Smells Like Spirit: On Adam Voith’s Recommended If You Like

Cards on the table: there is no God, and Christian rock cannot achieve greatness. Chances are you agree with the latter; to each their own with the former. John Jeremiah Sullivan, in his GQ classic “Upon This Rock” of 2004, claimed the genre had “excellence-proofed itself”: It’s message music for listeners who know the message cold, and, what’s more, it operates under a perceived responsibility—one the artists embrace—to “reach people.”