Christianity, Contemporary Christian Music, and Political Ideology in the United States

Publication Date

Spring 3-22-2026

College

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences

Department

Sociology, Department of

Faculty Mentor

Dr. Ken Spring

Presentation Type

Article

Summary

Research indicates that music is a critical component of identity formation (MacDonald and Saarikallio 2022). Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) is a music genre that has become a popular commodity within modern American Christian spaces. As CCM becomes more prominent in culture, it produces an identity through curating its own forms of authenticity that reflect and reinforce what the industry believes to be American evangelical ideals (Lindenbaum 2012; Ingalls 2013; Mall 2018; Myrick 2018). However, this search for establishing authenticity within the genre does not stop CCM from borrowing different industry tactics from popular and mainstream music scenes in order to reach wider audiences and include itself within more mainstream culture (Horn and Shepherd 2012; Harju 2016; Kopanski 2020). In successfully utilizing these methods, CCM has found itself associated heavily with modern Christian identity (Harju 2016). Furthermore, within the United States, contemporary Christianity has become intertwined with the politically conservative identity (Whitehead et al. 2018; Smith et al. 2022). The goal of this research is to explore the correlations between modern conservatism within the United States, American Christianity, and Contemporary Christian Music. In Dr. Spring’s Social Research Methods class at Belmont University, we examined these relationships by evaluating previous research, surveying Belmont’s student population, analyzing secondary data, conducting content analysis, and interviewing a professional. The processes, analyses, associated findings, and proposed future research will be discussed in this presentation.

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS