The conversation encourages audiences to understand The Martins's music as a cultural practice connected to the Arkansas backcountry. No Sympathy For the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism. Judy Martin Hess lives in Columbus, Georgia with her husband Jake Hess Jr, and their four children. Los Angeles, CA: Roadside Attractions, 2010. And both black and white gospel have "borrowed those aspects, reinterpreting them for their own cultures" and purposes. Trey is 20 and lives and works in Nashville only a few miles from his mom. [5] Jonathan Martin (b. Its fans and participants aspire to transcend or dissolve regional expectations, theological boundaries, and denominational classifications. This pan-stylistic hybridity was apparent in the group's repertoire before their Gaither affiliation. It is difficult to lend much credence to this account unless Gloria Gaither's opinion and judgment plays a much more determinative role in the Gaither image and Homecoming productions than is generally allowed or assumed. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_42', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_42').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Each video or concert is a variation on a format: Bill and Gloria Gaither invite many of the aging stars of southern gospel's mid-twentieth-century golden age to join them and their musical friends, peers, and rising stars from southern gospel and a range of subgenres on the more traditional and conventional sides of North American Christian musiccountry gospel, bluegrass, inspirational, and choral and hymnody. Yet it is a mistake to treat southern gospel as wholly synonymous with white gospel. For more on links between country and gospel, see Douglas Harrison, "Grace to Catch a Falling Soul: Country, Gospel, and Evangelical Populism in the Music of Dottie Rambo," in Walking the Line: Country Music Lyricists and the American Culture, edited by Roxanne Harde and Thomas Alan Holmes (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), 7796. The core of this essay began as a conference paper for the 2013 conference of the Society for American Music. Her reply offers quick-witted banter and comic reinforcement of the widespread assumptionabetted by the Gaither Music Companythat The Martins's southern gospel is an artistically and spiritually serious form of sacred song from people who are proud of their pietistic primitivism. Updated: June 20, 2015 Biography ID: 102744141 In the final decades of the twentieth century, these disagreements opened up a fault line between southern gospel and CCM, with each camp pursuing styles of music that implied divergent theories of musical evangelism. She keeps it real and points the way out of despair with an admonishing heart. Nominated in the "Gospel/Contemporary Christian Music" category, CCM soloist Natalie Grant attended the ceremony, only to leave before the show ended. Nor is its cultural function exclusively or even primarily of scholarly interest for what it may tell us about southern whiteness in an ever more racially diverse and pluralistic world. The collective effect forms the social imaginary, a way to understand self- and group-concepts in postmodern life.15Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), 3. Today southern gospel is found in areas of the United States and lower Canada with concentrated populations of white fundamentalist evangelicals.5For more on the demographic profile of southern gospel see Harrison, Then Sings My Soul, 175180. "63Emphasis added. Southern gospel performers often emulate black gospel styleincluding arrangements, vocal techniques, and use of choirs as backing voices. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_34', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_34').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); For the past fifteen years or so, professional southern gospel groups, including The Martins, regularly dissolved and re-formed, or disbanded outright under the constant pecuniary strain of small crowds and even smaller free-will love offerings, and the upheavals these instabilities introduce into private life. During the last three decades of the twentieth century, these conservative evangelicals and fundamentalists ceased perceiving themselves in the Nixonian paradigm as a silent majority existing voicelessly and invisibly within mainstream US politics and culture. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2009. Recording companies experienced similar contractions. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_5', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_5').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Among these people, "the term southern gospel," as I have noted elsewhere, "was not used to describe the music [in its professional, commercialized form] until the 1970s and did not gain widespread use until the 1980s. Through southern gospel, participants "develop the capacity to think and act as modern pluralists or situational relativists when necessary, while retaining their identification with antimodern religious traditions that notionally believe in timeless, unchanging absolutes. At one point in the interview with The Martins, Gaither describes their music as "sophisticated," and Judy Martin Hess jokes that Gaither was not saying The Martins themselves are sophisticated, only their music. Christ's return coincides with the rapture of living Christians and the raising of the righteous dead to heaven. Joyce Martin-Sanders says she really can't believe her luck. But it also resonates with less militant but hardly less conservative evangelicalsmostly whitewho respond powerfully to its organizing themes: proud piety, traditionalist notions of family, and unapologetic sentimentality about evangelistic faith and religious community. April 13, 2013, accessed October 15, 2013, http://bber.unm.edu/. This dynamic was captured in the 2014 Grammys. The Arkansas imaginary has explanatory power for The Martins inasmuch as southern gospel music revoices and revalues the distortions and elisions of religious identity and cultural history central to the self-concept of many white fundamentalists and evangelicals. Certainly there are southern and rural imaginaries writ large and available for scholarly scrutiny. The Martins hail from Hamburg near the Louisiana border in Ashley County, in the southeast quadrant of the state, where the west Gulf coastal plain meets the Mississippi Delta. Man, Crosswalk.com. Dayton, The Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press, 1987); and Dodrill, "Evangelicalism Examined . Directed by Bill Gaither. Everyone sits on risers around a piano and sings: old songs, new songs, gospel songs, hymns, inspirational ballads, spiritual anthems, praise and worship choruses, even a few secular tunes now and then (Bill Withers's "Lean on Me," or an arrangement of Barry Manilow's "One Voice"). tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_36', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_36').