Postkiwi

Steve Turner, poet, author and musician, has some very helpful things to say about rock music.

In his book, “Imagine: A Vision for Christians in the Arts“, IVP, 2001, Steve begins with what he learned from Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri.

“Evangelical Christians traditionally had taken redemption as their starting point to anything. Had the artist been reborn and was the artist singing, writing or painting about being reborn? For Schaeffer, creation was the starting point. Everyone was made in God’s image and those blessed with artistic gifts couldn’t help but display that original image in some way. This perspective confirmed what I had instinctively felt for some time - that a lot of art created by Christians was bad and a lot of art created by non-Christians was good. It was a possible for a well-loved hymn to be bad art and a painting by an utter reprobate to be good art. By making truth the sole criterion, Christians had often diminished the importance of human endeavour in the arts, and in doing this had deprived themselves of a wealth of cultural experience.”

Now this I find helpful. Steve’s able to get us beyond narrow definitions of ‘good and bad’ music. He makes room for the roles of imagination, creativity and excellence in exploring the development of popular culture. Only difficulty is that many Christian commentators use this set of criteria to look down their noses at music which appears to be too simple or common.

Steve has also written “Hungry for Heaven: Rock ‘n’ Roll & The Search for Redemption“, 1995, “A Hard Day’s Write: The Stories Behind Every Beatles Song“, 1999, “Amazing Grace: The Story of America’s Most Beloved Song“, 2003, along with biographies of Cliff Richard, Van Morrison, Jack Kerouac, Johnny Cash and Marvin Gaye.