Not only is this another amazingly cheesy and dare I say trifling Christian T-shirt slogan, "Body Piercing Saved My Life" is also the title of a new book by Andrew Beaujon (an agonostic writer for Spin Magazine) that has reviews making the rounds in the blogsphere. I have not read it but intend to. Here is a description from amazon.com. It looks very interesting...
According to Beaujon, contributing writer for Spin, sales of Christian music totaled 47 million albums in 2003— outselling jazz, classical music and New Age combined, with sales climbing 10% each year for the past five years. Beaujon came up with the title of his book from a T-shirt he saw at the Cornerstone Christian music festival depicting Jesus's hands with holes in them. In addition to promoting fundamentalist evangelical Christianity, such messages, Beaujon explains, delivered in either folky ballad lilts or throat-wrenching Steven Tyleresque heavy metal screams, are strongly antiabortion ("stop killing my generation"), staunchly conservative (70% of Christian rockers and their fans are Republicans) and provirginity ("dating is prostitution"). Beaujon developed the book from a series of pieces written for Spin and, consequently, the text reads like pithy, onsite, you-are-there set pieces. In "Black and White in a Gray World," he profiles a day in the life of youthful prolife Christian rockers who tout their anticontraception, antiabortion and anti–stem cell research messages through prolife rock music. Many of Beaujon's musical references may be obscure to those over 25, but his insider view of the ideologically passionate world of Christian rock is compelling. Beaujon—an agnostic—reports well but passes no judgment.
Here are a couple links dealing with this.
Mark Driscoll's take.
A very interesting interview with the author. I found it very revealing to listen in on a conversation between what I assume to be two unbelievers discussing their thoughts about Christian music and the American Christian culture in general. Read this one for sure.
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