02.12.07 An Insider’s Look At Christian Radio Pt.2: Defending “Safe”

According to one of Christianity Today’s recent articles on Christian radio, Derek Webb says…

“Safe for the family’ is a terrible and counterproductive slogan. If anything, artists are called to radical truth-telling, which can be very subversive, very dangerous. Artists should challenge what we believe. We can’t be safe any more than Jesus was safe.”

In defense of “safe” I offer a story.

We’re in line at Target.  My oldest girl, then just learning to talk, is standing in the cart dancing to the Jon Secada oozing from the speakers overhead.  The woman in front of us is on her cell phone.  The line moves forward.  But she doesn’t.  Gabriella stops dancing and yells, “Go, lady! Come on already!”

(It’s her mamma who talks like that in traffic, you know.  I’d never...)

Her brain is a tape recorder.  The microphone is always on.  And her mouth is a loudspeaker with no mute button.

I get that the Jesus you and I follow wasn’t safe - isn’t safe.  He upset the establishment, demanded we take up crosses (splinters and all), betray family and Caesar, shun conformity and get, in a word, dangerous. But that kind of dangerous is not what Christian radio stations are marketing themselves as the opposite of when labeling their broadcasts “safe.”

If we’re to understand what they do mean we can’t, first of all, separate “Safe” from “For The Whole Family.” “The Whole Family” is in my mini-van listening as I run errands.  And if something “safe” isn’t playing, those three little people in my backseat will step out of my Mazda MPV $#@*ing when we reach our destination.  Let me be even more blunt.  I don’t want my kids saying “dammit.” Ever.  So I choose not to put that word in their head needlessly.  I choose not to listen to Bob and Tom or Howard Stern or ESPN. Instead, I play a disc or turn to WAY-FM, which doesn’t claim to be “safe”, but certainly is.

But maybe that’s just me.  Maybe I’m naïve or kissing up to The Man.  So, what do radio stations say “safe” means?  I’ve asked. (Not sure why Christianity Today didn’t.) Turns out “safe” in Christian radio lingo is nothing more than a much-appreciated listener-demanded promise that nothing explicit will ever be heard on their station.  It’s a promise parents like me are glad stations make and keep everyday.

So, all this “the gospel isn’t safe” business is right on, but off base when used as grounds to criticize Christian radio’s pledge to protect my kids from the obscene.

My defense then of “safe” in radio slogans can be best summarized by quoting the great prophet Inigo Montoya from The Princes Bride: “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.”