Fifty years of Christian rock

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, February 12th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: five decades of faith and rock ‘n roll.

Petra is the longest-running band in the history of Christian music. They’ve been at it since 1972. That’s when four students at the Christian Training Center in Fort Wayne, Indiana, got together and formed the band.

BROWN: It was a group that would go on to sell over 10 million records and win multiple Dove and Grammy Awards.

Now, more than 50 years and multiple lineup changes later, Petra has a new album.

According to WORLD’s music critic Arsenio Orteza, it does their legacy proud.

ARSENIO ORTEZA: Petra wasn’t the first Christian rock band. 

The 1960s British combo The Pilgrims probably deserves that distinction. Petra wasn’t even the first American Christian rock band. But Petra does go back pretty far—all the way to the days when most churches thought rock and Jesus shouldn’t mix. 

So far, Petra is also the only Christian band still going half a century after its birth. True, the group retired in 2005. But it un-retired in 2013 for a 40th-anniversary tour. In 2022 it un-retired again for a 50th-anniversary tour. And the lineup that’s touring—Bob Hartman, John Schlitt, John Lawry, Greg Bailey, and Cristian Borneo—has just released a new album, Hope. 

MUSIC: [“Filthy Lucre” by Petra]

It’s the first new Petra recording of original material since 2003. It’s also among the band’s best.

MUSIC: [“Filthy Lucre” by Petra]

This is “Filthy Lucre,” the new album’s opening song. 

In typical Petra fashion, it combines hard rock with an overt and easily understood biblical message—in this case, that the spiritually mature must not be lovers of money. 

Also: like the majority of Petra’s songs, it was written by the band’s guitarist Bob Hartman.

Hartman founded Petra 54 years ago with the guitarist Greg Hough, the bassist John DeGroff, and the drummer Bill Glover. It was these guys who signed with Myrrh Records in 1973 and that recorded the group’s first two albums: Petra in 1974 and Come and Join Us in 1977. The latter album opened and closed with a song that would become associated with Petra even though the group didn’t write it. It was a cover of a U.K. hit written by the ex-Zombie Rod Argent for his band, Argent.

MUSIC: [“God Gave Rock and Roll to You” by Petra]

Petra would go on to record “God Gave Rock and Roll to You” again for its 1984 album Beat the System. 

MUSIC: [“God Gave Rock and Roll to You” by Petra]

The lead singer in both cases was Greg X. Volz. But the 1977 and 1984 versions sound very different, mainly because during that seven-year period, all of the original musicians except Hartman were replaced, sometimes more than once. The band also moved Volz from guest vocalist on albums two and three, to full-time member. 

By album number four, Never Say Die, Petra finally had a consistent and distinctive vocal identity.

MUSIC: [“The Coloring Song” by Petra]

The group’s revolving-door membership policy would continue throughout most of the ’80s. But its choice of producers and its apparent desire to blend in with the ever-changing sounds of mainstream rock also affected the band’s sound. 

The five albums that Petra recorded during the Volz years, for instance, were produced by Jonathan David Brown. They often sounded like a clever synthesis of Kansas, Journey, and Toto.

MUSIC: [“Stand Up” by Petra]

Then, Brown was replaced behind the production console by John and Dino Elefante. Volz himself left in 1986 and was replaced by John Schlitt. These changes resulted in the heaviest-sounding Petra yet.

MUSIC: [“Hit Where You Live” by Petra]

John Schlitt was well suited to late-’80s Petra. He’d been the lead singer of the secular band "Head East" before getting fired in 1980 due to his addiction to drugs and booze. He eventually became a Christian, cleaned up, and auditioned for Petra’s lead-vocal slot. The rest, as they say, is history.

But no band can go from strength to strength forever, and by the late ’80s there were signs that Petra was treading water. 

There was a praise album of mostly other people’s compositions, then a re-recording of that album in Spanish. Another praise album followed in 1997, then an unplugged collection. At one point, Hartman even retired, briefly leaving the lineup with no original members. And, yes, there was a third praise album.

But if the 21st century found Petra coming to an end, it was doing so not with a whimper but a bang. 

MUSIC: [“Jekyll & Hyde” by Petra]

The 2003 album Jekyll & Hyde contained its most heavily metallic music ever.

MUSIC: [“Jekyll & Hyde” by Petra]

Nothing on the band’s new album, Hope, sounds quite that hard. But coming from five guys who’ve only performed reunion tours during the last dozen years, it’s confident and limber, with something for almost everyone, stylistically speaking. 

MUSIC: [“Oxygen” by Petra]

The song “Oxygen” even adds Jamaican rhythms to their palette. And why not? 

For a group that believes God gave rock and roll to you, the idea that he gave reggae to you as well isn’t much of a stretch.

MUSIC: [“Oxygen” by Petra]

I’m Arsenio Orteza.

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