The Devil’s Music: How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll

Randall J. Stephens

Published by Harvard University Press 2018

The Devil’s Music

How Christians Inspired, Condemned, and Embraced Rock ’n’ Roll

Randall J. Stephens

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674919747

Overview
Contents

About this book

Randall Stephens traces rock’s inspiration to the Pentecostal churches where Elvis, Little Richard, and others worshipped. Faith, which served as a vehicle for whites’ fears, led them to condemn the godless music of blacks and hippies. But in a reversal of strategy, evangelicals later embraced Christian rock as a way to project Jesus’s message.

Author / Editor information

Stephens Randall J. :

Randall J. Stephens is Associate Professor of British and American Studies at the University of Oslo.

Reviews

David W. Stowe, author of No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism:
An admirably balanced, exhaustively researched, consistently engaging narrative of the complex and fraught relationship between conservative Christians and popular music in the United States.

David N. Hempton, Dean of the Harvard Divinity School:
Stephens brilliantly explores the many enmities, ambiguities, adaptations, and constant braiding of rock music and conservative Christian youth culture as the electricity of rock music jolted and shocked parents and captivated teens and young adults. The fiercely fought battles over music, values, and taste were indeed proxy wars for the soul of the nation.

Matthew Avery Sutton, author of American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism:
In this beautifully written, entertaining, and smart book, Stephens masterfully analyzes the religious roots of rock music, the evangelical response to the rise of rock music, and the ways in which evangelicals made rock music their own in recent decades.

Paul W. Gleason:
An engrossing story about American Christianity’s long and ambivalent relationship with what Fats Domino dubbed ‘the big beat.’

Harriet Baber:
The Devil’s Music chronicles the development of popular music in America since the mid-20th century, attending to the audience as well as the performers. Focusing on the reception of rock by conservative Christians, it is a commentary on the emerging social role of Evangelicals and the politics of the period.

Ed Whitelock:
Stephens’ deeply researched The Devil’s Music charts the long and oftentimes contentious relationship between evangelical Christianity and rock 'n' roll. Along the way, it offers some surprising historical insights and a somber lesson for social progressives who have long scoffed at their evangelical adversaries in America’s ongoing culture wars.

Clive Marsh:
[A] beautifully written, well-researched book…What Stephens has provided is an extensively evidenced account of just how tetchy Christians—especially theologically and politically conservative Christians in the U.S.—have been about popular music, while also wanting to make use of it when necessary to promote their version of the faith.

Christopher Carroll:
[E]xcellent… [V]aluable, clearly written and meticulously researched.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Pentecostalism and Rock ’n’ Roll in the 1950s Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	27
2. Race, Religion, and Rock ’n’ Roll Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	65
3. The Beatles, Christianity, and the Conservative Backlash Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	102
4. The Advent of Jesus Rock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	146
5. The Fundamentalist Reaction to Christian Rock Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	190
Epilogue Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	236
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	319
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	323

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Pages
- Main content: 330
Illustrations
- Other: 23 halftones

eBook

Published: March 19, 2018
ISBN: 9780674919747