This house, this music: exploring the interdependent interpretive relationship between the contemporary black church and contemporary gospel music.

In his groundbreaking work Somebody's Calling My Name: Black Sacred Music and Social Change, the Rev. Dr. Wyatt Tee Walker (1979, 17) sets forth the thesis that "what black people are singing religiously will provide a clue to what is happening to them sociologically." (1) Tracing the African and European cultural influences in slave songs, spirituals, and traditional gospel favorites, Walker establishes a clear correlation between lyrical content in black sacred music and the social circumstances of black life. In the same way this was true of the African-American spiritual, for example, Walker concludes that it is no less true of gospel music. Furthermore, in the case of gospel music, he attributes certain sociohistorical factors--the Great Depression, the post-World War II migration of blacks from the South to northern cities, the landmark U.S. Supreme Court desegregation case of Brown v. Board of Education, and the civil rights movement--as influential to the rise of the genre (132-141). Walker's work demonstrates how, as in the case with vernacular music generally, the content and structure of early gospel music directly reflects a specific social context.

Twenty-four years and several social contexts later, ethnomusicologist and musician Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. (2003) embraces a comparable interpretive framework wherein he advocates "attending to the specific historical moment" surrounding a particular black musical expression. But he further calls for an examination of the particular social setting that gives rise to that expression. For Ramsey, these settings are community theaters, cultural spaces, or sites of cultural memory, which "provide a window of interpretation that allows [us] to enter into some important ideas about the cultural work performed by music in the processes of African American identity making" (21). Community theaters include "cinema, family narratives, and histories, the church, the social dance, the nightclub, the skating rink, even literature" (21). Intrinsic to this "process of identity making" is the meaning making that transpires within these spaces, for in the community theaters, "real people negotiate and eventually agree on what cultural expressions such as a musical gesture mean. They collectively decide what associations are conjured by a well-placed blue note, a familiar harmonic pattern, the soulful, virtuoso sweep of a jazz solo run, a social dancer's imaginative twist on an old dance step, or the raspy grain of a church mother's vocal declamation on Sunday morning" (25-26; see also Walser 1993; Floyd 1991).

From these starting points, and to enhance our understanding of the theological, cultural, and musical significance of the latest installation of black sacred music--contemporary gospel music--I explore here how recent sociological phenomena have affected this genre's development. My thesis is that sociological factors that affect the contemporary black church are largely reflected in various aspects of contemporary gospel music. In the less than forty years that this form of black sacred music has emerged, the community theater that gave it birth and provided the creative, cultural, and spiritual resources for its vitality--the black church-has been undergoing its own transformation. I consider the impact of two social factors that have contributed to this transformation--integration and secularization--and examine their impact on the emergence, development, and proliferation of contemporary gospel music. By considering how these social realities have affected the black community in a broad sense and the contemporary black church in particular, we can transform our interpretive window into a lens through which understanding is magnified.

The Contemporary Black Church and Contemporary Gospel Music

According to the U.S. Census Bureau (1998), there were approximately thirty-four million black Americans in the United States in 1998. Compared with 66 percent of whites, 83 percent of blacks reported that their religious faith was "very important in their lives." Seventy-five percent of blacks agreed with the statement "God is the all-powerful, all-knowing, perfect creator who rules the world today." In 1999, about 49 percent of blacks labeled themselves "spiritual," and 61 percent labeled themselves "committed born-again Christians" (Barna Research Group). The large majority, roughly 80 percent, of these "committed born-again Christians" belong to the seven historically black denominations: three Methodist churches (African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, and Christian Methodist Episcopal Church), three Baptist conventions (National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., National Baptist Convention, America, and the Progressive National Baptist Convention), and one Pentecostal church (Church of God in Christ). With the exception of the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), these institutions were founded in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in response to the racism and rejection faced by blacks within white Christian churches. (2) These seven denominations, along with smaller denominations and predominantly black congregations generally, constitute the larger black church in the United States.

As a sociological reference, my use of the term black church refers to the diversity of a shared tradition of Christian commitment that has shaped the collective black community. Theologically speaking:

   Black religion has always concerned itself with the fascination of
   an incorrigibly religious people with the mystery of God, but it has
   been equally concerned with the yearning of a despised and
   subjugated people for freedom--freedom from the religious, economic,
   social, and political domination that whites have exercised over
   blacks since the beginning of the African slave trade. It is this
   radical thrust of blacks for human liberation expressed in
   theological terms and religious institutions that is the defining
   characteristic of black Christianity and black religion in the
   United States. (Wilmore 1983, x, italics added)

Decades before the founding of these religious institutions, however, the black church was preceded by what sociologist E. Franklin Frazier (1957) has referred to as "the invisible church." (3) Groups of enslaved Africans gathered in secret meetings on Southern plantations out of view and against the wishes of their owners to engage in worship and socialization in a form very different from that of their European-American slave masters. In a time when slave literacy was prohibited, musical expression reinforced by the indomitable African oral and musical traditions emerged as the lifeblood for faith in the slave community. While the Scriptures and the preached word increased in centrality after emancipation, black sacred music has always played a primary role in the religious tradition of black Americans since the time of its origins in the Africa-influenced slave culture of the antebellum period (Walker 1979, 29-30).

From the rich musical lineage of slave hollers, work songs, spirituals, anthems, the hymn-lining tradition, the meter music of Watts-style hymn singing, and Charles A. Tindley--influenced improvisational hymn-singing, gospel music surfaced in early twentieth century as the latest in the progeny of black sacred musical expression (Walker 1979, 129; Southern 1997, 461-474). It was the addition of instrumentation--tambourines, drums, horns, piano, guitar, and eventually, the organ--to the voices, hand clapping, and foot stomping that distinguished gospel music. This performance style, with an emphasis on free expression and group participation, was first experienced in the "independent" or "folk" churches of the Holiness, Pentecostal, and Sanctified sects. In later years, the music spread to other parts of the black religious community. It was attractive because it deeply resonated with their African and African-American cultural sensibilities in a way that the white Protestant liturgical tradition did not (Maultsby 2001, 91-93).

A Georgia-born preacher's son who migrated to Chicago and became a bluesman, Thomas A. Dorsey is credited as the "Father of Gospel Music." By wedding a secular blues aesthetic to sacred text, Dorsey and others (e.g., Lucie Campbell, Roberta Martin, and Mahalia Jackson) pioneered a new way of singing. Heavily influenced by the "folk'-style musicianship of Methodist minister Charles Albert Tindley, Dorsey authored more than four hundred songs, the most popular of which is the legendary "Precious Lord, Take My Hand." A skilled pianist, composer, and arranger, Dorsey, like Tindley before him, captured the current socio-religious mood of blacks of the early twentieth century by fusing the hard-times sensibilities of the Great Depression with an otherworldly assurance of hope for better days.

Gospel has thus always been a hybrid musical form, incorporating improvisation, rhythmic patterns, and tonal variations of African music present in the blues with European-influenced hymnody. Its blending of sacred (text) with secular (music) attests to its African cultural inheritance; conceptual distinctions between "sacred" and "secular" had no place in the worldview of Africans. Both religion and music were integrated within the whole of African life and served a variety of practical purposes. As the history of black music demonstrates, and particularly in the case of gospel music, this framework carried over into an emerging African-American community that exhibited a similar ambivalence toward separating sacred and secular musical conceptions. Since the 1960s, the idiom has been grouped into two broad categories: traditional and contemporary.

