By David A. Noebel

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The Apostle’s Creed of the Christian “now” generation is: “We believe in God, love and rock ‘n’ roll.”

Christian young people tenaciously defend their infatuation with secular rock stars and heatedly argue over the spiritual insight of certain rock members e.g., My Sweet Lord by Harrison of the Beatles; In the Presence of the Lord by Clapton; Spirit in the Sky by Greenbaum etc.

If you have not heard or noticed such developments, you are too isolated from youth. for a tremendous struggle is engulfing Christian young-people. The battleground is not rock festivals but the church’s choir loft. [And platform]

Bible schools, seminaries, Christian colleges and universities are sending forth “Christian” rock groups to local churches to entertain and inspire the saints. But the saints are confused, bewildered and approaching the breaking point.

In fact, all that some of the elders and deacons need is the information contained in this study and the three books I will be suggesting for further study to go on the offensive and cleanse the church of those who have turned the house of prayer and praise into a house of confusion, contention and carnality.

Instead of “psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” to build up and edify the believer, the brotherhood is beset with a relentless beat (which weighs on one’s nerves and pounds in one’s head until you feel you will break open) and syncopation (which evokes the most basic sensuous response from our bodies) which is purposely aimed at the physical and sensual instead of the spirit and the spiritual.

When music is aimed at the baser part of our nature, i.e. the promiscuous, then the spiritual has a difficult time surviving. And right ‘now, many parents, pastors and elders are beginning to understand the drawing power of rock music — played by either secular or sanctified groups — viz., sex!

Or as Bob Larsen put it, “Rock musicians and singers are not only exponents of a musical form. They are secular gods to which young people easily relate because they embody the characteristics of this generation. They advocate promiscuous love, decry war, wear freaky clothing and long hair.”

The local congregation is having a difficult time believing that “Christian” rock groups are really adorning the gospel with a life style that befits Christ Jesus, the Lord. Many “Christian” or “gospel” rock groups are doing their best to fashion themselves after the world of the subculture.

Men sport long hair, tight fitting pants and black velvet jackets with Lennon sunglasses; women appear in mini skirts and establish a wiggle that exploits their sex appeal to the best advantage — an advantage that would not, under normal circumstances, be considered conducive to worship.

Christian music, of course, should be music that worships and glorifies God and spiritually uplifts the believer or as Bach wrote, “The aim and final reason of all music should be nothing else but the glory of God and the refreshment of the spirit.”

Rock music by its very nature, however, expresses an unspoken desire to smash such a worship to pieces since its appeal is not to the higher elements of man’s nature, including his new nature, but to his lowest. Teenagers do not listen to rock because of its fine quality, but because of its erotic qualities.

Jerry Rubin explains: “Hard animal rock energy-beat surged hot through us, the driving rhythm arousing repressed passion. Rock-androll marked the beginning of the revolution.”

And Bob Larsen said, “Rock makes an appeal to the physical and carnal. Those who live superficial lives spiritually will obviously gravitate quickly to such an approach …. rock which entertains by arousing the listener sexually, seems ex tremely ill-fitted to be clothed by the gospel, although in most instances rock becomes a cloak for the gospel.”

Some time back (1971) I spoke to a young people’s rally in New Orleans. Over 700 Christian teenagers assembled at a church to hear a message on The NewPop Prophets — a critique on rock music.

Preceding my sermon, the youth were treated to some “religious” entertainment by the church band – a rock band. For 20 minutes the amplifier blared forth a new sound; not a new sound to the world, but a new sound to the church. And it wasn’t only “Christian” rock challenging one’s eardrums. In fact. the last song on the program was John Lennon’s atheistic rendition, Imagine.

As I listened to the new sound, my thoughts went back over my study of rock music and its influence on teenagers. Whoever observed that the church is only 24 hours behind the world spoke the truth.

Only yesterday the world, the flesh and the devil initiated rock ‘n’ roll as an invaluable tool to populate hell and only yesterday it was rejected as heathen, atheistic and immoral. Today, the church is mimicking the world and trying desperately to dry clean or launder the music to make it acceptable for worship.

The Scriptures, of course, urge the believer to imitate God (Eph. 5:1 ) not the world, but in this modern age — when everyone 13 to 16 years of age knows more than God — who cares!

And, to add sin upon sin, Christian men who should know better, and probably do, write “Christian” rock music and apologize for it.

“Christian” rock music is as consistent as “Christian” pot parties, “Christian” promiscuity or “Christian pornography. In fact, it might not be too long betore the latter will be defended with the same logic as “Christian” rock is presently being defended, viz., “You don’t want to lose these teenagers now, do you?”

