There are certain songs that not only embody a particular idea, but also capture for the listener the spirit of its time. So when most of us think of classic 70s disco-funk, our minds often drift to Curtis Mayfield, Sly & The Family Stone, Earth Wind & Fire, or similar artists. But my mind immediately goes first to this song, the blistering opener from his classic recording, This Is Another Day.
It’s a bit of stretch for me to call this a song from my era, since I was born the year this song was released and didn’t come to appreciate it until I was seven or eight. But given that my parents had the good sense to play edifying music around the house instead of songs like “Lady Marmalade” and “It’s Raining Men,” I learned how to groove and shimmy to this one instead.
And man, I’m glad they did.
Andrae Crouch, eight-time Grammy award-winning artist and gospel music pioneer
One of the things that I love about this song is the use of sonorous contrast. When the intro comes in, sounding all smooth and dangerous and Shaft-like (come on, you know I wasn’t sheltered my whole life), the whole groove is rooted in C# minor, and as all of the wah-wah guitars and percolating percussion and cascading horns come to a crescendo, the melody kicks in – not in its relative major of E, but up a whole step to F# major.
What results (for those of you turned off by the music theory geek speak) is a sense of unexpected discovery that underscores the title. In the middle of a furious musical maelstrom, the melody lands softly onto a pleasant musical bed, like a baby sleeping soundly in the eye of a hurricane. And as the melody winds its way through the chord progression, the musical cues lend a sense of depth and pathos by reinforcing its meaning.
And considering its meaning, it’s no wonder this song was released in 1976. This was the same era of classics like Stevie Wonder’sSongs In the Key of Life and Steely Dan’sAja. This was a tumultuous time in American history. The Cold War was beginning to thaw. The OPEC oil embargo had a crippling effect on the economy. The war in Vietnam had been raging for years, and Marvin Gaye’s“What’s Going On” had become a rallying cry for a generation of disenfranchised people tired of systemic inequity and senseless violence. There was turmoil abroad and turmoil at home.
(Not all that different from now, is it?)
When Andrae and his singers echoed the words of Isaiah 26:3 – You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You – it wasn’t just a pleasant sentiment to be displayed on someone’s desk or refrigerator door. They were fiercely proclaiming Jesus’ promise to supernaturally uphold his children in the midst of life-threatening storms.
So for me as an adult, “Perfect Peace” is no longer just an exercise in nostalgia or an instructive in how to craft a funky tune, though it surely works as both. For me, it’s a reminder to trust God and don an essential piece of His full armor, one that allows me to walk freely in His plans, despite my fear of the unknown. I can put on my headphones and, for at least a few minutes, relax, knowing that God’s got this whole future thing on lock.
So break out your afro wigs and your platform shoes, and then crank up your speakers this classic gospel throwback. You can get it on Amazon MP3 here, and don’t forget to check out this incredible Norwegian cover here.
Fans of political drama certainly have gotten their plates full over the last few years. In addition to award-winning, critically acclaimed series like The Wire and The West Wing, viewers have been treated to healthy doses of political intrigue on the short-lived Political Animals, The Chicago Code, and most recently, Boss, the Kelsey Grammer vehicle.
Into the fray comes Kevin Spacey in the Netflix original series, House of Cards, which debuted last Friday in an experimental format. The early buzz is due to its novelty as the first original series produced for Netflix, but most of the critical acclaim is aimed squarely at Spacey himself for his bracing, arresting performance.
Spacey’s protagonist, Francis Underwood, is the kind of charismatic, calculating, conniving antihero that audiences can’t avert their gaze from, even when he’s doing something as viscerally disturbing as [minor spoiler alert] euthanizing an injured dog. As Underwood, Spacey fills the screen with an endless string of meetings and phone conversations with theWashingtonelite, solving problems, currying favor, and dispensing axioms left and right.
