I plan on using punk band Green Day as one of the main case studies in my new book, Broken Hallelujahs. I’ll say more later about why, beside the fact that they are the best-selling punk band ever, and one of the best selling rock bands period. For now I’ll just offer an image from the concert DVD “Bullet in the Bible” filmed at their widely hailed mega-gigs at Milton Keynes Bowl in England where over two days over 130,000 fans saw them play. Just before taking stage , drummer Tre Cool shouts to his bandmates:

“This is a place of worship. The place of rock. This is a holy place.” A fellow band mate, as if on cue, says “Why are their no clouds in the sky?” to which Tre responds “Cause God wants to watch his favorite band again!”

Part of what I hope to accomplish with this book is to show that despite everything one might say to the contrary such a statement might just be right. While some Christians and some punk fans will cringe at that statement, I think it is actually really important to ask what it might mean to answer Tre with a solid, “Yea, maybe you’re right.”

Peace,

Chris

I’ve been off the trail of this book for four months as I tended to other stuff including an amazing job search that will likely have me land in a Lutheran seminary teaching worship and culture–and that’d be cool.  I want to teach more (I only teach one course a year at Yale b/c my main appointment is as a project administrator and researcher. Yale has been great in many ways, and I’ve grown hugely from the freedom and focus in my work at the Center for Faith and Culture.  I’m ready to take the next steps.

Part of the reason for doing this book on faith and pop music now is that I thought I might be in transition this year and need a fun project to work on.  I really enjoyed writing my U2 book, and have enjoyed the conversations it has sparked even more.  So the idea in this book is to flip the script.  The U2 book foregrounded the band, with a theology of culture in the background.  Broken Hallelujahs will foreground a proposal for connecting faith and culture, using examples from pop music.  Then I’ll be done writing books in this area for a while.  I think.

Anyway, I need to get cracking on this book.  Brazos Press and their brilliant, savvy, and funny editor, Rodney Clapp, gave me a contract for this book.  A vote of confidence, to be sure.  My challenge: make it worth reading, worth the paper, and something that aids the church, that helps struggling people who want to follow Jesus and live deeply in the vibe of the culture.  The tensions of holding spirituality and materiality, faith and culture, together in a lively interaction offers way more interesting prospects that building walls between the two.  So let’s dive into the tensions.  For more on that, read the post below on KOL.

anon, and peace,

Chris

Last night I saw them play at Toad’s Place, a famous venue here in New Haven. Lots of the great bands (and lots of so-so bands, too) have played here–including U2 in their early years. I saw KOL in 2005 when they opened for U2 on the Vertigo tour. I’d never heard of them and at the time didn’t know any of their songs. I was impressed by their energy, though, and by their tight pants (read my report on that concert here). According to Jared Followill, the bassist, “I mean [U2] called us KFC instead of KOL ’cause we have chicken legs. But in a funny, cool way. They’re the nicest guys.” I mused at the time about what the influence would be given the maturity of U2 as a band, as spiritual men, and on the road with this young band also with spiritual roots but exploring the tensions of faith and the life-style of rock n’ roll fame. As the story goes, the influence was low-key, and likely more powerful as a result. They showed, rather than told or scolded. KOL, for those who don’t know, grew up traveling with a father who preached revivials in the United Pentecostal Church but after troubles with drinking and finallly a divorce, left the ministry. The experience was dramatic for the boys. This from the Rolling Stone interview:

“Everything changed for the three brothers in 1997, when their mother and father divorced — an even bigger taboo in the Pentecostal community than in the Christian world at large — and Leon left the ministry. (Though some have reported that Leon was defrocked, the boys say he resigned on his own because ‘he knew it was time.’) ‘Our parents’ divorce shattered the whole mirage of this perfect little existence the outside world couldn’t touch and couldn’t pollute,’ Nathan says. ‘We realized that our dad, the greatest man we ever knew, in our eyes, was only human. And so are we. People are gonna fuck up. They’re gonna want to experiment with drugs, have premarital sex. This whole new world was open to us’.”

