MUSIC: CHRISTIAN POP: REBORN TO BE WILD

IF JESUS CHRIST CAME BACK TODAY, would he be an alternative rocker? In his day he was something of a counterculturist, hanging out with lepers, driving Pharisees and Roman governors to distraction, suffering little children to come unto him no matter what the stuffy old adults thought. So, were he around today, would he be ministering to disaffected youth in a mosh pit? Would his Sermon on the Mount be turned into a Street Corner Rap? Would MTV put The Lord's Prayer video in the Buzz Bin?

As of this writing, Jesus isn't around--not in the flesh, anyway--so it has been left to others to do the hard work of updating his message and making it '90s friendly. For a growing number of Christian musicians, this means using rock and rap as vehicles to carry religious messages to young audiences. Of course, this isn't a new strategy, since musicians have been combining popular music and religious themes for decades. Gospel, with its roots in the blues, was once considered too earthy to perform in church; the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar came out way back in 1970; and Christian diva Amy Grant has been racking up Grammys and gold records for years with her lite-FM pop. But younger Christian performers are now borrowing from a wider, more modern array of musical styles--such as alternative rock and gangsta rap--in an effort to create music that can appeal to a generation raised on Nirvana and Dr. Dre.

And it's working. Fewer than 200 radio stations around the country played Christian pop 10 years ago; now there are more than 500. According to some estimates, the sale of Christian pop concert tickets and record sales generated between $750 million and $900 million in revenues last year. Fans are young and old; many are religious, but some just like the music. "There's more money and better distribution than there was two or three years ago," says Billy Ray Hearn, chairman and CEO of EMI Christian Music Group. "We're reaching more audiences through mass marketing at Wal-Marts and K Marts."

The Christian pop industry is also starting to produce some genuine stars--performers who are making an impact not just in religious-music circles but in the secular world as well. In part this is due to the fact that last year Billboard magazine's SoundScan system, which measures album sales nationwide, started to take into account purchases at Christian bookstores--where 85% of Christian pop albums are sold. As a result, pop crooners such as Steven Curtis Chapman and Michael W. Smith, both veteran performers in the world of Christian music, saw albums they released in '95 climb higher on the charts than any of their previous releases (Chapman's The Music of Christmas peaked at No. 61, Smith's I'll Lead You Home hit No. 16). Newer acts, such as religious rappers turned alternative rockers DC Talk and the hip-hop-influenced gospel group Kirk Franklin and the Family, have also performed strongly on the newly configured charts--and that success has sparked interest in the music industry and the media. Says Bruce Koblish, executive director of the Gospel Music Association: "No matter how good you think the music is, when it can be validated by an objective system like SoundScan, it gets a lot of people's attention."