"ERACE-ing" the Color Line: Racial Reconciliation in the Christian Music Industry

Abstract

In this article I look at the contemporary Christian music industry and the issue of race. Racial reconciliation and inclusiveness have been part of an ongoing discourse and larger movement gaining momentum among Evangelicals since the early 1990s, and it provides important context and point of departure. The methodological approach is qualitative, based primarily on fieldwork in the form of participant observation in the setting of annual industry conventions, interaction and conversations with a number of industry workers, and review and analysis of a variety of documentary data sources. The main argument is that in the context of the heightened recent mainstream attention given Christian cultural products, certain members of the industry are using a form of what Smith (1998) termed "engaged orthodoxy" to spread the gospel and to further the aims of the racial reconciliation movement through their work. This is being done at a number of industry levels, and in this article I discuss some aspects of this activity. I also consider are some of the conflicts and tensions engendered in cultural workers' attempts to combine faith and commerce in the service of effecting social change.