The National Center for Family Integrated Churches welcomes Jeff Bodkin with the following message entitled, What the Twentieth Century Music has done to the Protestant Church in America. How many of you have been to lectures on music here so far this week? Okay, has that been helpful? How many of you still have a lot of questions about music? Okay, it's a tough subject.

And I was talking to one of the speakers yesterday. He said I'm sure I'll be Really refining a lot of my comments next week that I teach you on this week We're still we're learning. We're learning many things. It's a very dangerous and treacherous area. And we will...let's dig into it.

Before we do, let's go to the Lord in prayer. Our Father in Heaven, we are grateful to you for the way that you've made us. To be able to apprehend and enjoy and understand and experience sight and sound. And it's not just sensations that we feel and we hear and we taste and we touch, but you've made many things so beautiful. And we confess to you that men have turned and made so many of the things you have made beautiful perverted and ugly.

And Lord, we know this is true about music. We know that there's sonic ugliness, moral ugliness, spiritual ugliness surrounding us and our children. And we know that it has hurt and harmed our country and our church and our families. So we pray that you would not only show us how this has happened and why it's happened, but what we can do about it. We don't want to just curse the darkness, we want to be salt, we want to be light.

And I thank you for the families who are here. Give them grace to teach and lead their families and their children and their grandchildren down many generations. We pray these things in the name of your son, Jesus Christ. Well as we begin, and if you all who are on the edges, slide forward toward the center so some in the back can come in and find seats. There are two up here in the front.

I see there's a couple here on this side. If you all would like, some of you in the back would like to slip up front, please don't be shy. Come right on up. The American people are some of the most energetic, creative, and inventive and expressive people in history. This is our legacy.

This is what we've been born into. These are our ancestors. These are our fathers. The American people have for 400 years have expressed themselves culturally in music. This is what we've done.

We love music. We've loved music. And before the days of recorded music, we sang together all the time. We made our own music. But do you understand the essence of any culture?

It's essential to identify that culture's theology. It's essential to look into the music of a culture to see it, because culture is religion externalized. And the point I want to be making to you all today is that culture is theology externalized. Theologos means the word of God. Theonomos is everything that the Lord has given us to study and understand and appreciate about Himself.

Now the opposite of theonomy is autonomy, the worship of self. And this is what's happened in the 20th century that we need to understand in very clear terms. Self theology and self worship is deadly to any person or to any nation, to any church, any family. The culture that we see and the music that we see around us is theology externalized. Okay, have you got that?

Music is theology both externalized and internalized. We can see it, we can hear it, But when people partake of music, they truly internalize it into their very souls. And this is because music is one of the most theologically influential arts that there is. This art can help us express the emotions and the affections that we need to express toward God when we worship Him. But it's also a tool that's been used in the 20th century for complete cultural revolution.

Complete cultural revolution. Music expresses attitudes and emotions. It expresses attitudes toward truth and authority. I'm looking around the room wondering how many of you have brought in with you into the room. Phones, iPods, and other recording devices that have music on them.

Every single little item on your playlist is theological and has theological content. And especially those songs that have lyrics. But even instrumentation can drive the cultural urge of an entire nation. Here's something that I have to point out to you or the rest of the lecture will make no sense to you at all. All music is worship music and it's because of the fact that it reveals personal and national ethical loyalties to what we're worshipping, what we hold dear, what our affections are toward.

Now, Dr. Morcraft made the point that it's very dangerous to say that all of life is worship because there are distinctions in family worship, national worship, state worship, what magistrates do to worship, what congregations the families of God do when they gather together in a solemn assembly. But we need to recognize the fact that music really is a worshipful activity that we participate in when we turn our hearts and our minds and our souls to it, to the music that we love, music that we tune into spiritually. It is an act of worship when we allow it, when we delight in it, and we take it into our hearts, and we take it into our breasts. Do you see what I'm saying here?

It reveals the personal and national ethical loyalties. What ethical system are we serving? What faith system are we serving? All ethics come from God's law or the law of a rival God and that rival God may be an Individual little teenager who doesn't want to be a part of any other ethical system at all except the one that he or she creates He's made himself a little God Eve did that And so let's take a quick look at 400 years of music and I want to show you very quickly what has happened over this 400 year period. When our nation started early in the 1600s, Our nation was known for having worship music of a covenantal nation building structure.

Our music, our worship music for the nation, if you looked at the worship music of the nation, and when I say that I just mean all the music of the nation. And we were little and we were young. We were spread out into a few little seaboard colonies. We were known for covenantal nation building. And we had attitudes and the music reflected the attitudes.

