Category Archives: Music

Art, Music, Public Life

Means To An End

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It is an underlying theme in fundamentalism that very little in this present world can be enjoyed for its own sake unless an explicit attempt is made to connect it up to some higher spiritual purpose. Whether you eat or drink or whatsoever you do…make sure everyone knows that you’re only using it as a means to some righteous end. We wouldn’t want people to think that we engage in idle frivolity.

See that brilliant sunset with its colors and hues? Don’t just be still and meditate on its beauty, immediately distract everyone by sermonizing endlessly about how such splendor could not be the result of a cosmic Big Bang. Be proclaiming.

Taking a vacation to the mountains or the shore? Not only should you be sure to take gospel tracts you must also be careful to bring back photo documentation of you passing them to other beleaguered vacationers lest someone accuse you of not redeeming the time. Be working.

Enjoying a Bach sonata or a Monet landscape? It’s the perfect opportunity to hold a lecture on the decline of art in society as a sign of the end times. Be lecturing.

Nothing can merely be enjoyed as God’s good gift without explicit goals of evangelization, indoctrination, procreation, or separation being constantly brought to bear. It is all but impossible for a fundamentalist to merely be.

Music, Outreach

Radio

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Since before the days of Lester Roloff, fundamentalists have been fascinated with the medium of radio. Churches of the fundamentalist old-school will actually own their own radio station but others will at least buy time on a local station to let the managawd’s sermons be spread far and wide.

As is their custom, fundamentalists must spare no cost to provide an approved alternative to all the godless programming that congests the airwaves. This is mostly justified as “outreach”, although who exactly other than a fundamentalists will consent to listen to the usual fundy radio fare is not exactly clear.

A church’s radio station is actually a pretty good way to figure out exactly what camp they are in.

– If the people sing like they’re a hundred years old and chronically depressed it’s one of the BJU family of churches.

– If the people sound like young men and women who are so excited and happy that they may experience spontaneous combustion at any moment, you’re enjoying the sounds of PCC-style broadcasting.

– If the music sounds like neutered Southern Gospel and frequently stops for interludes of preaching that sound like the speaker is trying to inflict as much damage as possible on his vocal chords, you’re somewhere in the Hyles spectrum.

If you too would like to enjoy a trip down fundy lane, you can check out all kinds of fundamentalists programming from stations like WOEL, Rejoice Radio, and the Fundamental Broadcast Network.

It’s enough to make you wish that Marconi had invented something else — like, say, a better earplug.