Renegotiating the Sacred-Secular Binary: IX Saves and Contemporary Christian Music

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2009

Abstract

The growth of the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) industry has been phenomenal in the past few decades. CCM is a relatively fast growing "genre" in the music industry as a whole. Through an ethnographic account of one Contemporary Christian band, IX Saves, this study reveals the dynamics involved in the creative connection between faith-based messages and what were once thought of as secular musical genres. Contemporary Christian musicians' appropriation of musical genres found in the larger contemporary secular music scene is not without contestation and debate. The ethnographic data show the ways in which religious actors actively negotiate the nature of what constitutes secular versus sacred cultural products. In turn, the ability of religious actors to negotiate and redefine what is secular or sacred, highlights the looseness of the secular-sacred binary. This study has relevance for theoretical conceptualizations of the sacred-secular binary and offers one example of how religious groups engage, adapt, and subsequently survive in modern secular society.

Keywords

Contemporary Christian music, Contemporary Christian musicians, Christian rock music, Rock groups, Belief & doubt, Religious behaviors.

Discipline

Music | Religion

Research Areas

Sociology

Publication

Review of Religious Research

Volume

50

Issue

4

First Page

392

Last Page

412

ISSN

0034-673X

Publisher

Religious Research Association

Additional URL

https://www.jstor.org/stable/25593755

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