A Brief Rationale for the AMOS Project

A Brief Rationale for the AMOS Project

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Can you recognize the difference between "horizontal" and "vertical" orientation in songs? Test yourself.

CCM's Limited Topicality

Not surprisingly, today's popular Christian recorded-music industry is dominated by two sorts of focus: upon worship of God and upon the worshipper--basically upon the vertical relationship of the human being and God. Both foci are, of course, admirable in themselves, for God is worthy of praise and we must be careful to nurture our individual relationships with Him. Together, however, the huge commercial success of "worship and praise" albums and the parallel profusion of songs about the singer/persona's own state of spiritual being have created a finicky audience that expects to be fed mostly those two sorts of fare--as if they were the only sorts of legitimate musical food a Christian might have.

Furthermore, throwing away the hymnals in many of our churches has accomplished more than getting rid of some out-of-fashion melodies and language; it has gotten rid of many scriptural topics as well. One of the losses, which can be seen in an investigation of "hit" CCM albums over the years, has been suitable, scriptural attention to "horizontal" relationships. Ask yourself: can I name a Top Ten Christian album with 75% (or even 50%) of its songs primarily about human-with-human interaction without an overt "spiritualizing" of that interaction? Further, ask yourself: do we ever sing such songs corporately? Should we do so? How often? If you are part of an evangelical Protestant fellowship, can you even imagine a team of singers leading your church's congregation from time to time in a scripturally resonant musical statement about social injustice? How many of the songs in your church's hymnal (if there still is one) address social concerns as distinct from evangelism--that is, without simply assuming that telling the gospel is essentially the same as doing it?

The Need for a Christian Sociological Critique
of CCM

In our atmosphere of high self-involvement and easy formulas for handling social problems, then, it is past time for an examination of how well the so-called Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) revolution has handled the social-concern imperatives of Scripture. Many critical venues concerning CCM, electronic or otherwise, tend to pay more attention to the musical settings than to the lyrics--i.e., the poetry--of albums being reviewed; and when lyrics are discussed, there is generally little concern over the relative lack of expressed social awareness--and even less over the literary qualities of the lyrics. Fan-oriented sources tend toward extravagant praise of almost whatever the beloved artist produces; somewhat more critical ones still tend to make their own "hipness" to the CCM scene one of the loud undertones of the discussion and apparently operate from no consistent or well-defined theoretical position. Inundated with new recordings and industry hype, many listeners need to become more critically discriminating about their music-choices on the basis of as many biblical and aesthetically constructive principles as they can absorb.

The Need for a Christian Literary Critique of CCM

Quality in Christian contemporary music involving words is much more than a matter of a performer's vocal or instrumental skill, appealing face and youthfulness, reputation, and comfortable use of theological, linguistic, and musical clichés. Too many CCM consumers purchase CDs and tapes on the basis of just such criteria, thus perpetuating a kind of fashion industry in which the contemporary "look" or "sound" is more important than the verbal substance. Many albums now available in Christian music stores can make an observer wonder if the marketing isn't louder and more important than the message--if the packaging isn't more important than the material packaged. In some cases, the literary quality of the material is in fact so poor that almost any packaging would outshine the message. The AMOS Project is dedicated partly to raising our Christian subculture's awareness of CCM's literary qualities, primarily by eliciting critical praise for good writing. Besides basic linguistic competence (and metrical competence, if the work aspires to metrical control), such writing is likely to involve

          1. topical surprise,
          2. fresh point of view (by means of unusual
               personae and other characters),
          3. strong sensory appeal,
          4. unusual language (including competent use of
               fresh figures of speech),
          5. awareness of the world's complexity
               (resistance to oversimplification),
          6. ironic vision,
          7. appeal to both rational and emotional
               human faculties, and
          8. strikingly compact expression.

It is past time to investigate and address the literary values of CCM as it has been and is being written. For the sake of Christian witness and Christian edification, we must raise our literary expectations of our songwriters, as well--even while letting rock be rock, rap be rap, reggae be reggae, country be country, gospel be gospel, and so forth.

Primary Objectives of the AMOS Project

This website will supply both theoretical and practical help to those who wish to improve their analytic and evaluative skills within the CCM domain; it will provide historical information on certain topical features of popular Christian music during the last several decades; it will challenge today's Christian performers and producers of music to expend more creative effort in teaching and promoting the "Second Great Commandment" of Scripture (see Matthew 22:35-40 and Mark 12:28-34); and it will encourage listeners to develop a taste for such music and for carrying out its godly recommendations. Well-written contributions of several sorts are welcome.