Which is to say, he’s a classic Kevin Spacey character. But there’s another figure that Spacey’s Underwood resembles – that of a pastor. The resemblance grows even clearer during the third of episode of House of Cards, when [again, MINOR SPOILER] Francis Underwood is forced to travel to his home district in South Carolina to address a local tragedy and ends up speaking at a church in the area.
Part of Underwood’s appeal is his habit of breaking the fourth wall by looking directly into the camera and telling the audience his thoughts, which often differ dramatically to whatever he’s just said to another character. So the scene where he does this from the church lectern, where he totally contradicts himself in the middle of an emotionally-charged quasi-sermon, is supposed to highlight Underwood’s depravity by juxtaposing his hypocrisy against the moral uprightness of the church.
Unfortunately, that scene – minus a few Hollywood theatrical touches – plays out in churches all acrossAmericaevery Sunday. Except that in real life, the churches are just as complicit in the charade.
In his blog, Dr. Paul Metzger of Multnomah Biblical Seminary recently contrasted the fervor with which evangelicals tend to oppose evolution with the tacit acceptance they tend to give free-market economics, despite their being two different sides of the same ideological coin (according to Metzger, they’re both about survival of the fittest). This kind of bias creates a cultural blind spot, which invites certain pastors to speak out in favor of intelligent design in the classroom while remaining woefully silent on loopholes in the American tax code that benefit the rich at the expense of the poor.
(Then again, maybe we should be grateful for the silence, since some pastors clearly don’t understand the real-world ramifications of certain economic policies. Yes, I’m talking to you, Applebee’s pastor lady.)
The truth is, sometimes pastors make decisions for less-than-Godly reasons, and the faithful in the pews sometimes have trouble discerning when and why. In this scene, Spacey’s Underwood ends up quoting Proverbs 3:5, but it’s clear that his oratory is motivated more by political reasons than by any desire to honor God or share His truth with people.
And this wasn’teven during an election year.
House of Cards gets its name not only from its original British source material, but from the idea that our political process is effective only insomuch as people allow themselves to be shielded from the details of how it works. Otherwise, the facade is pierced and the whole thing comes falling down.
The same can be said about the church. For decades, many of our churches have been places where the primary motivation for showing up is neither worship nor Word, but to ascend the various echelons of social respectability. As such, it became easier and more popular to apply social pressure to overcome secularists who resist the church’s public agenda, rather than genuinely caring about them and allowing the Holy Spirit to use us to break down their defenses through other, non-activist means.
As long as it works, everyone’s fine – but anytime there’s a shift in the prevailing sense of morality, the whole thing falls apart.
The irony is, we revert to these top-down techniques because in many ways, they work. It’s a lot easier to demonize your opponents via press release than it is to invite your political opponent over for dinner and actually listen to what they have to say. Fortunately, people like Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy and gay activist Shane Windmeyer have proven that it’s not impossible. But still, it’s the exception to the rule.
After all, Underwood’s Machiavellian machinations don’t just make for good television – they’re compelling because they’re effective. For men and women like Francis Underwood, that’s how things get done in Washington. But it doesn’t have to be this way in the church. It really doesn’t. And even if, as the more cynical among us might argue, it is this way in the church and nothing will change anytime soon, then let’s at least let’s have someone come up with a decent scripted drama about it. And no, the pastor’s-wives-reality-show The Sisterhood doesn’t count.
Hezekiah Walker & The Love Fellowship Crusade Choir
“Christ Did It All”
Live From Atlanta At Morehouse College, Verity (1994)
So here’s a fun little experiment. Go to any black-owned barbershop, predominantly black church, or inner-city parachurch organization. Head into the office, conference room, or other common gathering place. Then play this song. And count how many people stop whatever they’re doing, and say, “THIS IS MY JAM!!”
(I’m guessing the over/under here is five.)
Now, for as long as there have been black people filling churches and singing in choirs, there have always been uptempo songs that make people move, jump, and clap. But this one always comes to mind for me when I think about about classic choir jams, and I think some of the following attributes combine to make this song and recording excellent.