Lose them? What are we saving them from? And besides when has the end ever justified the means! Christians are never to pervert the right ways of the Lord. (Acts 13:10) Squeezing in a few “thank you, Jesus,” or “Hallelujah, it’s done” in rock music does not cleanse rock of its evils. Indeed, the lyrics of rock were not its main sin for some time. The beat of the music was its evil. In fact, a leading Marxist writer, Irwin Sulber, acknowledged that beat music was un-Christian. He said the great strength of rock was its beat, a beat which is “basically sexual, un-Puritan (i.e., un-Christian) and a threat to established patterns and values.”

And Bob Larsen noted in his work, The Day Music Died, “Syncopated rhythms evoked the most sensuous response from the human body, particularly when they are electronically accentuated. Many of the vital processes of life are based upon mythm. The vascular, respiratory and autonomic nervous systems all use it to perform their functions. Man is a rhythmic being and therefore has an inherent affinity for certain rhythms.” Adding Christian words to a sensuous beat does not change its evil nature any more than adding Christian morals to a sinner changes his sin nature. The core is bad.

Alice English Monsarrat in an article enlitled Music- Soothing, Sedative or Savage? wrote, “With the advent of the 20th century, the meters began to gallop brokenly stirrup to stirrup with harmonic dissonance and discord in the melodic line.

“A broken meter in the treble, played over an insistently regular beat in the left hand with gradually increasing rapidity almost to the point of frenzy… is capable of producing the identical disintegrating and almost hysterical effect on an organism; as if a person would try to rush madly in two directions at the same time.”

She concludes, “Any psychiatrist knows that it is precisely this two-directional pull of conflicting drives of emotions that is helping to fill our mental hospitals with broken wrecks of humanity.”

Miss Monsarrat correctly points out that it is precisely at this point that rock ‘n’ roll becomes potentially dangerous. To maintain a sense of well-being and integration, it is essential that individuals are not subjected too much to rhythms not in accord with one’s natural body rhythms.

Add to this the fact that rock music is a music rooted in uncoated sexuality and you have an explosive situation. Jeff Greenfield in his work, No Peace, No Place, points out that Alan Freed, father of rock ‘n’ roll, made a discovery that shook the world. He discovered that white teenagers were attracted to rhythm and blues records recorded for black adults. Freed rechristened the adult music rock ‘n’ roIl and made history.

Greenfield writes, “The twelve thousand who danced and sang and cavorted for hours let New ,York City know that this music was a good deal more than a fad –it was reaching something deep within the American teenager.”

That “something,” of course, was sex. “Each night, sprawled on my bed on Manhattan’s upper west side,” says Greenfield, “I would listen to the world that Alan Freed created: To a 12 or 13-year-old, it was a world of unbearable sexuality and celebration; a world of citizens under 16, in a constant stage of joy or sweet sorrow. The rhythms of the fast tempo songs were hypnotic; and you could lie still when Little Richard screamed out ‘Tutty-Fruity,’ or when ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’ came bouncing out. New sexual sensations, driven by the impulses that every new adolescent generation knows, we were the first to have our music rooted in uncoated sexuality. In a sense, the editorials in the Archdiocese papers that demanded a stop to this obscene music were right; having been aimed for a decade to an adult audience, rhythm and blues music was a powerful boost of sexuality for a 13year-old.”

Dr. Ronald Spranglet, chief school medical officer in Nottingham, England, charged that teenage pop music was probably to blame for the mounting obsession with sex. And Dr. Masterson, head of the adolescent outpatient at Payne-Whitney Psychiatric Clinic says, “The music is, in a way; a kind of sexual expression. The beat has genuine sexual implications.”

Dr. Granby Blaine acknowledged an element of sexuality in the primitive rhythm and Dr. Bernard Saibel, supervisor of the State Community Services in the state of Washington reported a Beafte concert by stating, “The music is loud, primitive, insistent, strongly rhythmic and releases in an undisguised way the all too tenuously controlled, newly acquired physical impulses of the teenager.”

And, finally, Frank Zappa of the Mothers of Invention put it very plainly, “Rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms.”

Is it any wonder that Martin Perlich, vice president of Disc Records, insists that rock music has radicalized the young. Perlich says, “It radicalizes them by estranging them from the traditional virtues which they no longer see as relevant.” And Time magazine notes that all rock is revolutionary because by. “its very beat and sound it has always implicitly rejected restraints and has celebrated freedom in sexuality .”

Reader’s Digest (November, 1964) also observed something very important regarding rock music. “Rock ‘n’ roll,” says Reader’s Digest, “treats the concept of love with a characteristic doubleness. The lyrics generally capitulate to the Concept of true love, but the music itself expresses the unspoken desire to smash it to pieces.”

End Note:  This sermon was preached back in the early seventies. How relevant the message was that was preached at that time, warning of the dangers of so called “christian rock”. The message is as relevant now as it was then.

The names of the artists (if one could call them that) may have changed but the filthy abomination and perversion that they preach is as dangerous, if not more so. Because of the worldliness of today’s church Satans hordes have infultrated the Church and is making it ineffective in the service of God because it has become unclean