number, the surly singer pounding the stage with his steel-toed boot, sweating right through his baggy Army fatigues and black bandanna. He gestures like a member of some vicious street gang as he screams and roars into the mike, his arm swinging low as if on the way to the requisite crotch grab. This crude move is as integral to rap-rock as the blown kiss is to a lounge act, and is usually accompanied by a testosteroid explosion of expletives. The singer's hand slaps down hard on his thigh--and stays there. Gripping his pants leg with conviction, he screams, "Jesus Christ!" Pause. "Is he in your heart?"

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It's time to wreak havoc and give praise at Festival Con Dios, the first Christian alternative-rock tour. This is the sanctified answer to hedonistic summer blowouts like Lollapalooza and Ozzfest, an extravaganza where amped-up rock and roll meets tamped-down self-control. On the tour, which will span more than 30 U.S. cities throughout the summer and early fall, the ska band the OC Supertones dedicates its music to God while goofing around the stage in giant Afro wigs. Thuggish rapper T-Bone busts gangsta-style rhymes about the Lord. Newsboys, the festival creators and platinum-selling Christian-rock veterans, warn of Judgment Day in an upbeat song as their drummer defies gravity on a vertical, rotating riser. And it's all in the name of Jesus.

Alternative rock is just one pillar in the gigantic cathedral of Christian entertainment. It spans from the popular "Left Behind" novels, which sold 28.8 million copies, to the Grammy-winning singer Steven Curtis Chapman, who helped pack in 50,000 at the Freedom Live festival in Tulsa, Okla., last week. Then there's the 22 million video sales of the children's cartoon "VeggieTales." This gospel-fueled fun is now a booming business and a cornerstone of American culture. So why didn't you hear the hoofbeats of its thunderous approach? Because so much of this energy fails to register on the seismographs of mainstream industry and media, the ruling parties that tend to dismiss Christian entertainment as too marginal ever to outgrow its niche position.

The largely evangelical industry has created its own parallel world anyway, a place where popular art and culture are filtered through a conservative Christian lens and infused with messages of faith. This is a milieu familiar to many people who live in the Red Zone--the vast swath of the nation that tends to go to church, voted for George W. Bush and is sometimes suspicious of the national press (including NEWSWEEK). On the mammon side, the rise of Christian entertainment is a simple matter of supply and demand. The number of evangelicals, or born-agains, has increased sharply over the past 20 years; some studies suggest they're the fastest-growing segment of America's religious population. The heavenly ring of cash registers has finally grown so loud that major publishers (including Warner Books) have started Christian-book divisions, and independent gospel-based labels are being snapped up by such corporate giants as Sony and Universal. You don't have to care about music to see that the subculture of Christian rock, with its marketing strategies, ecclesiastical messages and devoted fans, sheds light on a fascinating sector of American life.

Contemporary Christian music is now the hottest genre in the entire music industry. If Christian pop used to connote sappy lyrics, lacquered hairdos and soft-focus videos, it now means the boy band Plus One, the Latin cross-over singer Jaci Velasquez and even the arty, underground Danielson Family. "CCM" has become an umbrella term for anything with faith-based lyrics, from Twila Paris's inspirational hymns to Audio Adrenaline's squealing feedback. It also means $747 million in record sales last year--7 percent of the overall sales in the American music industry. To put that in perspective: for every 10 country-music albums sold, seven Christian CDs fly off the shelf. CCM sales were double those of U.S. Latin music last year and topped the combined numbers of jazz, classical and New Age.

It took more than prayer to revitalize the industry. Christian music underwent a makeover, hipping itself up for the approaching millennium. Starting in the early '90s, its artists began borrowing from more relevant styles of music and fashion to promote their words of praise. Conveying those lyrics in the catchiest ways is now the main goal. It's all part of an evangelical oral tradition to spread the Gospel. Where a preacher uses the pulpit and an organ, CCMers use the stage and a band. Artists can choose to dedicate songs directly to God, referred to as "verticals," or praise-and-worship tunes, or to sing about religious values, sometimes with a deliberate ambiguity to attract less conservative listeners. Occasionally, the music crosses over: CCM stars such as crooner Michael W. Smith and the roots-rock outfit Jars of Clay get play on VH1, and the metal bands P.O.D. and Lifehouse are embraced by MTV. To young Christians, these rock artists are Gospel-spreading heroes. Like the kids, they exist between dueling cultures, forming an unlikely bridge from explosive teenage rebellion to steady, unwavering faith.