Faith and the Top 40

Here's an article from the St. Petersburg Times called "Faith and the Top 40." It looks at the growing overlap between "Christian" and "secular" music recently and talks about how difficult it is to label people as artists. R. Kelly and Kanye West are featured. I was struck by this excerpt:

Bonner, senior writer for GospelFlava.com, recently wrote an editorial praising Kelly's CD. Christians shouldn't try to determine if Kelly's lifestyle qualifies him to sing about God, he said. "Really, what qualifies one to sing the good news of Jesus Christ is having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ," Bonner said. "When you hear what R. Kelly is saying in the U Saved Me album, there's no way he can say this without having a relationship with Christ."

I'm keeping my mouth shut about R. Kelly, but how different would things be if more Christian people had been making a similar point about U2 from the start, instead of raking them over the coals for the last 2 decades?