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Show me an evangelical between the ages of 15 and 50, and I'll show you an evangelical who can tell this story (or something much like it): I used to listen to secular music, then I discarded it all and listened only to Christian music. Then I realized I didn't like much Christian music, so I slowly started listening to secular music again. Now I listen to the David Crowder Band in the mornings and Radiohead on the drive home.

Such is the tortured state of popular Christian music: It's of the world, but not in it. It exists, as Andrew Beaujon attests in his engrossing Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock, in a "parallel universe," never fully intersecting with the trendsetting sonic landscapes of mainstream or alternative rock. Christian music may approximate the sounds of popular rock, and the labels may even be owned by the same parent companies, but to many people's ears, Christian rock is just one long cover. 

It doesn't take Beaujon long to note Christian rock's tortured existence. Not only does the audience choose it as an oft-reluctant alternative to mainstream music, but many Christian musicians are themselves forever sorting out their own relationship to the non-Christian artists they esteem, the non-Christian listeners they covet, and the non-Christian labels with whom they'd like to sign.

Beaujon opens with a scene at the Cornerstone Festival, Christian rock's biggest and baddest rock fest. (Beaujon's title comes from t-shirts sold at Cornerstone featuring the pierced hands of Jesus.) On stage is Pedro the Lion, fronted by David Bazan, who looks "more like the bobble-head doll of an antiglobalization activist than the bad boy of Christian rock." Pedro the Lion is a critical favorite, a band that excels at slowed-down, pulsing emo-rock. Pedro is also a favorite among young Christians who know the band was originally a Christian band; though Bazan has rejected evangelicalism (or, rather, evangelical culture), his lyrics deal with Christ, faith, sin, and redemption, and his Christian fans still take him as one of their own.

At the Pedro show at Cornerstone, the central question—for Beaujon and the thousands of packed-in teenagers, if not for Bazan—is whether Bazan will flaunt the festival's unwritten ban against curse words and include his lyrical f-bombs. He does, the audience squeals, and Beaujon marvels at how evangelical kids can love someone who has rejected their culture: "Bazan has become a leading figure in alternative Christian culture because he is a reflection of those who cannot square their desire to believe with their contempt for the system in which they find fellowship." In other words, Christian music has entered its punk stage, and as Beaujon notes throughout, Christian rock's aggravation with itself is resulting in some fantastic music.

Beaujon is not an evangelical, and he does not expect to become one. He is not religious in any way, but he is "kind of a fan" of religion. As a rock journalist for Spin, he became fascinated with Christian rock. The book's early pages try to account for this fascination and anticipate criticisms from his rock journalism peers. "Making Christianity cool is a tall order," he writes. "When I started researching this book, the reaction of most of my colleagues was 'better you than me.'" But Beaujon takes those same colleagues to task for not covering evangelicalism fairly, and worse, for covering it ignorantly. Body Piercing is a travelogue into a world at odds with his own, but as Beaujon explores the history of Christian rock, the logic of the industry, and the key players in the field, he develops a reliable map of the territory.

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June (Web-only) 2006, Vol. 50