CHARISMATIC-STYLE WORSHIP: GETTING HIGH ON MUSIC
March 2, 2003 (David Cloud, Fundamental Baptist Information Service, P.O.
Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061, 866-295-4143,
fbns@wayoflife.org)
On a research visit to the large charismatic City Harvest Church in
Singapore on February 8, I was reminded of the power of rock music. On
Saturdays, City Harvest has two services, one at 4:30 p.m. and one at 7:30.
I attended the 7:30 session. The music was pull-out-the-stops rock & roll
and was the loudest I have ever heard in a charismatic church or
conference, even though I have attended many of them. The music featured
TWO drummers, electric guitars, a keyboard, and a powerful brass section.
Several worship leaders, both male and female, swayed and pranced at the
front of the stage.
The several-thousand-seat auditorium was almost full and the people were
very, very exuberant. As best as I could tell from my vantage point, almost
every person joined in enthusiastically during the worship time, singing,
clapping, jumping, swaying to the potent music.
When I walked out of the auditorium and got away from the sound of the
music, I actually felt a little lightheaded from not being accustomed to
such loud music. It has been more than three decades since I last heard
music that loud in an enclosed environment, and that was at a rock concert
before I was saved. It was such a relief to get away from the relentless
pounding.
I am convinced that if you took away the rock music, churches like this
would lose their large crowds almost instantly. Rock music is a drug in
itself.
ROCK MUSIC IS HYPNOTIC
Timothy Leary, the ‘60s LSD guru, who was an expert both in drugs and in
rock music, testified: “Don’t listen to the words, it’s the music that has
its own message. ... I’ve been STONED ON THE MUSIC many times.”
Leary was right, of course, about the hypnotic, addictive, sensual power of
rock and roll. And notice that he IS NOT TALKING ABOUT THE WORDS, but of
the music itself, of the rhythm, the back beat, the syncopation.
Musician Andrew Salter observes, “Rock music is an IDEAL VEHICLE FOR
INDIVIDUAL OR MASS HYPNOSIS” (Salter, Pop Goes the Gospel, p. 20).
Likewise, John Fuller, in his powerful book Are the Kids All Right, warned:
“Rock music in particular has been demonstrated to be both powerful and
addictive, as well as CAPABLE OF PRODUCING A SUBTLE FORM OF HYPNOSIS in
which the subject, though not completely under trance, is still in a highly
suggestive state” (Fuller, Are the Kids All Right? 1981).
David Winter, in his book New Singer, New Song, observes: “An incessant
beat does erode a sense of responsibility IN MUCH THE SAME WAY AS ALCOHOL
DOES. ... You feel IN THE GRIP OF A RELENTLESS STREAM OF SOUND to which
something very basic and primitive in the human nature responds.”
Indeed, rock music is powerful and addictive and is capable of producing
forms of hypnosis, and who is to say that this is not precisely what is
happening in the charismatic and evangelical rock and roll praise sessions?
ROCK MUSIC BREAKS THROUGH TO SPIRIT REALMS
No less an expert on rock music than Jimi Hendrix agreed that it is
hypnotic and that it connects people with a spirit realm, when he said:
“Atmospheres are going to come through music, because the music is a
spiritual thing of its own ... YOU HYPNOTIZE PEOPLE to where they go right
back to their natural state [which, biblically speaking, is the fallen,
sinful state]... People want release any kind of way nowadays. The idea is
to release in the proper form. Then they’ll feel like GOING INTO ANOTHER
WORLD, a clearer world. The music flows from the air; that’s why I CONNECT
WITH A SPIRIT, and when they come down off THIS NATURAL HIGH, they see
clearer, feel different things...” (Jimmy Hendrix, rock star, Life, Oct. 3,
1969, p. 74).
Please note, too, that Hendrix was not talking about the words of rock
music, but the music itself. Much of Hendrix’s rock music did not have words.
The spirits with which Jimi Hendrix associated were demonic, as we know
from the Bible. And his frank testimony, speaking, as it does, from beyond
the grave, is a loud warning to “Christian rockers.” What confusion and
folly to think that we could take the same music that has allowed rockers
to break through to demonic realms, “to the other side,” as Jim Morris of
the Doors put it, and incorporate that very music into the service of a
completely different and holy realm of spiritual life!
