Gospel Music for Agnostics
15 April 2007 - 28 ניסן 5767 by Huw
Props to Doug LeBlanc over at GetReligion for alerting me to Susan Werner’s music via the NPR Story, A Songwriter’s View from the Pew.
The album - along with lyrics - is posted on Susan’s website
you say you know you say you’ve read
that holy bible up on your shelf
do you recall when jesus said
judge not, lest ye be judged yourselffor i know you’d damn me if you could
but my friend, that’s simply not your call
if god is great, and god is good
why is your heaven so small
The album’s already available via iTunes Music Store (iTunes-only link)
I do agree with D. LeB over at GR: one hopes eventually that the left and the right stop bickering with each other. My full comment, posted over at GR, is also below the cut on this post.
Thanks for the heads-up about Werner: her music is available on iTunes already.
Pardon the metablogging, but two comments here seem to feed back to tmatt’s question of “is this a Christian blog” (yes, I think, but that’s another matter).
people who distance themselves from what they call organized religion. (Is there any other kind?)
Yes - Wiccans (and the rest of Neopaganism) are totally disorganised. They seem to like it that way.
It only seems to feed back… I realise I could be imagining the wrong sort of answer, but to treat it as a simply rhetorical question is to imagine that most folks and their spiritual paths fit into a certain category. They don’t.
Stamberg asks Werner if she’s describing a journey of faith. She is, sort of…
I don’t know how to take that “sort of”. Just because she’s describing a different sort of faith journey than conservative Christians might it’s only “sort of” a faith journey? Perhaps some other reading is needed - or let’s say she *is* in fact, discussing a faith journey: hers not anyone else’s.
I do agree that the Christian theological left and the theological right can be sad, sad mirrors of each other. I think the story worth following is whether or not Werner later finds out that conservatives are also her Brothers and Sisters in Christ. Although the song that closes the NPR piece, Together, seems to also make that point:
there must be a time
there must be a place
when everyone will finally come together
if there is a God
with a human face
i’m sure He’d want us all to come together
(Totally unrelated… NPR’s phrase, “gospel music for agnostics ” reminded me of a review of “The Hidden Cameras” on the iTunes Music Store: they were referred to as “gay folk church music.)
(The thread over there, btw, which is largely a multi-player monologue of bashing Werner for her progressive theology, is a prime example of why people think GR is not only a Christian blog, but also a conservative blog. Now would be a good time to pop out the “don’t debate theology but rather the reporting” mantra. But it would be hard when the original article made fun of the topic of the story.)
This is part of why I read GR very selectively and seldom comment there. I think it’s perfectly possible to report on media bias in reporting religion in a (relatively) unbiased fashion, but GR fails completely on that count. I don’t see how it could be described as anything other than a conservative blog.
Tope: I’ve even tried to say “hey, lets get this on topic…” It seems when it’s a *rightwing* topic, and the liberals are bashing them, GetReligion staff reminds everyone *up front* that the conversation is supposed to be about the media.
tmatt has actually got asked if the NPR reporter is practicing her faith… *sigh* As if any of us are qualified to judge some one - and, as if that has anything at all to do with the price of news coverage in China.
Personally, I *don’t* believe in unbiased news coverage any more than I believe in the Easter Bunny. But GR is nearly never a good example of it unless the condescend to talk about, from a Christians-are-right perspective, of course, about some non-Christian whom they like: we can be non-biased here, he’s almost one of us.
I rather like that the GR folk lay out all their biases on the about us page and get on with being biased. I really wish all organisations - liberal, conservative, whatever - would do that. I’m just annoyed that they claim non-bias.
Bias may not be the best word for what I mean . . . It’s not the fact that GR approaches religion reporting from a definite perspective that bothers me. It’s the fact that they refuse to take other perspectives seriously, or to understand other perspectives on terms other than their own. So that’s what I mean by “unbiased” - I think it’s possible for one to believe s/he is right and still take other points of view seriously, on an intellectual, emotional and spiritual level. As it is the GR approach seems to be to pit good religious people (themselves) vs. bad religious people (everyone else).
But GR is nearly never a good example of it unless the condescend to talk about, from a Christians-are-right perspective, of course, about some non-Christian whom they like: we can be non-biased here, he’s almost one of us.
The first example that came to mind of this tendency is their coverage of Mitt Romney, which I frankly find rather bizarre. They delete comments which are even remotely critical of Romney or Mormonism because they aren’t comments strictly on how religion news is reported. But with coverage of ECUSA troubles . . . fire away!
ECUSA… yes: always a hot-button topic w/ conservatives. Speck in neighbour’s eye and all that.