Renegotiating the Sacred-Secular Binary: IX Saves and Contemporary Christian Music

• Main Authors: CHANG, Paul Yunsik, Lim, Dale J.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2009
• Subjects: Contemporary Christian music; Contemporary Christian musicians; Christian rock music; Rock groups; Belief & doubt; Religious behaviors.; Music; Religion
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/1139
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The growth of the Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) industry has been phenomenal in the past few decades. CCM is a relatively fast growing "genre" in the music industry as a whole. Through an ethnographic account of one Contemporary Christian band, IX Saves, this study reveals the dynamics involved in the creative connection between faith-based messages and what were once thought of as secular musical genres. Contemporary Christian musicians' appropriation of musical genres found in the larger contemporary secular music scene is not without contestation and debate. The ethnographic data show the ways in which religious actors actively negotiate the nature of what constitutes secular versus sacred cultural products. In turn, the ability of religious actors to negotiate and redefine what is secular or sacred, highlights the looseness of the secular-sacred binary. This study has relevance for theoretical conceptualizations of the sacred-secular binary and offers one example of how religious groups engage, adapt, and subsequently survive in modern secular society.