Who Are We Shouting to Again?

I think the only thing that could have surprised me more would have been the Great Doxology. When American Idol, the ubiquitously touted icon of reality television and American pop culture decides to have their top 8 contestants sing, in front of 70 million American viewers and a remarkably famous crowd of celebrities wearing their appropriately sober "fundraising for a worthy cause" expressions, a worship song to end the evening's solemnities, it seems to deserve some comment...

To keep the post as brief as possible, I will offer only two thoughts on this genuinely strange and confusing event - one negative and one positive.

1. To look at it negatively, the "Shout to the Lord" performance was an embarrassing travesty. When evangelical worship songs are SO inoffensive to American culture at large that a group of pop icons can sing them on national television without anyone noticing that something particularly religious was going on, then you really have to start wondering if the evangelical church is doing its job. The focus of the evening was certainly not "the wonder and majesty of God" or that "nothing compares to the promise we have in [Jesus Christ]", and the fact that the contradiction in messages - the utter oppositeness of focus between the song and the evening - didn't turn any heads or raise any flags points to a kind of terrifying numbness and/or obliviousness in the culture. I wanted to shout "hey people, you can't sing that... or even clap when other people sing that! It's making exclusive claims on your life! It's demanding that your sole object of adoration be the Lord and His glory! Believe me, I've been listening to you and you don't want that!"
At the large church I attended in Southern California, we used to sing this song after communion, and we would all move to the center and hold hands and sway back and forth as the lights dimmed and the song swelled during the key change. I used to remark back then that the song had more of a "we are the world" function than anything else... it inspired a happy sense of unity and good-feeling about our identity as a "blessed" family. It is saying something pretty sad about the state of our "worship" when there is no significant difference - no additional claim made or devotion asked of participants - between "sacred" services and secular charity events.

2. To look at the event positively, however, we could say that the striking feature of the song's utter awkwardness WAS its obvious alien-ness to the situation. It is impossible that very many of the people present (or even singing) could believe in the message of "Shout to the Lord". The sense of out-of-place-ness was fueled by the very strength of the claims made in the song - of the genuine devotion expressed in the words and passionately meant by the author - and I am reminded that anyone that really COULD sing that song, even on that night and on that stage, and really mean it, is a friend and fellow servant of the Lord, and has a great deal in common with me.
The Christian view of the world, with its radically extroverted priorities and its utter denial of self, is diametrically opposed both to mainstream culture and to popular monotheism. Any religion that allows the autonomous individual to remain at the center is little more than a fertility cult or a safe neo-paganism - an easy way to pacify the starving spirit of humankind without making it give itself up in sacrifice. Such "religion" is a travesty.

But maybe there is something to the fact that America is fine with hearing worship songs on national television... maybe, on the positive side of things, it is quite refreshing to know that, despite the message liberal hollywood is trying to force down our throats (that America is really post-sexual, post-feminist, post-theist, post-moral, post-modern), the majority of Americans, when they really get to vote about it democratically, would rather hear worship songs than "we are the world" after all...