Petra god gave rock and roll to you6/23/2023 ![]() The band toured internationally (a feat still relatively rare among Christian artists), performed at the mainstream Farm Aid benefit and continued to bring a new level of professionalism and showmanship to the live Christian music scene. Volz in the mid ’80s, eventually reaching new levels of success after the arrival of vocalist John Schlitt. The group survived the departure of popular lead singer Greg X. For a long time, in fact, Petra was virtually the “only game in town” for rock & roll fans who wanted to hear a Christian message. Still, all rabble-rousers aside, Petra managed to create some of Christian music’s most treasured recordings. ![]() (It is, perhaps, a telling sign of the Christian community’s former resistance to Petra that the band won a GRAMMY before they ever won a Dove Award!) As one of the movement’s trailblazers, Petra bore the brunt of the controversy, enduring picketers, protesters and public denunciations by prominent Christian leaders. Petra was often the target of irate parents and pastors who were convinced that rock & roll was the “devil’s music” and that Christian rockers were “wolves in sheep’s clothing” sent to snatch their young people from the straight and narrow. But that career has not been without its struggles. ![]() Its debut album released on Myrrh Records in 1974, which began a professional career that now spans more than three decades with seven million albums sold. Wayne, Ind., in 1972, playing in a Christian coffee shop known as The Adam’s Apple. Few artists had as much influence in the formation and growth of what has come to be known as “contemporary Christian music” as did Petra. While that may be a term seldom used in the 21st century, in the ’70s and ’80s it was the cool term for an emerging genre of music that combined traditionally “worldly” music with lyrics expressing devout faith in Jesus. But to many Christian music fans over 20, Petra is rock – “Christian rock,” that is.
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