Mass media and the culture it carries have been identified as a key site of conflict in the so-called culture wars, pitting evangelical Christians against mainstream American society. Paradoxically, Evangelicals historically have appropriated the spectrum of forms of popular culture in America and secular commercial practices for evangelizing vehicles and, at the same time, contributed an evangelical voice to that culture. The author argues that Evangelicals' use of media has moved into a new level of sophistication enabling effective entry into the national discourse, partly through dramatic growth of contemporary Christian music. Given this phenomenon, the author examines issues of identity and social forces driving the subculture; he also explores potential influences or effects on the broader secular culture. Using a range of cultural theory, the author argues that the movement toward religious messages in the form of popular music enables the subculture of evangelical Christians to resist against a dominant secular society by taking possession of a cultural form and redefining it as their own, empowering them to effect an influential voice in the cultural discourse of American society.Evangelical Christians in American society historically have maintained a paradoxical relation with popular culture and the media that carries it (Schultze, 1986(Schultze, , 1990(Schultze, , 1996. On the one hand, evangelical (and Fundamentalist) Christians hold a certain distrust of popular culture, maintaining that, by and large, it represents a key corrupting force on the nation's values and is hostile toward their Christian values as well as

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Religion is now, as it virtually always has been, an integral part of American life. Nine in 10 Americans claim belief in a higher power, 8 in 10 say prayer is a part of daily life, seven in 10 identify with a religious group, better than 4 in 10 attend religious services in any given week, and the faithful give nearly $40 billion a year to support their beliefs (Dart and Allen, 1993).Religion's influence extends into the public realm, as wellexplicitly or Gormly

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