Contemporary gospel music differs from traditional gospel music in both form and scope. While Dorsey's "gospel blues" was indeed contemporary music in its time, by the 1960s and 1970s, technology had changed considerably. With the advent of new popular styles and technology, the sound of gospel became modernized. During the late 1960s, gospel musicians began using synthesizers, strings, brass, and the electronic musical styles of the burgeoning funk, rock and roll, and soul music. With this more contemporary sound, gospel music reached beyond the church into traditionally secular venues such as concert halls and recording studios. While this was not the first instance of black religious music performed outside of the church setting, it was the first significant, wide-scale introduction of black sacred music into the mainstream consciousness. (4)

A number of sociohistorical factors contributed to the rise of this contemporary musical form. Two in particular, integration and secularization, operated in tandem to bring about key changes in the black church experience of the post-civil rights era. (5) I believe that the political quest for social integration spurred secularization in the black church as well as black life generally. It is no wonder that the development of contemporary gospel music is marked by "musical integration," or "crossover," themes of its own: appropriating secular means toward spiritual ends (e.g., in the marketing of gospel music), fusing black and white musical aesthetics and worshiping communities (e.g., in the music of Andrae Crouch), and singing sacred songs in secular arenas (e.g., protest rallies, college campuses, and television programs).

Integration: Setting the Stage

The political movement for social integration produced a musical integration as well. This sacred musical genre, born and thriving within a Christian subculture of black American spirituality, was now being fused with a decidedly public, and secular, end. The musical result was freedom songs--spirituals or hymns with lyrics espousing resistance to segregation and perseverance during the movement for racial equality of the 1950s and 1960s (Floyd 1991, 200; Reagon 1990, 4-7) These songs became one of the central icons of the civil rights movement and boosted the morale of people from various racial, religious, and national backgrounds who identified with the movement's social and political goals. One of the most popular freedom songs, "We Shall Overcome," is an adaptation of C. A. Tindley's 1901 gospel hymn "I'll Overcome Someday." As the rallying cry of black and white demonstrators and movement sympathizers, these songs, in "gospelized" form, were reclaimed, popularized, and reappropriated for secular, and public, use. This music of the civil rights protesters, exposed largely via television news coverage, greatly affected mainstream white America. As a result, white churches supportive of the civil rights movement incorporated gospel songs into their worship services (Walker 1979, 153-155). This music, which emphasized personal spiritual transformation, was helping to catalyze group cultural and social transformation in both black and white communities (Sellman 2004).

In addition, the struggle for social integration and political equality led to strengthened group solidarity and the reclaiming of African heritage. (6) As a result, many African Americans developed a heightened race consciousness, which during this period eventually led to "a new sense of acceptance and pride ]regarding what had been considered] black sacred music's earlier stepchild, Gospel" (Walker 1979, 155). Before the civil rights movement, for example, the repertoire of black university choirs consisted predominantly of classical music, with a few spirituals included to conclude their concerts. As the civil rights movement organized politically, this changed. According to theologian Cheryl J. Sanders (1996, 202, 206-207), "To designate the proliferation of collegiate gospel choirs as a movement seems appropriate, since they emerged as student-initiated organizations during the peak period of black student involvement in public protests, political organizations, and demands for black studies programs, outlasting many other institutionalized expressions of black awareness among colleges students.... The push for gospel choirs ... represented black students' desire to identify with the 'subject race' in the struggle for liberation and justice."

This embrace of gospel music among black students in both black and predominantly white campus settings--both secular--reflected a general mood change among the standard-bearers of black propriety. That which some black folks had discarded on theological grounds was now recovered on the basis of political ones. By the end of the civil rights era, these sociohistorical realities aligned to create a receptive environment--within both black and white communities--for a new kind of sound in gospel.

Crossing Over: Music and People

In 1968, a West Coast community choir (the Northern California State Youth Choir) consisting of young people from throughout the Bay Area produced an album for local consumption titled, Let Us Go into the House of the Lord. One of the songs from that live recording, "Oh Happy Day," is a soulful, rhythmic reworking of an eighteenth-century hymn arranged by choir cofounder Edwin Hawkins (Biography of Edwin Hawkins). Quite unexpectedly, the song found a home on underground FM-radio playlists across San Francisco and soon began earning airplay on mainstream R&B and pop stations across the country and around the globe. That year, the song earned the later renamed and reconstituted group--the Edwin Hawkins Singers--a Grammy Award for Best Gospel/Soul Performance (King; MSN.com; Heilbut 1997, 248). This was far beyond the expectations of a modest California youth choir, which had produced only five hundred copies for a small fund-raising campaign.

Hawkins's electic music influences--pop, classical, jazz, R&B, and the Holiness Pentecostal Church--all appear in the vocal and instrumental arrangments on the fund-raisier album. It was unlike anything heard in gospel recordings of the time. Gospel music scholar Horace Clarence Boyer (2000, 5) described it as a fusion of "the harmonic variety of a Duke Ellington and the soulful accentuation of a Ray Charles." It was this sound that resonated with a restlessness of a generation yearning for modernity. In spring 1969, "Oh Happy Day" reached the top 5 on the Billboard charts, eventually selling an astounding seven million copies (King).

When "Oh Happy Day" hit the airwaves in the spring of 1969, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination just one year earlier was still a fresh memory. Despite the victories of the civil rights movement in raising the national consciousness around issues of racial injustice, and the passage of historic civil rights legislation, (7) King's death deflated the church-based political movement. The black church declined in significance in the lives of African Americans, and the Black Power message of a secular black nationalism gained ground in portions of the black community (Pinn 1992, 18). By the 1970s, the black church had lost its preeminent status as the lead institution championing the plight of African Americans.

In an effort to partake of opportunities previously denied them in the fields of education, employment, housing, and public accommodations, sizable numbers of African Americans began to enter formerly all-white arenas. The Christian church in America, however, was beyond the scope of the civil rights agenda, and integrating black and white churches was neither desired nor attained. In a sermon preached at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., just four days before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed, "We must face the sad fact that at eleven o'clock on Sunday morning when we stand to sing 'In Christ there is no East or West,' we stand in the most segregated hour of America." (King and Washington 1986, 270). It is my observation that little has changed in this regard since that Sunday morning in 1968. Given this reality, it is useful to place the career of contemporary gospel pioneer Andrae Crouch in this context. His ministry and recording career touched both white and black worshiping communities while at the same time laying important groundwork in the development of the modern gospel genre.

In 1968, Los Angeles born and COGIC bred Andrae Crouch was signed to a white gospel--oriented label, Light Records. With his group, The Disciples, Crouch recorded some of the best-known and loved songs in American congregational music: "Through It All," "My Tribute (To God Be The Glory)," "Soon and Very Soon," and "Take Me Back." His appeal to both black and white audiences, both religious and secular, sustained his continued recording success throughout the 1970s. His unique sound--part balladeer, part "Sunday morning," highly produced and very pop--gained him entree into an eclectic mix of musical circles. From collaborations with Elvis Presley to traditional black church worship settings (despite criticism he faced from gospel purists for his rock and roll--influenced lyrics, music and image) and the "Jesus Music" of the white hippie counterculture of the 1960s, Crouch unapologetically pioneered a new wave of religious music (Heilbut 1997, 247-248). Andrae Crouch and the Disciples achieved a series of "firsts" for gospel artists: they were the first to perform at Radio City Music Hall and in Australia's Sydney Opera House, and in 1980, the first to appear on the television program Saturday Night Live. He also experienced international acclaim, with sold-out concerts in Europe, Africa, the Far East, and the Americas. In many instances, Crouch's music brought blacks and whites of his generation together in worship--albeit in concert halls--for the first time. In these ways, Crouch's career embodies the musical, social, and cultural "integration" of modern gospel music reflective of the social realities of the 1960s and 1970s.

