OK, not the religion, per se, but the music associated with it. Not too long ago, young Mr. Brad Shoup wrote in these very “pages” about his experience with Christian music from the vantage of a one-time believer, but what about those of us who have never accepted Jesus the Christ as our personal lord and savior? Since my personal musical floodgates were opened some years ago, I have been searching out and reveling in music from lots of cultures other than the one I was born into—Tuvan throat-singing, Japanese koto, an abiding love of Afro-beat (who doesn’t have an abiding love of Afro-beat?). Of course I can’t particularly relate to the circumstances under which the music in question was made, but that’s what I always told myself: I don’t listen to relate, I listen to get another person’s viewpoint. Being a hypocrite like anyone else, this cross-cultural appreciation normally does not extend to music imbued with the light of Jesus. At this point, by way of disclosure, I should point out that your hack here is technically Jewish. (Todd, this would be a perfect time for a .jpg of some sort of hook-nosed Shylock caricature.)

[You’re fired. –Ed]

Now, this distrust (unfortunately, that probably is the appropriate word) traces from well before my Homeland fell under the spell of frothing Rapture-freaks (as in Revelations, not Echoes). Likely it’s the fact that, growing up, all the expressly Christian music I knew of, aside from certain classical pieces I knew little about, wow, totally sucked. Think DC Talk. Might have been the creepy-crazy televangelists on TV, too. Either way, the blinders were up. It took a nominal minimalist to bring the walls a-tumblin’ down: Olivier Messiaen, and his Quartet For the End of Time, an eight-movement piece for violin, cello, piano, and clarinet, regarding the angels who announce the Fall of Babylon and the Coming of The Lord. Messiaen was an ardent Catholic, wrote this piece in a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp, and chose the instruments by the players he could find; its premiere for the officers at the Stalag was such a success that it garnered him and the other three performers early release. It’s gorgeous, sumptuous, and has a low-key joy missing from so much of the modern Christian music I’m exposed to. The movement here is the “Eulogy to the Eternity of Jesus,” (from the 1989 reading by the Tashi ensemble) and features an endlessly slow and mountainously physical cello solo, rippled through with birdsong violin. It captures what can only be called a love and fascination with the Endless, the Infinite, that seems to me to be the center of the most life-affirming spirituality; with neither the deadening fear of, nor the bug-eyed exuberance for, the Apocalypse that creeps me out so. Naturally, I prefer this Heaven to the one that refuses me for being a big Jew.

Since my liturgical experience is of the sit-down-stand-up-sit-down-fall-asleep variety, catching a glimps ehere and there of a Southern Baptist ceremony is eye-opening. They seem so… happy, so reveling in the light of the Lord, that I wonder what my lame temple must have been thinking. Though I suppose, when you’re living in poverty that traces back to when your forebears were slaves, and you’ve got next to no rights, and the FBI is testing out the large-scale effects of syphilis in your neighborhood, you’ve got to revel in something. Listening to the women called on to testify in this recording of the Rev. D.C. Rice’s “We Got the Same Kinda Power Over Here,” a Depression-era tape revived by the fine folks at Dust To Digital for their Goodbye Babylon box, you behold a rebel yell of sorts, a cry of power and a show of strength in the face of the sort of adversity that I know basically nothing about. My secular rationalism is depressing in times of turmoil.

Of course, there’s still something to be said for white-light apocalypsis; it speaks to fears that a lot of us have. Like, for instance, the fear of a coming apocalypse, though not one of the God-made variety. In 2002, some good ol’ boys out of Denton, TX crafted a searing double-disc concept album called The Texas/Jerusalem Crossroads, about the End of Days coming and Texas being declared the promised land. Lead singer/songwriter Josh Pierson is the son of a Pentecostal preacher who fell in with a rogue bunch of Hegelian perceptionists; then declaring that he didn’t need to make a living, he could simply will what he needed into being, putting perhaps a little too much stock in simple faith. His wife left him (the preacher) and took the kids, and young Josh wrestled for years with his faith, eventually channeling it into this one album, a flagrant attempt to tickle God himself with a distortion pedal. It’s a miraculous album, equal parts Slint skronk and Kitchens of Distinction skree, with fire and brimstone lighting the way.

[buy messiaen/rev d.c. rice/lift to experience]