The Official Media Have Barely Noticed, but David

THE crowd in the war-memorial coliseum was a slung hash of the premillennial middle class—gaunt-looking slackers in Doc Martens and consignment-store flannel shirts, and black, clean-cut kids in white Ts and lettermen’s jackets; suburban moms with frizzy perms, and little kids eating pink cotton candy. Nobody smoked even in the parking lot outside, which was dotted with utility vans from places like First Eel River Baptist Church. They booed before the show when it was announced that there would be no mosh pit or body surfing. They whooped “Alleluia!” and “Praise Jesus!” when the lead singer ended the night with a sermon that sounded like Ecclesiastes meets Kurt Cobain, about the vanity of all that is not Jesus.

It was a concert by DC Talk, a band that plays everything from hip-hop to grunge to crooning urban soul to unplugged ballads—three guys who met at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and have gone on to make a name for themselves as the hottest act in what’s known as Christian contemporary music, which in turn is on the cutting edge of a burgeoning pop Christian culture in America.

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David Scott

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THE crowd in the war-memorial coliseum was a slung hash of the premillennial middle class—gaunt-looking slackers in Doc Martens and consignment-store flannel shirts, and black, clean-cut kids in white Ts and lettermen’s jackets; suburban moms with frizzy perms, and little kids eating pink cotton candy. Nobody smoked even in the parking lot outside, which was dotted with utility vans from places like First Eel River Baptist Church. They booed before the show when it was announced that there would be no mosh pit or body surfing. They whooped “Alleluia!” and “Praise Jesus!” when the lead singer ended the night with a sermon that sounded like Ecclesiastes meets Kurt Cobain, about the vanity of all that is not Jesus.

It was a concert by DC Talk, a band that plays everything from hip-hop to grunge to crooning urban soul to unplugged ballads—three guys who met at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University and have gone on to make a name for themselves as the hottest act in what’s known as Christian contemporary music, which in turn is on the cutting edge of a burgeoning pop Christian culture in America.