Social Integration, Social Separation

The aspiration of many African Americans in the early post-civil rights era went well beyond integration, toward assimilation, into white America. As these blacks attained educational, social, and economic status through their participation in mainstream institutional life, there emerged what sociologists Lincoln and Mamiya (1990, 384) describe as "two nations within a nation": a "coping sector" of middle-income working-class and middle-class blacks and a "crisis sector" of low-income blacks, who made up the working poor and the dependent poor. (8) For the first time, class became a basis of segmentation within the African-American community (Powers 1998, 33, 43). (9)

Tyrone Powers (1998, 43, 44) argues: "The blinders that middle-class Blacks had to put on to focus on integration caused them to ignore and abandon urban Blacks." He further states: "Although a middle class existed in pre-integration Black America, the divisiveness inherent in class division was subjugated by the collective conscience, which was a result of the commonality of the Black experience.... As middle class Blacks assimilated into White America post-integration, the collective conscience of Black America dissipated or was subjugated to class status. A state of anomie filled the void" (320-321). (10) The implications for the black church were profound. For example, while many middle-class blacks physically and emotionally left urban neighborhoods (what Powers describes as black flight or out migration), as well as the churches in those neighborhoods, in pursuit of the American dream, others kept their membership in black churches, commuting every Sunday into the city from the suburbs. However, the focus of the black church began to change. Whereas most black churches were previously concerned with empowerment for the entire black community, Powers contends that these churches during the 1970s began to specialize in middle-class concerns, leaving out the concerns of the urban poor. As a result, many lower-income blacks, young people, and young black men in particular fled from the black church (Lincoln and Mamiya 1990; Powers 1998, 47, 49, 133-134). Others left for ideological reasons based on what they perceived as the black church's failure to articulate and implement a nationalistic agenda for black advancement, particularly in light of the demise of the civil rights movement. For these reasons, by the 1980s, there was born a second generation of blacks, of both classes, who had no direct personal relationship to the spirituality, values, or culture of the black church (Pinn 1992, 20).

The low numbers of African-American urban poor, particularly young men, in the contemporary black church continues to the present day. Lincoln and Mamiya (1990, 322-324) report that a major challenge to the contemporary black church is the unchurched, urban, black teenagers and young adults, ages seventeen to thirty-five. In the decade immediately following the "black flight" of the middle class--the 1980s--black youth suffered: this group experienced unemployment rates of over 50 percent, black males were incarcerated on average at a rate of 47 percent, and teenage pregnancy rates grew to crisis proportions. While most black churches did not aggressively address these issues, some efforts were made to reach this constituency. In 1990, a survey of 2,150 urban and rural black churches included the question, "What special techniques and programs have you found to be successful in attracting young people?" The program/technique reported to have the most success was "music and choir" at 19.2 percent, with "allow greater participation and involvement in the leadership and decision-making of the church" as the second most successful, at 13.2 percent (330). For those who were serious about intervening in the lives of youth, the methodology was clear: fuse the sound, look, and feel of the hip-hop culture that had so captivated the hearts and minds of urban youth with the timeless message of the gospel.

Such was the rationale of gospel artists who pioneered hip-hop gospel in the 1980s and 1990s. Even without the aid of Lincoln and Mamiya's sociological research, church-based music ministers such as John P. Kee intuitively knew what it would take to reach a generation of youth who were alienated from the black church:

   Though John P. Kee was known as a composer of traditional gospel
   music, his concern over the nation's youth caused him to change the
   focus of his music to become more appealing to the younger
   generation. Kee picked up the hip-hop culture and perfected a
   combination of traditional, contemporary and hip-hop music that
   would start a trend within gospel choir singing.... Because of his
   own experience on the streets, Kee turned his focus and thrust on
   street ministry. One of Kee's special missions was to reach out to
   hard-core drug traffickers and other troubled youth in his community
   to try to dissuade them from such a lifestyle. Consequently, Kee
   chose to perform music that combined hip-hop and urban sounds with a
   gospel message. (Wise 2002, 183-185)

This formula proved successful in attracting teens steeped in this emerging urban youth culture.

Another case study illustrating the success of modernized gospel music in attracting young people to the Gospel message came in the summer of 1993, which was arguably the key defining moment for contemporary gospel music since "Oh Happy Day." Kirk Franklin, a young unknown gospel musician from Fort Worth, Texas, released a self-titled debut album, Kirk Franklin and The Family. Its hit song, "The Reason Why We Sing," led the album to one hundred weeks atop Billboard magazine's gospel charts It crossed over to the R&B charts and became the first gospel album ever to sell over a million units (Nu Nation).

While his inaugural album could be categorized as new traditional, Franklin's subsequent albums were mainly urban contemporary selections with a heavy hip-hop influence. (11) For example, in 1997, Franklin teamed up with a youth ensemble from his native Texas, God's Property, and their album entered the pop chart at number three. The hit song from that album, "Stomp," featured a duet with hip-hop veteran Cheryl James ("Salt") from the rap group Salt-n-Pepa. "Stomp" made musical history in two ways: (1) it reached number-one status on R&B, gospel, and contemporary Christian charts for several weeks that year, and (2) MTV played its video in heavy rotation. Many young people (churched and unchurched), representing a diverse demographic, became Kirk Franklin fans. Through his dress, dance moves, and lyrics, Franklin became the poster boy for crossover gospel, receiving accolades for his trailblazing but also caustic criticism from those who believed he had transgressed the line of what was proper for a gospel artist.

During the 1980s and 1990s, the music of Kee, Franklin, Brooklyn's Hezekiah Walker, and others like them attracted many to the Christian lifestyle and to church membership. Incorporating contemporary musical sounds proved to be a successful means by which to convey the Christian messages of hope, encouragement, and salvation in a way that was compelling to this hard-to-reach demographic. Church youth choirs across the country took hold of this new artistic flair, emulating these choirs and including their songs in their Sunday morning repertoires as much as the church members would allow. Although it was met with some resistance, churches could not deny that hip-hop gospel produced results at a time when little else was working. Religious studies professor Anthony Pinn (1992, 54-55) writes:

   Churches have recognized contemporary gospel and are using it as a
   tool for evangelizing communities. During the 1980s, many churches
   nurtured choirs for more than the music they provided.... Many
   churches in fact experienced growth based on the popularity of their
   choirs. Hence, excellent choir directors were in as much demand as
   charismatic preachers, and most churches now make it their business
   to nurture at least one choir with an understanding that there is a
   direct relationship between good music and full pews.

In this way, the urban sector of the black community, especially young people, who had been left out of the postintegration black church agenda, were now intentionally recruited via this new form of music ministry.

The "hip-hop gospel" innovation illustrates how the black church, as a community theater that gives music its meaning and function, reinvented itself through reimagining music in a way that would capture the hearts and souls of a languishing younger generation. As the music's effectiveness for reaching young people became clear, groups on each side of the church doors experienced a conversion. Hence, Ramsey's (2003, 193) pronouncement, that "hip-hop music ... has transformed the community theatre that is the black church" rings true.

Another group, however, was absent and unaccounted for: those middle-class blacks who had retreated to suburbia or who had left the black church for ideological reasons. Whether it was to the doors of the seven historic black denominational churches or to the new mega-churches, waves of middle-class African Americans found their way back to the church of their mothers and fathers during the 1990s.