First, there are two complementary, essential pieces – the choir enunciates its consonants well, and the mics are properly placed to pick them up. It might seem like a little thing, but without proper enunciation and mic placement, “Christ did it all” sounds a lot more like “rice did it all” (which I suppose could be a great parody version for the US Rice Growers Association, although, if I were them, I would go with the brilliant standard in misheard lyrics, “We Bring the Sacks of Rice On Trays”)
Also, the excellent blowing of Kim Waters on alto saxophone. This might’ve been the first contemporary choir recording where the saxophone was so front-and-center, featured prominently in the B-section of the chorus. (It’s a shame that this was excluded from the video, but it’s there in the commercially recorded audio.)
But mostly what makes this song such a jam is the infectious energy of the choir. In a lot of today’s contemporary gospel, the choir is simply there in support of a lead singer (or in some cases, a worship leader shouting exhortation).
But here, the choir itself is the star – which is great, because such a group of people singing in such spirited praise with so repetitive a chorus creates a sense of critical mass, not unlike the gravitational pull of a singularity, which then creates a reverse-supernova effect, where everyone in immediate range gets sucked in and starts singing along. Even Christopher Hitchens, if he were in the building, would’ve gotten swept up and singing along, even if only ironically. This galvanizing effect is one of the reasons why so many unchurched liberal white people love seeing African-American choirs sing gospel music (after all, such a singularity is also known as a black hole… okay, this analogy has officially gone too far).
“Christ Did It All” is proof that songs need not be wordy or full of lofty language in order to be theologically significant. Just like “Snakes On A Plane,” the whole point and concept of the song is embedded in the title. This is probably why so many black churches were able to have church services for so long without having printed hymnals or projected lyrics. You just stand up, watch, listen, and sing along. (Try doing that with “Lord When We Praise You with Glorious Music”… never gonna happen my friend.)
So while singing this song every service for a year might get old, and you might not want all of your songs at church to have this quality, it’s still true that songs like “Christ Did It All” can be an essential part of a churchgoer’s musical diet, because the lyrics are immediate, simple, and personal:
Christ did it all, all, all / Christ did it all, now I am free / Christ did it all, I’ve got the victory / And most of all, I have eternal life / Christ did it, He did it all
The vamp is driving, the band is kicking, it doesn’t change keys 47 times, and it’s only four minutes and twenty seconds. This makes “Christ Did It All,” a classic gospel throwback in my book. Just make sure, if you pull this one out at church, that you explain what “it” is.
Christopher Dorner, former Los Angeles Police Officer who is suspected of killing three individuals (Photo Credit: Robyn Beck/Newscom)
For the unaware, Christopher Dorner is a former officer of the Los Angeles Police Department wanted in connection with three murders – crimes for which he appeared to implicate himself in a long manifesto posted online. In it, he claims he was ejected from the force because he was trying to blow the whistle on rampant use of excessive force, abuse of power, cover-ups, and both institutional and interpersonal racism. He also claimed that, having exhausted all legal avenues to clear his name, these crimes are the only thing that will get the city’s attention and compel the LAPD to really clean up its act.
First, the obvious but necessary disclaimer:
Even if all of Dorner’s accusations are proven to be 100% correct, there is no legal or ethical justification for the murder of three innocent people. For these crimes, Christopher Dorner will be caught and brought to justice, even if that means by deadly force. At this point, that seems to be the most inevitable outcome.
Also, I generally don’t like to draw attention to this kind of writing, because I think it’s unwise to enable a criminal’s desire for attention. Thus, I was aware of this story for several days before I actually read what Dorner wrote.
But once I started, I couldn’t stop. And what I read troubled me greatly. Most troubling, of course, were the accusations leveled against several officers of the law – accusations that seemed, to me at least, as being too specific and numerous to be delusions of paranoia. Given the LAPD’s history with high-profile incidents of questionable behavior, it’s reasonable to conclude that there is truth in some of Dorner’s claims – though it’s not clear how much truth.