This, you might say, was their introduction to the “broken hallelujah.” The Pentecostal tradition they come out of has an element of purity-lust, a peculiar kind of sinful desire to leave the world into a “perfect little existence,” as Nathan put it. And when this breaks apart, then it can seem a farce. They seemed to think so, running away from God and their past into a life of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Their songs, and their reputation, through their first years as a band were fairly wild. Fast songs about drinking and sex and life on the road fill their first albums. They aren’t without a kind of reflective honesty, however.

Honesty or not, however, their lyrics are not really the point, partly because you can’t really understand them (even fans say that) and partly because Caleb’s voice is so odd that it takes on its own musical quality as part of the songs. Well, that’s not totally true, because on some songs it matters, but largely their effect is emotion. They are an affect-driven band, I think, and that partly accounts for the cries early on that they would again “save rock ‘n roll.” This was certainly true seeing them live for the second time in a small club (Toad’s holds 750 maximum, whereas the Fleet Center is a 20,000 arena). They doors opened at 8 and the opening band only played from 9 to 9:20 and KOL didn’t come on till 10:25. Long wait. We were getting tired and then they came out and played a crashing set for an hour and a half, with really only one slow song. They played one encore that included “Knocked Up”, “Charmer,” and “Slow Night, So Long.”

While they are singing about sex and drinking, and trying hard to look sexy and trying hard to drink while playing, you get the sense they’ve just jumped into cardboard cutouts of rock ‘n roll stereotypes. When guitarist Matt Followill stuck his cigarette into the strings of his guitar at the top of the neck so that it smoked while he played, I thought “Oh, geez, how totally cliche.” But what is interesting to me is the way they are experimenting with how far they can run from the purity of their religious upbringing, and what to do with the tensions. Some examples from interviews:
_________________________

Example One:

Interviewer: It’s well documented, of course, that you guys grew up sons of a preacher. Are any of you spiritual in any way today, or even religious?

Nathan: Yeah, we all believe in God, for sure. I think we all still have a lot of the morals that were instilled in us growing up. We’re no saints, by no means.

Example two:

Caleb: Bono said that the most beautiful music, the only relevant music to him, is either someone who is running towards God or running away from it. I think that’s kind of right. All that passion and guilt and all that stuff.”

Suddenly reflective, the singer with a thicket of hair says with disarming honesty: “I don’t consider myself to be a good person. I know I’m on the wrong path, brother. But at least I know, y’know. I almost quit this every day. I might pick up where my dad left off – maybe.” He adds, deadly serious: “I’ve got the stage time down already.”

Example three:

Interviewer: Why did you write a song about Arizona?

Caleb: I hold that place close to my heart. I love the desert and always have. But the story behind that song is kind of bad. I can’t really get into it. It’s about when Nathan and I went to Arizona, and…well, we had quite a few different substances in us, and we decided to go to this brothel. I guess I am telling you now, aren’t I? This really is a heartbreaker. We walked in and I looked around and there was this one girl who was so beautiful that all I could think was, ”What happened in her life that could bring her here?” as opposed to me thinking, ”Yeah! I’ll take that one!”

So you left?

No. I took an ugly one. I knew why she was there.

That’s a pretty heavy story from a preacher’s son.

I think there’s always two sides to your personality, be it when you’re drunk or sober, or at home or away, or whatever. Our song ”On Call” is about the grounded part of you. It says, ”And when I fall to pieces, Lord you know I’ll be there waiting.” You could take that in a Biblical sense. The Bible says that David, or Daniel, or one of those guys, was a man after God’s own heart. But he was quite a messed-up person. So if he’s the man after God’s own heart, well, maybe when you’re at your roughest moment, that’s when He’s watching over you and smiling.

________________

Okay. If you are still with me, you must be getting the point. One way to go is this black or white, saint or sinner understanding of Christian faith. And KOL grew up with the saint version and are now exploring the sinner side, an extended moment of rebellion rooted in the rupture of their father’s fall from grace. But they are discovering, surprisingly, as did Augustine long ago, that God does not simply abandon you in the midst of your rebellion. The “Hound of Heaven” is still there, and perhaps more persistently that ever. So how the band seeks to integrate this as they go along will be interesting to watch. Caleb, the lead singer, aways has a cross around his neck. And indeed, their song “On Call” is easily their biggest hit to date, in part because of the message which has a sort of cultural and religious resonance (think “Lean On Me” or “Footprints in the Sand”–it is just a popular idea, and one Christian scripture and tradition underline, even if in a bit more complex a way). Here is the song, followed by the lyric:

She said call me now baby, and I’d come a running.
She said call me now baby, and I’d come a running.
If you’d call me now baby then I’d come a running.

I’m on call to be there.
One and all to be there.
And When I fall to pieces.
Lord you know I’ll be there waiting.

To be there.
To be there.

I’m on call to be there.
One and all to be there.
And When I fall to pieces.
Lord you know I’ll be there waiting.

I’m gon’ brawl, so be there.
One for all I’ll be there.
And when they fall to pieces.
Lord you know, I’ll be there laughing.

I’d come a running.
I’d come a running.
I’d come a running.

To be there.
To be there.

I’m on call, to be there.
I’m on call, to be there.
I’m on call, to be there.
I’m on call, to be there.

From one perspective, that of what I’ve called “Karma” or the theology of glory, the band have fallen from the narrow way and Christians should not listen to them. They’ve embraced the devil and his ways. Going to their concerts exposes tender minds and hearts to themes of sex, drugs, drinking, smoking, and more. All worrisome, at least to a majority of Christians. And indeed, I was standing next to people who drank six or more beers during the concert and were smoking pot and were shouting profanity. So by any standards of judgment in terms of acts, the scene was one of acts unbecoming a Christian.

From another perspective, however, while they are twisting and turning the gifts they’ve received from God, they only do what they do because of God’s gifts. And it is very compelling to see the way they are struggling to integrate faith and rock ‘n’ roll–struggling to find a way to run away from God and a kind of broken faith while accounting for the fact that Jesus is running with them. A recent interviewer asked, “What’s the song you all sing together just before going on stage every night?” And Caleb answered, “It’s a gospel song called ‘Just A Little Talk With Jesus.’ [Sings] ‘Now let us have a little talk with Jesus/Let us tell him all about our troubles/He will hear our faintest cry/He will answer by and by/Now when you feel a little prayer wheel turning/And you know a little fire is burning/You will find a little talk with Jesus makes it right’.” Rock ‘n’ Roll is littered with people divided between Jesus and the devil, between the church and the club. It tears people apart. Will it tear the KOL apart, or will they find ways to integrate the gift of faith and their gifts in music? Interesting question, and a question worth following, I think. I have hopes, however, for as Caleb sings in the song, “The Runner,” “I talk to Jesus/ Jesus says I’m okay.”

A next question has to do with judgment. If Christians don’t accept or reject songs or artists or pop culture generally on the basis of “good” or “bad” content, what means of judgment do we have to guide us? Surely not everything is edifying. I’ll reflect on this and my experience talking about it at Mount Vernon Nazarene University, a conservative evangelical school in Ohio that asked me to come and speak on “Imagination and the Kingdom of God.”

+anon

Let me unpack a bit why I draw on the song “Hallelujah” and especially this phrase, “Broken Hallelujah,” for thinking about pop culture in relation to faith. It is a shorthand way to point to a fundamental view of human life as a broken reality, and broken beyond our ability to fix. The Christian term for this is “sin” which many people today see as an antiquated and unenlightened idea. However, that cultural shrug in response to the idea of sin usually is a reaction to the idea of sin as sins. The shrug throws off the presumed legacy of a medieval and psychologically damaging introspection in relation to sinful acts and impulses which modern liberated society now knows are actually normal. Like: sex is supposed to feel good. Or drinking in moderation is good for you.

