School ended and summer came and went. My senior year began, and I knew it was going to be the best ever. We had a new principal who was not the Pastor, and I the first day of school I approached him with my latest idea – a student council. To my surprise he approved, probably to keep me and my radical ideas under constant supervision. Our first election ended with me as senior class president of our first student council. Still the geek I was trying to be a jock getting involved in varsity sports. Of course, at a small Christian school, everyone has to be involved or they don’t have enough payers for a team. My real love was writing and photography. Along with taking most of the pictures I was also editor of the Yearbook. My senior year started out very promising.
After my birthday in September, I turned sixteen. Old enough to have a full time job paying minimum wage I could earn money for gas and car insurance. My parents gave me a car so I could drive myself to school and I paid for my monthly tuition at my Christian School
One day, under her coat, a classmate smuggled a record by Larry Norman to school and began loaning this Christian hard rock contraband to others, including me. Today many consider Larry Norman to be the father of Christian Rock. At the time he was a liberal, long haired hippie Christian fake; at least to us fundamentalists. The album being passed around, Just Visiting This Planet, was released in 1974 and was much anticipated after the buzz created by his 1972 song, “Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?” Some of the lyrics of this song were particularly offensive to Christian fundamentalists and conservatives. He almost started a Christian jihad single handedly. As I listened to this record my ears and cheeks burned.
They say rock ’n’ roll is wrong, we’ll give you a chance
I say I feel so good I gotta get up and dance.
There’s nothing wrong with what I play.
’Cause Jesus is the rock and he rolled my blues away.
Overt references to dancing, racism, poverty and sexually transmitted diseases guaranteed that his music would be rejected by most conservative Christians. If one listened to his lyrics much of what he was saying was not bad, but spoke in the language of the day. He was highly relevant to the drug and hippie culture and mainstream conservative Christians hated him. But he didn’t candy coat the social ills of the day. Speaking a challenge to his generation he proclaimed, “Why don’t you look into Jesus, he got the answer?” He was Billy Graham meets Mick Jagger.
For conservative Christians he was more Mick Jagger than Billy Graham. He violated all of the outward boundary markers but he remained difficult to label. His music was definitely Rock, but his lyrics had a strong, if sometimes crude message true to the gospel. He voiced agreement with all the tenets of the faith, but mingled easily with non-Christians. His first band was not a Christian Band per se, and they opened for big names such as the Grateful Dead, The Doors and the Byrds. These were not exactly gospel quartets or Christian choirs. They were a blatant mix of secular and Christian. For fundamentalists he was secular simply because of his music and lack of good Christian fashion and grooming. For young people there was something about his lyrics and the integrity of his spiritual and personal life that was compelling. He made a significant impact on me, fifteen years before the Jesus People movement brought Contemporary Christian Music to mainstream churches and Christian America.
Although most of his music was filled with conventional spiritual messages, his hippie-length hair, ragged jeans and radical social themes insured that his records would be kept off the racks of most Bible Book stores for most of his forty year career. In 1969 Larry gave an interview where he articulated an approach that would eventually shake modern day Christianity.
“I wanted to push aside the traditional gospel quartet music, break down the church doors and let the hippies and the prostitutes and other unwashed rabble into the sanctuary. I wanted to talk about feeding the poor, going into the world.... I wanted the church to get active and go out and do what Jesus told us to do. I felt that while the hymns had great theology soaked into their lyrics, that most of the modern music was anemic and needed a transfusion."
Most of his music I didn’t care for, it was a style that didn’t appeal to me at the time. But his lyrics spoke directly to my heart. One particular song became the cry of my heart, my true desire to be defined as the kind of Christian Jesus commanded us to be – lovers. Even today I can still quote and sing it totally from memory.
You can be a righteous rocker
Or a holy roller
You can be most anything
You can be a child of the slum
Or a skid-row bum
You can be an earthly king
But without lu-uv you ain’t nothin, without luu-uuv
Said without lu-uv you ain’t nothin without love
You didn’t hear that, but I was singing pretty well just now.
Whether you liked his music or not, or whether you tolerated his hair and clothes or not, many of us knew he was changing things. Conservative Evangelicals and fundamentalists are familiar with Larry Norman because his song, I Wish We’d All Been Ready, a ballad about the pre-tribulation rapture, was highlighted in a 1972 movie entitled, A Thief in the Night. It was produced by MARK IV Pictures, the Christian film distribution company of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. This movie was the first mainstream popularization of the dispensational view of the rapture and the end of the world, a view held dear by most fundamentalists.
Because of this, you would think that this movie would be welcomed by fundamentalists. It was not. It was banned by many churches including my Christian school. Not because the doctrine was bad, but because the song was written by a long haired, liberal so-called Christian, and produced by the liberal Billy Graham ministry. Making matters worse the movie was shown in local theaters not exclusively in churches. It blurred the lines between secular and Christian.
While Just Visiting This Planet made the rounds at my Christian school, I was emboldened to introduce some sedate Bill Gaither Trio music to the lunchroom at school. Their album, Alleluia! A Praise Gathering for Believers was a radical departure from their gospel quartet heritage. Following Larry Norman’s lead they decided to embrace drums and music with a beat. These Pentecostals would introduce contemporary Christian music to my parent’s generation. Thinking it would be a good foray into modern Christian music I got out a record player and plopped my vinyl disc on the turntable. A strong drum beat filled the room.
Again I found myself in the principal’s office. They would not let the devil’s music corrupt the students at their school. Secretly I smiled as I was told I was suspended for three days this time. It was Ok with me. Taking the fall, I became a martyr for my cause while Christian rocker Larry Norman was making the rounds right under their fundamentalist noses.