   The black middle class expressed a feeling of living between two
   worlds, one generated by economic success and the other premised
   upon racial classification.... Yet despite gains, middle-class
   blacks found themselves in search of a stabilizing force, a
   community. For those who followed their dreams out of cities,
   life in the suburbs proved troubling; racial discrimination
   could make property difficult to secure and, even
   when housing was found, fires and other forms of violence were
   often used to protest their presence.... Accompanying these
   difficulties was a cultural uncertainty, a shaky and often
   changing meaning of what it was to be "black." Many middleclass
   black Americans found themselves "outside the loop," considered
   foreigners by both less well-off blacks and whites. To combat
   this, many returned to their religious roots. (Pinn 1992, 28-29)

It is no wonder that gospel music--in its modernized form--was an integral part of this spiritual and cultural rejourneying. It is well settled that gospel music has come to represent the essence of a distinctly African-American culture (Williams-Jones 1975). For Ramsey (2003, 193-194), "gospel music reigns as a powerful sign of ethnicity among African Americans. Faithful Christian believers and nonbelievers alike have long recognized the genre as an important cultural symbol, loaded with both social and eschatological meaning." As seen in the black collegiate gospel choir movement of the 1970s, contemporary gospel music had already once served the purpose of being a source of spiritual sustenance, group solidarity, and racial pride for these affirmative-actionbabies-turned-Buppies. (12) Despite any physical or political distance from the black church over the years, gospel music had been an accessible means of connection to the culture and spirituality of the church. In this way, the songs of Andrae Crouch, Edwin Hawkins, and others served as familiar and comforting passageways for liturgical reentry. What they had enjoyed in secular venues such as the college campus, music festivals, and even on mainstream radio now resonated in even sweeter tones when enjoyed in its natural habitat: Sunday morning in a black church worship experience.

Moreover, as many in this group were wrestling with their Duboisian "two-ness" (13)--trying to make sense of their relationship with a white America that both beckoned and rejected (Powers 1998, 43) them, as well as struggling with identity insecurities surrounding their own blackness highlighted by a similar beckoning and rejection from the black urban poor--they were attracted to contemporary gospel music. It modeled, in aesthetic form, a solution to their existential dilemma. Ethnographer and gospel singer Pearl Williams-Jones (1973, 373) argues: "Black gospel music is one of the new seminal genres of contemporary black culture which continually maintains its self-identity while it nourishes and enriches the mainstream of the world's cultural sources" (italics added). This theme resonated with a postintegration, middle-class, African-American sensibility: to maintain one's self-identity while engaging fully and productively in the mainstream (i.e., white) society. (14)

Theologically, this challenge harkens back to the Christian admonition to "be ye in the world, but not of it." (15) It is the question one asks oneself after the quest for assimilation and acceptance within white America has been met with hostile demands for accommodation. (16) It is the rhetorical question posed by Jesus centuries earlier, with now perhaps a deeper and double meaning for this group of striving African Americans: "For what does it profit a man, that he shall gain the whole world, but lose his soul?" (17) At its cultural best, contemporary gospel typifies how one can incorporate the "the things of this world" without forfeiting that most prized currency of blackness--soul. This, according to jazz scholar and anthropology professor John Szwed (1970, 220), is what music is expected to do: "Song forms and performances are themselves models of social behavior that reflect strategies of adaptation to human and natural environments." Hence, contemporary gospel music appeals to both churched and unchurched sectors of the African-American middle class because of all of these messages in the music--both stated and implied.

In these ways, contemporary gospel music has achieved what the traditional black church as a whole has failed to accomplish in the post-civil rights era: a mechanism for spiritual and cultural sustenance for both ends of its bifurcated community--the African-American middle class and the African-American underclass. Not only does it accomplish this, but it does so in a way that ushers both sectors back into the pews of the waning post-civil rights black church. During a period in which both groups are experiencing their respective versions of anomie caused by alienation, contemporary gospel music offered itself as a channel towards the recovery of collective consciousness lost in the post-civil rights era.

Integrating the Music Industry

By the late 1970s, a small cadre of blacks was working professionally in the business of gospel music, particularly as white-owned Christian music labels started their black-music divisions and hired African Americans to be involved in marketing, promotions, and decisions of artists and repertoire (A&R). By the early to mid-1980s, these record labels (18) introduced the largest numbers of contemporary gospel artists to national audiences (Wise 2002, 159). In the early 1990s, several independent black-owned labels came into being, as industry veterans who had worked for these Christian labels, or in the secondary market generated by them as independent contractors, struck out on their own to establish gospel music-related ventures of national scope.

Vicki Mack-Lataillade and husband Claude are perhaps the most notable examples of this phenomenon. In 1993, Mack-Lataillade ceased operations as an independent marketer and founded a label with $6,000 from her father's postal pension fund. Gospocentric became the label behind Kirk Franklin's debut album with its historic crossover sales. The label now dominates the gospel music marketplace through its A-list roster, which includes artists such as Kurt Carr, Byron Cage, and Tramaine Hawkins.

The marketplace for entrepreneurial activity in the gospel industry continued to expand. In July 1998, Black Enterprise magazine published an article titled "Resources for Gospel Entrepreneurs," which gave advice to members of its predominantly African-American readership who might have interest in launching gospel music-related businesses: "Do your homework and be as well versed in the culture and grassroots network of the black church and the gospel community as you are in the workings of the music industry. Ministers, church musical directors, church bookstores and annual conferences represent some of the support systems, informational sources and marketing opportunities for gospel music entrepreneurs" (Rhea 1998). Whether for entrepreneurs or corporate executives, the cultural capital of the black church was an important asset in the design of marketing plans and promotional campaigns, resulting in unprecedented sales, increased visibility, and greater accessibility for contemporary gospel music. Simply put, when these professionals entered the mainstream, they brought their unique understanding of the gospel market with them. In this, we notice a direct relationship between the inclusion of blacks into the mainstream of American corporate and entrepreneurial life, as a direct by-product of the civil rights movement, and the commercial explosion of gospel music.

Secularization

The issue of secularization in the black church and within contemporary gospel music is a negotiated, fluid, and dynamic one. In its barely forty years of existence, a body of tensions and controversies have erupted that, in my view, are rooted in and complicated by the fact that the gospel music idiom is itself a hybrid musical form blending sacred and secular musics. As the following discussion demonstrates, these tensions and controversies were as alive at the turn of the twenty-first century as they were when Dorsey was kicked out of the black churches for playing what was viewed as "the devil's music" in the 1930s (Harris 1992). (19)

Thus, as it had in the 1960s, gospel music again experienced innovations and controversies in the 1980s. When up-and-coming musicians employed the same methods used by Dorsey, Hawkins, and Crouch by incorporating the most contemporary musical styles of their day--now, R&B, rap, and hip hop--they met resistance from all but the church teenagers and R&B fans in the pews. Perhaps the most successful progenitors of the gospel sound of the 1980s were The Winans, a quartet of brothers from a musical family in Detroit. They were the proteges of Crouch, who produced their first album, Introducing the Winans, in 1981 (Wise 2002, 179-180). The Winans dominated the gospel and R&B charts throughout the 1980s in part due to mainstream marketing efforts that included recording with secular artists such as Anita Baker, Teddy Riley, Stevie Wonder, and Kenny G. In the face of more secular-sounding tracks like these, mainstream radio DJs discovered that their listeners were not offended by hearing a gospel song in an otherwise secular music lineup. In fact, DJs and program directors began playing selected gospel songs during prime radio airtime periods (196). However, this use of secular musical styles, coupled with bold musical associations with secular recording artists, made this new strand of gospel unwelcome in the typical black church. According to musicologist Guthrie Ramsey (2003, 191-192): "While church leadership has generally guarded and cherished the notions of tradition and convention, forces from within the church (more often than not the younger generation) have defied the older heads ... and claimed stylistic change as an artistic priority. The interaction of these two impulses (tradition and innovation) has provided a creative framework through which musicians have continually pursued new musical directions, despite the inevitable controversies that these innovations are sure to inspire."

