The Spirit Moves Them : Christian ‘Raves’ Gain Followers Among the Faithful as Churches Back Off Dance Taboo

First there was Christian rock music, then Christian heavy metal, and lately Christian rap. All won gradual acceptance from church groups if the lyrics were God-oriented and performed by born-again artists.

Now comes a musical assault on one of the most deeply entrenched taboos in many Christian churches--dancing.

In the Bible Belt and beyond, evangelical churches have traditionally regarded dancing as just as sinful as drinking and fornication.

Or worse, to judge by an old joke with many versions: A deacon spots the pastor and the choir director making passionate love standing up in the choir loft.

“Please don’t misunderstand,” the embarrassed woman protests. “We’re not dancing .”

The 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 time. Even some groups that embrace Christian rock and rap music as a way to reach inner-city youth still blanch at permitting dancing.

Now, however, the taboo shows 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 sound with religious messages, and the company hopes to sell 17 new CD titles this year in large chain stores as well as in Christian bookstores.

Clubs playing Christian dance music have sprung up from San Jose to Nashville to Oklahoma City, providing alcohol-free, smoke-free alternatives to secular nightclubs.

Late-night Christian “raves” with the same flashing lights, smoke and ear-pounding, pulsating music found in secular, drug-friendly raves are being organized by religious groups as 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 DJ at the free event was N Soul Records’ founder Scott Blackwell, 35.

A top New York dance club DJ “until God began shaking my cage,” Blackwell today is praised in evangelical circles for providing accomplished religious versions of the electronic music dubbed techno, house, rave, acid jazz and the like.

“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 the group Prodigal Sons.

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

“I was making $1,200 a night or more spinning records, but the sex wasn’t fun anymore, the drugs weren’t doing it, and I was absolutely miserable.”

His wife left him, came to California and joined a Christian church in Chatsworth. When they reunited, 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. Of the 13 records produced last year, Blackwell’s “Nitro Praise” spent 26 weeks on Billboard magazine’s Top 50 list, and the World Wide Message Tribe’s “Dance Planet” was No. 1 on the contemporary Christian music charts for three weeks last fall.

“We’ve sold between 7,000 and 20,000 copies of everything we’ve put out,” Blackwell said.

One upcoming N Soul record 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, adding 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.”

In the Old Testament, David danced before the Lord, and in the New Testament the joyful father in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son gave a party with dancing.

The favorable reference by Jesus notwithstanding, conservative Christian churches have advised against dancing because of its association with smoking, alcohol abuse, drugs and sexual misconduct.

Even at conservative Christian schools, where a controlled environment would be possible, dancing is still forbidden. “I suspect our policy against sponsoring school dances is set in stone,” said Gary Smidderks, principal of Los Angeles Baptist High in North Hills.

At Sun Valley’s Village Christian Schools, spokesman Dave Wilson said, “We have about 100 kids from Grace Community Church, and their parents would object if we had dances here.”

A spokesman for Grace Community Church said that leaders of the Sun Valley congregation believe that contemporary dancing is a serious problem for Christians. “The fleshly motives and pleasures that so often accompany dancing mean that it is all too likely to involve immoral sexual responses in at least some of the participants.”

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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.”

Blackwell said that contemporary dancing is not much different from any other social activity. “As born-again Christians, the Holy Spirit lets us know where the line is. . . . You can dance in a way that is fun, energy-releasing and a chance to fellowship with your friends, and it’s unquestionably an expression of joy throughout the Bible.”

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

For the past four years, an Assemblies of God church in Salem, Ore., has drawn 150 to 300 youths monthly 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 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, observed 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,’ ” said Farley.

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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.

Efforts to stage one-time Christian raves depend on support from church youth groups. For example, in Denver, a Christian rave scheduled for March 17 is being organized by a small group called Higher Frequency Productions.

“I have yet to run into a youth minister who understood what a rave was,” said organizer Hillary Holland, 17, of Golden, Colo.

Still a problem for advocates of Christian dance, however, is the very 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 written warnings against “card-playing and dancing” in the 1950s, at least in Indiana, recalled anthropologist Melinda Bollar Wagner of Radford (Va.) University.

Methodist youth groups do hold dances today, said Dan Gangler, an editor at the 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.”