Ok, I know this one requires a little explanation, because, yes, this is a lot of Christian rock. Don’t worry, this isn’t just a mix of Christian rock songs, it’s more of a collage of my spiritual fall and rise, the soundtrack to the story.

This story starts in 1995, and ends at Alopecia, as this was the period in which I identified as a born-again Christian. It’s an interesting time for me to think back on, because while I thought at the time that I wanted to believe in Jesus and the Bible, with middle-age comes perspective, and it’s become clearer now that all I really wanted was to express my individuality whilst not feeling like a total dork outcast. I wanted friends. I wanted girlfriends. I had neither. But all of this music helped me believe that there was a group of people out there who would accept me. The first song on this mix, “Jesus Freak,” was the song that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up when I was 11 years old, in "my new church friend” Phil Kuypers’ bedroom, when he put the song on and that loud, distorted guitar riff direct-signaled my youthful need for rock and roll. Rock and roll, making a friend, finding acceptance. It was all there, in that moment. Shortly thereafter, DC Talk’s 1995 album became the first CD I ever bought. I followed it up with Jars of Clay, and then Newsboys.

It was early 1996 when Newsboys’ “Take Me to Your Leader” came out, and my Christian parents strongly encouraged my new listening habits. This music was safe and good and Christian. Except my parents were wrong. It was anything but safe and good. Listening to it now in 2018, I’m pretty appalled by its willful myopia. The misanthropy is blatant, even boasting, but to an 11-year-old kid in need of rebellion, its dissension came off as nonconformity (an adolescent virtue, to be sure). Christian rock can thrive in this paradox. It’s hard to tell when you’re an impressionable preteen, but all of this music is fundamentally divisive and aesthetically soulless. It’s music for people who’ve already picked sides, and just want to say “amen” to an agreeable guitar riff.

1997 was the year Switchfoot’s first album came out, and “Chem 6A” was its cheeky anthem of anti-intellectualism. Switchfoot wasn’t overtly evangelical, but was still shrewdly marketed to young, impressionable kids from a repressive/religious upbringing. The music said nothing and was philosophically bankrupt, so toothlessly open-ended that it could mean anything you wanted it to mean. But it sounded a little bit different, and the right hemisphere of my brain that was increasingly craving creative challenges was excited by this.

Once I opened my mind to different musical styles, I heartily embraced ska. And punk. Supertones and MxPx were the big dogs on Tooth & Nail Records, a label that also released music by Pedro the Lion, Underoath, Danielson, Mewithoutyou, and P.O.D.. Tooth & Nail was weirdly subversive in all the wrong ways. It exploited counter-cultural underground music and, whether it was accidental or intentional, served as a powerful force for conservative propaganda. It assured youth group kids that they could think about girls too, and even sing songs about them, so long as they settled down with that girl and married her before having sex. For all the songs about desire and emotions, none of them were ever about the actual complications and realities of sexual relations.

By 2000, emo was on Tooth & Nail’s radar, and The Juliana Theory was the label’s proto-Taking Back Sunday. I was a sophomore in high school when Emotion Is Dead came out, and while I was still a shy Christian, I had been listening to secular music for a few years thanks to Q101 and those BMG 12-CDs-for-a-penny ads. This was that bizarre era of Christians bands claiming to be a “band of Christians” rather than a “Christian band” for the sake of their image in the mainstream MTV market. Of course, it never made a difference; if you were in the fold, you were in the fold. But there was undoubtedly a blurring of the lines around this time. Like, how can an instrumental post-rock band be a Christian band when there aren’t even any lyrics? Well, Sleeping at Last didn’t sell their CDs at Family Christian Bookstores, but they played concerts at churches. They played the Cornerstone Festival. They were Christians, but they didn’t want to be divisive. They didn’t want it to be us or them. Anyone, with any belief, could listen to this music—this was the hope. This is what Christian bands wanted around this time. They wanted inclusiveness. Inclusiveness meant not alienating anyone who might be a potential buyer of a Christian band's records and concert tickets, you see.

Then Sufjan Stevens brought something else entirely. He brought the end of Christian music. I sometimes wonder how many once-Christian kids heard this guy and, eyes wide, finally realized that they didn’t have to force their way to acceptance. To finally not have to worry about tangling spiritual beliefs up with social life, let alone making it the determining factor, what a relief Sufjan was. I don’t know if Sufjan is a Christian, I’m actually very curious to hear the stories of ALL of the artists in this mix and how they feel about Christianity now, but I do know that I’m not a Christian anymore. I knew it by the end of Why?’s Alopecia, an album that went out to the “backslidden pastors’ kids” of the world, full of Biblical allusions that Yoni certainly knew would be relished by the very kids who were desperate for a way out. This was the album that said, you can go. You are free. We all live, we all die, there is no division in this. It’s about accepting your own self first, which is something that Christianity can never be about. It can take a long time to realize this. It took me well over a decade. But RDC007 is my 20-minute testimony. (Sorry if you wanted more good music this month though.)

Johnny Cash reading the Bible is so loaded that I will withhold comment on my reasons for its inclusion. But I’m sure you get the point. I mean, it’s Johnny Cash reading Revelations. Yes, ok, good, amen.