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); This retreat from metropolis to outpost acknowledges that southern gospel is no longer a national phenomenon.37 Douglas Harrison, "Slouching Toward Pigeon Forge." Nathaniel Crawford (Eugene: Wifp and Stock, 2011), 84. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_22', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_22').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Southern gospel is overwhelmingly a product of evangelical fundamentalism. Clearly this story of The Martins's beginning as Homecoming Friends is important to them because they are depicted in the narrative as so natively talented that Bill Gaither purportedly allows them to perform without ever having himself auditioned them. This essay is interested primarily with professional southern gospel, which descends from convention singing but has been distinct from it since the 1930s and 1940s. For an overview of southern gospel's history and development within the wider domain of American gospel music, see Shearon et al., "Gospel Music," and Don Cusic, The Sound of Light: A History of Gospel Music (Madison: Popular Press, 1990). 'Cause I've waited my whole life. Premillenialists espouse a literalist interpretation of scripture that foresees the imminent return of Christ to earth. Audiocassette. Join the. Southern gospel has found itself in alliances with black gospel traditions and the black church. She tells Bill, "you have to hear these kids sing." The Gaither interview invites viewers to imagine them as representing a set of hill-country valuesa love of hunting, closeness to nature, self-sufficiency, and cultural isolationthat Blevins argues have over the course of two centuries come to stand in for all (white) Arkansans.58The cultural difference between the Ozark/Ouachita and Mississippi Delta regions of Arkansas is aptly captured by/in two recent films. See Shearon, email to H-Southern Music Network mailing list, March 27, 2009. The Martins's performance of pious authenticity plays out in public in ways that take common celebrity narratives (the underdog or, as in the story below, the innocent) and recodes them within the logic of the Arkansas imaginary. My focus on professional southern gospel music is distinct from the avocational or amateur tradition, known as convention singing. From these materials emerge patterns of description, allusive gestures, cultural maneuvers, and possibilities for self-concept through which southern gospel identities are constructed and reimagined. The Martins appear to possess an unadorned, God-given popularity that abides in their embodiment of white tradition and progress. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_27', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_27').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true });And it is that, to a certain extent. There is also the sense that The Martins's appeal reaches across the spectrum of religious beliefs and musical tastes that form the conservative end of the white Christian music entertainment market. This model "avoided conventional church approaches, using . Joyce Martin Sanders (b. January 6, 1968) lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband Paul, and she has two children. Joyce Martin Sanders lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband Paul, and she has two children. In short, whiteness remains strongly associated with southern gospel performance and fan culture.10Ibid., 203, especially note 53. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_10', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_10').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Front cover of Crowning Day (Dayton, VA: Ruebush-Kieffer, 1900). As one of three sibling members of the gospel group The Martins, she travels all over the place getting to do the thing she loves. He just finished getting a tech degree in musical engineering. . tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_35', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_35').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); The National Quartet Convention, southern gospel's annual flagship event that at its height in the mid-1990s drew crowds approaching 25,000 for four or five nights in a row, no longer attracts audiences or interest to warrant multiyear leases with the Kentucky Fair and Expo Center in Louisville. The southern gospel condemnation of CCM has long and deep roots.28Although CCM borrows heavily from mainstream secular music and performance styles, it does so to cultivate a canon of popular music that signifies Christianity's cultural relevance and the music's evangelistic savvy, while claiming a special status derived from CCM's pious commitments to conservative evangelical values and theological positions. Joyce Martin is a well known gospel singer. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_20', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_20').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); In its early decades, CCM's creative and cultural home was Nashville and many performers and professionals still work there. Jennifer Lena has exhorted scholars of music culture to deemphasize sounds and instead examine "social structures and collective actions. "61Anthony Harkins, Hillbilly: A Cultural History of an American Icon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 7. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_61', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_61').