While some Christians are still pretty focused on these sorts of issues (e.g., if having sex or drinking are sinful) that is not what I mean. I actually mean we are broken to the core. The Christian tradition sometimes calls this by a Latin phrase I find helpful: incurvatus in se. I’ve discussed it here. It means basically “the self curved in on itself.” I love that phrase. It reminds me of the interpersonal conversation joke: “Well, enough about me. What do you think about me?” As if there is nothing more interesting that what I think and feel. Add to this, then, an overoptimistic sense that we can work out some spiritual peace for ourselves (through Yoga or “just being a good person” or attending church). So we think we’re really okay–in relation to God and to our daily lives. It’s the old, “I’m okay, your okay” thing.

The song, however, is grounded in another view of life. I see it saying that we want to pretend that we have a “holy hallelujah” to offer God when actually all we ever have is broken hallelujah. But the Christian story is that through the gift of Jesus Christ we are judged fairly, seen for what we are, and despite it all, forgiven. That gift of God’s holiness, through Christ, gives us a ‘holy hallelujah’ to sing even if our lives are always ‘broken.’ We share in something ‘unbroken’ if you will. Cohen gets at this beautifully in his portrayal of the one who, despite it all, is able to “stand before the Lord of Song” with “nothing on my lips but Hallelujah,” a circumstance that implies something like the Seraph putting the hot coal on Isaiah’s lips. It is a way of saying that God gives us a standing we do not earn, and a purity that is not from us even as it begins to draw us into becoming what we were intended to be and will be in the end. Living in this mixed state, with unclean lips yet bearing the gift of God’s purifying touch on our lips, points to another classic Latin phrase, if you don’t mind: simul justus et peccator. We are by birth into a sinful world, and as sinful creatures, simply “peccator”, that is, sinners through and through. That means we seek ourselves even in doing good; we presume that we are good, worthy, righteous because of our own good acts. Or, more likely, we just love our selves and our pleasures so much we don’t give a shit about doing good. Britney Spear’s new anthem, recorded and released in the midst of her personal flame-out, is ironically titled “Gimme More”. Its not that I think Britney or anyone else needs to find Jesus and thereafter only sing songs of Glory in the narrow sense (as in hymns or spiritual songs in an explicit way). That orientation often means the person feels they must either earn or prove their salvation through good behavior. No, instead when one finds themselves confronted by the accusing judgment of God, and gives up, literally, by dying to themselves and being ‘born anew’ then one can begin to live out of a “justus”, that is, a right-ness that is not one’s own but given.

Let me try this all another way, looking at the way I think of this stuff in relation to Bono and U2.

I like to use the formal terms of a “theology of glory” and a “theology of the cross.” Bono calls these two orientations to God “karma” and “grace.” Both karma and grace are coherent theologies that begin with varying understandings of human beings. One sees sin as a minor defect, simply making us predisposed to act badly. Thus we are optimistic that with a little energy boost from Christ—as if he’s a can of Red Bull, we can be who God expects us to be and thereby have certainty that we are blessed. The other sees sin as something wrong at our core, something we cannot overcome alone. We stumble but on account of Christ we have hope. We are joined to his death and resurrection, dying to sin and being made alive in Christ.

I think Bono, U2, and Philip Yancey (in What’s So Amazing About Grace) are on just the same page here in saying, as I say in my book, that too many Christians think their “good” behavior will earn them passage through the pearly gates of Heaven. And notice where this view leads: as we mature in faith, we spend more time with other Christians, make up rules about what “Christian behavior is like,” and judge others by how well they follow these rules.

