Country music arose in the 1920s from the American South, also the so-called Bible belt, beginning with the first family of country music, The Carter Family.  The Carters were raised under the influence of gospel music, an earlier iteration than even country.  However, their “gospel” also influenced country.  “Gospel,”  which was a distortion, and increasingly so, of the actual saving gospel, originated from late nineteenth century revivalism, even as did the Charismatic movement in the United States.  Revivalism, Gospel, Charismaticism, and Country dovetail at the Carters.  One of the original three Carters, Maybelle, had a daughter, June, who married Johnny Cash, her second husband and his second wife.

One of the most notable of the Carter songs remains one of the most famous ever country songs, Will the Circle Be Unbroken.  The song is sung every year at the induction ceremony of the Country Music Hall of Fame.  Its lyrics concern the death, funeral, and mourning of the narrator’s mother, the hope being that she went to heaven.

Some of the earliest country “hits” were explicitly religious in nature.  The Grand Old Opry, the longest running radio broadcast in United States history, was held at Union Gospel Auditorium in Nashville, TN from 1943 to 1974, with its peaked, stained glass windows and wooden church pews.  The Johnny Cash Show ran 58 episodes from 1979 to 1981, each ending with a “gospel song” in honor to a promise he made his mother.

For education purposes, I watched the just produced Ken Burns’s documentary on PBS, Country Music.  Maybe he misrepresents country.  For the most part, I don’t think so.  Nothing in country is a true gospel.  Country isn’t reverent at all.  I don’t see any indications of biblical sanctification in a single country singer in the history of country music.  Many of the stories are alcohol, fornication, foul language, divorce, drugs, and partying.  For some, church follows on a Sunday morning after a Saturday night of lasciviousness.  It is not a gospel of actual repentance or a true, scriptural Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus is a placebo.

Many country stars and heroes learned music in religious homes and honed in revivalist churches, only to use it for sin and self-gratification.  I don’t know every history, but it would break my heart as a parent.  No Christian, country western star or legend, Kenny Chesney, recorded the song, Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven, that matches the philosophy of country.  Nancy Pearcy in her book, Total Truth, writes, “Artists are often the barometers of society, and by analyzing the worldviews embedded in their works we can learn a great deal about how to address the modern mind more effectively.”  Everybody Wants to Go to Heaven is a song about a man explaining his life to a preacher, one of alcohol and immorality, and Chesney sings first as the preacher:

“Don’t you wanna hear him call your name
When you’re standin’ at the pearly gates?”
I told the preacher, “Yes I do
But I hope he don’t call today.”

Chesney knows of what he speaks.  That sounds like country to me.  Just keep kicking that can down the road, or even better, conform your view of the grace of God and even God Himself to your licentious desires or tastes.  Michael Ray sings a song, titled, Real Men Love Jesus, with this chorus:

They like Saturday nights out on the town,
Sunday morning coming down,
A pretty girl out on the dance floor spinnin’,
Round and round and round,
Cold beer and a dirty hand,
Calling home every chance they can,
To say, ‘I love you’,
They don’t need a reason,
Real men love Jesus.

The conclusion of the chorus reflects nothing that is sung before it.  Real men dance and drink beer and call home, and, oh, love Jesus — not the Jesus of the Bible.  Trace Adkins in his song, Jesus and Jones, ends with the words:

I need to find a little middle ground
Between ‘let ’er rip’ and settlin’ down

Christianity is not a pursuit of middle ground, although this is what I witness of the professing Christians who are also country music fans.  The faith of the Bible is not a resolution between one side and the other.  It is the choice of just the one and the rejection of the other.

Country music always has been and especially today is an attempt at validating a selfish lifestyle that is in no way biblical or honoring to God.  It cheapens faith and distorts the gospel, leaving its adherents twice the children of hell they once were.