But this passage – edited for length and clarity – is what really floored me, where Dorner describes his background and upbringing, trying to shed some light on why an officer and war veteran would choose to retaliate in such a conspicuous, bloody way:
Find any incidents where I was ever accused of being a bully. You won’t, because it doesn’t exist. It’s not in my DNA. Never was. I was the only black kid in each of my elementary school classes from first grade to seventh grade in junior high and any instances where I was disciplined for fighting was in response to fellow students provoking common childhood schoolyard fights … My first recollection of racism was in the first grade at Norwalk Christian elementary school in Norwalk, CA. A fellow student called me a n—– on the playground. … I struck him fast and hard with a punch and kick. The principal swatted Jim for using a derogatory word toward me, then swatted me for striking Jim in response. He stated, ‘as good Christians we are to turn the other cheek as Jesus did’. Problem is, I’m not a f—ing Christian and that old book, made of fiction and limited non-fiction, called the bible, never once stated Jesus was called a n—–. How dare you swat me for standing up for my rights for demanding that I be treated as an equal human being.
This, alongside other passages of his manifesto, paints a visceral picture of a man who lost his faith in the systems and structures that had guided him personally and professionally. Dorner speaks forcefully and eloquently about adhering to his moral compass despite the corruption around him (he calls it his “true north”). And other than this brief episode, he never refers to God or the church.
Not once.
I don’t mean to discount Dorner’s personal agency in the matter. As individuals, we all bear an individual responsibility for our actions. However, as Donne reminds us, no man is an island. We are all bound, socially and emotionally, to the institutions that guide us and give us meaning. And reading Dorner’s manifesto, I can’t shake the feeling that this is a man in desperate need of a church community.
First off, it seems like he had no one who could talk him down from taking such drastic measures. All we know publicly of his support circle is an ex-girlfriend who posted a negative review on a dating site. No priest, no pastor, no small group. No one to forcefully warn him about how much damage he could do to his legacy by going against everything the badge and uniform represent.
I am convinced that Christopher Dorner regarded the American church with the same bitter disdain that he carried for the institutions of state law enforcement – even though both spheres have a few bad apples that spoil the reputation of the upstanding majority. Even as an adult, he was unable to make the connection between the racial persecution he suffered as a child and the persecution that Jesus suffered as a man. His eyes saw another institutional culture resistant to reform, and had no reason to believe the church could be any different.
This, to me, is the church’s essential failing. For Christopher Dorner and others like him struggling under the weight of racism and corruption in virtually every sphere of public life, pat answers are not enough. Generic moralistic therapeutic deism, where God exists to help good people do good things and live good lives… won’t cut it. Sometimes good people get screwed, and people like Dorner have been leaving churches in droves for years because their doubts and frustrations aren’t being addressed.
As a Christian, I believe the church is unique among societal institutions in that it’s the only avenue for true reconciliation across barriers of race, culture and class. Under the cross, we are all sinners, and yet through God’s grace we all get to participate in His redemptive process of bringing love, light and justice to the world.
But in the American church, we’ve allowed uniformity to become a substitute for integrity, where our misdeeds are never challenged because they’re reinforced by the blind spots in our cultural norms. Somewhere along the line, the church traded in its humility for political expediency. And people like Christopher Dorner got lost in the shuffle.
As for easy answers, there aren’t any. But part of the solution, at least for now, is for good, socially acceptable churchgoing people to sit with this mess, and wrestle with culpability. If the church was really functioning as God intended, these murders would not have happened.
Lena Dunham, creator of HBO’s Girls (Photo Credit: All Access Photo/Newscom)
Dear Lena,
First, let me apologize.
I formed an opinion about you without really examining your work. All I’ve been able to see from your critically-acclaimed comedy Girls is clips from YouTube. Since I didn’t exactly know what to make of them, I mostly ignored and moved on. But since hearing of your casting Donald Glover as a black Republican boyfriend – even for just two episodes — I thought to myself, “maybe I should give her another chance.”
