NASHVILLE, TN. (www.skillet.com) - Ardent/Lava recording artist
Skillet will be featured on an upcoming VH-1 News special, RELIGION: A POP CULTURE HISTORY. Interviewed last summer at the Creation Festival, the program will air at 11 am and 11 pm EST on 3/26, and 6 pm EST on 3/27, with future airdates to be announced.
VH-1 has released the following copy on the program:
Until a few years ago, religion and pop culture kept a safe distance from each other. Hollywood was reluctant to back movies and TV shows that treated religion seriously. Christian musicians were reluctant to make records that might compete in a godless pop marketplace. But in the changed landscape of the post-millennial, post-9/11 world, Hollywood seems to have found God, and men of the cloth seem to have found, in Hollywood, a chance to reach out to the masses in a way they never have before.
In the half-hour documentary RELIGION: A POP CULTURE HISTORY, VH1 charts the recent explosion of religion and pop, from the blockbuster movie "The Passion of the Christ" to Kanye West's hip-hop smash "Jesus Walks" to the aggressive marketing of Christian hard-rock bands to Hollywood's sudden interest in Kabbalah. We'll dip into history to look at "Davey and Goliath," an early attempt to promote Christianity through a TV show, and take viewers behind the scenes of such present-day phenomena as the marketing of "Jesus Is My Homeboy" t-shirts, the staging of a Christian version of Woodstock, and former child star Kirk Cameron's re-emergence as an evangelical Internet and TV host.
RELIGION: A POP CULTURE HISTORY is the next installment of a VH1 News series that began with the award-winning AIDS: A POP CULTURE HISTORY (2003) and has also included POLITICS: A POP CULTURE HISTORY (2004). In addition to movie and TV clips and vintage footage, the documentary features interviews with such key figures as Kanye West, Run-DMC's Reverend Run, born-again actor Stephen Baldwin, actor-turned-televangelist Kirk Cameron, Christian rockers Skillet, Audio Adrenaline and Rev. Al Sharpton.
Skillet's GRAMMY and Dove-nominated project COLLIDE is now approaching 200,000 units sold. Recently featured in the New York Times, Skillet closed out 2004 with one of the Top 100 Alternative Rock songs (R&R) of the year, and have toured with mainstream acts 3 Days Grace, Shinedown, Saliva, Earshot, Finger Eleven and more. In addition, their COLLIDE headline tour closed out last month, selling out and playing to capacity crowds all over the country.