A classic example of the controversies that erupted amid the impulses of tradition and innovation came as a reaction to Tramaine Hawkins's 1985 techno-funk hit "Fall Down." The song topped the dance charts despite its explicitly religious content, sending Hawkins into dance clubs to perform, much to the chagrin of many of her fans in the church community. According to one biographer, "After the uproar, Hawkins felt that everyone but her family and her church family had turned their backs on her" (Richard De La Font Agency). Years later, Hawkins returned to the music industry after taking a break to care for her ailing mother; she also returned to a more traditional style. She is heralded today as one of gospel music's "divas."

Another illustration of the tradition-innovation tension surfaced through what many considered a watering down of the gospel message in contemporary gospel songs. This was especially notable as major secular labels signed certain artists to their roster with an eye toward crossover sales. The brother and sister duo BeBe and CeCe Winans, the younger siblings of The Winans, were at the epicenter of this controversy. In the late 1980s, BeBe and CeCe's "I.O.U. Me" (1987) and "Lost without You" (1988) scored high on the R&B and Adult Contemporary Billboard charts but offended many in the gospel music and church community because the songs seemed to "treat spiritual love in fuzzy terms just as conducive to the physical" (Bush). It was even part of the lore of the time that when they left their Christian-owned label and signed with secular recording giant Capitol Records, their new recording contract explicitly prohibited them from using traditional religious words like "God" or "Jesus" in their songs. In his history of gospel music, Raymond Wise (2002, 181, 199) supports this suspicion with the observation that "as secular record companies began to enter the gospel market, many gospel artists were told to compromise their gospel message or omit the altar calls from their concerts." BeBe and CeCe's practice of using ambiguous terms such as "love," "light," and "Him" contributed to some sectors of the Christian community questioning whether the duo had "sold out" their ministry-minded motives in exchange for acceptance in the secular marketplace (Southern 1997, 608).

As a result of these tensions and controversies, definitions of subgenres emerged to help supporters and critics alike distinguish between these new breeds of gospel music and the (now-standard) contemporary gospel music they were likely to encounter on a Sunday morning. The Gospel Music Industry Roundup, dubbed "the Bible of the Gospel music industry," sets forth some important distinctions that emerged as a byproduct of these concerns (Collins 2001, 7):

Contemporary Gospel: "Good news" music using secular influences but designed for worship both within and beyond the walls of the traditional church.

Urban Contemporary Gospel: Incorporating street beats and urban influences, this may have a place in people's spiritual lives but not in the traditional church worship experience.

Inspirational: Songs that are spiritually uplifting but do not necessarily convey the Gospel.

Praise and Worship: Participatory call-and-response music designed to provide worshipers with a mechanism for praise within the church experience.

While such industry-driven definitions helped consumers, critics, and industry personnel comprehend the new musical landscape that was becoming contemporary gospel, new vocabulary alone could not bring consensus around the vastly different theological, musical, and business approaches these categories represented. Herein lay the subject matter for examining issues of secularization in the contemporary gospel music period.

Sociologist Mark Chaves (1994, 757) offers a conceptual framework that can be useful in interpreting issues of secularization:

   Secularization at the societal level may be understood as the
   declining capacity of religious elites to exercise authority over
   other institutional spheres. Secularization at the organizational
   level may be understood as religious authority's declining control
   over the organizational resources within the religious sphere. And
   secularization at the individual level may be understood as the
   decrease in the extent to which individual actors are subject
   to religious control. The unifying theme is that secularization
   refers to declining religious authority at all three levels of
   analysis. (italics added)

This theory opens the door to a new approach to secularization, one that situates religion and religious change in a concrete historical context. Secularization occurs, or does not occur, as the result of social and political conflicts between those social actors who would enhance or maintain religion's social significance and those who would reduce it (750-752).

In this way, Chaves's approach evokes the primary thesis of this study, forwarded by Walker and reinforced by Ramsey: that any interpretation of black sacred music necessitates sociohistorical contextualization. However, Chaves's view of secularization mirrors the conceptual framework of this study even more precisely, with his hypothesis that secularization is a function of the outcome of negotiations between "social actors"--akin to what Ramsey believes transpires within the community theater.

How, then, are we to understand secularization in the case of contemporary gospel music? The tussle across shifting sacred and secular definitions appears to be its only constant. How do we assess gospel music ministers' innovative use of secular means (e.g., hip-hop) to achieve the most sacred of ends (the spiritual and social reclamation of its young people)? Has the Church now become more secular for having reached its young, or has it affirmed its sacredness by enacting the Great Commission in contemporary times? Both Chaves's and Ramsey's frameworks suggest close examination of the actions, motivations, and negotiations between the social actors involved in the contemporary gospel music genre. For this reason, I look at the three main groups of social actors as they relate to the music and the Church: the recording industry and other corporate actors, gospel musicians and recording artists, and leaders of the black church.

The Recording Industry and Other Corporate Actors

The creative innovation, heated controversies, and high visibility of gospel music in just the last decade have made it unmistakably clear-from the pulpit to the door, from Main Street to Madison Avenue--that gospel music is hot (Jeffers 2002). Moreover, for better or for worse, gospel has become a hot commodity. Former Payne Theological Seminary president and novelist Obery M. Hendricks (2000) suggests that this "process of Gospel songs being sold as commodities" began when Thomas Dorsey sold his first piece of sheet music in 1926. This commodification has continued and expanded to the point where, some sixty years later in 1996, the Gospel Music Association declared gospel "the fastest-growing musical genre in America, ranking only behind rock, country, urban contemporary, pop, and rap" (Buckles 1998). That same year, a New York-based market research firm reported that 50 percent of gospel music listeners were between ages twenty-five and forty-four, the age group that accounts for more than 59 percent of all record sales in the music industry (Rhea 1998).

Such sales prompted unprecedented involvement from the American corporate sector in the business of gospel music, as major secular labels entered into distribution deals with several independent labels in the 1990s. These arrangements afforded the product of independent labels the same prominent placement within mainstream retail chains as those of secular artists (Rhea 1998). In the 1980s, major corporations interested in strengthening their African-American consumer base (such as McDonald's, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Quaker Oats, and Wrigley's Chewing Gum) sponsored Gospel choir competitions and other Gospel-oriented events. (20) In addition, with the aid of corporate sponsorship, local civic, art, and community organizations across the country began to produce outdoor gospel music concerts (Wise 2002, 166). In the 1990s, even Hollywood took notice: several major studios produced theatrical films incorporating contemporary gospel music or gospel music-centered story lines. (21)

Thus, as the participation of big business (representing "corporate actors") brought a level of commercialization and involvement heretofore unseen in gospel (and perhaps in any other sacred musical genre), secularization in the making and distribution of gospel music has certainly occurred. In the language of Chaves's framework, societal secularization is evidenced in the "declining capacity of religious elites to exercise authority over other institutional spheres" (Chaves 1994, 757). In this sense, much of that which had been self-contained in the churches was now at best a shared endeavor with entertainment and consumer-goods corporations.

