Randall J. Stephens

hurch leaders and laypeople in the US went on the defensive shortly after rock and roll became a national youth craze in 1955 and 1956. Few of those religious critics would have been aware or capable of understanding that rock ‘n’ roll, in fact, had deep religious roots. Early rockers, all southerners—such as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and James Brown—grew up in or regularly attended pentecostal churches. Pentecostalism, a vibrant religious movement that traced its origins to the early 20th century, broke with many of the formalities of traditional protestantism. Believers held mixed-race services during the height of Jim Crow segregation. The faithful spoke in tongues, practiced healing, and cultivated loud, revved-up, beat-driven music. These were not the sedate congregants of mainline churches. Some pentecostal churches incorporated drums, brass instruments, pianos, and even newly invented electric guitars. Rock ‘n’ roll performers looked back to the vibrant churches of their youth, their charismatic pastors, and to flashy singing itinerants for inspiration. In a region that novelist Flannery O'Connor called “Christ-haunted,” the line between secular and sacred, holy and profane was repeatedly crossed by rock musicians. This article traces the black and white pentecostal influence on rock ‘n’ roll in the American South, from performance style and music to dress and religious views. It also analyzes the vital ways that religion took center stage in arguments and debates about the new genre.

This article analyzes the cultural trajectory of a small, but influential denomination that formed in 1843. Wesleyan Methodism first emerged as an abolitionist protest against the Methodist compromise with slavery. The new church drew in members who championed a range of antebellum social reforms, including abolitionism, pacifism, women's rights, and temperance. By the early twentieth century, Wesleyans would become closely identified with fundamentalism, waging war against modernism, championing personal holiness, and maintaining a militant brand of protestant orthodoxy. This article places Wesleyans within a larger religious and cultural context of the Civil War era and the late nineteenth-century disenchantment of the Gilded Age and Progressive Eras. It also traces the reasons for the Wesleyans shifting focus away from social reform and toward matters of personal holiness.

In the summer of 1966, amid a scandal about The Beatles’ popularity compared with that of Jesus and Christianity, John Lennon tried to clarify what he meant. He was just making an observation, not a judgment, he pleaded. He also noticed other trends in the church that seemed to confirm that believers wanted to reach out to youth. "Even church people are trying to be with it," he said at a press conference, "with sort of pop groups and things." Indeed, by the mid-1960s and into the 1970s American and British evangelicals and mainline Protestants, as well as Catholics, embarked on new missions to young people. They sponsored rock and folk bands at Christian coffeehouses. They created new record labels, and radio shows for what was being called "Jesus rock." And they enlivened their services with drums, electric guitars, and shouting singers. Stalwarts reported on the activities of brethren across the Atlantic and gained ideas from each other about innovation and musical exploration. British efforts—sponsored by Anglicans and non-conformists—preceded American experimentation with pop music and pop culture. But by the late 1960s, American fusions of evangelicalism and rock helped define a new countercultural Christianity. This paper will explore how religious groups hoped to bridge the generation gap in the 60s and 70s. It will also look at the ministerial and musical cooperation that developed between Brits and Americans, asking how promoters, fans, and musicians differed in their political, theological, and cultural orientation. Finally, it will judge the relative success and failures of these efforts amid the troubles of post-Christian Britain and the religious successes of evangelical America.

In this podcast, Art Remillard talks with Randall Stephens, who was the keynote speaker for the sixth annual North American Undergraduate Conference in Religion and Philosophy, held at Saint Francis University. Stephens’s address was entitled, “Evangelical Anti-Intellectualism in Modern America,” which draws from his book, The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, co-authored with Karl Giberson. Stephens is Reader in History and American Studies at Northumbria University in the UK, and he is a former editor of the Journal of Southern Religion. Stephens begins the conversation by explaining how his keynote will contribute to the conference’s theme, “The Future of Reason.” He also talks about the book’s research, which includes interviews with David Barton and leaders of Focus on the Family. The interview concludes with Stephens discussing his newest project, an examination of rock music and American Christianity.