Lauren daigle concerts 2018

There was a time – several times, actually — when contemporary Christian music artists were groundbreaking: When Larry Norman created the genre by scandalously putting spiritual words to rock music in the 1970s; when Amy Grant’s pairing of pop and proselytizing put her atop the charts in the ‘90s.

In recent decades, though, Christian music has followed the leads of secular music and simply put a spiritual spin on it.

New Christian singer Lauren Daigle is unquestionably talented, with a powerful voice and a magnetic stage presence, as she showed with a concert Saturday at Reading’s Santander Arena.

But how she has become the highest-charting female Christian artist in 20 years is a mystery of biblical proportions.

Daigle’s music has a lovely, uplifting message, but hardly one we haven’t heard before.

And her songs were hardly challenging.

Her voice was very much something we’ve heard before: throughout the 20-song, hour-and-45-