Recording Artists

When questions concerning gospel's secular sound were raised at the height of the contemporary gospel music controversies of the 1980s, some leading artists explained the rationale behind their musical and marketing choices. Andrae Crouch stated, "We are to reach people where they are, therefore our music must be appealing" (Wise 2002, 19). Marvin Winans explained: "When you need to get a certain group to hear your music then you've got to go get that certain group. If we just wanted gospel people to hear the music, we would have gotten [other] gospel artists [to appear on our albums].... We recognize the fact that because we are gospel artists, we're only going to be played on so many stations. In order to change that we needed to get some people to help change that circumstance, not change our music, but [to] make sure other people hear us" (Smith 1988, 27-32). The previous discussion of John P. Kee's intentionality in using hip-hop to reach unchurched youth also applies here.

Even at the beginning of a new century, gospel artists' motives are still the subject of inquiry. As Ramsey (2003, 212) reminds us, "[T]he appropriateness of certain musical gestures for worship, the secular nature of a song's subject matter, dress, body language, and the proper venue of presentation have become lightening rods for controversy." Enter Tonex. Introduced to gospel audiences in 2000, he has been described as "one of gospel's most perplexing and creative talents," "gospel's avant-garde," "a twenty four year old musical prodigy" (Collins 2002, 67), and "the mad scientist," due to his "busy" musical style (Mission Productions). He is often compared to recording artist Prince, not only for his musical virtuosity but also for his salacious stage presentation. Gospelflava.com, a leading gospel website, describes the reasons for the uproar created by Tonex:

   While the artist's music is definitely on the cutting edge, it is
   his appearance that has birthed a tremendous amount of heat from
   within the Gospel community. For most of his performances or
   appearances, it is not uncommon to find Tonex clad in his trademark
   top hat and boa, along with assorted body piercing and other retro
   apparel. In addition, his performances are usually heightened by
   a stage filled with incense and candles. His stage presence is
   certainly a far cry from his Apostolic upbringing. (Gospelflava.com
   "The World According to Tonex, Part II: The Future")

Defending himself, Tonex contends:

   I've made it a point to be as extreme with my appearance as
   possible for a reason. It's time for the church world to understand
   that they must not limit God and put Him in a box. The problem with
   the church is that they want to look the part but not act the part.
   David was anointed of God but he didn't look like it.... The church
   has made it so that they want people to be fixed up before they get
   cleaned up and that's not right. It is my mission to educate
   the church world that it's not about how you look but about the
   anointing. (Gospelflava.com "The World According to Tonex, Part
   II: The Future" [italics added])

The "box" Tonex refers to is the invisible line that delineates the sacred from the secular. Perhaps more consciously than his predecessors, Tonex wants to expose and step over these lines. Toward that end, he has coined a name for a new category of gospel music, nureau. He explains: "It means 'new row' ... as in new row in a church pew, new row in a retail shelf, etc. It's a category of music all by itself" (Gospelflava.com "Tonex: A Chatterview"). In this, nureau marks the next wave of modernity to disrupt the contemporary gospel music status quo. While Crouch and Winans seemed fixed on "how to reach the masses," Tonex's self-appointed mission is also to revolutionize the way that Christian insiders perceive God. In this, he claims that his futuristic sound, edgy presentation, and even his shock appeal are merely tools used for spiritual objectives.

Lincoln and Mamiya, however, would likely view such independent, nonconformist stances as squarely in tension with the dictates of the prevailing religious leadership, as a sure sign of secularization in the contemporary black church, notwithstanding the spiritualized claims of these artists. Lincoln and Mamiya (1990, 13) determine secularization in terms of the "dialectic between the communal and the privatistic": "The communal orientation refers to the historic tradition of black churches being involved in all aspects of the lives of their members, including political, economic, educational and social concerns.... This dialectic is also useful in assessing the degree to which the process of secularization has affected black churches. In sociological theory the effects of secularization are to push towards privatism, a more personal and individualistic sense of religiousness." These artists' defiance of the norms of the "communal orientation" would seem then to constitute secularization. Tonex's "individual sense of religiousness," Lincoln and Mamiya might argue, empowers his oppositional stance against the status quo. Yet, even Lincoln and Mamiya acknowledge that their communal-privatistic understanding of relations within the black church sits within the context of a dialectical framework--and one, they maintain, that is not resolved in a Hegelian synthesis but which remains in tension. Furthermore, as noted earlier, both Chaves and Ramsey recommend that attention be paid to the dynamic, multifaceted layers of meanings embodied in the social actors and factors of a particular historical moment.

In this way, Chaves's analysis of "individual secularization" seems most fitting. In evaluating the relationship of church musicians and gospel recording artists who embrace modernity against the preferences of church leaders, Chaves (1994) calls for a second step in the secularization analysis. First, consistent with Lincoln and Mamiya's communal-privatistic framework, Chaves recommends examining "the decrease in the extent to which individual actors are subject to religious control." Then, Chaves directs us to analyze the extent to which any loss of that religious authority has been a loss to "social actors whose agenda is to reduce the social significance of religion" (752). Evaluated against this standard, it appears that the clearly stated evangelistic goals of artists such as Crouch, Winans, and Tonex, for example, are those that are directed to promote Christianity, not reduce its influence. As long as the Gospel message is presented, according to this view, any musical style may be employed (Wise 2002, 172). While this viewpoint has traditionally stood in tension with the more conservative elements of the black church-going community, it should not be discarded outright as any less a religious stance. More than an "end-justifies-the-means" analysis is necessary. With this more comprehensive layer of analysis suggested by Chaves's framework, we may conclude that what is taking place in this instance is not secularization after all. Simply: it is singing a new song for a new day. (22) Each generation of devotees will express religious faith through its own culturally relevant expressions borrowed from the secular society and "gospelized." (23)

Black Religious Leadership

Any consumer of American pop culture knows that gospel music is "not just for Sunday anymore." The corollary of this is also true: gospel music is no longer exclusively the province of the religious community of its origins. One leading gospel music journalist even referred to the church as merely "the incubator" for the music (Petrie 2004).

Given this reality, the recent launches of gospel music labels by several black megachurches may represent more than ministerial or even entrepreneurial objectives. (24) Apparently, these pastors believe that their extensive church networks contain the business, marketing, and creative resources to compete with mainstream and seasoned independent record labels. Perhaps these megachurches, with anywhere from 2,000 to 25,000 members (Tucker-Works 2001, 179) took note of their courting by gospel labels and reasoned that, in an industry where artists need only between five hundred and one thousand units in a given week in order to rate on the Billboard Gospel charts (Jessen 2004), their multimillion dollar enterprises could also be major players in the Gospel "mode of production."

In Chaves's scheme, organizational secularization refers to "religious authority's declining control over the organizational resources within the religious sphere" (Chaves 1994, 750-752). If music is considered as an organizational resource, the recent launching of full-service record companies by black megachurches might also be understood as an act of territorial recovery. In the perennial struggle between commerce and culture as it applies to black culture and black music in particular, such initiative on the part of several of the nation's most influential black clergy to control the gospel music mode of production is perhaps an attempt to desecularize this music.

