By Randall Murphree & Rusty Benson, AFA Journal Editor and Associate Editor
July 1997 – Art – in all its forms – moves. Who can deny it? Certainly not Christians.
God’s people should recognize what God has ordained: A song is much more than sound and rhythm; a drama, more than players on a stage; a painting, more than color on a canvas; a poem, more than letters on a page. Indeed, these works are the deepest window into the soul of the artist and his world – a sphere of ideas and convictions where the language of melody and rhythm, meter and rhyme, light and color speak to the deepest level of our being.
\Contemporary Christians, especially parents, must come to appreciate the incredible power of our culture’s most visible and most potent art forms – television and music – as spiritual expressions. Sadly, a critical look reveals consistent themes of violence, illicit sex, hedonism, hopelessness and Godlessness.
Television as teacher
In television, for example, National Coalition on Television Violence reported in 1994 that by age 18, the American teenager will have witnessed 200,000 violent acts on TV, including 40,000 murders. USA Today watched a sample week of programs and found that in 45 sex scenes, 41 (92%) involved couples not married to each other. During Spring 1996 sweeps, AFA monitoring confirmed that number – 91% of the sexual situations in network prime-time were outside marriage.
From 1990 to 1996, prime-time profanity on the top three networks increased by 20% (from 1,213 incidents to 1,517 incidents). The Fox network added another 367 incidents to that number. And today’s TV profanity is unquestionably far more vulgar than that of six years ago.
U.S. News & World Report surveyed a random sample of 1000 adults in 1996 and found that 80% expressed concern about verbal references to sex, nudity and extramarital sex on TV. Seventy-five percent were worried about portrayals of homosexual activity. In a 1995 poll of 10- to 16-year-olds by Children Now, 77% said there is too much sex before marriage depicted on TV, and 62% said sex on TV influences their peers to have sexual relations when they are too young. Two-thirds of the youths said TV teaches them to disrespect parents.
That’s what prime-time is teaching in our family rooms and our children’s bedrooms. How do they do it? Let’s take a look at one example.
In the 1986-87 season, prime-time’s creative minds openly promoted casual teen sex. Almost every prime-time family with teens handled the theme, and in AFA reviews, we found only one use of the word marriage. Even then, it was spoken by a 17-year-old girl, whose mother quickly declared that marriage was not expected to precede sexual activity. Instead, prime-time parents – without exception – told their teens (some as young as 14) that before they have sex, they should do two things: care about their partner, and use protection. Abstinence was ignored, as were sexually transmitted diseases.
Music as preacher
At recent induction ceremonies for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, Felix Cavaliere, member of the ’60s pop band The Rascals, reflected that the highlight of his career was when the group’s peace anthem “People Gotta Be Free” topped the charts in 1968. Cavaliere used the occasion to admonish the music industry to once again find positive themes to promote.
What Cavaliere’s short comments alluded to, but did not reveal, was the depths to which record companies have stooped to make a buck. No theme is too damnable if enough young, impressionable listeners will buy it – murder, suicide, illicit and perverse sex, anarchy, God-hatred, despair, etc.
Brian Warner, aka Marilyn Manson, the front man of the hate-rock group of the same name, knows – even if he overstates – the power of the rock icon as evangelist. In achieving his goal of putting an end to Christianity, Warner says, “…no one has managed to succeed yet, but maybe through music, we can finally do it.” The group’s most recent album, “AntiChrist Superstar,” entered the Billboard charts at number three. The band was named Rolling Stone’s band of the year and has received huge media coverage.
Manson’s concerts are an orgy of debasement and hate, particularly towards God and Christians. Tee-shirts recently seen at Manson concerts proclaim “Kill God,” “Kill Your Parents,” and “The World Spreads its Legs for Jesus.”
Less brazen, but still spiritually potent in their own way, are “alternative” and “heavy metal” acts which proselytize a bitter vision of a world gone hopelessly wrong. Solutions to life’s problems often include escape through suicide, drugs, sex or Satanism.
In much of the “rap,” “dance,” and contemporary “r&b” music scenes, illicit sex and vulgarity are dominant themes. “Gansta rap” mixes in violent motifs and has been linked to numerous real-life crimes.
Message and medium
Although scores of artists still offer work with redeeming themes, mainstream television and music are dominated by those intent on leading souls into faith in anything but the true God. Their message is that man is supreme and the God of the Bible is irrelevant. Their mediums are powerful, capable of captivating both the minds and emotions of listeners. Christian parents must be aware – and beware. 
