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Of course, these musicians' mission would be much easier should their counterparts on the business side of CCM reform their companies. Until these executives learn to function in the culture as ordinary labels (albeit ones with spiritual missions), they will continue to lose talented artists to their secular counterparts. If CCM executives were to create safe places for artists to emerge without being labeled "Christian rock," artists would not have to go to mainstream labels to be heard by the wider culture.

The encouraging news is that some companies are doing this already. Word Records' experiment with the Squint label, now run by a former Capitol Records executive, is proof that a label is never too old to try new tricks. It has positioned itself as a mainstream label—not as a religious one—and its artists have gained mainstream radio play and gained access to all of the outlets that mainstream artists have.

Atlantic Records, from its offices in New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles, has also worked to allow artists like Plus One and P.O.D. to have access to both mainstream and CBA markets. Not as religious artists, but as artists who are available and accessible to the entire culture without limiting labels.

Tooth & Nail Records, is another label which has modeled how labels owned and operated by Christians can operate in the future.

"There is no such thing as a 'Christian record label' any more than there is 'Christian McDonalds' 'Christian Safeway,' or 'Christian hockey,'" says the label's founder, Brandon Ebel. "A company is a business. We sign bands that we like. To call something 'Christian' implies that what that organization has to offer is only for Christians."

The move to label records that have not specifically come out of the Nashville-based Contemporary Christian Music industry as "Christian music" perpetuates the sacred/secular split that young artists are trying to overcome. It places emphasis on growing "Christian music" as a genre, and thus reinstitutes the labeling that limits influence on the wider culture.

Scholar and author Phillip E. Johnson has warned Christians of the danger of going along with those who seek to label their work as religious:

"Classifying a viewpoint or theory as religious may have the effect of marginalizing it," he says in his book Reason in the Balance. "A viewpoint or theory is marginalized when without being refuted it is categorized in such a way that it can be excluded from serious consideration. The technique of marginalizing a viewpoint by labeling it 'religion' is particularly effective in late twentieth-century American because there is a general impression, reinforced by Supreme Court decisions, that religion does not belong in public institutions."

Some will continue to promote Contemporary Christian Music as a unique genre—albeit one that incorporates almost every musical style, sometimes even without lyrics. But they will find themselves a shrinking minority. Ironically enough, while the very notion of "Christian music" is in retreat, people of faith are streaming out of their subcultures and making strong statements of faith in the center of the music culture. And they will continue to do so, with or without help from their brothers and sisters on the business side of the existing paradigm of Christian music.

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February (Web-only) 2002, Vol. 46