"Are 'Christian' and 'rap' mutually exclusive? Hardly."

[WilliamD] What really gets me upset with guys like John Piper is that anything goes as long as they claim to be Calvinists - christian rap, cussing preachers, whatever, as long as it has the reformed label, it has to be “God centered” as if the two were mutually exclusive and so anything that claims to be so.

Painting with way too broad a brush here!

Who’d have thought there’d be so many Rap lovers here. :D To answer a couple of the questions, what about those coming to Christ for whom rap is already a part of their life? Personally, I’d have no problem at all recommending that they look for something better… which would be almost anything.
(Hey, I’m just asserting my opinions on this one… I can’t claim to be able to prove any of this. Some things really are obvious and though we’re not going to agree about what those things are, we’ve all got our short lists. The lack of value in Rap is on my short list of things I will never bother to attempt to prove.)

Greg’s question: “Dealbreaker” for those who say its worth redeeming? I tend to have a “you do your thing, I’ll do mine” attitude about these things. Each of us will give account for ourselves, and before his own master he stands or falls (am I remembering Rom 14 accurately?). Whether it’s a deal-breaker depends on what sort of deal we’re talking about. I could view taking Rap seriously as an art form as an isolated lapse in judgment from folks who are otherwise top notch.
Please understand, I’m not trying to be persuasive here. If I were, I’d use less dogmatic language and try to make a case… marshal some arguments. No, I’m just trying to clarify where I am with it for anybody who cares. I’m not claiming my opinion on it has much value either.
As for 50’s era stuff and “white people” music… I don’t think most of that has much value either. I think you have to go back a good bit further than 1950 to find any positive innovations in music from an artistic standpoint. …not that I don’t enjoy some music that is artistically worthless. I do. But the fact that I get a kick out of it doesn’t mean it’s really got any value to it. Much of this stuff is like vanilla shakes at McDonald’s. Sure, lots of folks love them but nobody needs them.
Is Rap like a vanilla shake or more like the stuff in the bottom of the garbage can after I take the bag out? Well, I’m not going to make an assertion on that one! I’m content with saying it’s musical junkfood at best, and nobody really needs it. If every believer leaves it behind, the body of Christ will certainly not be artistically impoverished.

As for a mode of communication to reach otherwise unreachable people… OK, maybe. But how about if we just talk to them instead?

Edit: that last sentence doesn’t really make sense, does it? I should have prefaced all this with: WARNING- brain does not function after 11 PM central.
Anyway, what I meant w/that last one was maybe some will listen to a message via rap that would not listen to it via some other musical medium… but we can solve that by just talking to them.

Aaron,

Are you reverting to Common Sense Realism? There are no Scripture quotes in your posts! :-)

BTW, I agree with you, Aaron. However, it would be interesting to see what Bauder thinks about rap music … as long as the words in the “songs” are theologically correct.

C.D…. yep. Guilty. As soon as the higher brain functions go to sleep, I’m Common Sense Realism all the way. :D

I didn’t realize my post defended rap. My intention was to bring the point that we have brought this on ourselves. Our hold hymnal had a lot of silly “gospel” songs that really were not gospel or much of anything else. These songs are not bad per se, but they have very little apiritual value. I think we have to remove those from our choices if we are going to have any credibility in going after Sovereign Grace, Getty’s or even this. While the tunes of some of those songs we grew up with aren’t offensive, the lirics are not really spiritually helpful. Or to use Aaron’s analogy, rap music may indeed be a vanilla shake, but so are many of the “soul-stirring” that we grew up with. That is why we sing mainly actual hymns at our church

[rogercarlson] I didn’t realize my post defended rap. My intention was to bring the point that we have brought this on ourselves. Our hold hymnal had a lot of silly “gospel” songs that really were not gospel or much of anything else. These songs are not bad per se, but they have very little apiritual value. I think we have to remove those from our choices if we are going to have any credibility in going after Sovereign Grace, Getty’s or even this. While the tunes of some of those songs we grew up with aren’t offensive, the lirics are not really spiritually helpful. Or to use Aaron’s analogy, rap music may indeed be a vanilla shake, but so are many of the “soul-stirring” that we grew up with. That is why we sing mainly actual hymns at our church

No disagreement with you there… and I was just teasing about “rap lovers.”

[Aaron Blumer] Who’d have thought there’d be so many Rap lovers here. :D To answer a couple of the questions, what about those coming to Christ for whom rap is already a part of their life? Personally, I’d have no problem at all recommending that they look for something better… which would be almost anything.
(Hey, I’m just asserting my opinions on this one… I can’t claim to be able to prove any of this. Some things really are obvious and though we’re not going to agree about what those things are, we’ve all got our short lists. The lack of value in Rap is on my short list of things I will never bother to attempt to prove.)