ROCK MUSIC IS SEXUAL
Not only is rock music hypnotic, it is sensual, sexual. How can music that
has always been acclaimed by the world as sexual, all of the sudden be
spiritual? Consider just a few of the hundreds of quotes that could be
given. All of these are testimonies of secular rockers who have no agenda
except to honestly describe the nature of rock music as they see it:
“The main ingredients in rock are … sex and sass” (Debra Harry, Hit
Parader, Sept. 1979, p. 31).
“Rock is the total celebration of the physical” (Ted Nugent, rock star,
Rolling Stone, Aug. 25, 1977, pp. 11-13).
“That’s what rock is all about--sex with a 100 megaton bomb, the beat!”
(Gene Simmons of the rock group Kiss, interview, Entertainment Tonight,
ABC, Dec. 10, 1987).
“Rock 'n' roll is 99% sex” (John Oates of the rock duo Hall & Oates,
Circus, Jan. 31, 1976).
“Listen, rock 'n roll AIN’T CHURCH. It’s nasty business...” (Lita Ford of
heavy metal group The Runaways, Los Angeles Times, August 7, 1988).
“Rock music is sex. The big beat matches the body’s rhythms” (Frank Zappa
of the Mothers of Invention, Life, June 28, 1968).
“Rock ‘n’ roll is pagan and primitive, and very jungle, and that’s how it
should be! The moment it stops being those things, it’s dead … the true
meaning of rock … is sex, subversion and style” (Malcolm McLaren, punk rock
manager, Rock, August 1983, p. 60).
“When you’re in a certain frame of mind, particularly sexually-oriented,
there’s nothing better than rock and roll … because that’s where most of
the performers are at” (Aerosmith’s manager, USA Today, Dec. 22, 1983, p. D5).
“Rock music is sex and you have to hit them [teenagers] in the face with
it” (Andrew Oldham, manager of the Rolling Stones, Time, April 28, 1967, p.
54).
“The great strength of rock ‘n’ roll lies in its beat … it is a music which
is basically sexual, un-Puritan … and a threat to established patterns and
values” (Irwin Silber, Marxist, Sing Out, May 1965, p. 63).
“[Rock music] is the strongest drug in the world” (Steven Tyler of the
group Aerosmith, Rock Beat, Spring 1987, p. 23).
“Everyone takes it for granted that rock and roll is synonymous with sex”
(Chris Stein, rock manager, People, May 21, 1979).
“Pop music revolves around sexuality. I believe that if there is anarchy,
let’s make it sexual anarchy rather than political” (Adam Ant, From Rock to
Rock, p. 93).
“What made rockabilly [Elvis Presley, Bill Haley, etc.] such a drastically
new music was its spirit, a thing that bordered on mania. Elvis’s ‘Good
Rockin’ Tonight’ was not merely a party song, but an invitation to a
holocaust. … Rockabilly was the face of Dionysus, FULL OF FEBRILE SEXUALITY
and senselessness; it flushed the skin of new housewives and made pink
teenage boys reinvent themselves as flaming creatures” (Nick Tosches,
Country: The Twisted Roots of Rock ‘n’ Roll, p. 58).
“For white Memphis, the forbidden pleasures of Beale Street [where the bars
and whorehouses and gambling dens were located] had always come wrapped in
the pulsing rhythms of the blues. … Elvis’s [rock & roll] offered those
pleasures long familiar to Memphians to a new audience” (Larry Nager,
Memphis Beat, p. 154).
“Rock and roll aims for liberation and transcendence, EROTICIZING THE
SPIRITUAL AND SPIRITUALIZING THE EROTIC, because that is its ecumenical
birthright” (Robert Palmer, Rock & Roll an Unruly History, p. 72).
“Rock and roll is fun, it’s full of energy ... It’s naughty” (Tina Turner,
cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, p. 12).
“Rock and roll was something that’s hardcore, rough and wild and sweaty and
wet and just loose” (Patti Labelle, cited in Rock Facts, Rock & Roll Hall
of Fame and Museum, p. 17).
“Sex, violence, rebellion--it’s all part of rock ‘n’ roll” (John
Mellencamp, Larson’s Book of Rock, p. 170).
rufus
