Scholarly Resources from Concordia Seminary

Sectional 3: How Hip-Hop and Lutheran Thought Can Favorably Serve the Church and the Culture

The expectation in rap music is that artists will bluntly state what they mean to say. The Gospel message, too, is very clear and blunt. For that reason, they pair well. As rap music and hip-hop customs have spread throughout the known world, and in particular, to suburban youth, it is nearly impossible to talk about missions or cultural engagement without addressing the rap listener. Historically, Lutherans have excelled in both verbiage and practice as it relates to the two realms (temporal and spiritual) and the two types of righteousness (passive and active). For this reason, arguably, Lutherans do right to understand hip-hop culture and how to produce artists who can speak relevantly to matters of faith (justification by faith alone), the duality of the human experience (temporal and spiritual realms) and rap music as a vocation. This course will bind these affairs together, with the goal of seeing how God can use the arts to teach, shape minds and restrain evil by way of sound Lutheran theology in harmony with melodic sounds and heavy bass.