Blog: The Christian Music Industry is Dying…and That’s a Good Thing.

I consume a lot of music from a bunch of different genres but if there’s one genre that you will almost never hear me listening to (outside of country) is music with a Christian label on it. Seriously, I only listen to one Christian artist, and that’s Skillet, but other than that, I am not a fan of the genre. Even when I was listening to K-LOVE as a child, I wasn’t a big fan of most of the songs on there. And today, as we’ve recently learned that Michael Tait, the frontman for the bands The Newsboys and DC Talk was Bill-Cosby-ing guys (a recent update to the story also alleges that he drugged and raped a woman by the pseudonym “Nicole”), I think it’s time to talk about how the Christian music industry is quickly digging its own grave and going to hell and why that’s actually a good thing for the church.

To start with, music has always been a big part of Christian worship dating back thousands of years. However, it’s only been in more recent years that an entire industry similar to today’s secular music industry has been built up around it. The traditional Gospel music that you would hear played in churches morphed into something more contemporary in the 1960s and 70s, influenced by whatever pop and rock bands were popular at the time, attracting many younger listeners. Overtime, it’s grown dramatically, becoming a multi-billion-dollar industry including multiple musical genres and offering Christians a wholesome alternative to the secular music of today that’s often highly sexualized or obscene in other ways.

However, though the Christian music scene might’ve started out with good intentions, it’s become clear over the past few decades that it’s quickly been corrupted as a way to make fast money thanks to a built-in fanbase. If you just look at some of the artists dominating the scene right now, almost every one of them seems like a copycat of some secular artist, ranging from Katy Perry to Drake to Megan Thee Stallion. The difference between them? They say they’re Christian.

I’m not kidding. That’s it.

Just like with how the secular music industry (and secular media in general) promotes you more depending on how hard you pander to a certain group of people, the Christian music industry promotes you for pandering to Christians. This means that you can copycat another artist, say “Jesus” a few times, and become famous. Talking to my dad about this, he told me about an episode of Southpark in which Cartman starts a Christian boy band after being kicked out of another band, ripping off his songs from other artists and filling them with many, many innuendoes and I feel it perfectly illustrates this point. It also reminds me of the first church I attended where it was an open secret/joke that all the people on the worship team were people that the church picked up doing bar gigs.

Unfortunately, this has made the Christian music industry very similar to the secular music industry where it’s a game of pick-your-poison. If you’re willing to sell your soul to a secular music label and agree to do whatever they want you to, you could go famous. If you sell your soul to a Christian music label and agree to live by whatever standards of purity they have even if you’re not a Christian, you could also go famous by pandering to a built-in fanbase. This is not only can be bad for people in these circles because it can potentially foster a very toxic lifestyle, but in Christian circles, it can be bad for the church. For one thing, it makes Christianity look like a joke, like nothing more than shallow behavior modification when in public and a get-out-of-jail-free card when an artist does things that you expect to see at a secular concert at your “Christian” concert. For another thing, it enables abuse since many people, in the name of grace and unity, will try to write it off and sweep it under the rug. John Cooper of Skillet recently called out the evangelical media for doing just that on his podcast Cooper Stuff, saying, “What kind of Gospel are we displaying to the world when … our biggest, most passionate, most famous Christian music icons … say, ‘I’ve been living a double life since the beginning?’ […] This stuff is so egregious, and it shames the Gospel to such a huge level. We’re not condemning people. We’re condemning the actions of people full-throatedly, unapologetically. We do not shrink back.”

It doesn’t just stop there, either. On the artistic side of things, this is the antithesis of art; it’s pandering. Art is meant to be a way of self-expression. When all you can do is copycat other people for money, you’re not creating art of your own. You’re just a sellout. There’s no creativity; just a crater of stolen ideas.

Because of this type of thing, I think that more people are starting to realize that the Christian music industry is a big hoax at this point and that will hopefully help fix things some. Hopefully it will help make the vetting process for up-and-coming Christian artists better, help encourage accountability, and get more real art into it.

The second reason why I think it’s a good thing that the Christian music industry may be dying is because it’s been almost completely monopolized by NAR (New Apostolic Reformation) churches or groups, such as Bethel, Hillsong, Elevation Worship, Maverick City Music (who has teamed up with secular artists like Connor Price, GloRilla, and Will Smith, which really says everything you need to know about them) etc. If you listen to any Christian music station or almost any church, I can guarantee that almost every song played will be from one of these groups or from someone affiliated with them. What this means is that while some of the songs may seem biblically sound (and some of them are), there are quite a few that have aberrant and even heretical messages in them. Furthermore, these songs are meant to grow the influence of NAR by getting people interested in their churches and generating them money. For example, as of 2023, Bethel Church made $80 million from their music, the net worth for Hillsong’s band is an estimated $10-$20 million as of this year, Elevation Worship has an estimated net worth of $8 million, etc. If the Christian music industry truly is dying, it will cut off a significant stream of cash for these aberrant and heretical churches and groups.

Until next time,

M.J.