While once something of a fringe issue within musicology, over the last couple of decades, the relationship between Christianity and popular music has slowly begun to receive a greater share of scholarly attention. In The Devil's Music, Stephens offers his contribution to a growing bibliography, telling the story of the relationship between American evangelical Christianity and rock music in a five-stage narrative covering initial linkages between Pentecostalism and rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s, subsequent debates and moral conflict surrounding race, religion and popular music, the conservative backlash against the Beatles (in particular John Lennon's infamous remark about being ‘bigger than Jesus’), the advent of Christian rock and the subsequent kickback against this re-integration of music and religion. Each stage of the narrative showcases different tensions and dynamics as both Christians and American society more broadly adapted to, argued over and negotiated long-term processes of cultural and social change both within and outside of the structures of religious communities.
Stephens is far from the first writer to tackle many of these themes, and the evangelical battle over rock music is a familiar one, not least because it is recent history still well within the realms of living memory and experience. Numerous scholars have begun, over recent years, to circulate around these broader questions, histories and issues. Early on, however, Stephens sets out the distinctive nature of his contribution – to move away from a specific focus on one particular intersection of Christianity and rock and to broaden the canvas so as to take in a broader range of interactions between believers and popular culture. While existing studies often focus on a particular issue or moment, such as the adoption and production of rock music by Christian communities, Stephens is interested in the different back and forth interactions which are present from the earliest days of rock ‘n’ roll onwards.
Stephens's narrative is a very readable one, full of interesting vignettes and anecdotes which are used to illustrate different dynamics and moments within the unfolding history. The opening description of Jerry Lee Lewis's regrets, late in life, that he hadn't managed to follow God in the way he should have sets up very effectively the ambiguities and tensions that form the core of Stephens’ narrative as a whole. Stephens's skill at storytelling means that the book is easily approachable for a popular audience as well as for the scholarly community, indeed it seems likely to have been written with this cross-over potential in mind. While well-footnoted throughout, the author focusses on telling this story over and above weighing in on scholarly debates, theoretical frameworks or historiographical issues. At points, I would have welcomed more exploration in these arenas, and from time to time I felt a little over-reliant on the author's own observations and analysis as a substitute for broader critical engagement.
What becomes clear throughout the course of the book is that the relationship between rock music and religion isn't purely a concern of the Christian adopters or critics of the music, but an association that is bound up closely with the origins and development of the music itself. The story of Christianity and rock is not a para-history orbiting around an otherwise independent secular core, but rather race, religion and music are innately bound up through the history of rock music's development, in a potent mixing-pot of energy, tension and conflict. It's a relationship that is constantly twisting and turning in different directions, rather than one that has remained consistent over time. Stephens offers a remarkably balanced narrative, which feels like it does justice to the internal conflicts and dilemmas faced both by musicians and by religious leaders rather than offering an artificial polarisation of innately oppositional groups.
Stephens foregrounds moral panics associated with race as drivers of the debates around rock. Indeed, almost every moral opposition that evangelicals had to rock music seems, in Stephens's narrative ultimately to be racially rooted. Yet in foregrounding music as the principal theme of the book, the broader racial dynamics and developments which would help to illuminate these tensions are sometimes pushed somewhat to the background. Throughout, I was left with the constant feeling that Stephens could have probed a little deeper into the various issues that are raised, and that, in telling the stories of events and personalities, some of the ideological ground was being left uncovered. The narrative Stephens tells has a couple of (perhaps intentional) blind spots. While he covers the creation of Christian rock as a musical genre, for example, the use of this music within the context of Christian worship is pushed somewhat to one side. While this seems to be something of strategic move, avoiding developments already well covered elsewhere, this missing strand in the broader ecology of music and Christianity shouldn't be underestimated in its contribution to precisely the developing dynamics that Stephens describes. Likewise, in foregrounding racial dynamics, theological rationales and ideologies don't always receive the attention they deserve.
All in all, this is a solid volume which presents a compelling narrative, taking the long view from origins to present day. The contextualisation of different stages of development alongside one-another is very welcome, and the book is to be commended for drawing them together in this way. Stephens's book is far from the last word on this topic, and it is to be hoped that it contributes to a broadening scholarly concern regarding intersections of popular music, religion, race and socio-cultural change so that consideration of these issues can continue to enrich the study of popular musics more generally.
