Christian Popular Music, U.S.A.
Co-authors: Monique M. Ingalls, Anna E. Nekola
The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology
Co-edited by J. R. Watson, Emma Hornby, Jeremy Dibble, Colin Gibson, Margaret Leask, Michael Hawn, and Carlton R. Young
Abstract
Christian popular music (hereafter CPM) is an umbrella category for a sonically diverse repertoire of late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century evangelical Protestant commercial popular music. It encompasses several distinct subcategories based on musical genre, industrial context, or function including, but not limited to, Jesus Music, Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), Praise & Worship music, and Christian rock. CPM is characterized by Christian lyrics or themes, mediated by self-identified Christian companies (i.e., magazines, publishing firms, radio stations, and record labels that promote Christian values), created by artists whose self-identification as Christian is central to their public persona, and listened to and purchased primarily by a white, self-identified Christian audience. Other industrial terms for this music that may be used outside of the US include “inspirational” and “gospel”; however, US audiences usually consider CPM distinct from “gospel music,” which generally refers to longer-standing traditions of hymnody and popular music formed in both white and Black cultures in the US.