‘Christian’ used to describe anything other than a person is just a marketing term…
Friday, August 19, 2011
“Christians have this really nasty habit of only engaging with art and culture that has a Christian label on it. You have to learn how to find truth, you have to learn how to find beauty, you have to learn how to discern those things rather than how to discern the category of the band you just bought. Labeling something Christian does not suddenly make it beautiful and true. And labeling something non-Christian doesn’t make it untrue and ugly. Those terms don’t mean anything.”
-Derek Webb
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Comments
Anonymous | August 20 2011 at 8:09 am
Amen! So true. Rather than GMA dove awards, how amazing would it be if good artists, working the “secular industry”, who have a Christian worldview, swept the Grammy’s?! Something worth fighting for…and Webb is definitely a leader in that charge.
Anonymous | August 20 2011 at 2:13 pm
I’m not a big fan of contemporary Christian music, so I have no beef with CCM artists who cross over. But I would find Webb’s convictions a little more convincing if he had been willing to voice them when he was still being marketed as a Christian Artist to Christian Radio stations, writing Christian Music for a Christian Band under a Christian Label. For some reason that did not appear to bother him so much back then. Christians do indeed have a nasty habit of engaging with art and culture when the Christian label is applied. But it’s big business, and you never want to bite the hand that pays the bills. If you watch the careers of crossover artists, for some reason, they never discover how distasteful and artificial the “Christian” label is until it’s time to crossover.
CCM is a profitable industry, but still is only about 6% of the whole music industry. So to tap into the other 94% of the market, abandoning the “Christian” label is a necessary step. This article makes the point nicely:
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/gospel.music.sales.grow.christian.artists.cross.over/8399.htm
The band Switchfoot preferred to avoid the Christian label because, “Calling us ‘Christian rock’ tends to be a box that closes some people out…”. (Read: “limits our market”). And Mute Math declined to be labeled a “Christian band” for what appears to be the same reason.
I don’t know Webb or the motives of his heart, and he does make a good point: labeling something “Christian” can be done with crassly commercial motives, and sometimes gullible Christians fall for it.
But removing the label Christian can be done with commercial motives that are equally crass. For this reason, Webb overlooks a critical truth: while it is true that adding the label does not suddenly make something beautiful and true, that alone does not require that the label be removed, which he appears to insist that we do (i.e., “Those terms don’t mean anything”). I find the label quite meaningful, especially when applied to Christian theology, Christian education, Christian historiography and Christian ministry. As with many cultural and behavioral issues facing the church today, moderation and appropriate usage of the “Christian” label would be better than a hard line insistence that it is only appropriate when applied to a person. After all, I am just as guarded at the overtures of an outspoken “Christian salesman” as Webb is at the use of the term to describe the industry where he started his impressive career.