[Jyqm]

[QUOTE=Brwn_eyes0511]

Originally Posted by Jyqm

You obviously weren't reading what I wrote. They label themselves Christian artist because of...

1. THEY ARE
2. They feel that have been called to a ministry of music
3. It depends on what label you are with.

The label answer is getting a little closer that to what I'm asking about, but then the question becomes, why sign up with a "Christian" label? Why do these artists choose to restrict themselves to a "Christian" music audience (because, once you label yourself as a "Christian" musician, that's largely what you're doing) rather than just put their music out there for the whole of the population to discover?

And also the facts aren't going along with your contingency that Christian music is "limiting", not when sales and interest in Contemporary Christian music is continuing to grow...

I was saying that the idea of "Christian" music seems to be self-limiting in the range of ideas that can be written about;* I never said anything about popularity or record sales.

*And you countered by demonstrating that not all "Christian" artists write every song about Christianity. At which point the question turned to, why do they then label themselves as "Christian?"

Fine, forget Sheryl (she was just the singer songwriter that kept jumping into my head)...pick ANY secular pop artist, and if they were to come out with a song specifically written about their love for Christ (not just GOD but JESUS CHRIST), you don't think they would receive some backlash?

No! Why on earth do you think this? Steve and I have both posted the names of a number of musicians who do not label themselves as "Christian artists" but who are Christian and have written and performed more than their share of music with religious themes with little to no backlash from anybody.

To cite the two examples I already mentioned:

1) Kanye West is one of the biggest "secular" music stars in the world right now, and he had a HUGE hit single last year with the song "Jesus Walks," the chorus of which is, "(Jesus Walk)/God show me the way 'cause the Devil's tryin' to break me down/(Jesus Walk with me)/The only thing that I pray is that my feet don't fail me now/(Jesus Walk)/And I don't think there is nothing I can do now to right my wrongs/(Jesus Walk)/I want to talk to God but I'm afraid 'cause we ain't spoke in so long." Incidentally, the song also grapples with this same idea of yours, that the music industry won't embrace a song about Jesus. But the song's massive success proves that idea dead wrong.

2) Sufjan Stevens is an artist who is very open about his Christianity, and a number of songs on his album Illinois are religious in nature. Critics have almost universally praised the album as one of the year's best, and it's become a commercial success by most independent music standards.

And those are just two examples from the present moment. Dig into the past a little, and you'll find dozens of "secular" artists in nearly every genre releasing widely-acclaimed and embraced religious music, from Willie Nelson's 1976 gospel album The Troublemaker to John Coltrane's 1964 masterpiece A Love Supreme.

You seem to have this dichotomous idea of the music world where there are self-labelled "Christian" artists who write songs about their religion, and then there are "secular" artists who write only about secular matters. But this simply isn't the case. There are many "secular" artists on "secular" labels who write music that deals with generally religious and/or specifically Christian themes and issues. And since this is the case, and everybody seems to be co-existing rather nicely, my question is why some artists feel the need to segregate themselves as "Christian" artists, shutting themselves off from the broader music industry.