Greg’s question: “Dealbreaker” for those who say its worth redeeming? I tend to have a “you do your thing, I’ll do mine” attitude about these things. Each of us will give account for ourselves, and before his own master he stands or falls (am I remembering Rom 14 accurately?). Whether it’s a deal-breaker depends on what sort of deal we’re talking about. I could view taking Rap seriously as an art form as an isolated lapse in judgment from folks who are otherwise top notch.
Please understand, I’m not trying to be persuasive here. If I were, I’d use less dogmatic language and try to make a case… marshal some arguments. No, I’m just trying to clarify where I am with it for anybody who cares. I’m not claiming my opinion on it has much value either.
As for 50’s era stuff and “white people” music… I don’t think most of that has much value either. I think you have to go back a good bit further than 1950 to find any positive innovations in music from an artistic standpoint. …not that I don’t enjoy some music that is artistically worthless. I do. But the fact that I get a kick out of it doesn’t mean it’s really got any value to it. Much of this stuff is like vanilla shakes at McDonald’s. Sure, lots of folks love them but nobody needs them.
Is Rap like a vanilla shake or more like the stuff in the bottom of the garbage can after I take the bag out? Well, I’m not going to make an assertion on that one! I’m content with saying it’s musical junkfood at best, and nobody really needs it. If every believer leaves it behind, the body of Christ will certainly not be artistically impoverished.

As for a mode of communication to reach otherwise unreachable people… OK, maybe. But how about if we just talk to them instead?

Edit: that last sentence doesn’t really make sense, does it? I should have prefaced all this with: WARNING- brain does not function after 11 PM central.
Anyway, what I meant w/that last one was maybe some will listen to a message via rap that would not listen to it via some other musical medium… but we can solve that by just talking to them.

Thanks, Aaron. I was hoping you would post something like this. I think it’s entirely appropriate to view things the way you do. For you, rap is a lapse in artistic judgment, or a lack of aesthetic taste. However, this is what makes things so interesting (bizarre?) for Fundamentalism. You’re telling me that Fundamentalist churches have been separating from others for decades based on… lapses in artistic judgment? Can I separate from a church if they have a really ugly sanctuary or a tremendously tacky church bulletin?

[Charlie] You’re telling me that Fundamentalist churches have been separating from others for decades based on… lapses in artistic judgment? Can I separate from a church if they have a really ugly sanctuary or a tremendously tacky church bulletin?

I think we exercise two kinds of ‘separation’- that of the Biblical kind based on false doctrine and immorality, and that of a personal nature based on our conscience and/or taste. The first is true separation, where we don’t have anything to do with the offending party until they repent, but the second kind is more of a distancing from something we find unpleasant, questionable, or in-our-never-to-be-humble-opinion, repugnant.

So it depends on why the sanctuary is ugly and in what way church bulletin is tacky. Are there gross jokes in the church bulletin? Is there a weekly synopsis of the latest episode of Lost? Is the sanctuary ugly because major bucks were spent on gaudy chandeliers, brass fixtures, and a fountain that looks like a young boy relieving himself in the foyer?

How we present ourselves can be an indication of what we believe to be important and worth emphasizing. An ugly church with a tacky bulletin isn’t a reason to separate, but I’d certainly find it reason enough (based on the above hypothetical) to visit somewhere else and not recommend it to others.

About rap. It isn’t singing, it is chanting. IMO it should not be called music- it doesn’t incorporate melody or harmony in a structured manner on any planet. If you want to use it in your church, have at it. But if a person finds it distasteful, they should not be compelled to support it with their time or money, so in that sense, they can ‘separate’. But to answer the OP, I don’t think ‘Christian’ and ‘rap’ are mutually exclusive, but I do not agree with the interviewee who states that while rap is not equal to preaching, it is a way to make preaching ‘applicable’. Where in the Word of God are we encouraged to use music to ‘make preaching applicable’ or ‘relevant to culture’?

I also don’t see a Biblical foundation for using music purely as an evangelistic tool (what is a full-time music ministry anyway?- can’t wrap my mind around that one) This is a conversation http://sharperiron.org/forum/thread-music-for-evangelistic-purposes] we’ve had here before on SI . I believe we should be careful to define and use music for the purposes God intended it, especially if one is going to make a ‘ministry’ of it.

I do think our presuppositions about the morality of music does influences our opinions about this topic. answering a question like “can rap be redeemed? or can “rap” be Christian does imply at the very least that a genre of music has a level of morality attached.

