Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Apparently missing from “The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge“, and from the pop culture background of the paper’s music critics, editors and copy editors, is any perspective about the pervasiveness of Christian artists in the annals of popular music.
Pop star Elton John is featured on the cover of Parade magazine this week. So I guess Parade is still around. He’s ostensibly on the cover to talk about how he’s a better person now than he was before. But he makes news for an unconventional religious idea he puts forth.
I’ve only been a card-carrying Get Religion-er since August, and in that brief time I’ve been repeatedly drawn to articles that cover the intersection of faith and culture.
So Bob Dylan went and made himself a Christmas album, instead of a holiday album. It ends with him singing “amen” at the end of a non-ironic “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” Many will note that the album does not contain a performance, ironic or otherwise, of “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.”
It’s that time of year when concerts of George Frideric Handel’s Messiah occur with seemingly ubiquity. The New York Times critic Anthony Tommasini reviewed one such performance yesterday, remarking that the bass “sang the repeated ‘the dead shall be raised incorruptible’ and ‘we shall be changed’ with such prophetic vigor that the prospect seemed almost terrifying.” I read a review of a different Messiah concert in the same paper a few weeks ago.
Back in my teen years, I was a bit of a classical music nerd. Then someone gave me a copy of the second Blood, Sweat & Tears record and, before you knew it, I was into jazz and forms of rock that required the musicians to know more than three chords.
Christians can do funny, goofy things. That’s why reaction to a Christian rap group’s video seemingly advocating the sexually chaste “Christian side hug” was so interesting. Apparently, the group was kidding. But that didn’t stop critics and bloggers for missing the joke and getting snarky about it.
Based on what you know about religion, news and religion in the news, do you think that, when meditating on Adam Lambert’s performance on the American Music Awards, cultural conservatives in this great nation of ours are upset about:
If you like articles that take readers on journeys to places where faith and culture intersect in new and unexpected ways, then you’ll enjoy reading Kate Shellnutt’s Chicago Sun-Times story, “Young Muslims use punk to loosen their religion.”
