I'm not an American Idol fan. In fact, I've never even seen an entire episode, but tonight after dinner some guys were here at the apartment, and the first part of the show came on as I was finishing in the dishes. I watched as the host recapped the previous evening's program: "Idol Gives Back." This was a charity program to raise funds for world relief work. Fair enough. If singing celebrities can incite fans to give 60 million plus dollars for world relief projects, praise be to God! But then something strange happened--they did--praise God, that is. The "final eight" Idol contestants sang "Shout the Lord." It was one of the most surreal moments I've seen on television. Eight aspiring pop singers with a black gospel choir singing one the most popular American evangelical worship songs on national television. I don't really have a category for that.
I tried to compute the cultural hermeneutical relationships and pastoral care implications ("there are probably a lot of people who are going to need counseling after watching that," I thought to myself). However, at the end of the day I think I am just stunned at how post-Christian our society has become in some spheres and yet how so many elements of a sort of "folk" or "cultural" Christianity remain. You can't pray in school and the Pledge of Allegiance probably shouldn't mention God, but don't worry the secularists have not yet won the day. God, or at least his cultural effigy, is alive and well on the set of American Idol.
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2 comments:
I watched the performance on YouTube and it was very weird. And then I thought, "Well, it sounds good to me, but I wonder what it sounds like to God. I wonder if it was weird for him too." And then I thought, "Well, everyone is going to praise him some day, so they might as well get some practice now."
I think your last sentence summed it up best, Gods cultural effigy is very much alive in pop culture, but his holiness, wrath pretty much all his attributes were clearly not invited
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