"This whole question of being a 'Christian singer' as opposed to just a singer is a very important one to many people," said Grant a few weeks ago. "I feel a great responsibility toward the audience that has helped to establish me; at the same time, it would be nice if I could reach others as well. . . . People used to tell me that the problem is what you're singing; it may be pop music, but it's too religious. Personally, I think the problem is bucks - promotional dollars. I'm signed to a record company (Myrrh Records) that has never distributed records in non-Christian outlets. It's a marketing problem, not a music problem. We've sold close to 900,000 copies of my Age to Age album - that's almost platinum - and I've never had a song on pop radio stations."
The daughter of a Nashville doctor, Grant began singing and writing her own songs as a teenager. Her decision to sing modern religious music came about, she says, from years of study of the Bible, not from a sudden "born-again" experience.
"That's one reason I started writing songs, because I didn't want to impose my religion on anyone," she said. "This way, the audience can sit back and draw its own conclusions, and I feel a certain freedom, because I've communicated what I think, and the audience's interpretation of it is its own responsibility.
"Sometimes the organized church feels awkward about someone who doesn't work within the church. They'll say to me, 'Why are there these posters of you? What are you promoting?' And I'll say, 'My art, and the feeling I'm trying to communicate through my songs. It would be silly for me to say, 'This is who God is'; I don't have any answers.
" 'Are you using us to be a success, are you playing off Christianity?' some people will ask me. I'm playing to a very evangelistic group of people, even though I'm not particularly evangelistic myself."
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