Radosh.net

mewithoutyou I like well enough, but their Tooth&Nail label-buddies and fellow Christians Anberlin and Mae I like much, much more. Oh hell, I love them. (Although I don't know if Anberlin or Mae would count for inclusion in the evangelical scene, since their music specifically avoids Christianity as a subject matter.)

I don't know Mae (it's hard to listen to everything) but I find Anberlin boring. Not bad, just familiar -- hard to distinguish from any other melodic alt-rock. MewithoutYou seems much more fresh and eclectic to me.

What makes any of these bands "Christian"? Hmm, a person could write a chapter of a book unpacking that question.

Wow, that was very good.
Having just gotten the KLove syndicated radio programming in town, it's interesting to listen to, especially since most Christian-oriented content makes my skin crawl.
A lot of it is Christian Yacht Rock but sometimes there is a song or two that has this striking alternative vibe to it. On the other hand, I tuned in one of the KLove announcers in mid-conversation the other day, only to hear him say, "Well, God made us, you know." Funny he would have to reiterate such an obvious point. Didn't mention bananas, unfortunately, and the fact they have a stem and are curved completely decodes the universe for us.

If indie rock can make room for Pedro the Lion and Sufjan Stevens, surely they can live with mewithoutYou.

You will never hear mewithoutYou on Christian radio. I doubt you'd hear Anberlin even. At best you'll get Audio Adrenaline or Relient K. Crap bands that sound OK when you're flipping channels because they're no more crappy than the crap bands that get played on most "secular" stations.

The question is: why won't the handful of good "secular" stations that are left play mewithoutYou and other good Christian music? I'd love to know if XM and Sirius mix it up more than terrestrial radio.

Pedro is the role model for all these bands. I could be wrong, but I don't think Sufjan was ever on a Christian label or in the Christian scene, so in a sense he's more like U2: a Christian artist who is embraced by many in the Christian bubble but who has never really been part of it himself.

As for mewithoutYou and for Anberlin (and for Mae) they are fully perceived by most people (read: me?)as members of the scene that includes Fall Out Boy and Say Anything to bring out examples which have received either MTV or mainstream radio play. For these reasons I think they are left out of the mainstream Christian scene, although they tend to be popular with the Christian high school and college students. Out of all of them, mewithoutYou is the most "Christian"...I can't think of a single Mae song with an overt Christian reference, and only one Anberlin song.

As for why secular stations won't play their music, I'm not sure. Maybe because radio in general just isn't good at spotting trends anymore.

Someone could write a whole chapter unpacking this question, eh? Someone like...you?

This is from www.defectiveyeti.com :

A Google search indicates that no one has ever formed a heavy metal Christian band called "BC/AD." That's just unacceptable, people.

I was gonna say the same about "JC/BC," which I think would be even more appropos, but no, it's taken.

Sufjan Stevens is Eastern Orthodox (I think) which is a fairly long way from the Evangelical movement. He (and Bono, too) reminds me more of writers like Flannery O'Connor or Walker Percy, devout Catholics whose work frequently explored their faith, as opposed to someone like CS Lewis, also a Catholic, whose work seems more like an apologetic.

According to Wikipedia, Sufjan is Anglo-Catholic. His cultural distance from evangelicalism is certainly important to this discussion, but his approach to Christian themes in his music is less so. You could say much the same (explorative/informed by vs. apologetic/evangelistic) about mewithoutYou, Pedro the Lion and scores of other indie CCM artists going back to Daniel Amos.

Artists in this camp often cite a quote from T-Bone Burnett: "If Jesus is the Light of the World, there are two kinds of songs you can write. You can write songs about the light, or you can write songs about what you can see from the light. That's what I try to do."

I went to Notre Dame and I had to look up what an "Anglo-Catholic" is. That's even further away from Evangelicalism than plain old Orthodoxy. Interesting.

You could say much the same (explorative/informed by vs. apologetic/evangelistic) about mewithoutYou, Pedro the Lion and scores of other indie CCM artists going back to Daniel Amos.

I suppose I was referring to bands that are embraced by Christian radio as opposed to bands that self-identify as Christian.

Of course there probably is no one who knows less about the subject of popular Christian music than me. I'm not even sure why I chimed in.

But back to Walker Percy for a minute. There is a great exchange in his correspondence with Shelby Foote in which Foote basically says that all devout artists (although he was talking specifically about writers) will always be minor because they, by definition, put something ahead of their art.

He quickly (and insincerely) tells his friend that he doesn't consider Percy a "Catholic writer." Percy disagreed, I think, on both counts.

I suppose I was referring to bands that are embraced by Christian radio as opposed to bands that self-identify as Christian.

I am going to chastise you for your ignorance yet more, my friend, because none of the bands we're talking about "self-identify" as Christian. Maybe the people in those bands do (though mwY is hard to nail down even on that) but that's not the same thing. What I think you mean is "...as opposed to bands that are identified as Christian," since CCM is more than anything an audience-defined classification.

Foote must hate Renaissance painting. But in a limited sense, he's onto something when it comes to contemporary Christian fiction. The fact that we have to go back to Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor and CS Lewis to talk about great Christian literature is revealing.

Foote must hate Renaissance painting.

Well, Shelby would probably argue that most of those guys weren't all that devout. They were painting Madonnas because that's what the church and the Medicis and everyone else were paying for. He didn't say you couldn't make great art from a religious subject. Madonnas were the, um, Madonnas of their day.

The fact that we have to go back to Walker Percy, Flannery O'Connor and CS Lewis to talk about great Christian literature is revealing.

Yeah, especially since there would seem to be a market for it. There have been some guys like Brian Moore who have written terrific, thoughtful fiction from a religious perspective, but it doesn't seem like there are many of them lately.

Of course it cuts both ways. It seems unlikely that a book like The Moviegoer would win the National Book Award today, either.

Just incidentally, C.S. Lewis was never a Roman Catholic.

CC - right, good catch. Officially he was Anglican, but he was kind of an oddball (in a good way).

Oops. Sad part is I knew that. And it's an important biographical distinction. Sort of like the way Joe Lieberman was never a Republican.