In the 1700s the music of the nation could be characterized as the music of moral testing. Our nation went through much moral testing And our founders and our fathers and our great grandfathers were struggling to pass those tests and they did really well. They did very well. In the 1800s, we can say and we can summarize that the music of the nation was of economic and frontier expansion. It was a boom time, the economy was booming all over the nation.

Men could hardly decide what to be doing economically because there were so many different options. In the 1900s we can say that our music was the worship music of cultural revolution. We developed the technologies of recording music and sharing it and broadcasting over radio. And everything changed because of the content of that music. So the worship music of the nation in the 1900s became the music of cultural revolution.

So here's the question that we're asking today and I want you to go away with. What is the spirit of American music today? What is it today? And I'll give you an answer to that at the end of this talk. So let's look at the scope of theology and music from the very beginning of our country.

The pilgrims sang their theology in the Psalms. They sang it together. They sang it as a community. And the Bay Songbook, this book right here, was the first book published in the colonies. They were that serious about it in establishing a printing press and getting it established.

And the very first thing that came off the press was a song book so that these congregations could see it and hear it. This is a copy of it. For the next 150 years, the colonists were known as Psalm Singers. That's what they called it. Even the enemies in Europe said those people over there across the water, they're Psalm Singers.

That's what they were known for because that's what they cherished and loved in their hearts, and they sang the Psalms. If anyone is interested, I see two empty chairs up front here, if any of you ladies want to slip forward and come up front. By the mid-18th century, America was being called a repentance because there had been some slippage in the children and the grandchildren of the psalm singers. Great leaders like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were preaching and a young Patrick Henry was singing psalms with his family and listening to sermons and hymns being written by men like young minister Samuel Davies. Listen to the lyrics of this song that he was writing, that people would sing.

While over our guilty land, O Lord, We view the terrors of thy sword. And this man was a giant in what he understood about theology and worship. And he put these words to him that was sung by thousands. We view the terrors of thy sword. Oh whither shall the helpless fly, To whom but thee direct their cry." He understands their judgment.

If we depart from the living God, there will be chastisement because of the promises of the covenant. He understood this. And so, how is America doing with their worship music? How are they doing with their moral tests? It was really a hard time in the 1700s, but America came through and passed the test.

In the 19th century, going into the 1800s, songs and lyrics were not timid about celebrating correct biblical theology. There were more songs being written by families, by pastors, by others. A widely shared culture was family centered, marked by virtues of gratitude for family, faith and freedom. There was a lot of gratitude. There was a lot of fellowship.

And there was a lot of singing about things that were important. Examples. In 1801, a popular song written called the quiet family man. In 1803, the orphans prayer. 1813, songs were created and even imported from overseas like the minstrel boy.

1813. In 1814, Francis Scott Key placed America's theological orientation in the Star Spangled Banner. Look at this verse. Oh, thus be it ever, when free men shall stand between their loved home and the war's desolation. We were tested again with the war in 1812.

Blessed with victory and peace, may the heaven rescued land. Okay, we didn't do it by the strength of our might. And the swords and the gunpowder that we created. May the heaven rescued land praise the power that has made and preserved us a nation. 1814.

And then conquer we must when our cause it is just. And this be our motto. In God is our trust. So do you see the theological worship music of the people who are bowing the knee to Christ are still connecting to what's true and right about God and His truth and His covenant. 1832, this song, Our Father's God to thee, author of liberty.

They're honoring their fathers, the fifth commandment. Author of liberty. Doesn't come from the genius of men being able to organize themselves into society. Long to thee we sing. To thee we sing.

God's enthroned on the praises of his people. They still understood this, 1832. Long may our land be bright with freedom's holy light. Protect us by thy might. Great God our King.

We've so altered theology that we are not teaching what's true and right in our music, in our sermons, in our conversations, and it must be recovered. Music has undercut this since 1832. By the end of the 1830s, there was a beginning of a slide, a theological slide, a moral meltdown, and it's primarily centered around mammon. Men were so tempted by mammon. We had passed the test of the 1700s, and God was blessing the country.

And one of the blessings that's promised is economic prosperity. And there was that in this country. And the men were scrambling and enjoying it and benefitting from it and chasing it. But the pastors were not really helping manage this economic exuberance and all the blessings that God had bestowed on America. And there were so many blessings.

Guess how high the taxes were? Zero. Zero. And that's why we've got to be careful. Can you imagine how much time men would have if they didn't have to work half the year just to pay their taxes like we do now?

