Beaujon, Andrew - Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock

In attempting to take a close look at the Christian rock scene, author Andrew Beaujon knew from the start that he was taking on somewhat of a Herculean task. He writes in the opening chapter, “When I started researching this book, the reaction of most of my colleagues was, ‘Better you than me.’”

True, the mere concept of Christian music sends most people into convulsive fits as they picture the clean-cut pop star known as Carman looking into a camera lens and saying, with all seriousness, “Satan bite the dust.” Yet, over the past 10-15 years, the lines between the Christian music world and the “general market” (as it is known to most Christian artists) have become quite blurred as bands like P.O.D., Sixpence None The Richer, and Switchfoot have accomplished all manner of crossover success and an equal amount of artists who may not record for labels like Word and Tooth & Nail, but still have no problem proclaiming their faith (Sufjan Stevens and David Bazan among them). Although Beaujon does interview and write about the Christian artists who have paved the way for these folks, it is this nebulous grey area that fascinates him the most and what he spends the majority of his focus on during this book.

Like most modern rock journalists (he has been a contributor at SPIN Magazine and The Washington Post), Beaujon injects himself and his personality into the book, helping it to not read like an academic journal. Although his asides are sometimes distracting, it makes for more compelling reading having a non-Christian struggle with the sometimes hard-to-listen-to worship music that he encounters and trying to make sense of some of the lectures that he sits in on during Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Music.

It is that chapter about the festival that hits on some of the more prescient points that Beaujon tries to tackle: the push and pull between trying to bring outside influences into the Christian world (former Soul Junk leader Michael Kaufmann plays some avant-garde songs and snippets of Tuvan throat singing to some of the Calvin festival attendees asking, “Do you think Christians are ready for music like this?”) and those artists who are trying to actually be heard in the “general market.” Beaujon cites the fact that most of the cultural elite of Seattle (Sub Pop, The Seattle Weekly) probably aren’t even aware that Tooth & Nail Records operates just down the street from them, but also finds that many Christian artists who are finding success outside of that market are evasive when it comes to talking about their faith. There’s the interview with P.O.D. where Beaujon brings up the fact that, on an early independent release by the band, they had recorded an anti-abortion song (which drummer Wuv Bernardo likened to “gangsta cred”) or Switchfoot frontman Jonathan Foreman’s dubious claim about fighting to keep their music “out of boxes” (even though the interview took place at the Cornerstone Festival, an annual Christian music fest held every year in Illinois).

The Christian music world is also shown as being less than open-minded when it comes to an “outsider” wanting to write a book about it. When Beaujon tried to attend the Gospel Music Awards, he found his request for press credentials denied until Doug Van Pelt, editor of HM Magazine, heard about it. While he was there, Beaujon was asked to leave a number of panel discussions and had dozens of interview requests either denied or ignored in the process. A number of those luminaries in the Christian music world who did agree to interviews are scattered in their own sections throughout the book as Beaujon tries to delve into the world of record labels and artists who are, more often than not, outselling their “general market” contemporaries. It is in these sections that Beaujon shows how delicate the art of the interview can be, picking up on subtle turns of phrase from his interviewees and bringing out some surprising insight through them.

Beaujon also does a fine job keeping the entire book on an even keel. Although he does make his feelings known on the music that he heard throughout his research (he is a critic after all), he doesn’t proselytize or make judgment calls on people’s beliefs. Beaujon freely admits that he isn’t a Christian himself, but doesn’t allow that to cloud his feelings towards anyone in the book. Even in the chapter where he spends time at an anti-abortion rally in DC with members of Rock for Life, he lets his subjects do the saber-rattling and, for the most part, stays out of the fray. It is a testament to Beaujon’s skills as an observer and as a writer that he is able to traverse this minefield of a subject and end up as a friend to both sides.

The only thing missing from this book is that, other than a small encounter with a strange group of Christian Goths in attendance at the Cornerstone Festival, Beaujon doesn’t give any space for the fans of the bands and the genre as a whole to have their say about what the music means for them. As they are the ones pushing the sales of Christian rock records to record numbers and selling out festivals all over the U.S., it would have been interesting to get a little bit of dialogue from the fans to get a sense of what the music means to them.

Other than that relatively minor oversight, Beaujon does a fantastic job tackling an exhaustive subject and disseminating in a fashion that is strikingly even-handed and written with a deceptive casualness that just barely hides the depth of insight underneath.