Electric Church was a quasi-spiritual belief that electric music brings out emotion

Emotion

Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...

s, feelings, and creative ideas in people, and encourages spiritual

Spirituality

Spirituality can refer to an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality; an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being; or the “deepest values and meanings by which people live.” Spiritual practices, including meditation, prayer and contemplation, are intended to develop...

 maturity. It was popularized by Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

 and his band The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

The Jimi Hendrix Experience were an English-American psychedelic rock band that formed in London in October 1966. Comprising eponymous singer-songwriter and guitarist Jimi Hendrix, bassist and backing vocalist Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, the band was active until June 1969, in which...

, as well as other followers of psychedelic music

Psychedelic music

Psychedelic music covers a range of popular music styles and genres, which are inspired by or influenced by psychedelic culture and which attempt to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues-rock bands in the...

 in the 1960s.

In an interview on the Dick Cavett Show in 1969, Cavett asked Hendrix about the Electric Church. Hendrix replied by saying that he designed his music so that it would be able to go "inside the soul of the person, and awaken some kind of thing inside, because there are so many sleeping people". In an interview promoting his third album Electric Ladyland

Electric Ladyland

Electric Ladyland is the third and final album of new material by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, released in October 1968 on Reprise Records, catalogue 2RS 6307. It is the only Hendrix studio album professionally produced under his supervision. It topped the Billboard 200 album chart for two weeks in...

, Jimi Hendrix said "the influence the psychedelics have on one is truly amazing, and I only wish more people appreciated this belief and genre". When asked why he didn't name the album "Electric Church" instead of "Electric Ladyland", Hendrix said that some ladies were "electric too".

Hendrix made numerous allusions to the concept in his musical work, most famously in his widely distributed live performance of the song "Red House

Red House (song)

"Red House" is a song written by Jimi Hendrix and originally recorded by The Jimi Hendrix Experience in 1966. The song, a slow twelve-bar blues, "is one of the most traditional in sound and form of all his official recordings". It was developed during his pre-Experience days while Hendrix was...

", in which he introduces his band by saying that he is about to present them all to the "Electric Church".