Conclusion

In their preface to The Black Church in the African American Experience, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya (1990, xii) write: "Because there has been such a dearth of serious research on black churches up to very recent times, the Black Church has often experienced difficulty in conceptualizing or knowing itself except as an amorphous, lusterless detail on some larger canvas devoted to other interests. In consequence the Black Church has often found itself repeating history it had already experienced, and relearning the Black Church lessons it had long since forgotten." This is especially true in the case of the black church and its relationship to the contemporary forms of gospel music. In direct response to Lincoln and Mamiya's lament, I offer the following as lessons to remember.

First, from a historical perspective, gospel music seems almost destined to cross over. In her seminal work The Music of Black Americans, Eileen Southern (1997, 609) writes: "Again and again black musical styles have passed over into American music, there to be diluted and altered in other ways to appeal to a wider public or to be used as the basis for development of new styles." History has demonstrated that once certain aspects of black culture gain popularity in the black community, mainstream market forces (i.e., "corporate America") "discover" that culture, then commodify and reappropriate it into the mainstream as popular culture (Ramsey 2003, 168). Given this historical reality, the black church should not be surprised by the crossover market appeal of gospel music; rather, it should expect it. Despite the music's explicitly religious content, I believe this country's legacy of economic exploitation of black culture will continue to support the transmission of gospel music from the sacred space of the black church community theater into the secular mainstream. Aside from the economic and cultural injustices involved when black artists and communities do not reap the financial rewards of their cultural contributions, (25) some positive ramifications do emanate from this unfortunate reality. One example is in the furtherance of the gospel message; another is in the furtherance of the gospel music genre.

It should hardly be necessary in the context of a missionary religion such as Christianity to remind any portion of the Church that it is a good thing when their message is presented to groups beyond the Church's ordinary reach. Yet this seems to be forgotten in the case of the black church and the use of secular music styles with sacred text. Instead, the music is often rejected as "worldly" (church lingo for "secularization") and without any spiritual merit. If the black church would only recall the recent history of this nascent genre, it would not be surprised or offended by such innovations. I am not suggesting that the Church abandon all sense of propriety for what is suitable for the Sunday worship service, but I am calling for a more informed response to contemporary trends in gospel music, based on an acknowledgment that, indeed, there would be no gospel music as we know it--traditional or contemporary--if in each instance the religious traditionalists of the day had prevailed.

Second, gospel music was designed with crossover attributes. Because of its hybrid musical nature, modern gospel music will naturally appeal to listeners of contemporary secular musical styles. In this, an expanded base of musical listening communities is nearly guaranteed. That gospel music was both destined and designed to cross over underscores this simple truth: neither the Gospel nor gospel music was meant for the exclusive enjoyment of the community of its social origin.

Third, the black church itself has a number of unique roles and responsibilities regarding gospel music artists and the genre's propagation. For example, Max Siegel (2002), President of Verity Records, the world's largest gospel music label, comments on what a professional gospel music recording artist needs to "make it" in the Christian music business:

   You've got to understand that there are tensions involved in being
   in that realm.... [T]here's always a tension between creativity
   and ministry and business.... [I]t really gets complicated when
   some of the things [the record company] may ask you to do to market
   your record may be compromising to your ministry.... [F]irst and
   foremost.... you need to be under a pastor where you can learn, you
   can be covered, and you can be spiritually fed. That's critical.
   The one thing is to have someone who's going to give you some
   guidance and advice spiritually. (Siegel 2002)

In this way, pastors and ministers of music have unique opportunities to minister to the spiritual and vocational needs of those who earn their living as professional recording artists. While this article has focused on the communal ramifications of tensions between sacred versus secular definitions, and ministry versus business objectives, these pastoral-care, church-based issues are ones of deep personal consequence for many gospel recording artists. This is also the case for many Christians who work in high levels of the entertainment industry generally. Instead of church environments that alienate and criticize people for having "worldly" occupations, or that are ignorant of the issues faced by these individuals, more black churches can be, and many are, sources of counsel, refuge, and emotional support for these high-profile individuals.

As an institutional community theater affiliated with a black musical genre, the black church also stands in a unique position to mitigate against undesirable sociological factors associated with gospel music. For example, with Dorsey's transformation of congregational hymns into songs for church choirs, soloists, and ensembles, a unique and powerful dimension of the worship experience in the black church was altered. Lincoln and Mamiya (1990, 361-362) note: "While [congregational hymns] united worshippers through the collective activity of singing and declaring theological and doctrinal commonalities, the new style required the congregation to assume the role of audience. In essence, worshippers became bystanders who witnessed the preaching and personal testimonies of singers.... [B]lack worshippers and concertgoers often became the audience to a new homiletical gospel experience."

The implications of this changed dynamic are most starkly felt in the case of highly stylized gospel music. The impersonal nature of American society often leaves parishioners desirous of the "temporary reduction of social alienation and ... an interim sense of community" afforded by congregational singing (347). I believe this is in part responsible for the rise of praise and worship music as the fastest growing subgenre in Christian music today. Praise and worship is participatory music that downplays the performance tendency in the worship setting and fosters a sense of unity and equality within the congregation. Ministers of music can address the potential limitations and barriers presented by gospel music by incorporating different worship styles, including those from other aspects of the black sacred musical tradition.

The black church can also act as an advocate and guardian of the music in the larger society. Many of the sociological factors affecting the development of the genre (e.g., secularization, dilution of the music, compromising the message, inappropriate marketing strategies, harnessing black buying power and ownership opportunities in the recording industry, inadequate knowledge of music history, etc.) are ripe for the informed leadership and initiative of churches who care about the music's preservation, integrity, and proliferation. In this, the black church's credibility and leverage with respect to the recording industry would be enhanced. More important, however, the black church would then rise to the occasion of its own stewardship of its own natural resource, no small feat in these postmodern (and some say postblack and post-Christian) times in which we live.

Finally, the black churches are more than a market base for this music, but principally, they serve as spiritual and cultural institutions with unique missions, sociohistorical contexts, and operational cultures. Record companies in particular would do well to remember and respect this important truth. Often, the lines between the goals of the recording studio and the choir loft seem opposed and confusing to the persons operating in these two distinct contexts. And that is as it should be. Most churches, for example, focus on ministry objectives and spiritual outcomes; record companies focus on recouping their recording and marketing funds and on making a profit by exceeding what they spend in these areas. Yet, as churches become more business minded, and as record companies appreciate that the heart of gospel music is ministry, a maturing trust and a comfort is growing between these two communities. Gospel record company executives who understand their market realize that black churchgoers are the core consumer base for black sacred music in all of its forms. They can articulate to their record industry colleagues how understanding and respecting the culture of the Church is good for business objectives. In addition, organizations such as the Gospel Music Workshop of America and the Gospel Music Heritage Foundation have helped to strengthen the communication and working relationships between these groups. This serves as a model for the existing and potential collaborative work between black churches and the American private sector in other socially beneficial areas, such as economic development, education, and philanthropy. It would not be the first time that significant social change in the United States was inspired and sustained through the songs of black folk.

This article was written in fulfillment of the senior essay requirement for the master's of divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School. I wish to thank The Reverend Professor Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals, Professor Ingrid Monson, Quincy Jones Professor of Music, and Professor Wallace Best, Associate Professor of African American Religious Studies, all of Harvard University, for their enthusiastic support of this work. Thanks to my mother, Eleanor Weekes, who filled our home with the love of God and the love of song.

DISCOGRAPHY 

Crouch, Andrae, and the Disciples. My tribute (to God be the glory). Andrae Crouch and the Disciples. CGI Records 51416 1177 2.

