May 1, 2021
Tracing an early front in the culture wars to a trio of evangelical opponents of rock music in the 1950s and '60s.
By the 1960s, three prominent voices had risen to the top. Frank Garlock headed the music department of Bob Jones University, while Bob Larson was a musician and DJ before taking his place in the anti-rock world. (“As a rock musician, I knew what it meant to feel the counterfeit anointing of Satan,” he claimed.) But perhaps the most well-known of the three was David A. Noebel, an Evangelical who was part of the anticommunist Christian Crusade. Noebel set his sights on one of the biggest bands of the era—the Beatles, whom he campaigned against in a series of lectures and religious tracts.