I am not a rap lover, and I am not African American. Nevertheless, some of the comments being written here are somewhat offensive to me, and I can imagine how offensive they are to African Americans who enjoy that music.

Rap is a product of another culture. Some of the statements here go beyond theology. They display a dismissive and demeaning attitude toward the products of another culture. They also display what I will charitably call a lack of understanding about music in general and rap in particular.

What we don’t understand, we don’t like or appreciate. I have a feeling that if we understood more about rap, we would appreciate some things about it. This is also true of modern classical music. Most people do not appreciate it because they do not understand it. The fact that they don’t understand it is not the music’s problem.

If you can be so dismissive of music you don’t understand, so be it. But perhaps, it is not appropriate to do so in a public way. I listened to the interview. I heard two very articulate men discuss these issues in an intelligent way. They are not fans of classical music but they did not take potshots at those of us who do. They have thought through their philosophy of music and presentation. Their music is deep and theologically sound. They love God and are making a positive difference. Can’t we treat them in a more charitable way? It is one thing to disagree. But this thread is reflecting some attitudes that go far beyond disagreement.

[GregH] I am not a rap lover, and I am not African American. Nevertheless, some of the comments being written here are somewhat offensive to me, and I can imagine how offensive they are to African Americans who enjoy that music.

Rap is a product of another culture. Some of the statements here go beyond theology. They display a dismissive and demeaning attitude toward the products of another culture. They also display what I will charitably call a lack of understanding about music in general and rap in particular.

What we don’t understand, we don’t like or appreciate. I have a feeling that if we understood more about rap, we would appreciate some things about it. This is also true of modern classical music. Most people do not appreciate it because they do not understand it. The fact that they don’t understand it is not the music’s problem.

If you can be so dismissive of music you don’t understand, so be it. But perhaps, it is not appropriate to do so in a public way. I listened to the interview. I heard two very articulate men discuss these issues in an intelligent way. They are not fans of classical music but they did not take potshots at those of us who do. They have thought through their philosophy of music and presentation. Their music is deep and theologically sound. They love God and are making a positive difference. Can’t we treat them in a more charitable way? It is one thing to disagree. But this thread is reflecting some attitudes that go far beyond disagreement.

Expressing one’s distaste for rap is not the same as ‘taking potshots’ at people. Do you think McDonald’s is junk food? Most people do. Does that mean you hate people who work at McD’s, or believe they are part of a wide spread conspiracy to make people fat and result in their early demise due to heart disease and high blood pressure? Are people who eat at McD’s every day stupid, or do they have a death wish? I doubt it. We shouldn’t make it impossible for people to express their opinion or dislike for something without being accused of being offensive or attacking people.

I think the question should be- is it Biblically supportable to use ‘music’ as a method of making preaching more palatable or applicable? On this issue I do not think those men were ‘deep’ or ‘theologically sound’.

Susan…actually, I heard a report the other day that put McD towards the top of the list of healthy places to eat, and restaurants that we think healthy at the bottom. It had to do with nutritional value and meal size. I still will not eat anything from them except a coke, milk shake, and ice cream…Anyways, carry on. Just found that interesting.

Nevertheless, some of the comments being written here are somewhat offensive to me, and I can imagine how offensive they are to African Americans who enjoy that music.

Would you perhaps highlight some of these comments for us, and tell us how they are “offensive”?

Rap is a product of another culture.

Could you discuss this culture and how it is expresses its values through rap. Why does this culture choose rap, and what does the style of communication mean?

What we don’t understand, we don’t like or appreciate.

Always? Aren’t there times when understanding things brings out more dislike? Why don’t you “have a feeling that if we understood more about rap, we would [not] appreciate some things about it”? In other words, I am trying to figure out the basis from which you are making this statement. What sort of reasoning did you use to get here?

I think the question should be- is it Biblically supportable to use ‘music’ as a method of making preaching more palatable or applicable? On this issue I do not think those men were ‘deep’ or ‘theologically sound’.Susan,

I would be curious as to why you don’t think these men were theologically sound or deep?

[Susan R] I think the question should be- is it Biblically supportable to use ‘music’ as a method of making preaching more palatable or applicable? On this issue I do not think those men were ‘deep’ or ‘theologically sound’.

[rogercarlson] Susan,

I would be curious as to why you don’t think these men were theologically sound or deep?

On the topic of using music to ‘apply preaching’ or make the message of the Gospel more interesting to the lost, I did not hear any Biblical foundation given for this premise.

We need to take Biblical principle and apply it to our methods, instead of taking our methods and squishing them into the Bible.