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Mark Joseph is president of MJM Entertainment Group and worked in the entertainment business as a journalist and executive. Joseph says younger Christian artists are having unprecedented success as mainstream musicians. In turn, their songs are having an impact on popular culture in ways that contemporary Christian music never could. Joseph is the author of The Rock & Roll Rebellion and most recently, Faith, God and Rock 'n Roll: How People of Faith Are Transforming American Popular Music. He lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife and children.

You say that the exciting news in Christian music is that Christians are performing as mainstream acts. However, the Christian music industry gets most of the attention because of its sales figures. You say those figures aren't so accurate as they seem.

Every year press releases are issued from Nashville saying that Christian music is growing by x percent. It's fascinating because, on the one hand, those numbers are greatly exaggerated and on the other hand, sales are even more than that.

The numbers that show growth in Christian music unfortunately are obtained by counting records that really wouldn't be considered Christian music. Things like the O Brother, Where Art Thou? record, a POD record, and Mannheim Steamroller. These records, which are used to tabulate sales of Christian music, by any standard, are not [Christian music].

Christian music, as a genre, is probably actually in decline, if you use real numbers. What's exploding is the idea of Christians playing rock music in mainstream America.

Only four of the top ten CCM bestsellers are really CCM?

It's silly to play these numbers games and say Christian music has grown by x percent when it really hasn't. The big story is that Christianity, Christian ideas, Christian thoughts in rock music, are exploding beyond any possible measuring standard.

Let's talk about a couple of examples of that as evidence. One would be the POD story. How do these guys illustrate your point that the real story is Christian artists in the mainstream?

It's so ironic that the trade association that is responsible for Christian music would tabulate POD's records as growth in sales of Christian music because this is a classic story of this younger generation. These are a couple of kids from San Diego who are devout young Christians. They had two paths to take: One path led to Nashville and would have led to Christian music stardom. The other path was to Atlantic Records, where they ended up. They deliberately chose the path that took them to the mainstream. In fact, they were offered a record contract early on by one of the Christian music labels and they turned it down at a time when they didn't know if they would be offered a mainstream contract.

Why are these artists saying they don't want to be in the CCM niche?

For the mainstream culture, the term Christian rock has become a term of derision. The only people who haven't figured that out yet are some of the people involved in the Christian music industry. It's become a term that once you are labeled with, it's hard to recover.

The people who were running the Christian music industry four or five years ago couldn't figure out why all these young artists didn't want to be called Christian rock and they didn't realize the label immediately made them irrelevant. These young artists have said, "If we sign to a Christian music company, that will put us off the map of American pop culture."

I have to say that today a lot of the leaders in the Christian music industry are a new generation. The heads of Word and Provident are terrific people who understand this phenomena and are trying to figure out a way to help.

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July (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48