The Worship of God Q&A: Holy Hip-Hop from NCFIC on Vimeo.
The topic of "holy hip-hop," "reformed rap," or whatever you'd like to call it is not a new one. It, along with Christian rock music and its descendants like Christian metal, have a history of controversy in the church. I have experience from my much, much younger days of our church undergoing a split because the older, hymn-preferring people were greatly vexed by a new music minister that dared to bring in more contemporary worship music (very, very tame stuff by today's standards--things like early Michael W. Smith, Michael Omartian, and the like). The gentlemen above do not seem to have a much better opinion, or understanding, of rap music as it exists today in Christianity.
The reaction to their words has been very broad of scope, and while of course there have been a lot of ill-advised words from random Internet commenters, the thoughtful and thorough responses of many Christian rappers have been very interesting and heartening to see. My own thoughts are a combination of annoyance, which I am trying to suppress, and a desire to teach.
I have a music degree, and I spent, and continue to spend, a lot of time thinking about, studying, and participating in or performing music. Music history, while generally a rather vexing subject for any performance major especially when you're talking about history before the Baroque era, is a subject that one should at least be nominally familiar with before drawing judgment on any form of music. I say this because of one of the points made by Scott Aniol, a point he defends in a continued discussion with rapper Shai Linne on his website: that rap music is, by its very nature, immoral. I am deeply concerned by his arguably ignorant statements he makes about hip hop in general and Christian hip hop especially. To be totally honest, I view his position as descriptive of the problem of communication between American evangelicals and much of the rest of society: so many evangelicals are so concerned about "cleaning up" things and putting them within a certain little Christian box.
But when that's your desire, when you're more worried about things like the style of music your kid is listening to than the actual content of it, you're missing out on actually engaging your kid where he is. Likewise, we have a huge section of this country that exists in hip hop culture. I can speak from experience in saying that it's very easy for cultural conservatives to look at that culture, roll their eyes at its style and speech and say things like "Rap is just 'crap' without the C." But I'm not interested in trying to conserve a particular culture: I'm interested in seeing more and more people come to know, love and worship Jesus Christ as Lord. How is it possibly helpful for me to come up to someone who has existed in this world and say "Well, it's great that you want to know Jesus, but you're going to need to wear these clothes, throw out all this music and start listening to some Bill Gaither."*
Answer: it isn't. When you put up all these extra, culture-oriented barriers between a person and knowing Christ, the concern arises that you don't particularly understand the Gospel, and might even need to review the book of Galatians. But let's step back from that for a moment and return to the issue of music history and its relevance to this issue. In particular, in response to this statement from Aniol:
Third, you are making a very common category error in these discussions. I agree completely, of course, that whatever God creates is good. God created music. God created meat. These things are good.This is a difficult area because it's understandable that sinful things have arisen from the minds and desires of man, twisted as they are by our innate brokenness. And I certainly understand his wariness and resistance towards music that are not part of the traditional realm of church. But I disagree vehemently that God did not create those forms of music. God did not simply create the realm of sound and the rules and laws of physics that cause sound to come across to our ears in such a way that our brains recognize it as music. God created sound in such a way, on purpose, that it would sound like thus and so when certain sounds come together, and perhaps more importantly He endowed us with the creativity to do with music what we do, and all of it in one way or another will eventually glorify God.
But God did not create rap. People did. For that matter, God did not create Gregorian chant, German chorales, Appalachian folk tunes, country western, jazz, or rock ‘n’ roll. People did. And because these are all human communication, they are moral.
It is very dangerous to ascribe to God something that he did not make.
To be sure, rap has a very twisted and broken history. But so does all music, and for the simple reason that it all comes from broken, sinful humans. The church was the forefront of music development for a long time simply because for a period of time, they were funding a lot of its best and brightest. One example: the oratorio style was developed in response to the church rejecting opera as an acceptable style for performance in churches. But people who knew and understood the medium and wanted it to be used to glorify Christ got hold if it, removed the costumes and staging and cleaned up the subject matter, and bam: new style, church-approved. Or for that matter, take a look at old-style gospel music like the aforementioned Bill Gaither*: look at its roots in blues and folk music, and you will find a lot of music that is not acceptable in church for its subject matter But people who loved Jesus and grew up with a history and culture in those forms of music began to use it for His name and created a new genre, one that rightfully for many people is regarded fondly and is stirring to their souls.
I'm not trying to write a hyper-accurate or detailed history here. I simply want to make the point that I do not accept the presupposition that there is a thing that cannot be redeemed for the sake of Christ, because all things that are true belongs to Him. Let me just head off the obvious argument right here: "Are you saying there can be Christian porn?" Of course not. That's because sex, like everything else, was created by God for a purpose, and porn is a twisting and abuse of that purpose into sinfulness.
This is a tough subject to tackle because I want to give it the proper gravity it deserves, but I also don't want to go on and on since I don't think I'm that terribly interesting. I will, however, pass you off to some gentlemen much more suited to speaking to this issue than myself, and I would encourage you to listen to the whole hour:
*There is nothing wrong with Bill Gaither, or liking Bill Gaither. Please do not write me or comment saying "Stop making fun of Bill Gaither!" because I'm not. Crikey.
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