Concerts of contemporary Christian worship music as a space of interaction between religion and popular culture

Abstract

This article explores the phenomenon of Christian contemporary worship concerts as a complex sociocultural and communicative form situated at the intersection of religious experience and mass culture. These events are examined as expressions of postsecular religiosity, which increasingly gravitates toward individualized, emotionally charged modes of spiritual participation that extend beyond the boundaries of traditional institutional frameworks. The concert environment is conceptualized not merely as a setting for musical performance, but as a multidimensional cultural text in which sacred meanings are transmitted, reinterpreted, and reformulated through the symbolic apparatus of popular culture. The stage, sound, lighting, imagery, performers’ rhetoric, and audience responses collectively form a coherent semiotic structure in which the sacred, in dynamic interaction with the profane, retains its religious core. Contemporary worship concerts are framed as a distinctive mode of faith experience, wherein the emotional connection between performer and audience plays a central role. This creates a communicative space marked by affective intensity, collective engagement, and aesthetic saturation – characteristics shaped by broader transformations within the historical and cultural landscape. The study underscores that such musical events generate a sense of deep personal involvement in a shared spiritual experience, thereby enhancing the authenticity and subjective significance of religious participation. Special attention is given to the hybridity of these concerts as texts that merge traditional religious narratives with contemporary formats of cultural expression. The analysis supports the view that these phenomena contribute to the emergence of new models of religious identity, formed at the confluence of sacred content and the mechanisms of contemporary communicative culture.