Thoughts on F&T's "A PR disaster for the Christian music industry"

"A PR disaster for the Christian music industry" over at Faith & Theology.

So it begs the question: does it matter that the band plays along as Christians? In the comments, "Jim" says, "Christian rock is to music what hemorrhoids are to relaxation." I have to agree. I imagine that fans listen because of the message, not the music. So yes, it seems to violate some sort of expectation/assumption, but as Steven Segal says, "Assumption is the mother of all fuckups"...or was it the villain. Irrelevant.

"Tim" comments: "Or maybe, pop music is like the eucharist - ex opere operato? It works regardless of the state of the soul of the person 'performing' the rite...." Simple Donatism but in pop music form. I'm reminded of the time when I was a young lad and my sister remarked that she didn't like Plato because he was a misogynist. I didn't understand the objection because it seemed like she liked other things Plato had to say (i don't know why!), but discounted it out of hand because he didn't care for the girlies. She did the same thing with Nietzsche.

It seems like there are at least two categories of lying: outright fibbing and the lie of omission. Seen from the P.O.V. of strategy or game theory, there are good reasons why explicit lying is undesirable, but lies of omission often do less (or no) harm. In the case of the non-Christian "Christian" rock bands, it seems to come down to semantics: is the "Christian" in "Christian Rock" the predicate of the "Rock" or the "Christians"? If "Rock," then no big deal...if "Christians" then I suppose it's deceitful. But if that's not the case, then why the "Rock"? Unless it's some form of group worship mediated by distance and sound. I find the latter case more convincing as no one listens to Christian Rock for the Rock...but then why not Christian Folk and so on?

The whole thing also presupposes such a thing as authenticity. Who believes in such fairytales these days?