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The other day I openly confessed that, as a kid and throughout my life, I have always been a choir fanatic. What I hinted at in that piece I will now state openly: I was the kind of choir fanatic who was only interested in singing classical music, especially when dealing with sacred issues and texts.
At most schools (high school or college) there are band types, athletes, drama people, book fanatics, math/science geeks (and proud of it), etc., etc. Sometimes, these groups can overlap, such as the common book/band hybrid or the choir/drama type. I was a book/choir guy.
Not too long ago, when the New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a supportive profile of a sex-positive sex-ed teacher, Rod Dreher wrote about the magazine’s obsession “with sex and sexuality, and of course always, always, always from a progressive point of view.” He listed some of the “sexual-liberationist” stories they’d done this year.
On Sunday, my congregation celebrated the Reformation rather gloriously. As one might expect for the day one commemorates the good news of the salvation of all sinners by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone, our pastor preached an amazing sermon. The organist pulled out all the stops. We even did the German Mass, which includes many, many hymns. But we didn’t sing “Salvation Unto Us Has Come.” And this disappointed me.
Joshunda Sanders of the American-Statesman in Austin has a fascinating and compelling story about a local man. It begins with a great vignette:
For GetReligion readers who happen to follow the niche music market known as Contemporary Christian Music (CCM), there really isn’t much new information to share about the life and career of the lesbian singer-songwriter Jennifer Knapp. Her decision to publicly out herself cost her lots of fans and made her some new fans.
People who build high-end acoustic guitars (and people like me who just love acoustic guitars) walk around with a lot of very particular sounds in their heads.
Katy Perry’s religious background has piqued journalistic interest for a while. After all, most musicians don’t get their start in Christian music to go on to sing “I kissed a girl and I liked it.” Rolling Stone picked up such themes for its cover story last year, where Perry said she still considers herself a Christian.
What we have here is the kind of commentary on the news that GetReligion tries to avoid, since the purpose of this blog is to offer criticism — positive and negative — of actual religion-news coverage in the mainstream press.