Bono might say that as we mature in faith, we should spend LESS time with other Christians and more time with people who look like those Jesus spent time with. Why? So that we can communicate the love of God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit, that’s why! If we truly are given the gift of God’s love and forgiveness while we are yet sinners, as St. Paul says, then the issue is not how do I behave so that I earn God’s love, but how do I participate in what God is doing in the world because God’s love found me? Well, God says (Isaiah 65, Revelation 21) that God has promised a new heaven and a new earth, a place where there is no longer suffering and tears. We experience that “other place” in worship, and then we’re sent out into the world to meet God who is already in the world working to bring this “new” reality to birth.

Unfortunately, U2 loses some potential audience among some Christians because their music doesn’t fit with a theology of karma that says, “if you admit doubt, your faith is not strong enough and God won’t bless you.” See how it starts with an “if”? So this group says, if U2 are explicit enough about their faith, we’ll listen. If they are explicit about their doubt, we’re pretty sure they are lost and we’re tuning out. Ouch! That is a shame, and misunderstands both U2 and God. That is a strong statement, I know, but read on.

We live in the “long Saturday” between Christ’s coming and his coming again to make all things new. We have the victory, but it has not been brought to completion. And because of that first coming, we who have received the Grace of God by faith are drawn into the work of praying, watching and working for the day when all things are made new. Doubt is simply part of that reality of faith. We have salvation now, but it is not complete. The world is changed, but it is not transformed. So when we see terrible things happen in the world, or experience great suffering in our personal lives, we do doubt and it is something we can and should bring directly to God. If we can’t admit anger at the world’s suffering, or admit feeling adrift because it seems God is not present to us, and admit these things in prayer, in hymns, in Christian community, then isn’t our faith actually weak rather than strong?

There is no secular if you believe that God is creator of heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them (Psalm 146:6; Acts 14:15). When Jesus says that God makes it rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5), he said something profound in relation to how we regard popular culture. Recently I watched the film “Walk the Line.” It is a movie about Johnny Cash and June Carter. It is a complex story, including deep suffering, drug addiction, divorce and also great love, repentance, and an experience of healing. Was God only present in Cash’s “gospel songs” or was God somehow present also when Cash sang “Folsom Prison Blues” to a room full of prisoners?

U2 present us with this challenge. Bono, while meeting with religion reporters after his “homily” at the National Prayer Breakfast last year, said, “I’m asked, ‘Why doesn’t your music proclaim Christ?’ and my answer is that it does.” He went on say that “creation has its own proclamation of God and I’d like to think our music has the same qualities to it.” (source) Can the Church find a profound enough view of sin to see its own faults, and a profound enough view of creation and grace to see God’s presence working in the world? U2 might ask us: “Do we proclaim God only when we sing about divine love in the songs ‘Gloria’ or ‘Grace’ or do we proclaim God also when we sing about human love in the songs ‘Desire’ and ‘Discotheque’?” If we split it like this, sacred on one side and secular on the other, we risk missing the very human presence in “Gloria” and “Grace”, and miss the heavenly resonances in “Desire” and “Discotheque.” More importantly, our imagination is constrained by a shrunken view of the scope of God’s domain.

U2 have always been about holding the tensions together—earth and heaven, spirituality and sexuality, faith and doubt. At root, as they see it, the issue is a theological issue, an issue about being true to who God is and who we are created to be.

Next up: bringing this to bear through reflection on a Kings of Leon show.

+anon

You carried me is a song from the band Building 429. The song is a single off their 2007 release Iris to Iris and is currently topping the contemporary Christian music charts. Building 429, for those who don’t know, are a Christian rock band from North Carolina. They won the Gospel Music Association 2005 “New Artist of the Year” award and have been rising since. Their name points to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 4:29 “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” You can take a listen to the song here, and read the lyrics, followed by some comments about why songs like this, written from “a strictly vertical perspective,” can’t bear enough weight to carry the message I’m trying to develop in this blog (and in the book to follow, I hope).

