Dear Teresa:

Johnny Cash did become a Christian. Many of the Country singers are Christians, or at least they say they are. The issue, however, is whether or not the music promotes sin. Most Country singers have good songs and not so good songs.

Those songs that promote drunkenness, adultery, divorce, and such should be avoided. I personally know a woman who had marital problems and left her husband for another man.  Her family was not supportive as they were religious and did not believe in divorce. She felt guilty and thought about returning to her husband. Then she heard on the radio a popular Country song at the time. I don't remember the name of the song, but the refrain said something like, "I don't care what my people say, I am going to love him anyway."

Largely due to this song she decided remain with her boyfriend and not go back to her husband. While she may have done that anyway, the fact is that the presence of this song helped her to remain in her adultery.

There are Country singers who seem to sing nothing but drunken, adulterous, divorce songs, but most today sing many good songs. Thus, you have to take it case by case.

The same analysis applies to other genre of music. Some singers are not worth listening to at all, others may have a mix of good and bad music.

As for classical music, and other forms of music, that has negative effects Italian psychiatrist Roberto Assagioli studied the effects of music back some sixty plus years ago. In a quick summary, he said, "The harmful effects of music on the body and mind are due to various factors. The most important of these is the kind or quality of the music." There are many other factors, which go into more detail than what I can do here.

Assagioli reports on a study by MacDonald Hastings on cases of "Musicogenic Epilepsy". These people actually had epileptic fits brought on by music (F. Howes, Man, Mind, Music, 1948, p. 158).

Of the types of music likely to produce negative effects can be organized into four groups. These groups may be exampled in classical music, jazz, rock, country, folk, and other genre of music.

The First Group "is the music that arouses the instincts and appeals to the lower passions, that excites by its sensual enchantment." There are many forms of music and/or songs today that fit this group. Assagioli mentioned music of this kind to include "Venusberg scene in Wagner's Tannhauser and certain parts of Salome by Richard Strauss.

The Second Group "consists of those that are very melancholy and depressing, as they express languor and weariness, grief and distress, agony and despair." Some pieces of Chopin, especially his nocturnes, are examples of this type .

The Third Group "consists of those musical compositions which, while representing interesting experiments in new forms of musical expression, reflect, with their frequent dissonances, their lack of form, their irregular and frenzied rhythms, the modern mind in its condition of stress and strain." Jazz is an example of this.

The Fourth Group consists of music that may "not directly stimulating the passions nor inducing depression and discordance, can be harmful owing solely to the fact that it arouses and nourishes an excessive state of emotion which, when it is not transmuted into constructive activity, weakens the character." This type is often that music "wallowing in sentimentality." The music that helped the adulterous woman I mentioned may have been of this type.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary