Western Seminary

Abstract Few things frightened conservative white Protestant parents of the 1950s and the 1960s more than the thought of their children falling prey to the “menace to Christendom” known as rock and roll. The raucous sounds seemed tailor-made to destroy the faith of their young and, in the process, undermine the moral foundations of the United States. Parents and pastors launched a crusade against rock music, but they were fighting an uphill battle. Salvation came in a most unlikely form when a revival swept through counterculture hippie communities of the West Coast in the 1960s and 1970s. Known as the Jesus Movement, the revival was short-lived. But by combining the rock and folk music of the counterculture with religious ideas and aims of conservative white evangelicals, Jesus people and evangelical media moguls gave birth to an entire genre known as Contemporary Christian Music (CCM). By the 1980s and 1990s, CCM had grown into a massive, multimillion-dollar industry. Contemporary Christian artists were appearing on Top 40 radio, and some crossed over into the mainstream. And yet, today, the industry is a shadow of what it once was. In this book, Leah Payne traces the history and trajectory of CCM in America and, in the process, demonstrates how the industry, its artists, and its fans shaped—and continue to shape—conservative, (mostly) white, Protestant evangelicalism. Ultimately, the book argues, CCM spurred evangelical activism in more potent and lasting ways than any particular doctrine, denomination, culture war, or legislative agenda had before.

Abstract For half a century, readers of C. S. Lewis had only two problematic and at times obscure spiritual autobiographies (The Pilgrim’s RegressandSurprised by Joy) to use in attempts to understand Lewis’s journey to faith through what he called Joy, Sehnsucht, or longing. Both books, though important and full of key insights, in some ways hid more than they revealed. Recent discoveries, however, have widened the arc of autobiography. Lewis’s landmark pre-Christian account of his conversion to theism, ‘Early Prose Joy’, published in 2013, monumentally widened and deepened our understanding of Lewis’s spiritual journey to faith. And the fragmentary poem ‘I Will Write Down the Portion that I Understand’ also adds significant insight, at least into Lewis’s composition process of grappling with conversion. Insightful recent scholarship by Alister McGrath suggests widening the scope of what we consider spiritual autobiography in Lewis to includeA Grief Observed; this idea opens the door to a broader view of how autobiography functions both in Lewis’s compositional life and in the categorization of his writings. This essay accepts that invitation, finding clear autobiographical efforts to capture the role of Joy in Lewis’s early poetry, includingDymer, and in his late novelTill We Have Faces. That last book, written with soon-to-be-wife Joy Davidman, serves crucially to change the focus of Lewis’s spiritual autobiographies from Joy to love. By thus expanding and exploring Lewis’s autobiographical arc, this essay brings to light an almost teleological understanding of love and the central theme of Lewis’s life and work.

This empirical research explores adult identity formation through work experiences, gaining insight into structures and practices which allow women to thrive in leadership within the evangelical church ministry context. This qualitative research explores adult identity formation and gender role stereotypes in leadership domains within the evangelical church context on the West Coast. Twenty-five ( n = 25) women in vocational church leadership, aged 25–71, revealed what impedes or contributes to female leadership adult identity formation. Key findings revealed women leaders thrive and gain identity strength through agency found in union with Christ; hold back identity components and skills available to church leadership teams to fit the male work context; contextual factors impact women’s well-being in leadership including assumptions and mindsets adverse to women leading; and lead pastors and supervisors’ beliefs about women in leadership are critical to healthy identity formation. Therefore, this research is an exploration of what experiences assist women leaders to thrive or not thrive in evangelical vocational leadership on the West Coast and how their identity in Christ empowers their leadership.

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