And fans of Building 429, I do like the song! Its not that–more below . . .

You Carried Me

I’ve been so busy, I missed the reasons
I missed Your love, I nearly missed it all
Still You’ve loved me, and You’ve healed me
You’ve given all and it brought me to Your cross
And I stand only because You’ve given me grace to walk
Only because

You carried me
You carried me
You carried me through it all
And I believe
Yes I believe
You’ll carry me all the way home
‘Cause mercy covers all

I know the scripture, I’ve known the songs
I sang the words from my hollowed heart
You’ve spoken softly through the storm
I’ve heard Your voice and I’ve felt the calm

I stand only because You’ve given me faith to walk
Only because

You carried me
You carried me
You carried me through it all

And I believe
Yes I believe
You’ll carry me all the way home

I know that you love me
I’ll never doubt it, I can’t live without it
Your mercy has found me
I am astounded, I can’t live without it oooh

You carried me, You carried me
Through it all…

You carried me
You carried me
And I believe
Yeah I believe
You’ll carry me all the way home
Cause mercy covers all
Mercy covers all
Yeah, yeah

And I believe
And I believe
I believe

Jason Roy, one of the band’s founders and the lyric and music writer for “You Carried Me,” describes this new album as a result of a divine intervention. He had been trying to write new lyrics and struggling. He says he “hit his knees” and God spoke to him saying, “Sing to Me.” They describe this album, then, and this song as case in point, as coming from “a strictly vertical perspective.”

So my thoughts on why I can only go so far with this kind of song:

First, it is a “Christian” song. I say this not because it has references to mercy or grace or whatever. So does Cohen’s Hallelujah, obviously. It’s not that. Rather it is a song about faith, mercy, and the power of God, a praise song of an almost unambiguous sort. I’m okay with that for church–for the gathering of insiders. I’m even okay with that in popular culture, but theologically I worry about songs like this–for Sunday worship, where they have a proper place, but especially in pop culture more broadly.

Why do I worry about such songs? Second, then, I think they are a bit formulaic and not that deep biblically. The song feels a bit like the famous “footprints in the sand” poem. The lyric admits “storms” in life, but the total confidence that God carries us through (“Ill never doubt it, I can’t live without it.”) ends up feeling like in order to offer praise, we’re trying to say the right “faithful” things to God.

Third, such songs lack biblical depth because even when they speak of storms, they only highlight the “silver lining.” As fan testimonies roll at the end of the video for “You Carried Me,” diverse people declare God carried them through alcoholism and anger, divorce and loneliness. Do I doubt this? Of course not. The danger here is that the form of presentation teaches the faithful, and more importantly witness to the culture, that in order to be “in” with God, you have to have utter confidence (“I’ll never doubt”) that God has carried you, too. Such praise sounds dressed up for Sunday; it sounds like a “holy” hallelujah when set side by side with Cohen’s cold and broken hallelujah. Douglas John Hall, whose work on the theology of the cross taught me a lot, once said that we ought to be very wary of prescriptive providence. In other words, don’t be too quick to say to Joseph while he is in prison in Egypt, “They meant it for evil, but God means it for good.” Hey all you people who have crap going on in your lives: don’t worry! God is carrying you! It may be true in a technical sense, but think about how it is heard.

To many Christians this point of view will be unsettling or even incomprehensible. Fine. Jesus continuously unsettled the righteous insiders of his day, and he comes in his living word today to do the same.

Next up: I’ll do a bit of theological straight talk to clarify where I’m coming from juxtaposing holy and broken hallelujahs.

+anon.

This song is, one could say, larger than life. It is the kind of song that seems as if it has always been written. Of course that is partly because its main theme, the chorus “hallelujah“, has indeed ‘always’ been written. It is the the ancient Hebrew word ” הַלְלוּיָהּ ” meaning “praise God” and is found over and over in the Psalms. It has also struck a cord because of the interplay of the music and lyrics. I don’t know how many people have done a cover version of this song, but there are a lot of them. The hyperlink on the song title will show the history of covers, and among my favorites are Jeff Buckley, Allison Crowe, Bob Dylan and of course U2. Read through the lyrics and I’ll then make some interpretive comments at the end.

Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen, first released on Various Positions (1984)

Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew her
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well, really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my lips but Hallelujah

additional verses

Baby, I’ve been here before.
I know this room, I’ve walked this floor.
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch,
But love is not some kind of victory march,
No it’s a cold and it’s a very broken Hallelujah.

There was a time you let me know
What’s really going on below,
but now you never show it to me, do you?
I remember when I moved in you,
And the holy dove was moving too,
and every breath we drew was Hallelujah.

Now maybe there’s a God above,
As for me, all I ever learned from love
Is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
and it’s no complaint you hear tonight,
and It’s not some pilgrim who’s seen the light
it’s a cold and it’s a very lonely Hallelujah.

Why draw on this song, then, as a means to “thinking pop culture through the cross”?

First, it is not a “Christian” song. It is first of all a pop song that has grown in popularity so that it was even used in Shrek.

Yet, second, it does have a particular religious depth, drawing on Biblical references. (King David, of course, in verse one and two, who is well known both as a musical genius and a womanizer, as well as references to Samson and also in verse three to Exodus where Moses learns ‘the name’ of God.) If you don’t know these references, read the Old Testament or email me and I’ll point you in the right direction.

Third, however, it is not ‘just’ a biblical song, but one that draws from those roots to speak about both the power of the Holy and the brokenness of human life. The song begins with David but moves progressively out of the Bible into the challenges of daily life. The last verse of the original version and all of the additional versus point to the challenge of living. A deep humility about human goodness comes through: “I did my best, it wasn’t much.” Perhaps this is easier to say in Canada but for the eternally optimistic “Your Best Life Now” America, such sentiment is dismissed as misguided and a downer, at best, and at worst unfaithful. I actually am going to make the case that it is spot on, at worst, and perhaps exactly what being faith means. In this life, all we are capable of is a broken hallelujah. We’re only even able to raise a broken hallelujah because of what God has done for us. Knowing that keeps us from trying to please God with our shiny “holy hallelujahs” and allows us to be honest about ourselves, our need for God’s mercy, and our call to join in the God’s mission of mercy in the midst of a broken world.

Next, I’m going to show what songs look like when we try to put on a holy hallelujah. But in closing, try setting these side by side and see what you think. They are not saying the same thing, I know. Still, the resonance between them is what I’m after in using the phrase ‘broken hallelujah.’

“I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you. And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the Lord of Song with nothing on my lips but Hallelujah.” Cohen, verse 4

“Since we’ve compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity God put us right. A pure gift. God got us out of the mess we’re in and restored us to where we were intended to be all along. And God did this through Jesus Christ.” Romans 3.22-24

Ah, so you are curious about the title? Check out the song, first, before I continue. I have to admit that the video seems a bit cheesy in its staging, so you might find yourself closing your eyes.  I do,  or else I just laugh.

Welcome to what’s next in my thinking about faith and pop culture. I’ve written on faith and one of my favorite bands, U2. while writing that book, I kept a blog to chronicle the process and it was a blast (it was on blogger, however, which seems like a much less attractive platform compared to wordpress so I’m glad I switched!) I met lots of thoughtful and faithful people through the process and learned about faith and about U2 from people’s comments.

So why the new blog? A new book, that’s why. No, I don’t have a book yet, and I don’t have a publisher. but I’ve started writing and I need a forum for thinking out loud so that I hopefully spark some feedback. The topic is faith and pop culture. The book title is Broken Hallelujah: Faith in Pop Culture. Yes, you should hear a Leonard Cohen reference here.

If you like to think about faith and movies, music, or the arts generally, then stay tuned.

+anon.