Do you men realize you're doing that? You're giving half your year to pay the taxes, the state, the local federal taxes that you have to do. If you didn't have that. If you could come home at noon and have the whole rest of the day with your family and still have the same income and standard of living. The church was getting weak because pastors were not guarding the flock from the sins of worshipping mammon.

You can't serve two masters. Here's a quote attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville who came from France and was looking at this and was concerned about it. He saw all the blessings of God but he was concerned about this. The moral meltdown that has overtaken America has been met with a deafening silence from the pulpits of America and the people pleasing preachers who presume to stand in them. It's important for you to see and mark this in your mind on our timeline.

End of the 1830s, we're having theological compromise in the pulpits of America on this point. Okay? And this will compromise everything. The music, what's going on in the middle of the century we were judged with a war. We entered a period of judgment and he was marked by bad music that accompanied willful unbelief.

Music can and does enculturate dominant ideas into a common faith and in the north there were people who were singing songs that glorified status terrorism about this man, America's first funded terrorist John Brown. And the same songs that they were singing in the North were later cleaned up and made a little bit more dignified to be sung in churches as a Unitarian hymn to recruit an army to come attack the South. By the end of the 1800s, and I'm moving very quickly here because I want to get us up into the 20th century and for you to see what is happening to our nation. By the end of the 1800s, this is coming to a close, we've got photography, the history was marked by a retreat from nation building into leisurely prosperity. The villages were becoming cities, and so the creative energy of people and the children, the grandchildren of great nation builders and great grandchildren who were experiencing the prosperity that existed at the end of the 1800s began to refocus their creative energy on self and selfishness.

American culture began to succumb to an antithetical urge in musical creativity. Whereas before, for 300 years, we had been trying to honor and preserve the worship of God in our daily life, our daily music. The honoring of God, the honoring of Scripture, the honoring of Providence, the honoring of our fathers. And then comes an antithetical. The antithesis begins to appear in music in the 20th century.

And it was fueled here in New York in this little neighborhood known as Tin Pan Alley. Look at this. There were dozens and dozens and dozens of music publishers in this one place in this little alley in New York City, 1900. American craftsmen by this time had made at least a million pianos in the year preceding 1900. 350, 000 pianos had been made by American Craftsman.

And the demand for sheet music, this was before radio, and only recorded music was just, you know, on the phonograph was just becoming practical at this time. The demand for sheet music was met each week by many, many publishers. We don't even know how many at this point. But we've seen some of their catalogs and they would put tens of thousands of titles into their catalogs just in the next decade. Tens of thousands per publisher of sheet music that was circulating around the country because there was more leisure time and the youth primarily were spending their time learning these songs, singing them together, and it was a different kind of music.

These publishers began to toy carelessly with novelty, different theologies, and music became very highly commercialized at this time. They were competing with one another. Sheet music was very cheap. And the theologies that became most destructive during this period, and just keep walking with me through the 20th century now as we're looking at the influences of music in the 20th century. It was a tempting humanistic sensuality, some of which originated in revolutionary European hostility to Christianity.

There were people in Europe, Karl Marx was a contemporary of Abe Lincoln, and many of his disciples and followers were trying to come up with ways to destroy Christianity. They focused, of course, on America because that's where it was strongest. And so many of those ideas were making their way into the US through the music. And these ideas demanded the gradual disintegration of biblical social foundations. And it was appearing in the music.

Here's a song that was super popular. My Merry Oldsmobile is about a guy who comes and gets a young girl from her father's home in a new contraption called an automobile and he's taking her out and seducing her with his words. Johnny and Lucille, a huge hit, changing the whole culture of family, fatherly authority, patriarchy and courtship in music. How many songs have copied this model? I read the lyrics to one just last week that Gary Varnier sent me.

It was terrifying. Guy in his pickup, good old country music song goes to a house of the parents and the girl sneaks out in her little cotton dress and they go down by the dam and then it gets worse and worse and worse. Where did these ideas come from? From the music. So American parents at this time, 1910s going into the 1920s, they were not stewarding the challenges and opportunities that came with American freedom.

They just thought, well this is, everybody's doing this. Does this sound familiar? Everybody's doing it. There's freedom, there's wealth, there are advantages, there's free time. Don't we want our children to be happy and have advantages that we didn't have?

Well look at these advantages. You know, liquor, free time, running around, carousing, automobiles. And so the printing houses, the record companies were using music to create on a vast scale an entirely original social structure that was not seen anywhere else in the world. Had it never been anywhere in the world until this point in the United States. And here's what it developed into.