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Yet many of the white, conservative, and fundamentalist Christian consumers who are the target audience for this kind of Christian entertainment merchandise may well see something quite different. Heilbut notes that this vibrancy is driven by the rise of name-it-and-claim-it prosperity gospel in the black church, which is intensely homophobic and discourages its members from thinking in "broad sociological" categories in favor of a self-aggrandizing theology that links spiritual well-being with personal wealth (See "The Gospel Church and the Ruining of Gay Lives: An Interview with Anthony Heilbut," interview by Douglas Harrison, ReligionDispatches.com, July 30, 2013, accessed January 28, 2014, http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/culture/6221/the_gospel_church_and_the_ruining_of_gay_lives%3 A_an_interview_with_anthony_heilbut/; and Heilbut, The Fan Who Knew Too Much: Aretha Franklin, the Rise of the Soap Opera, Children of the Gospel Church, and Other Meditations [New York: Knopf, 2012]). Fortunately, new and forthcoming work in the study of southern gospel is beginning to scrutinize Gloria Gaither's role as a Christian entrepreneur, thinker, and writer much more closely. "Southern" gospel has its own difficulties, not least the fact that not all gospel from, of, or appealing to people in the South is a white enterprise. This period was followed by the mobilization of right-leaning Protestants (and many conservative Catholics) into a political base for the Republican Party in the Reagan Era and a power base for evangelical leaders (including Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, Pat Robertson'sand later Ralph Reed'sChristian Coalition, and, more recently, Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, and Tony Perkins's Family Research Council); and the not-entirely unrelated realignments within conservative and fundamentalist Protestantism wrought by the rise of non-denominational evangelical mega-churches and the Tea Party. This essay is interested primarily with professional southern gospel, which descends from convention singing but has been distinct from it since the 1930s and 1940s. Yes she is a gospel singer and her last name is now sanders Is Evangelist Joyce Rogers married? tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_50', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_50').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); southern gospel audiences have historically bonded with performers who come to fame through place-based narratives of discovery. The interplay of praxis and imagination is crucial. Joyce Martin-Sanders photos, including production stills, premiere photos and other event photos, publicity photos, behind-the-scenes, and more. In addition to these sources, my own use of social imaginary theory is indebted as well to Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998). After Grant's divorce from Gary Chapman, her symbolic function in southern gospel expanded to include the corrupting effect of musical compromises on personal morality and the heternormative family.Southern gospel's disdain of CCM can come off as a kind of "Sister Bertha Better Than You" self-righteousness.27Here, I am borrowing an image first popularized by Ray Stevens in "Mississippi Squirrel Revival," on He Thinks He's Ray Stevens (Universal, 1987, MCAC-5517). His interview enacts a modern gospel version of the venerable Arkansas Traveler colloquy in which a high-born southerner (the Traveler) engages an Arkansas Squatter in a dialogue about the differences of class and geography.60Bill Clinton's presidential campaign used the Traveler name and image as a way to strengthen his populist appeal running against a Washington insider. tippy('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_1524_1_23', { content: jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_1524_1_23').html(), placement: 'bottom', theme: 'sosp', arrow: false, allowHTML: true }); Within commercial Christian music, most white fundamentalist fans and professionals left cold by CCMand committed to traditional modes of evangelistic outreachcoalesced around "southern" gospel. The videos still air regularly on many local-access religious television channels, but sales today are largely driven through merchandizing at concerts, the Gaither, "Gospel hymns" refer to a repertoire of American sacred songs that "first appeared in religious revivals during the 1850s, but which flourished with the urban revivalism that arose in the English-speaking world in the last third of the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth century." These congregations structured worship, congregational culture, and church outreach to target "those who had never established a relationship with Christ and the Church, and those trying to reconnect" (Lester Ruth, "Lex Agendi, Lex Orandi: Toward an Understanding of Seeker Services as a New Kind of Liturgy," Worship 70, no. Such work is as welcome as it is needed. See David Fillingim, "A Flight From Liminality: 'Home' in Country and Gospel Music," Studies in Popular Culture 20, no. Jonathan Martin and his wife, Dara, live in Des Moines with their six children (Craig Harris, ", In the 1990s and early 2000s, Gaither Homecoming was popular on the now-defunct TNN cable channel. The MartinsJoyce Martin McCullough, Judy Martin Hess, and Jonathan Martingrew up in Hamburg, Ark., (pop. Its primitive construction and the faded color photo intensify the contrast between rustic lifeways and the warmly lit, generously appointed, and contemporarily decorated set in which The Martins appear comfortable, coiffed, and professionally poised. . But I'll say this: I've never been more honored to sing about Jesus and for Jesus. My use of "evangelical" follows George Marsden's, denoting Protestant thought and action shaped by Reformed theology. More conventional black gospel singers (such as Angie Primm and the late Jessy Dixon, both of whom have appeared on Gaither Homecoming videos) and black gospel choirs are generally held in high regard in southern gospel. Joyce Martin Sanders is listed in the credits for the following albums: Year Artist Album Role ; 2013: Jason Crabb: Love Is Stronger: Guest Vocals : Joyce Martin Sanders. A journal about real and imagined spaces and places of the US South and their global connections. Joyce Martin is married to Paul Michael Sanders, who has had periodic jobs as a southern gospel singer.

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