Musical Sacrilege?

Soon after M and I released our 2005 album, our half-hearted attempts at marketing our music took us to a small bulk foods store in a nearby small town.

Yes, they would sell the CD for us, they said, but they wouldn’t play it over their sound system in the store because they only play “Christian” music.

Our music, not Christian? Was that even possible, since we had always been dyed-in-the-wool Christians ourselves?

Admittedly, none of the songs we’d recorded were of the “three chords for the Lord” flock, but they were all about life–which I’d say made them pretty much at least relevant to Christianity despite their lack of religious sentimentality.

And besides, don’t Christian people so often deal with the exact same issues as non-Christian people? Things like greed, arrogance, and, well, shameless self promotion? No, there is nothing special about life that prohibits it from finding itself sung about under both “Christian” and “non-Christian” labels.

Certainly one might argue that Christian musical treatment of common life might reflect a higher passion or even inject that flair into its listeners while secular music can only lead us to looking at ourselves through dimly blurred mirrors, but in reality the religious value of a song is most often only specked somewhere in the beautiful eyes of the beholders.

For example, some people think that fiddle tunes and even classical movements aren’t “Christian.” I know others who insist that rock music instrumentation in itself is evil, in part because it, regardless of lyrical content, speeds listeners’ heart beats per minute and makes them do crazy things. Just look at the people jumping up and down when Petra sings Dance–and Petra is even one of the all-time historical Christian rock bands. Just think about how excited you get when Tommy Emmanuel plays Classical Gas and beats his microphone with his head.

Occasionally songs from distinctively secular markets find themselves assigned Christian depth. Not too long ago we found ourselves visiting a church where the preacher recited excerpts from Neil Diamond’s Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show as an example of “finding a connection with others and with God.”

“But that song,” my mother hissed to me, “is making fun of religion!”

“It could be,” I said. “I think it is, too, but you wouldn’t have to think that. It’s a great song.”

(We mustn’t forget that Dolly Parton sings that song, too, about Brother Love, which brings it to a whole new level of sacrilege or worship, depending.)

Then there’s that really funny, karaoke-friendly Eight-Hundred-Pound Jesus by Sawyer Brown, which I can’t ever be too sure isn’t tongue in cheek, and Josh Turner’s Me and God, perhaps the most blasphemous song I’ve ever heard but which I suspect many religious types love. Are these songs sacred or sacrilegious?

Sacred, secular, or otherwise, one song that in my book tops many is Paul Simon’s spiritually insightful and religious trappings-less Outrageous, which has become, as I’ve listened to it over the years, ever more meaningful for no reason in particular but partly because after hearing “Who’s going to love you when your lips are gone” I checked the album lyrics to find what Simon really sings.

Enjoy.