The Christian Whitewash

Tom.jpg Mister Dubbs over at Cultural Christianity has put up a great post called Subculture Hero, a statement on a game called Guitar Praise (a Christian Guitar Hero ripoff) and the ripples that come out from that. I highly recommend reading it.

This puts me in mind of something I saw last night called Gospelr. What is it about some Christians that they feel the need to take something “secular” and slap a coat of Christian white wash on it?

I mean in the case of Guitar Praise, they (as the article pointed out) didn’t even pick out the really good guitar driven Christian songs. They do exist, fyi. I agree with a commenter over there that says this smacks more of a profit than prophet driven motive.

With gospelr it seems like another way for Christians to have a sort of insular community that we just aren’t called to have. I will say that in the case of gospelr they actually improved on Twitter a bit so at least this seems to be quality work. Too often though that’s not the case. Much of the time the Christian version is of inferior workmanship.

That’s sort of a side rant though really. Why even do it at all? I understand the desire to create music that has elements of faith. I understand doing things that are a reflection or a natural outpouring of your faith. I don’t understand looking at something and going “Hey I want to make a direct ‘rip-off’ of that.”

Another example of this that drives me a bit batty are music groups like ApologetiX that take secular songs and slap Christian lyrics on them. They do a good job generally, but why do it at all? Then there are Christians that do covers of secular songs that sound sort of spiritual. I recognize that both exercises can be fun, but is there a real benefit? Am I missing something? Am I overreacting? You tell me.

  • http://kansasbob.blogspot.com/ Kansas Bob

    The first song I remember that did this was Sinatra’s “My Way”.. they changed some words and made it “God’s Way”.. not too good.. all I could think of when it was sung was Sinatra.

  • http://pinakidion.org pinakidion

    You know, Tim Kimmel talks about this a lot in his book, Grace-Based Parenting. He basically says that he didn’t see the value of a Christian Parallel Universe and didn’t want his children to be a part of it.

    I don’t think things like ApologetiX hurt. It’s their thing, more power to them. What hurts my conscience is trying to live in an alternate reality. It’s fake to me – being fake is antithetical to faith.

  • http://www.salguod.net salguod

    I don’t get it either. In some cases, GodTube or maybe even Guitar Praise, I can sorta see wanting something that didn’t have the inappropriate content in it.
    Pink and our’s denomination recently set up a ‘Christian myspace/Facebook’ kind of deal. It’s clunky and ugly (well, so is myspace) and worse, when you sign up you get two friends automatically that you can’t ‘unfriend’. They’re there to make sure things are all spiritual like.
    I don’t know these guys at all, I don’t want them in my friend list watching over me.
    I haven’t been back since I signed up ’cause I don’t need a nanny and Facebook works pretty darn well for me. There was nothing new there, why bother?
    Thing is, the guys who built Facebook did it because they thought a way to be connected & share stuff would be cool. They loved the idea and built something cool that works. If your main point is to make a Christian version of something cool, it’s going to be Christian first, cool second and it likely won’t work nearly as well. Most of the time, compared to the original, it’s a bit dorky and not nearly as good.
    If there’s inappropriate stuff in something cool, either figure out how to avoid it (I’m constantly turning off the scantily clad cartoon babes in my daughters’ DDR) or just don’t use the cool tool. That’s part of the cost of following Jesus.

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