For the final project, Eliza and Helen designed a website which covers five rock songs about the Bible and Christianity. The songs range from the 1960s to the 2000s. Here is the website overview.

From a broad view, Rock’n Roll speaks for modern generations who embrace pop culture and challenge the traditional Christian culture. This music genre is called “the devil’s music” and is pugnaciously attacked by conservatism because of the overt critique of religious beliefs and religious texts in the songs. The confrontation between Rock’n Roll spirit and Christian beliefs stirs up the debate and critical thinking about the role of religion in the modern world.

Ever since the Bible was written, there have been different interpretations about it. Based on those interpretations, Biblical texts have been referred to in modern contexts as a source of authority. However, facing complicated issues like wars and racism, the younger generation is not satisfied with using the Bible to oversimplify the problems and starts to question the orthodox meaning extracted from the Bible. Some of them turn away from it and speak up for those who are silenced in the Bible while the others go back to the original text and reconstruct the narrative by trying to come up with their own explanation.

Instead of resisting the Christianity itself, rock music represents the freedom of expressing people’s own feelings and protests against the control from authorities. With their thought-provoking lyrics about the Bible and Christianity, rock songs from different periods push their generation to think for themselves.

Eliza Ge

Author

Hi! I’m Eliza Ge, a sophomore student at Colgate University. My majors are in Art and Art History and Anthropology. I hope my college journey will nurture my intellectual curiosity and spark passion for the academic field. If you are interested in my article and want to discuss it with me, contact me at yge@colgate.edu.

Helen Lin

Author

Hi! I am an international student at Colgate University and I am from China! I am majoring in Studio Art and thinking about double-majoring in Geography. Love Rock n’ Roll! Currently favorite band is Arctic Monkeys!