Reformed Rap

I have become totally convinced that reformed theology best reflects the truth of the scripture. The five sola's that emerged from the reformation, Sola Fide,Sola Gratia,Sola Christus ,Sola Scriptura and Sola Deo Gloria  became the battle cry against Catholic dogma. What followed later are some of the best confessions of faith that have stood the test of time.

From the Westminster Confession of Faith , the London Baptist Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism,Belgic Confession, Canons of Dordt and a few others that emerged from the reformation , are staples of reformed teaching. They should never be put on a pedestal even close to scripture, but one thing they all have in common is a deep and total reverence for God's word, and a desire to explain it in a systematics way. If you read any of them you will encounter teaching about justification, imputation , expiation,propitiation etc...

So what does this have to do with rap? Now I confess that in general I'm no fan of rap . In the secular world rap music is crude,sexual and violent. It has no redeeming elements at all. But one thing I will say , its rhythmic and if its done well musically , you recall  the beat. Recently within rap/hip-hop a couple of Christian artist have started to emerge as stand out rappers. A couple of Blogs I read linked to their material  and being curious , I had to check it out.

The two artist I checked are Curtis Allen(the Voice) and Shai Linne (the artist featured above) . The reason I featured the song above is it raps like a confession . It is a rapping Catechism . What impressed me is its depth of understanding of the doctrines of grace but what blew me away was the use of solid doctrinal terms as mentioned above. Reformed theology is shaping these artist lyrical rhymes and what they are delivering are messages that are solid meat . Compare what is rapped about in the above song with much of contemporary worship songs or Christian pop music. No comparison.

The  medium of hip-hop or rap is nothing new in the sense many cultures would use a rhythmic use of words to recite stories or even scripture. The Rabbi's of Jesus day could recite the whole Torah in a chant. Singing or rhyming is known to be a better way to recall things then just spoken word. Hebrew and Aramaic are very rhythmic . So they would lend themselves to recitation that way.Rap lends itself to teaching scripture truths because like the chanters of the past , they are the new story tellers.

That is why it is so cool that these artist will be listened to by those who will probaly not rush out and buy any of the confessions that I mentioned. In general we know from poll after poll, the youth in the Christian community have a very shallow doctrinal understanding. So it is exciting to know that if these artist are listened to , it will be like being exposed to the great confessions in a fresh new way. Hopefully it will inspire those who check out both Allen and Linne to do some research on the doctrines they mention . So I just might get out my bass boost and discover my inner rapper . Rap on my Christian reformed brothers .