--. Soon and very soon (We are going to see the King). Songs of Andrae Crouch and the Disciples. CGI Records 51416 1090 2.

--. Take me back. The best of Andrae. CGI Records 51416 1135 2.

--. Through it all. Andrae Crouch. Light Records 7-115-74060-7.

Edwin Hawkins Singers. Let us go into the house of the Lord. Pavillion Records BPS 10001.

Franklin, Kirk. Kirk Franklin and the family. Gospocentric GCD 2119 (1993).

--. God's property. From Kirk Franklin's nu nation. B-Rite Music TD-90093.

Hawkins, Tramaine. Fall down. Spirit of love. A&M Records SP-12146 (1985).

Winans, The. Introducing the Winans. Light LS-5792 (1981).

Winans, Bebe, and CeCe Winans. Bebe and Cece Winans. I.O.U. me. EMI Records 1108566 (1987).

--. Lost without you. Heaven. Capitol Records CDP 7 90959 2 (1988).

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(1.) Amiri Baraka, former known as Leroi Jones, was the first black author to theorize extensively about the relationship between black music's development and the historical trajectory of African-American social progress. See Jones (1963).

(2.) The Church of God in Christ was formed in 1907 by Bishop Charles H. Mason, one of the leaders of the interracial Azusa Street Revival movement, credited for the spread of Pentecostalism in the United States.

(3.) Religious historian Albert J. Raboteau (1978) further developed this idea in his work Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution in the Antebellum South.

(4.) For example, the Fisk Jubilee Singers had been performing spirituals in concert halls throughout the nation and the world since the 1890s.

(5.) See Pinn (1992) and Lincoln and Mamiya (1990, 382-404) for an examination of several theological, social, and political factors that have shaped and are shaping the contemporary black church, including the challenge of black theology, the decline of denominationalism, the rise of neo-Pentecostalism, high incarceration rates among black men, the rise of religious diversity within the black community, political passivity, and the rise of communal leadership structures.

(6.) For example, the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam were influential nationalistic movements during the 1960s and early 1970s.

(7.) The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided enforcement mechanisms by which the government could ensure that African Americans would be treated equal to whites in all spheres of American life; the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed literacy tests, poll taxes, and other Jim Crow barriers to black voting that were prevalent in the South.

(8.) Lincoln and Mamiya credit their formulation of "coping" and "crisis" sectors to Professor Martin Kilson, who gave a presentation of black clientage politics in the working group of Afro-American Religion and Politics at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute, Harvard University, October 29, 1988.

(9.) Also see Wilson (1987). The point is not that class was an entirely new phenomenon in American black life (see Frazier [1957]) but that in light of affirmative action and other modes of equal opportunity for blacks, class emerged as a point of social differentiation within black America with a significance and scope not before experienced in American history.

(10.) In essence, anomie is a state in which norms and expectations on behaviors are confused, unclear, or not present, causing deviant behavior among the groups involved.

(11.) Collins (2001, 7) defines new traditional gospel music as "Gospel music utilizing today's technology for its updated rhythms, but rooted in the vocal and lyrical execution of traditional gospel music." She defines urban contemporary gospel as "music incorporating street beats and urban influences; it may have a place in our spiritual lives, but not in the traditional church worship experience."

(12.) Buppies, an acronym for black urban professionals, is a colloquial term for the new black middle class that surfaced in the 1980s.

(13.) In his classic Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois ([1903] 1982, 45) likens the situation of being black in the United States to a state of perpetual duplicity: "One ever feels his two-ness-an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

(14.) Also see Harris's (1992, 207-208) discussion of this similar attraction to "the gospel blues" of Dorsey's day.

(15.) Based on biblical passages such as John 17:16-18.

(16.) Relying on studies of sociologist Robert E. Park's (1924) work on European out-migration across the globe, Powers (1998, 39) distinguishes between assimilation, "a process of interpretation and fusion in which persons and groups acquire the memories, sentiments and attitudes of other persons or groups, and by sharing their experience and history are incorporated with them in a common cultural ife," and accommodation, "the migrating group's forced adjustment to a new social situation." Also see Hullum (1973).

(17.) Mark 8:36; Luke 9:25.

(18.) For example, Benson's black-music division was Onyx; Word's black-music division was called Rejoice. Sparrow, Myrrh and Light Records, which became the number-one record company of contemporary gospel music during the 1980s, also started black-music divisions during this time.

(19.) What I call "the Dorsey-Hawkins-Franklin breakthroughs" represent a recurring cycle intrinsic to the identity, style, and development of gospel. It reveals a socio-historical pattern worth detailing:

(1) A young, church-based musician or choir director integrates contemporary "secular" musical sounds and sensibilities with the existing standard black sacred musical form.

(2) The leadership and other conservative elements of the black church resist and reject the innovation, usually highly critical of both the innovator and music itself.

(3) Sectors of the black church community that are more accepting of charismatic, celebratory worship styles and/or secular audiences welcome the new musical innovation.

(4) Considerable market demand for this new music propels its commercialization and popularity within mainstream, that is, "white" America.

(5) The conservative church leadership that once rejected the music becomes accepting of the innovation; later, the church wholly embraces it.

(6) The musical innovation is marketed to those expanded audiences via traditional and nontraditional venues and mechanisms.

(7) The innovation becomes a standard or accepted part of black church worship, liturgical practices, and/or culture.

(8) A generation or two later, the cycle is repeated.

(20.) Also see Hairston (1995, 1996) and Kentucky Fried Chicken advertisement (1987).

(21.) For example, Beauty and the Beast (Trousdale and Wise 1991), The Preacher's Wife (Marshall 1996), The Fighting Temptations (Lynn 2003), Kingdom Come (McHenry 2001), The Prince of Egypt (Chapman, Hincker, and Wells 1998), Legally Blonde (Luketic 1001), and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (Davis 2001) all used gospel music.

(22.) This relates closely to the historical development of other aspects of modern black sacred music. Migration of blacks from southern rural communities to northern urban centers from 1900 to the 1930s influenced the way that blacks sang hymns and spirituals; once they established themselves in the North, blacks again changed the way that they sang religiously from the 1930 through the 1960s. As gospel musicologist Bernice Johnson Reagon (1992, 4-5) put it: "New situations fostered new sounds."

(23.) There is much cross-fertilization between church musicians and secular musicians; often, they are one and the same. In this way, it is not always evident who is borrowing from whom.

(24.) The Potter's House in Dallas has established Dexterity Records (Bishop T. D. Jakes), World Changers Ministries has formed Arrow Records in Atlanta (Creflo Dollar), Christian Cultural Center in New York has launched CCC Music Group (Dr. A. R. Bernard), New Covenant Christian Center has started Axiom Records in Boston (Bishop Gilbert Thompson), and Greater St. Stephen's Full Gospel Baptist Church owns Delilah Records in New Orleans (Bishop Paul S. Morton). Also see Collins (2003).

(25.) In this case, the record companies, distributors, publishing houses, concert promoters, and so on, that service the gospel music industry are largely not owned or operated by blacks.

MELINDA E. WEEKES operated her own law practice in New York before entering Harvard Divinity School in 2001. She graduated with a master's of divinity degree in March 2005 and was later ordained a minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. As a gospel music theorist, she was retained at the W.E.B. DuBois Institute of Research at Harvard University's African and African American Studies Department to write the biographies of Edwin Hawkins and Tremain Hawkins for the African American National Biography, forthcoming from Oxford University Press.