The music of uninhibited immaturity. Uninhibited immaturity. And one dominant trend in music came with a new social attitude created by jazz. Okay? And it was marked by an attitude as every form of music, every form of music that's in this room on these iPhones and little MP3 players and your phones is marked by an attitude.

And if you like the attitude, you are developing a worshipful attitude toward that particular song. And so jazz was marked by this attitude. Deliberately disrespectful and irreverent. Deliberately disrespectful and irreverent. Forms of jazz and ragtime developed a sloppy expression of mockery, criticism and covert protest against the triumphalism of the European traditions.

It was mocking it. And that's what ragtime really was. We're ragging good music. We're ragging classical music. We're ragging good solid order and coherence.

Defiance of authority by misbehavior. Now the trend, I want to make this point very clear. There were racists afoot in Europe who were bad white men, disciples of Karl Marx and disciples of other socialists on the scene. And they were exploiting and using black people to further revolutionary ideas through music. And so this trend in defiance of authority was not led by black Americans, but revolutionaries in Europe and spoiled American white kids who wanted to experiment with downward mobility, sensual license, and a party lifestyle that was not far removed from the brothels and the honky-tonks.

Partying became the new grand pastime and jazz accompanied the fads downward into childishness and more childishness and even more childishness. And the music was driving it. And if you've heard some of the lyrics from jazz, and I hope none of you have this on your iPods, it's baby talk or worse than baby talk. Here's a quote by E. Michael Jones who has studied this extensively.

He said, The happy-go-lucky, jazz-and-guilt-free, sexually liberated darkie is a cultural construct created by white moderns. They were exploiters. I hate men who exploit the weak. Women and children and people who don't have the education or the background to stand up and have moral clarity and certainty. And I hate music that does this to our culture and to our children.

And there are white revolutionaries doing this with black people and I hate it. White moderns who wanted transvaluation of Christian sexual mores, and this is how they would talk in Europe, in Germany, in England, and in America, as they came over to America. We need the transvaluation, that means we're going to change everything that Christians think is important to just the opposite. Jazz was the cultural vehicle that made this artificially constructed paradigm not only plausible but compelling. Jazz and eventually rock persuaded millions of whites that they could throw off Christian or Jewish morality in the name of racial solidarity.

E. Michael Jones. He's dead right about that. At this time the Broadway public music publisher, Edward Marx, he made the point and he was looking and he was looking for music, new music. He said, hey the best songs, this is a quote, The best songs come from the gutter.

This is what they were looking for and they were publishing and they were recording and they were getting out to the people. And so what were these songs built with? Uninhibited sensuality, extemporaneous improvised individualism, discordant sounds. And Nietzsche in the 1800s had really been pushing this and he wanted to see something like jazz developed. And he said it's got to have dissonance, it's got to have sonic ugliness, and It's got to have Dionysiac frenzy, like an orgy, an unrestrained orgy.

And so what is all this doing to the Protestant church by the 1920s? Okay, by the 1920s, it's discipling the congregations of the church because they're listening to this. The congregations of the American church, the Evangelical Protestant church, are listening to this. And it's discipling them into deep moral stupidity. And so congregational holiness becomes very difficult in the 1920s and the 1930s.

But everybody continues to think, well this is just how American life is. This is how things work. We have the opportunity to enjoy ourselves with entertainment. Individuals are compromising their integrity for entertainment. They're sampling all this commercial music.

It's defiling hearts. It's defiling their minds. It's defiling their souls. And so, why was this so valuable to the revolutionaries? I want you to understand this scripturally.

Look at this. Do not be deceived, Paul says to the Corinthians. Do not be deceived. The American church was allowing itself to be deceived by this. American parents were deceived by this.

Bad company corrupts good morals. You spend time with these songs that are written from the gutter, gathered from the gutter. What's going to happen? Good morals, the Greek phrase for this, kind ethics. Bad company will corrupt it and people will become corrupt.

The whole nation can become corrupt. Every institution will become corrupt. The family, the church, and the state will become corrupt. The next verse says, become so reminded as you are. Here's Paul's admonition.

Bad company's going to corrupt. He's writing to people in Corinth, one of the dirtiest, ugliest, most dangerous cities in the world of all history, morally. And he's telling them, don't be deceived. You hang around with bad company, you will be corrupted by it. And so his command in the very next verse is this, become sober-minded as you ought.

Stop sinning, for some have no knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame. Some have no knowledge of God. In Corinth, I speak this to your shame. Become sober-minded.

Stop sinning. Stop affiliating yourself with these ideas and developing tastes and appreciation for these things. I want to show you what happened in the 20th century with this. And so what is The proven way to destroy the knowledge of God is just to erase all knowledge of God from the culture. You just erase it.

And in a country as strong as America was in the knowledge of God and scriptural literacy, you erase it. Well, how do you erase it? Biblical illiteracy in America began exploding during this time in the 1920s, as fast as men's hearts and minds and souls was turning to the music of the world. The moral intelligence of the churches began to crash in the 1920s and then in the 1930s. The moral intelligence, and why is that?

So strategy number one for eliminating the knowledge of God. And this is so pertinent to us. Can you see? I want you to follow this very carefully. There's no knowledge of God.

I speak this to your shame. What's happened in our culture and what's true right now, there is so little knowledge of God in our culture and in our churches. We must be ashamed about it. So strategy number one for getting rid of it. Knowledge of the truth is linked to the condition of purity.

This is a biblical doctrinal reality. Knowledge of the truth is linked to the condition of purity. Blindness comes with rebellion. And so therefore, and the revolutionaries understand this, you Get people to rebel against purity. Get people to rebel against it.

And the verses, we can't go into it in great detail today, but you know the theological progression of this. Romans 1, 18, the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness. So if it can be suppressed in unrighteousness, you eliminate the knowledge of God. Verse 28, just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God, in the wrath of God, He gives them over to a depraved mind. What this means is when people begin to toy with impurity, they become stupid morally.

And the Church of Jesus Christ began to become stupid morally, unable to be able to make decisions and even understand the dangers around them and what would corrupt them. And they were indulging in these things, and the more they indulged in it, the worse it got and the worse it got. And we're only up to about 1925, 1930. All sexual sin and fleshly indulgence makes people intellectually as well as morally stupid. Here's a quote that's been attributed to Thomas, the Apostle Thomas.

An impure selfishly corrupted will to pleasure, a will to pleasure. An impure selfishly corrupted will, I just want pleasure, give me pleasure, give me immediate gratification. He's saying, destroys both resoluteness of spirit and the ability of the mind to listen in silent attention to the language of reality. And so music continued in a headlong rush to create in man, to create in Americans this will to pleasure. I just need, I need a new song.

I need another sensual experience with my song. I need it to make me feel good. I need it for an emotional uplift. E.M. Jones says this, the intellectual life is a function so the moral life of the nation is being reorganized around a new culture of worship music being listened to Monday through Saturday, being driven by a commercial industry that's being listened to by virtually everyone and the tastes of the nation are moving downward into impurity and decadence.

So here's strategy number two in destroying the knowledge of God. Just look at the logic of this, and the people in Europe understood this really well. If there's no God, there can be no religion. And if there's no religion, there can be no morals. If there's no morals, there can be no self-control.

If there's no self-control, there can be no social order. If there's no social order there can be nothing but the chaos of competing desires. But since we cannot have chaos in a society, therefore we must institute behavioral control in place of the traditional structures of the past. Family church in the free market and limited local government. So the revolutionaries thought, hey, if we want a whole new structure of a utopia that we create that has no family, no church, no private property, no limited government, and we want a gigantic all controlling centralized government.

Look, we just need to eliminate God. Through this process here, we've got to get rid of self-control, morals, religion, And then God is gone. He's gone. He's absolutely gone out of society. And we get our way.

Christianity is destroyed and we get our way. By the late 1920s, lyrics were falling into uninhibited sensual irresponsibility. Here's a big hit from 1927, Cole Porter. We're all alone, no chaperone, can get our number, the world's in slumber, let's misbehave. A call, a song calling for misbehavior.

Justified misbehavior, misconduct. There's something wild about you, child, that's so contagious, let's be outrageous, Let's misbehave. This is the direction that the popular commercialized music was going. Introducing people to the justification of sexual misconduct. The depression in the 1930s only increased America's appetite for music.

By 1937, out of 32 million American families, 27 million had radios. Everybody was listening to this commercial music and the pulpits did not know how to address it and what to say about it. And so here's how commercial music disintegrated the church. This is a picture of a guy named Wilhelm Reich, one of the revolutionaries who was in Germany at the time in 1933. He started realizing, you know, we've got to accelerate our efforts to destroy Christianity.

We've got to. We've got to use music more in this process. And he realized that in talking about sexual misconduct, it would be a successful organizing tool for cultural disintegration. So he stopped talking about all these intellectual things that he'd been talking about, about economics and economic reorganization. And he started talking about misbehavior.

And here's what he wrote in his book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism. He said, we as communists used to debate people about the existence of God, And after a while I came to a conclusion this was a waste of time. You aren't going to debate people away from the existence of God, but what I found was that if you get people involved in deviant sexual behavior, the whole idea of God just disappears automatically. And this is exactly what the revolutionaries understood. And this is why they got behind top 40 radio music.

They got behind the whole creation of a whole commercialized industry that would push this idea, push this idea. In every genre, every genre of music, people would pick it and choose it and have their little taste and just say, well, that's how I entertain myself during the week. I may go to church on Sunday and hear my little hymns over here, but I've got this whole other preference of taste that I like during the week and it's just entertainment. It's all neutral, isn't it? No, it's not neutral.

It is not neutral. He goes on to say, Marcuse goes say, and say Wilhelm Reich says, we would not bring down Western culture with philosophical writings about 12 tone music. Now 12 tone music was one of the tools they were trying to use to derange Christianity. And they started it in Germany. He says you're going to bring it down through sex, drugs and rock and roll.

So that's how you're going to bring down Western culture, and that's what they were talking about. And so they began to focus, and there were people who began to see that, yes, if we can just understand and get behind the prophet that's now being generated in the 1940s, and now in the 1950s, with songs of prurience and decadence, We'll make so much money because that's what's making money. Sam Phillips was a record producer and he said if I could find a white man who had the Negro sound and Negro feel, I could make a billion dollars. He found this guy. And he wanted that kind of decadence because he was an exploiter.

He was an exploiter. Marcuse wrote, Marcuse was another revolutionary disciple of this guy Wilhelm Reich. He said, what we need is a polymorphous perversity creating a society caught in endless adolescence. Many of you dads and moms who are in here began growing up in that and were trapped into that, mentally and spiritually. And these, his writings, Markuza became one of the most popular authors on college campuses in the 60s and 70s and so remember our thesis here all worship all music is worship music because of the attitudes that are created it reveals personal and national ethical loyalties and Where are the ethical loyalties in America going by the 1950s and the 1960s and the 1970s?

My peers were dedicated and were loyal to the theologies of rebellion and freedom from God and creating their own ethical systems. They were loyal to that. All ethics come from God's law or the law of a rival God. And with my friends in the 60s and 70s, they were making up their own morality. What's good for me is good for me.

All ethics come from God's law or the law of a rival God. Somebody told me this guy here is a Christian performer, a so-called professing Christian performer. Here's a picture of Madonna in a huge, big, multimillion dollar Super Bowl sermon. And prior to the sermon she told CNN the Super Bowl is kind of like the Holy of Holies in America. So here she's standing in front of a church choir on the field at half time to perform this.

She said the Super Bowl is kind of like the Holy of Holies in America. Is she right? I'll come at halfway of the church experience, meaning the whole Super Bowl is like the new church experience in America. And I'm going to have to deliver a sermon. It'll have to be very impactful.

She understands the theological ramifications for the culture that has been built and what is expected of her as one of the high priestesses of modern music. And here she is in one of the scenes. We are idolaters when it comes to football. So that's got to be part of her little sermon, which started out as her dressed up as the ancient Sumerian Babylonian goddess Inanna Ishtar. This was part of her sermon.

Now what is their sermon saying? Her sermon saying is that, you know, we love being religious. We love having all this polymorphous perversity that we can just have all kinds of different gods that we worship. Whatever feels good at the moment is what we like to worship. And this, I don't want you to be afraid of this phrase, but this is what it means.

Polymorphous polytheism means it's changing all the time. My tastes in music are just changing. I'm worshiping all these different kinds of gods because every little song I've got is a different theology. I've got Babylonian, I've got Sumerian, I've got American football, I've got Bach and Beethoven, I've got the Beastie Boys, I've got, it's just all there and when I'm in a mood for something different, that's what I turn to. And I've got Benjamin Botkin on there too.

And he just fits in. You know, just with my whole list, my whole big playlist. This is a picture of the kind of representation of what's on somebody's iPhone. It's different. Let me quote Joe Morgrifft.

He said, if you can listen to all this kind of different thing, I'll have to paraphrase him because I don't have the exact quote. If you can listen to all this, all these different kinds of theologies with the same disposition and attitude, you don't know God. Commercial music in America by the 20th century has displaced Biblical theology with profane doctrines of self-worship and this is exactly what it is. Here's a picture of somebody's bedroom. They've taken all their old album covers from their playlist from the 80s and 90s, and you know, papered their wall with it.

I mean, this is the world that they live in. This is what they listen to. This is what they worship. All these different polymorphous, polytheistic theologies that they're listening to, Monday through Saturday. What happens when they walk into a church?

It's just another one of their little theologies, isn't it, that fits in. So what is the spirit of American music today? Let's try to answer it. It's uncontrolled emotional spontaneity. I just feel, I feel like I want this right now.

I need something that will give me a buzz, an emotional feeling from the music that's somewhere on my iPod or somewhere. Or maybe I'll hop to this other church and see if they can make me feel good because I've learned to respond to sensual music. The spirit of American music is now private individualized rationalization of moral autonomy. That means we rationalize anything we want to do what's right in our own eyes. We make up our own law systems as little gods that are rival to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

And so-called church music might just be one of the little categories. I had so many people say to me, oh, I found, you know, I've just discovered black gospel, it's so cool, it's such good Christian music. It's just one of my categories. I sort of like the way it sounds and makes me feel. Law professor Jacques Ellul said this, we are seeing a considerable religious transformation by which the church through the means of the myth is being absorbed little by little by propaganda and becoming one of its categories.

And so In terms of the propaganda of the 20th century, the church was just one little choice of options that people could just choose in a totally ethically neutral environment that they were trying to create. And they eliminated the transcendence of God by doing this through music. Alistair Cooke, a British journalist who came to America to live and study America said this, America is awash with religiosity, but has the soul of a whorehouse. And this happened in the 20th century. This was not true in the 1600s, in the 1700s, in the 1800s.

What has happened? And he's right about this. What have we done to our soul? We have indulged in the sensual pursuit and taste of polymorphous perversity. Psalm 135 verse 18 says, Those who make idols become like them, and so do all who trust in them.

Here's a picture of a so-called Christian band or worship band. The guy jumping around on stage here has a T-shirt on that says sanctify. And so the church has allowed reverse sanctification. I mean what you're seeing here is a picture of idolatry and reverse sanctification of every institution in America including the church. The church has become just like the idols of the people, the little idols that we worship.

We're double-minded, we're polytheistic, we're sensual, we're shallow, we're impertinent. And Joe Morcraff was dead right. Our worship can become so worthless. Jeremiah 2 verse 5 says, What wrong did your fathers find in me that they went far from me and went after worthlessness and became worthless? What has music done to the church in America?

It has made us so worthless. We are so culturally impotent. We have become so morally stupid. Romans chapter 1. We don't even understand it.

We can't even see how dangerous it is. What pastors have the courage to call their congregations to account on what they're doing Monday through Saturday. What parents have the courage to say, honey, son, daughter, what is on your listening device? Well we think, well it's just music, it's just neutral, it's just entertainment. We have become, do you see how morally stupid and insensible we have become as a nation because of what this has done to us.

And the more we listen to it, the stupider and stupider we become. And so what music guides our affections and fills our hearts and our minds and our souls? This is the question we need to ask, because if it is the music of sensuality and perversity and infidelity and sensual gratification. We're only becoming more stupid all the time. Let me just say in closing, I believe that the most destructive category in the area of the country that I live in is country, country music.

It is by far the most destructive. I've discovered in doing a little study and with some of the folks in our church that CCM is not, CCM used to be the most destructive of all because it was such a twisting of biblical theology. And people thought it was Christian and would listen to it and would let their children listen to it. Very defiling and destructive, but it's not cool anymore. And so people, Christians, young people, home schoolers have gravitated to country.

Hey, isn't that the music about, you know, just the good old home life? Mom, dad, grandma, you know, the pickup truck and the dog and the shotgun in the back window. Hey, that's just all American music, isn't it? No, it's not. It's not.

These songs are about perversity and decadence, autonomy, rebellion against God, setting up your own ethical system, living by it, rejoicing in it, celebrating it, doing what you want, and then coming to church. And there's songs about, hey, I love these little girls who are really good Christian girls on Sunday, but live like the devil the rest of the week. And we exploit them and have fun with them. How many of your children are listening to these songs? Do you know?

How much of this is walking into the church on Sunday morning? How much worship is being done? Even if we have the absolute perfect Jeffrey Botkin playlist of hymns and psalms and to be sung in church with the Joe Markraff seal of approval, okay? Who is qualified to worship God with that, even if we had it perfect? Who is qualified to bring clean hands and a clean heart into a service and worship?

What have we done to our hearts and to ourselves? God is not mocked. I mean, even if we did have it perfect and we came in and we just been listening to all this, all our little idols, all our little preferences, and maybe we really like the Jogemorgraft choice of sacred music. And we just fit it in there like it's just the other panoply of gods that we have. Because we are idolaters.

We have become idolaters. Proverbs 12 26 says this, one who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor but The way of the wicked leads them astray. This is the summary of what has happened in the 20th century and what must happen now. One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor. And so we can begin in our own homes to be a guide to our children.

The way of the wicked leads them astray. The way of the wicked has led our country astray through music in the 20th century, has led us completely astray, completely. The one who is righteous, are we righteous? What will it take you to become righteous? What will it take you to become someone who worships God alone and fears God alone and clings to God alone and none of your other gods?

When I got saved when I was 21 years old, the Lord was doing miraculous work on the college campus where I was. My friends and my peers were some of the most wicked people that had ever lived and I was among them and the Lord was saving us. And what happened to these people who had been involved so deeply into this culture of decadence, sex, drugs, rock and roll and defilement? When they got saved and came to the living God, they destroyed everything that had been part of that part of their life. They would burn it.

They wouldn't sell it. They would destroy it. They got rid of it. And this is what has to happen in us. And I am so concerned in the homeschooling movement.

So many homeschoolers are sampling, tasting, touching, playing with the delicacies of this world through the music and the music videos and sharing them with one another and showing them one another. Look at this cool music video. And they're horrible. They should not be in our midst, in our homes, in our churches, anywhere, even in our country. The one who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor.

Can we turn this around? Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, Theodor Adorno, all our enemies, Nietzsche, Wagner, the people who wanted to destroy Christianity through music have triumphed. It has been destroyed in the churches. The Christian mind has been destroyed. But the Holy Spirit is so powerful to be able to rebuild and make all things new.

And my friends who had been so defiled became new. I mean, such corrupt young people, completely transformed and reformed by the power of the living God. And I'm in testimony of that. I hate what's ugly and dirty. I hate what God hates.

Not because I've trained myself intellectually to be sort of superior. It's because He's changed my heart. He's put a new song in my heart. I think this is where we need to end today. I want to thank you for listening to this.

I mean, I think you believe and you can see the seriousness of what has happened. Do not be deceived, bad company corrupts. We spend Monday through Saturday in the elevators, when we're in hotels, the Today Show comes on in the morning and we're trying to have breakfast with our families, we go into a restaurant, it's playing over the loudspeakers, We need to bring order and discipline back into our homes, in our churches, to what our children look at and listen to. We cannot partake. It's not cool and it's not virtuous to be part of the world.

We don't have to be to win the world. We need to be righteous. We need to be a guide to our neighbor. While the way of the wicked is trying to lead them astray. Can we be victorious in this?

Yes we can. Let's pray. Father in heaven we need men and women who can preach and teach the difference between the holy and the profane. And we confess to you that we have become so common. We have been so comfortable in sitting on the curb and dangling our feet into the gutter.

Watching it, not being offended by it in the same way that you are. Lord, we know this must begin with repentance and the affections of our hearts, what we look at, what we fondle in our minds. And we pray that you would change our affections and the things that we see, the things that we hear. We don't want to be in love with perversity and infidelity, moral experimentation, moral autonomy, moral irreverence. Oh God give us, I pray, the kind of attitude that you see as reverent and worthy.

We don't want to be worthless people who can't guide anybody, who can't disciple even our own children. Lord, help us to be the teachers and leaders that you've called us to be, to see that we have the tools, the weapons, we have the integrity, we even have the spiritual power to proclaim your will to others. And Lord thank you that we can prove it and live it in our own lives first. So I pray that you would help us, fathers and mothers and even young children, to clean their hands and to clean their hearts. Lord, help us to do this so that we can speak with moral authority, that we can regain a way to think clearly with moral clarity.

We don't want to be forced into the kind of forced stupidity that we deserve when we depart from you with ingratitude, with suppressing the truth, with so much unrighteousness. Oh God, help us with our country, help us to turn it. We don't even know where to begin except with our own families, except with our own habits. And so Lord we ask you please to help us now. In Jesus' mighty name we pray these things.

Amen. For more messages, articles, and videos on the subject of Conforming the Church and the Family to the Word of God, and for more information about the National Center for Family Integrated Churches, where you can search our online network to find family integrated churches in your area, log on to our website ncfic.org.