Quietly Christian mainstream rock

For the last few years I have been made aware [often by my kids] of how many mainstream rock and pop music artists claim a Christian affiliation, on the quiet. I've been wondering whether the fact that one of the few popular live music institutions that encourage and enable kids to perform music are churches. All the other kids just want to sing and be in a dance line-up where something technical provides a backing track. Nothing wrong with that except that it tends to reduce the amount of music performance in the population as a whole [wonder if there are any studies on that?]. Anyway if I were right you might expect that kids with a Christian background would have an advantage when it comes to producing music: experience and informal tuition/mentoring. Add to that the Greenbelt factor in British Christian culture [ie the encouragement to make mainstream music which reflects Christian perspectives on 'ordinary' things without preaching] and you have the potential for a whole load of quietly Christian artists amking it. That's my theory; I now await the devastating critique pointing our something obvious I've missed.

In the referred to article I was also intrigued by the following comment on the phenomenon from a mainstream critic.
"NME editor, Conor McNicholas, believes there is a simple reason why rock stars don't talk about their faith: 'The problem with religion is it's never cool. At the heart of all religions, there's a notion of control, and that's the opposite of rock'n'roll. It ends up being the least rock'n'roll thing you can think of. What people want from music is inspiration and escapism. Religion offers that in a very different way. Most people are looking to escape from that, it turns them off.'"

I want to ask whether his analysis is right. He clearly has his own ideological perspective but I'm not really sure that what he says is right. For him rock clearly is supposed to be about inspirition and escapism and not 'control'. But of course that's not the whole story and I wonder whether he really takes into account the way that listening to music functions in lots of people's life. Given that Rock seems to function 'religiously' in many people's lives I can't help but question the idea that religion is the least rock'nroll thing you could think of. Perhaps that's the issue; that of rival ideologies? But the music isn't the ideology; I'm not even convinced the form itself is inevitably connotative of the family of ideologies that the NME guy says it is. It seems like he may be the secular equivalent of those Christians who say that rock is of the devil/inherantly evil or immoral. Like extreme creationists and evolutionists they paint up the differences in order to create a simple 2 factor choice when actually it ain't really that simple.

The real issues is not rock'nroll ideology but the popular perceptions and the way that Christians are trying to duck out of the negative stereotyping we routinely suffer [sometimes understandably: there's nothing so awkward as those who fit the stereotype turning up]. There's a dialogic quality to it all: Christians are sensitive to being written off because they are Christians and so modify their behaviour in order to be able to do what they feel called to in a secular arena. It's not that what they are is somehow inimical to what they do [the implication of the NME guy's remark] but that many of the consumers of their product don't know enough not to be prejudiced about it. And yet, by performing well and being savvy about the way they conduct themselves with regard to faith matters in public they may be able to help educate their public so at least their prjudices are modified or challenged.
Guardian Unlimited | Arts news | A new breed of rock star: quietly Christian: