French Christian Boys Band GLORIOUS

A few minutes ago we were watching the 1:00 p.m. news on TF1, one of the main channels in France. Claire Chazal, probably the most influential female news broadcaster on French television, was giving the news.

Suddenly there was a story about Glorious, a group described as a "Christian boys band from Valence." It said that they became believers through the JMJ (an event Pope John Paul II started to reach out to young people) in France several years ago. Glorious is composed of 3 brothers in their 20s: Aurélien (Aurél), Benjamin (Jam), and Thomas (Tom) Pouzin. Their oldest brother Benoît (born in 1977) is a Catholic priest. Jam and Tom gave clear testimony of their faith in Christ in their interview. One of their albums has sold 60,000 copies, which is a huge number for a French Christian album. (This ain't the U.S., where the market is much larger).

At the end of the news story, Claire Chazal described their category of music as "praise and worship" (with a cute French accent), then translated it as "louange et adoration".

I haven't been this excited to see a Christian group on a main network since I saw Switchfoot sing "We Were Meant To Live For So Much More" on Late Night with Conan Obrien last fall in the U.S. I think that all the openness to talk about Christianity since the Pope's death is what opened the door to this story being aired.

I found Glorious' web site through Google. It is http://www.glorious.fr/. I have tried to keep up with the French Christian music market, at least the Protestant side of it. I look forward to purchasing one of Glorious' CDs at the huge Catholic bookstore La Procure http://www.laprocure.com. Their web site also sells "Jesus Freak" sweatshirts. They describe their two passions as being God and music. They have 2 albums "Glorious" and "Glorious et Libre" ("Glorious and Free").