Soul Dancing : ‘Raves’ Becoming Evangelical Good Times for Youths

First there was Christian rock music, then Christian heavy metal and lately Christian rap. Now comes a musical assault on one of the most deeply entrenched taboos in many Christian churches--dancing.

Evangelical churches have traditionally regarded dancing as just as sinful as drinking and fornication. Now, however, those fears show signs of giving ground to “sanctified dance music,” pioneered by a small Chatsworth company, N Soul Records.

Christian radio stations with a contemporary music format are playing N Soul’s rapid-beat music with religious messages and the company hopes to sell 17 new CD titles this year in large chain stores as well as Christian bookstores.

Clubs playing Christian dance music have sprung up nationwide, providing alcohol-free, smoke-free alternatives to secular nightclubs. Late-night Christian “raves”--with the same flashing lights, smoke and ear-pounding, pulsating music that are found in secular, drug-friendly “raves”--are being organized by religious groups as low-key evangelistic tools.

More than 1,300 teen-agers showed up at a Christian rave event in December at Azusa Pacific University, a conservative Christian school.

“We want kids, who are so influenced by music, to see that Christianity is not square,” said Scott Salamat of the sponsoring Calvary Chapel in Diamond Bar. The deejay at the free event was N Soul Records’ 35-year-old founder, Scott Blackwell.

In the mid-1980s, Blackwell was working in New York clubs and radio, plus doing studio mixing for singer Debbie Gibson and groups such as ZZ Top. “I started doing drugs, got totally into the nightclub, underground culture and cheated on my wife,” Blackwell said.

His wife left him, came to California and joined a Christian church in Chatsworth. When he reunited with her, he too dedicated his life to Jesus, wondering how he could stay in the music business within a Christian framework.

“I thought, no way I can do dance music,” he said. “That’s all about sex and libido; God can’t use that. But then I saw two hip-hop dancers in a Christian show who were as good as anyone I had seen, and there was nothing sexual about what they were doing.”

Blackwell began N Soul Records in August, 1993. Among the 13 records produced last year, Blackwell’s “Nitro Praise” was on a Billboard magazine list of hits for 26 weeks.

“Scott makes music that is very innovative and beats that are undeniable,” said Phil Kim, chief executive officer of Metro 1, a Christian record label in Newport Beach that includes dance music by one group, Prodigal Sons.

One upcoming N Soul album will feature the vocals of dancers Lakita Garth, a runner-up in the 1995 Miss Black America pageant, and Chris Shaver, a former Los Angeles Laker girl.

“We’ve danced professionally in Hollywood for five years, but we’ve turned down more jobs than we’ve taken,” said Garth, saying that their Christian views limit what they will wear or do in dance routines.

However, she defended dancing by Christians, pulling a small Bible out of her purse and pointing to Psalm 149:3--”Let them praise (the Lord’s) name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre.”

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But opposition to dancing is still so strong that Los Angeles Baptist High School and Village Christian High School in the San Fernando Valley hold no dances, even at graduation. Even some groups that embrace Christian rock and rap music as a way to reach inner-city youths still blanch at permitting dancing.

“I suspect our policy against sponsoring school dances is set in stone,” said Gary Smidderks, principal of Los Angeles Baptist High School in North Hills.

Nevertheless, some Christians are questioning dancing bans as illogical.

Mike T. Smith, publisher of 23:4, a North Hollywood-based rap/dance magazine for young Christians, drew a protest from a Pentecostal urban ministry because of a recent article on Christian dance music. His reply: “Don’t people jump up and down at a (Christian) rap concert? Well, that’s dancing.”

When churches sponsor dances, the winning argument is usually that they make evangelistic sense.

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For four years an Assemblies of God Church in Salem, Ore., has drawn 150 to 300 youths a month at Club Rev (for Revelation) on church property. “A Christian band comes in and we invite kids off the street,” said Lisa Burch, a member of the church who studies at Azusa Pacific University.

In San Jose, Club J, a 1-year-old Christian dance club backed by the 6,500-member Jubilee Christian Center occupies half of an electronics warehouse and has live bands on Saturday nights.

“The whole purpose of Club J is to have a smoke-free, alcohol-free, well-chaperoned event for anyone who wants to come,” said singles pastor Adam Bernal.

Bouncers at Club J wear striped referee shirts. “If dancers get too bump-and-grindish, then the bouncer blows a whistle or throws a flag for a violation,” Bernal said.

But teen-agers rarely do sexually suggestive dances when the songs have Christian lyrics, said Ken Farley, program director for Christian radio station KOKF in Oklahoma City, which hosts regular Christian dance nights at two local clubs.

“It’s kind of hard to be gyrating all over the place and listening to a lyric that says, ‘I don’t want your sex for now,”’ Farley said.

Rocketown, featuring Christian hip-hop and rave-type music, was launched last year in a Nashville suburb by popular Christian singer Michael W. Smith. A 10,000-watt sound system, a 30-foot video wall and about 20 video monitors circle the 3,300-square-foot floor. Still a problem for advocates of Christian dance is the word dancing-- usually omitted from Christian club names or events because of the red flags it raises.

The Methodist Church, a socially liberal denomination today, distributed warnings against “card playing and dancing” in the 1950s, at least in Indiana, recalled anthropologist Melinda Bollar Wagner of Radford University in Virginia.

Methodist youth groups do hold dances today, said Dan Gangler, an editor at United Methodist Reporter. But, he added, “when dance was part of a service in Nebraska churches, we called it ‘interpretive movement’ to be sensitive to the feelings of the older members.”