Scripture in rock

The first half of 2007 has seen two mainstream rock albums released dealing explicitly with scripture and its themes.

Neal Morse is a US prog rocker who first made his mark in the band Spock’s Beard and then formed the prog-rock supergroup Transatlantic. Following his conversion to Christianity in 2000, he left both bands and has since produced a substantial and well-regarded body of solo work exploring different aspects of his faith. At the turn of the year, and thanks to Paul Harcourt at All Saints Woodford Wells, some of us in the Chelmsford Diocese were able to be at a service led by Neal. It would be great to see him return when he next tours European Churches. In March this year he released his fourth solo prog rock album Sola Scriptura which, across four tracks and 76 minutes (this is prog rock we’re talking here!), tells the story of Martin Luther and the Reformation. Morse says, “The point of it is to point us … toward the light of God's truth which is laid out wonderfully before us in the scriptures. Of course, this is a lofty goal for a mere CD, but, with God anything is possible!”

The latest album from Rickie Lee Jones, The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, is directly inspired by the sayings of Jesus. Rickie Lee’s friend and collaborator, US photographer Lee Cantelon, published in the 1990s a thematic collection of Jesus’ sayings called The Words and then followed this up by planning a spoken word edition set to music. Rickie Lee was invited to read one of the spoken word pieces but instead improvised a song to the musical backing and continued improvising until she had the songs that form the current album. Musically reminiscent of the Velvet Underground, this is a challenging listen both musically and lyrically but one that is already connecting with many outside of Church. The in-concert response to the song 'Where I like it best', which riffs on Jesus’ words from Matthew 6. 5-13, has led her to comment that “people are longing to pray” but have been “damaged by their brush with religion.”

Artists and albums like these challenge us to think how our use of scripture connects (or doesn’t connect) with those outside of our congregations.