So looking for an entry point, I watched your feature film debut, Tiny Furniture. And I was impressed by its emotional honesty. While I’m glad that it helped me to get a broader sense of your cinematic voice, I can now say with certainty that many of my initial instincts were correct.
You and your costars, the progeny of successful, famous people, have inspired quite the backlash from critics and bystanders – a potent combination of curiosity, incredulity, and let’s be honest, plain ol’ Haterade. There are many reasons for this, but one stands out:
Lena Dunham, you are, quite literally, a living embodiment of white privilege. (By the way, that “literally” was spoken in Rob-Lowe-as-Chris-Traeger-voice.)
Now I realize that in 2013, privilege is no longer the exclusive domain of white people – just ask Rashida Jones – but yours is a situation that specifically illustrates the advantages in the entertainment business that are granted by growing up amongst the liberal, hypereducated upper class.
And none of this is your fault, really. None of us asked to be born into our families. But I say this only so that you can understand how grating it can sound to struggling artists and filmmakers – of any race, really, but especially of color – when you say, as you did in last year’s NPR interview, that you “wrote the show from a gut-level place, and each character was a piece of me or based on someone close to me, and only later did I realize it was four white girls.” You should take plenty of credit for the freedom and boldness that it takes to write from such a gut-level place. However, the ability to express those gut-level fears and anxieties in the context of a commercially successful television program on a premium cable network? As President Obama put it, you didn’t build that. That ability came straight from your invisible knapsack.
I’m sure none of this is news to you, so don’t think of this letter as an indictment, but an encouragement. Your fledgling success actually gives me a measure of hope, because I see parallels in your story to another writer whose work I really respect. For now, we’ll call him Paulie.
This guy Paulie also came from a Jewish background. His upbringing was also steeped in privilege – a privilege that he understood and fully owned, even though he eventually grew disenchanted with it. And even though he could be intellectual and systematic, he wasn’t afraid of showing his real self, warts and all. He wrote with a raw, visceral intensity. He once implied that vegetables are for weak people, he referred to his enemies as dogs, and once sarcastically told some of his critics to cut off their own junk.
But as far as I can tell, there’s one important difference between Paulie’s story and yours. Paulie had an amazing encounter with the Christ, one that quite literally opened his eyes to the world around him (after being temporarily blinded), and eventually transformed his entire worldview.
And you know what the kicker is? All the stuff that I just mentioned… he wrote all of that after he became a Christian, not before. Though he hated Christians and actively tried to undermine everything they stood for, after having really encountered Christ, he went just as hardcore in the other direction.
Now if you’ve made it this far, you might be wondering – how is this relevant, exactly? I’m not a Christian. Well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to change that. I want everyone to experience the forgiveness and freedom that comes from having a relationship with Christ.
But that’s not my main objective here. I want to call your attention to a specific aspect of my man Paulie’s story (okay fine, nobody calls him that, I’ll just call him Paul). See, when Paul became a Christian, he didn’t run away from the privilege afforded by his upbringing; instead he leveraged it. He wrote and spoke with firsthand knowledge and experience of the cost of following Christ as one of the Hebrew elite, and his resulting message was credible and resonant. As an apostle, someone who traveled to various churches in various places, Paul understood that God had given him a unique platform. By writing from a dual perspective, both inside and outside of his culture, and by doing his best to be all things to all people, he reached many with his writing.
(I would apologize for the cliché, but Paul’s the one who started it.)
My guess, Lena Dunham, is that with Girls, you’re trying to use your story to speak resonantly to people beyond your core demographic of disaffected, upper-middle class, twentysomething women. In my opinion, that goal, admirable as it is, only happens if you can demonstrate enough grace and humility to reach out and learn from others beyond the scope of your upbringing. And it starts with realizing that you need other people to help you get there.
In Paul’s case, the love of Christ compelled him to do so; in yours, perhaps Nielsen numbers would suffice? Either way, I hope you learn how to cross those cultural boundaries. Your professional output will be better for it. If you do, could you share some of that grace and humility with Cathryn Sloane? She’s probably ready now. You can reach her on social media.
