POP MUSIC : On the Wings of a Dove : This Christian is some lion, with several gold albums and three Grammys to his credit. So you’ve never heard of Steven Curtis Chapman? The earnest young singer will be the last one to complain.

When Steven Curtis Chapman first started rising through the ranks of the contemporary Christian music scene about seven years ago, there was a minor identity problem to overcome.

“There definitely have been people asking me what it’s like being married to Amy Grant,” he says with a laugh, referring to occasional confusion with Grant’s husband, Gary Chapman, an established recording artist in his own right. “My wife hasn’t appreciated that too much.”

Such mistakes are exceedingly rare nowadays, though, at least in the gospel music world, where this Chapman has emerged as the apparent king to Grant’s queen. (The two hold court together June 22 at the Hollywood Bowl.)

Within the expanding Christian music subculture, the Tennessee-based tenor, 32, has blossomed as a bona fide star--with several gold albums, tours that sell out major houses and three Grammys to his credit. At April’s annual Dove Awards telecast (gospel’s equivalent to the Grammys), Chapman picked up seven awards this year alone to add to his previous 20. Amy and/or her spouse should do so well.

In the mainstream, though, it tends to be Steven-Curtis-who?

Despite a high-profile hookup between his longtime Christian label, Sparrow, and Liberty Records, the home of Garth Brooks, most of Chapman’s recordings are still sold in Christian bookstores that only this spring began installing SoundScan equipment, meaning his impressive sales haven’t yet registered proportionately on the pop album charts.

And media attention hasn’t necessarily been commensurate with actual popularity either. It may be a bias of the secular press against Christian music, as gospel enthusiasts like to allege. Or it could be that--set against the realm of rock ‘n’ roll iconoclasts who wear their neuroses, if not sins, on their sleeves--it’s hard for mainstream journalists to keep straight all the straight arrows of Christian pop. There’s also a critical perception of the genre as bland and mediocre.

On this side of the crossover fence, then, it sometimes seems Chapman can’t get no respect. But he refuses to pull a Rodney Dangerfield about any lack of media lionization; rather, true to faithful form, he focuses on the strides that he and his contemporaries have been making in breaking through the wall between church and stature.

“Compared to what I ever imagined I would be doing, selling gold records and being able to go to the Universal Amphitheatre and pack it out is an amazing thing,” he says. “And those are the things that sometimes make you think, ‘Boy, it would be nice if it was recognized that this is having an impact, and there’s a real strong segment of people that are listening to this music, so let’s react to it.’

“It’d be great if some of my songs could get played on pop radio and I could get on the Jay Leno show. . . . But there’s a lot of great stuff happening right now with regards to that. I think there’s just too much good to be encouraged by to come off as the whiny, complaining Christians over there going, ‘Why don’t you give us as much attention?’ We’ve got a whole lot to be thankful for, so I’m not gonna complain.”

So, he didn’t take the bait. And Chapman doesn’t spend any more time whining on record than in person.

In his home city of Nashville, he’s currently working on a Christmas album with producer Brown Bannister. But he’s still riding and touring high on “Heaven in the Real World,” released last summer, an album of songs about--as the title would indicate--the intersection between the spiritual and material worlds.

Chapman is careful to introduce some suggestion of negative experience or emotion into nearly every song therein--be it a mention of low self-esteem, a homeless man glimpsed on the corner, domestic disputes, prison inmates, the hubbub of daily life--but, in each case, this irritant quickly comes to act as a springboard for an upbeat, thoroughly inspirational chorus.

Like rocks over scissors, in a contest, heaven beats the real world hands down every time.

“I’ve even been challenged at different times by people in my record company or publishers saying there’s something healthy about asking questions, and maybe even leaving those questions unanswered to let the listeners answer them for themselves,” Chapman says. “And God knows, if anyone does, that in my heart I don’t feel like I have all of the answers by any means.

“The last thing I want to do is give a perception that I’ve got it all figured out and if you just do it like me, all your problems would be over. I think Christian music can do a real disservice if we’re not real careful to explore the valleys, because in reality that’s where a majority of the lessons are learned anyway.”

But . . .

“But at the same time, there’s so much music that does just ask questions that leave you feeling almost hopeless that there are answers, feeling that these are just questions that we’re gonna be burdened with for the rest of our lives. And I feel like, with my music, I would be leaving business unfinished if I didn’t at least offer some sense of hope.”

By pop standards, Chapman is not exactly what you’d call a colorful character. He can give you a dozen different shades of sincerity, though. Nearly all questions get a lengthy, reasoned reply, but are peppered through and through with humility too, as if the likable Chapman felt a little bashful that his eagerness to explain his evangelicalism might be misinterpreted as ego.

What he has to sell--besides Christianity--is a fetching genuineness. In him is the tempered zeal of a wise youth leader, locked up in the boyish good looks of the lad next door, his floppy bangs making him look a little younger than his years and a wee bit wilder than his not-too-rambunctious music. He’s Bryan Adams with religious values, better skin and an earnest desire to let the world know that everything he does, he does for Him.

His music may be conservative, but at least he doesn’t appear to be pandering to his audience, like Petra and some of the other more robustly postured Christian rock outfits. The sweet, slick hooks that have gotten Chapman named songwriter of the year at the Doves for seven years running, he comes by honestly, it would seem.

“A couple years ago, I had to make a conscious decision to say I was not going to try to chase musical trends and say, ‘Well, it’s all moving to Seattle and getting grungier, and so I better do that if I’m really going to have a voice.’ If something about that moves me, then I’m not gonna shut it down and say no way. But chances are, to a guy who grew up in Paducah, Kentucky, that’s probably not gonna come real natural.”

Chapman grew up in that mid-sized city the son of a music-store owner who used to play and write songs on the side; the son remembers his dad heading off to Nashville on the weekends for minor gigs and the music-biz mystique that was invested in him at the time.

When he was about 9, both parents became committed Christians, “and I started to see a difference in the way they treated each other, and the way we as a family communicated,” paving the way for his own young conversion.

As a teen, Chapman was into the Doobie Brothers and Atlanta Rhythm Section, but more passionate about the first wave of contemporary “Jesus music” emerging in the ‘70s--acts like Dallas Holm, Andrae Crouch and the Imperials.

For all their impact, none of those vintage pop-gospel acts sold truckloads of records, which is something Chapman tries to keep in mind, especially when Billboard magazine ups the ante by wondering if he might be “the Garth Brooks of the ‘90s” in terms of crossover potential.

“You think, OK, if that did flesh itself out in numbers, man, what if I could sell 20 million records, that would be a historic thing. But then I think, we’re just talking about the music business , and in the grand scheme of things, it’s a drop in the bucket. There are more people in the world who don’t know who Garth Brooks is than do. That’s where you start feeling small.

“But the thing I count myself most fortunate to get to do is know that the message I write my music about is--I believe with all my heart--a timeless one that will have an eternal impact on a few people whose lives have been changed the way mine was, as a result of gospel music.

“I was a kid and had that friend that I carried with me that encouraged me to do the right thing when I had a choice. Not that I always did--but it encouraged me to honor my parents and honor the girl I was dating, and to try and respect people around me and respect the laws of the land, all of these things.

“If I can have that kind of impact on the lives of a few people, even a handful,” he muses, “that’s a pretty awesome thing.”

* Steven Curtis Chapman appears with Amy Grant on June 22 at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., 7:30 p.m. $12-$57. (213) 850-2000.