Description: In a sweeping investigation into the music of megachurches and political rallies, a journalist asks: How did praise and worship music beloved by millions of white evangelicals become the soundtrack of Christian supremacy's war on democracy? And where are songs of conquest and spiritual warfare taking our nation?
Brief description:
Rick Pidcock is a journalist and weekly contributor for Baptist News Global whose work has been featured by the American Academy of Religion, BioLogos, Patheos, the Center for Christogenesis, the Bucks County Beacon, and Real Clear Religion. He is the host of BNG's Highest Power: Church + State podcast. Prior to becoming a journalist, he led worship for twenty years. Pidcock has a master of arts degree in worship from Northern Seminary and is an at-home parent of five children. He and his family live in South Carolina.
Review Quotes:
"Journalist Pidcock debuts with a revealing account of how white evangelical worship music 'has become a servant of the political right.' . . . the author persuasively draws on his experience as a former worship leader to uncover the power of this music to influence churchgoers' beliefs in sometimes disturbing ways. The result is a trenchant look at an underexplored element of today's Christian nationalism." --Publishers Weekly
"Blending sharp analysis, in-depth reporting, and insights gleaned as a former worship leader, Pidcock offers a fascinating insider's guide to the music industry aimed at white evangelical audiences. Along the way he explores the idea of worship music as political warfare, deftly showing how its power dynamics of authority and submission help sacralize the drive to a theocratic and autocratic order." --KATHERINE STEWART, author of The Power Worshippers and Money, Lies, and God
"With a worship leader's insights and a journalist's shrewdness, Rick Pidcock peels back the appealing façade of the evangelical worship music industrial complex. In the process, he exposes some of the foundational infrastructure for the authoritarian turn in modern American Christianity." --MATTHEW D. TAYLOR, author of The Violent Take It by Force and Defying Tyrants
"With a worship leader's insights and a journalist's shrewdness, Rick Pidcock peels back the appealing façade of the evangelical worship music industrial complex. In the process, he exposes some of the foundational infrastructure for the authoritarian turn in modern American Christianity." --MATTHEW D. TAYLOR, author of The Violent Take It by Force and Defying Tyrants
"Pidcock's experience as a worship leader and journalist enables him to give us a clear picture of the power and influence of white evangelical music to fuel Christian nationalism in both subtle and overt ways. . . . Pastors, laypeople, and educators will find this book illuminating, and hopefully, it will propel us all to think seriously about what it means to worship God with music."
"Pidcock demonstrates that contemporary worship music has become a weapon in the culture wars as he traces a web of connections between people, institutions, and songs. Weapons of Worship is a provocative and compelling exploration of the ways some of today's most-loved songs of faith and their powerful associations can be used to divide rather than edify." --KELSEY KRAMER MCGINNIS, worship correspondent for Christianity Today and lecturer at Grand View University
"Be forewarned, reader: Like you, I matured as an evangelical Christian through the songs Rick Pidcock writes about. But the story he tells about these weapons of worship is disturbing. Like you, I can't unhear the songs that made me. This book can help us all sing different ones." --MATTHEW BOEDY, professor of rhetoric and composition at University of North Georgia and author of The Seven Mountains Mandate
"One of the greatest joys of my career has been meeting and publishing Rick Pidcock. His voice is what we need in this time. He brings the background to interpret Christian nationalism and male hierarchy to a larger audience. He's a frontline war correspondent in the battle for America's soul."
"The truth Pidcock shines a light on throughout this book will set us all free--if we let it. You will never see the contemporary Christian music industry or its music in the same way again after reading this book." --JOASH P. THOMAS, public theologian and author of The Justice of Jesus