December 1, 2001 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061-0368, 866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org) - The Gospel Music Association (GMA) includes every sort of Southern gospel and Contemporary Christian Music today, including the hardest rock and the worldliest musicians. Its great worldliness was evident on November 27, when the late Elvis Presley was inducted into the GMA's Hall of Fame. Presley was inducted by members of three Southern Gospel quartets -- The Jordanaires, The Stamps, and The Imperials.

Though Elvis Presley loved Southern gospel music, he is best known as the "King of Rock & Roll"; and his immoral life, sensual music, and self-centered philosophy literally changed the world. Alice Cooper said, "There will never be anybody cooler than Elvis Presley" ("100 Greatest Artists of Rock & Roll." VH1). Presley produced 94 gold singles, 43 gold albums; and his movies grossed over $180 million. Further millions were made through the sale of merchandise. In 1956 alone, he earned over $50 million. He is the object of one of "the biggest personality cults in modern history." An estimated one million people visited his gravesite at Forest Hill cemetery during the first few weeks after he died, before it was moved to the grounds of Graceland. More than twenty years after his death, 700,000 each year still stream through his Graceland mansion in Memphis, Tennessee; and the annual vigil held to commemorate his death is attended by thousands of dedicated fans, many of whom weep openly during the occasion. Elvis Presley Enterprises takes in more than $100 million per year. When the U.S. Post Office issued a stamp of Elvis Presley and sold Elvis paraphernalia in 1994, sales exceeded $50 million. There are 500 Elvis fan clubs still active around the world.

More than any other one rock artist or group, Elvis symbolizes the rock & roll era. Countless other rock stars, including the Beatles, trace their inspiration to Elvis. The King of Rock & Roll changed an entire generation. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Halberstam observed: "In cultural terms, [Elvis's] coming was nothing less than the start of a revolution" (Halberstam, The Fifties). When Elvis appeared on the Milton Berle Show in April 1956, he was watched by more than 40 million viewers, one out of every four Americans. Soon, Life magazine published photos of teenage boys lined up at barbershops for ducktail haircuts so they could look like their rock King. Elvis' biographer Peter Harry Brown correctly noted that to the girls of that day, "Elvis Presley didn't just represent a new type of music; HE REPRESENTED SEXUAL LIBERATION" (Down at the End of Lonely Street, p. 55). Elvis Presley stood for everything rock & roll stands for: sexual license; rebellion against authority; self-fulfillment; if it feels good, do it, and don't worry about tomorrow; and moral debauchery glossed over with a thin veneer of shallow, humanistic spirituality. The rock & roll philosophy created Elvis Presley, and it killed Elvis Presley.

For Southern gospel and Contemporary Christian Music people to honor Elvis Presley in such a manner is evidence of the great worldliness that permeates commercial Christian music today. This was described long ago in New Testament prophecy:

" lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away" (2 Tim. 3:4,5).

"Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God" (James 4:4).

Also newly inducted into the Gospel Hall of Fame were pioneer Christian rockers Keith Green and Larry Norman.

Keith Green, founder of Last Days Ministries, was killed in a plane crash in 1982, but his music is still popular. He was Pentecostal in theology and had been discipled by Kenn Gulliksen, founder of a Vineyard Christian Fellowship associated with the late John Wimber. Green defended rock music in book titled Can God Use Rock Music, published just a few months before he died. He denounced those who warn against rock music. Note the following excerpt from this book:

"I believe that music, in itself, is a neutral force. Let me give you a better example. Take a knife for instance. With it, you can cut bread, carve a roast, loose someone who's been bound by ropes, or you can do harm and even kill somebody" (Keith Green, Can God Use Rock Music?).

To compare music to a knife is nonsense. A knife is indeed a neutral force until it is used in a certain manner. A musical composition, though, is not neutral because it presents a specific message by the particular arrangement of rhythm, melody, harmony, etc. The knife would better be compared to musical notes and components. These are neutral as long as they are not arranged into a musical composition. A b flat note is neutral; but when a b flat is put together with other notes in a composition, it is no longer neutral but speaks with a certain voice and message.

Keith Green's widow, Melody Green, subsequently remarried, to Andrew Sievright, and recently divorced him.

The long-haired Larry Norman, who could not attend the induction because of a recent heart surgery, is considered the father of Christian rock music. His 1975 hit "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music," one of the theme songs of the CCM scene, promotes the strange philosophy that rock music is something good that Christians need, and that traditional Christian songs, hymns, and spiritual songs are boring "funeral marches." The song oozes with adolescent rebellion, which certainly has no place in the Christian life.

"I want the people to know/ that he saved my soul/ But I still like to listen to the radio/ THEY SAY ROCK 'N' ROLL IS WRONG/ we'll give you one more chance/ I say I feel so good/ I gotta get up and dance.

"I know what's right/ I know what's wrong/ I don't confuse it/ All I'm really trying to say/ Is why should the Devil have all the good music?/ I feel good every day/ 'Cause Jesus is the rock/ and he rolled my blues away.

"THEY SAY TO CUT MY HAIR/ THEY'RE DRIVING ME INSANE/ I grew it out long/ to make room for my brain/ But sometimes people don't understand/ What's a good boy doing in a rock 'n' roll band?

"There's nothing wrong with playing blues licks/ But IF YOU GOT A REASON/ TELL ME TO MY FACE / Why should the Devil have all the good music/ There's nothing wrong with what I play/ 'Cause Jesus is the rock/ and he rolled my blues away.

"I ain't knocking the hymns/ JUST GIVE ME A SONG THAT HAS A BEAT/ I ain't knocking the hymns/ Just give me a song that moves my feet/ I DON'T LIKE NONE OF THOSE FUNERAL MARCHES/ I ain't dead yet!

"Jesus told the truth/ Jesus showed the way/ There's one more thing/ I'd like to say/ They nailed him to the cross/ they laid him in the ground/ But they shoulda known/ you can't keep a good man down.

"I feel good every day/ I don't wanna lose it/ All I wanna/ all I wanna know/ Is why should the Devil have all the good music/ I've been filled/ I feel okay/ Jesus is the rock/ and he rolled my blues/Jesus is the rock/ and he rolled my blues/ Jesus is the rock/ and he rolled my blues away" (Larry Norman, "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?").

The philosophy behind this song is the philosophy behind the CCM and contemporary Southern gospel scene as a whole. It is this: worldly, sensual music is good and pleasant, and no matter what anyone says and no matter who we offend, we are going to rock and roll. We will dress as we please; we will live as we please. No one is going to judge us. When Larry Norman was in his early teens, his Christian father forbade him to listen to the radio because he was concerned about the influence of rock music on Larry's life. Larry's rebellious attitude toward this fatherly discipline is evident in his music. No one is going to tell him how to wear his hair or what kind of music he can listen to. I remember having precisely the same attitude. When I got out of the Army, I determined that I would never cut my hair again, and I grew it out like a woman's. That was BEFORE I was saved, though!

Larry Norman's first album, Upon This Rock, was banned by most Christian bookstores back in the 1960s, but the relentless advance of CCM and the rapid spread of apostasy has broken down all of the walls between sacred and secular music in most Christian bookstores today.

Norman was inducted into the Gospel Hall of Fame by the members of the popular rock band dc Talk. They said Norman was "a true Jesus freak."

Among the more than 1,000 "Christian entertainers" in attendance at the GMA Hall of Fame induction were a wide variety of Southern gospel and CCM musicians, including Vestal Goodman, Bill Gaither, the Rambos, the Sunliters, Randy Stonehill, Rebecca St. James, Phil Keaggy, and dc Talk. The event was held at The People's Church near Nashville, Tennessee. The Oak Ridge Boys hosted the ceremony.

Those who have the impression that Southern gospel is separate from Contemporary Christian Music and Christian rock, should understand that all of the popular commercial Southern gospel groups are yoked together with CCM and Christian rock in the Gospel Music Association. In fact, it was some of the more famous Southern gospel performers who helped establish the Gospel Music Association (GMA) in 1964. The formation took place at the National Quartet Convention that year. Members of the original GMA Board of Directors included Urias and Meurice LeFevre of the famous LeFevre singing family, James Blackwood of the Blackwood Brothers, Hovie Lister and James Wetherington of the Statesmen, and J.D. Sumner of the Stamps. Don Butler, director of archives for the GMA, was the Statesmen's manager during the 1950s.

In was the GMA, in turn, which in 1969 began handing out the Dove Awards for outstanding achievement in the Christian music industry. The vice president of the GMA that year was the famous Southern gospel pianist Hovie Lister. The Dove Awards have honored Contemporary Christian Music artists of every stripe, including very hard rock groups such as Bride, the Newsboys, Petra, and dc Talk. Catholic singer Kathy Troccoli has been nominated as the Gospel Music Association's female vocalist of the year five times. The GMA has even extended its Dove Award to Amy Grant's Behind the Eyes album, which is not Christian in any sense.

Thus we see that the well-known Southern gospel groups are yoked together with and are supportive of the rock-oriented, ecumenical-charismatic CCM crowd. For the most part there is no separation from and no reproof of the error of CCM by the commercially-successful Southern gospel people. They are peas in one unscriptural pod.

If our Christian music sounds like the world and creates bridges to the world, it is obviously unscriptural and contrary to the will of a holy God.