WORDS Virginia Small
Cast your mind back to when Britney Spears, one of the most popular rock singers in the world, announced her commitment to virginity.
The media picked up on the story quickly, as though it was something novel and innovative. Then, not long after, they reported Britney changed her mind after meeting Justin Timberlake and declared sex was not ‘such a big deal’.
Rebecca St James, one of the most popular Christian rock singers in the world has made a similar declaration to remain chaste until her marriage, except Rebecca plans to remain true to her convictions. She was reported by Reuters last year as saying she felt ‘sorry’ for Britney for having a change of heart.
The Grammy award-winning 27-year-old says she felt sorry for Britney because she believes mainstream pop stars are pushed in a particular way, for instance being told to dress in revealing clothes and in portraying values of promiscuity to young people.
‘Artists need to be more responsible in the values they choose to project and young people need to be more careful in choosing role models’, she explains. ‘I would hate to think that at the end of my life I had led people the wrong way.’
In the US she recently criticised the television show Desperate Housewives as a negative role model for entertainment. ‘The media promotes lies to women that you have to look like models, you have to look a certain way and that women don’t need men.’
As a result, she says, young women are saying ‘yes’ to too much.
Rebecca’s voice of Christian moderation can easily be dismissed in a cynical, secular world where excess is glorified and we are encouraged to do what makes us happy, but it is this very freedom which Rebecca says needs boundaries.
An emphasis on restraint or abstinence is also not unique to Christianity; it resonates throughout many religious faiths.
Rebecca’s latest book is SHE (an acronym for Safe, Healthy and Empowered woman of God), which was co-written with American Lynda Hunter Bjorkland. It deals with what these women perceive as the necessary physical, spiritual and financial boundaries that young women should construct in their lives.
For example, Rebecca says it’s OK for women to be feminists but their values should be Bible-based, that is focusing on protection of themselves and others, purity of thought and deed, maintaining good health and mentoring each other.
Spiritual and emotional intimacy is another value which she says women need to reclaim because communication has broken down at the family table and that, she says, is where intimacy has a base. She believes that for many, the family unit has become a disjointed entity.
‘Many families need to rediscover intimacy with each other and God’, she says.
She explains that society at large can reclaim biblical values by not allowing physical abuse and by encouraging us to create financial boundaries, thus avoiding over-commitment.
‘The Bible is all about wisdom’, she says.
It can sometimes seem to the believers among us that everyone else has grown very weary of Christianity. Christians can sometimes feel pathetic misfits or vulnerable in a self-absorbed Western society. But on that note Rebecca offers hope. She says that since the terrorism of September 11 many people are looking for answers and something to believe in.
‘This is a time for believers to be reaching out with love’, she says.
Australian-born and US-based, Rebecca describes herself as not belonging to any particular denomination of Christianity but rather has seized on the basic beliefs of Christianity as her life mission.
At the same time she has built an impressive career. She has had 17 top ten singles on the Christian charts, has co-authored four books and won a Grammy in 2000 for Best Rock Gospel album. Her latest album Live Worship has just gone gold.
Living in Nashville, Tennessee, since she was 14, when her father was offered a posting there, her beginnings were not easy. Not long after moving to the US her father lost his job and Rebecca and her mother took work cleaning houses in order to help provide for the family of seven children.
‘We prayed every day and at the end of each day it seemed that God would give us an answer to our prayers. For example, not long after Dad lost his job someone came and offered us a car.’
Rebecca’s music career began when she made her debut album in 1994. She’s since made seven more and has been awarded Christian music’s highest accolade, winning the Dove Awards Favourite Female Artist.
You would think such success could easily translate into mainstream pop but Christian pop is limited and is often at odds with the secular music world.
Artists like Madonna have captivated audiences dressed in raunchy leather wearing a cross and singing songs such as Like A Virgin and models wear over-sized rosary beads and crosses as fashion accessories, but it seems those who sincerely try to embody Christian religious messages are relegated to a separate universe.
Rebecca is unfazed by the limitations of Christian music. She says while she would welcome one of her songs being accepted into mainstream pop music, it isn’t her aim.
‘If it moves across it would be fulfilling God’s purpose’, she says, but hastens to add that some Christian artists have been embraced by mainstream pop, citing one of the biggest bands in the US, Switchfoot, as an example.
‘They are all Christians and their message is clear to Christians’, she says.
The Christian music scene is stronger in the US but only in its fledgling phase in Australia. Rebecca says there is an abundance of Christian television stations and radio stations all around the US that provide outlets for Christian music.
Rebecca also gives some time doing missionary work, for example spending two months recently in a Romanian orphanage. One of her biggest heroes is Blessed Mother Teresa. ‘I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from her, she looked after everyone and did what Jesus would have done.’
Rebecca maintains a hectic pace giving over 200 concerts a year, mostly in the US, but also travelling to Europe to perform every two years and visiting Australia when she can.
She writes most of her own material and is about to record a new album, saying her music brings her closer to God. ‘You can say something in a song much more powerfully than a sermon.’
Check out the Rebecca St James website at www.rsjames.com
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