U2’s America
U2’s America: a promised land for refugees, safeguarded by (filthy rich) pop star prophets, subverted by the wrong sort of elected officials. There are no blue-collar workers and no rural communities
Scene of the Crime
On our own, we cannot get back to the Garden. In the word picture of Genesis, angels with flaming swords block any path back.
Bob Dylan: Advent songwriter?
The central theme of “When He Returns” is not the dynamics of personal conversion, but the cosmic scale of the divine last word.
‘To write a song that would endure’
Tom Petty wrote and sang of agapic love.
The Boss and Catholicism: Springsteen’s memoirs
Springsteen’s world remains one of “great and harsh beauty, of fantastic stories, of unimaginable punishment and infinite reward.” The world is “dark and beatific,” a place of intense grace but also where we can turn into devils.
Eclipsing the heavens
We live in an age of diminished faith, and of dead, eclipsed gods.
The double cure
Toplady's “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me” qualifies as one of the richest hymns, with its biblical allusions, soteriological vision, and complex history.
Artistry in Easter: Jesus in the progressive jazz of Stan Kenton
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Jazz speaks for life.”