Stryper earned wild-eyed “Satanic Panic” outrage, while the steadfastly wholesome Grant was a target for collective Evangelical misogyny. Of course, no punchlines from the secular world about the oddity of Christian rock were any match for the fury of fundamentalist believers, and both Grant and Stryper recall receiving more than their share of self-righteous wrath. That narrative’s deep flaw comes when the film treats the increased corporate demands on the industry, as well as the difficult social realities and injustices that are either ignored or aggravated by Evangelical culture, as mostly not worth mentioning.įast forward to the 80s, and the game-changing emergence of Christian music as a cultural force within the Evangelical world and an untapped market with mainstream crossover potential, represented here from the seemingly polar opposite success stories of Grant - the first Christian artist to sell that mythical million for her 1982 album “Age to Age” - and metal band Stryper, a band that came to Christianity, ironically, due to the influence of bellowing anti-rock televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, and whose black-and-yellow-striped spandex costumes won them a fervent MTV audience.
Even with an unlikely high-profile ally in evangelist Billy Graham, who publicly encouraged the music, the artists were often rejected by churches over aesthetic and decibel-based offenses.Įmploying standard documentary usage of archival footage and new interviews with artists from every decade of the genre’s ascension, the Erwins move with stylistic ease through a mostly chronological narrative arc that emphasizes the earnest intentions of the assembled artists.
The opposition, what little existed, came from established older clergy who rejected the formal elements of the music itself, since Protestant churches in the United States had been pointedly against rock and roll. The enthusiastic reception of this music among young Evangelicals ( a word pointedly never mentioned in this documentary) coupled with a broader Christian revival of baby boomers entering adulthood, was enough of an overground phenomenon to make the cover of Time magazine. Love Song, Second Chapter of Acts, Phil Keaggy, Keith Green and the wildly complicated Larry Norman (an artist considered too secular for Christian audiences and too Christian for secular audiences) laid a foundation that became known as “Jesus Music.” In short order, bands sprang up at Calvary just as other bands and solo artists were emerging in other cities.
In Costa Mesa, California, a church called Calvary Chapel welcomed these prodigal sons and daughters and the music they were making. Pre-Amy, there were the Jesus People: the young adults of the late 1960s, burned out on drugs and other religions they consumed as novelties, returning to the faith of their fathers.
She wasn’t the first to the Contemporary Christian Music party - a slew of shoeless longhairs in the early 70s beat her to it - but when she arrived, she was the well-scrubbed, modest girl next door who inspired a fledgling arm of the music industry to collectively dream of platinum albums.Īnd as one of the producers of this documentary from directors Andrew Erwin and Jon Erwin (“I Can Only Imagine”), a pleasant-enough advertorial that glides through the brief history of CCM and elides its thornier issues, Grant gets the first and last words.