The King's College

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Larry Norman and the never-ending culture wars over 'Christian' music and art (Part I)

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Larry Norman and the never-ending culture wars over 'Christian' music and art (Part I)

When Larry Norman released "Upon This Rock" in 1969, its rock-star sizzle and blunt faith put the album in the soundtrack for millions of lives as the "Jesus Movement" revival surged onto the cover of Time magazine.

Music industry pros were used to hearing The Beatles on Capitol Records. Now there was a longhaired guy on the same label belting out: "Sing that sweet, sweet song of salvation to every man and every nation. Sing that sweet, sweet song of salvation and let the people know that Jesus cares."

Norman's work did more than shake up church youth meetings. His early success convinced some Gospel music executives to turn up the drums and guitar solos. Soon, "Contemporary Christian Music" grew into a billion-dollar industry with its own written and unwritten rules.

Now it was time for Norman to freak out Christians as much as he did secular-music people in the early years when he shared concert bills with Janis Joplin, The Doors, The Who and others. What were Christian radio stations supposed to do with "The Great American Novel," a song that addressed racism, war, poverty and other hot-button topics?

"You kill a black man at midnight just for talking to your daughter, then you make his wife your mistress and you leave her without water," sang Norman. "And the sheet you wear upon your face is the sheet your children sleep on, at every meal you say a prayer; you don't believe but still you keep on."

Norman "overloaded lots of people's circuits" and, eventually, even his own, according to philosopher Gregory Alan Thornbury, author of a new biography named after one of Norman's most famous tunes -- "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?" The subtitle hints at future darkness: "Larry Norman and the Perils of Christian Rock." Norman died in 2008 at the age of 60.

Thornbury calls Norman the "Forrest Gump," a true "holy fool," of American evangelicalism. The scholar — and guitar player — doesn't hide Norman's struggles in business and his private life, adding a painful backstory to a career that put the singer shoulder to shoulder with everyone from the Rev. Billy Graham to President Jimmy Carter, and lots of colorful people in between. As a young man, Vice President Mike Pence was born again at a Christian rock festival -- headlined by Norman.

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Putting the brilliant, tormented, flawed Martin Luther on trial -- one more time

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Putting the brilliant, tormented, flawed Martin Luther on trial -- one more time

NEW YORK -- The drama unfolds in a Gothic sanctuary in a limbo zone between heaven and hell.

In this new Off-Broadway play -- "Martin Luther On Trial" -- Lucifer requests new proceedings against the Catholic monk turned Protestant reformer, with St. Peter acting as judge and Luther's wife, former nun Katharina von Bora, as defense counsel.

The first witness is Adolf Hitler, who hails Luther as a "great German patriot" who saved Germany "by uniting all Germans against a common enemy -- the pope. … Luther's 95 Theses freed the German conscience from the clutches of Rome, creating space for a new moral system, one that would be distinctly German."

Luther's wife shouts: "Objection. Luther wasn't a nationalist. He wanted people to follow Christ first, nation second."

St. Peter sadly replies: "Overruled."

So the debate begins. Luther's defenders stress his struggles against worldly Medieval church structures, his work translating the Bible into German and his messages stressing that salvation was found through repentance and faith. It was a world-changing event when, on Oct. 31, 1517, the theology professor posted his 95 theses in Wittenberg, Germany.

The Devil says Luther's goal was to "Reform the Christian church. His result: fracturing it into a thousand pieces." Luther's work also unleashed a violent storm of change in Europe. Facing public failure, as well as success, the aging Luther lashed out at Rome and the Jews in language and logic later recycled by Nazi leaders.

"There is the mad genius thing here. Not in the sense that Luther ever went mad, but there were times when he gave into his anger," said Chris Cragin-Day, who co-wrote the play with Max McLean, founder of the Fellowship for Performing Arts, which is producing "Martin Luther On Trial."

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The blasphemy iceberg is much bigger than Charlie Hebdo

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The drama began when a Pakistani politician named Salman Taseer criticized the land's blasphemy laws that were being used to condemn Asia Bibby, a Christian convert.

This led to a man named Malik Qadri firing 20 rounds into Taseer's back, according to witnesses, while security guards assigned to the Punjab governor stood and watched the assassination. When Qadri went to trial, cheering crowds showered him with rose pedals. Later, radicals threatened the judge who found Qadri guilty.

The judge, of course, had committed blasphemy by passing judgment on the man who killed a Muslim politician who -- by criticizing the blasphemy laws and defending an apostate -- had committed blasphemy.

"Then you get the question: Can you defend the judge or would that be blasphemous? We are starting to get here very like a Monty Python element," noted human-rights scholar Paul Marshall, speaking on "Charlie Hebdo, Free Speech and Freedom of Religion" at The King's College in New York City.

This kind of tragedy on the other side of the world is not what most Americans and Europeans think about when they worry about violence inspired by accusations of blasphemy, said Marshall, who currently teaches at Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University in Jakarta, Indonesia. 

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Praying for better journalism at The New York Times

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NEW YORK -- It was a perfectly ordinary invitation to gather for Christian fellowship, the kind of message believers often circulate among colleagues that they know share their faith. In this case, Michael Luo invited a circle of fellow journalists in the New York Times newsroom to breakfast, including one former pastor of an evangelical church.

Yes, this tiny Times flock plans to gather again. No, the veteran reporter was not willing to name any names.

"The Times is like a lot of other elite cultural institutions," said Luo, speaking at The King's College in lower Manhattan's financial district. The newsroom is full of "cosmopolitan, urban types, highly educated people who went to the top colleges whose cultural sensibilities are probably more shaped ... by the upper West Side and Park Slope, Brooklyn, than, you know, the Bible Belt.

"So it's certainly not the easiest place to say that you're a Christian. In fact, some of those people at that breakfast who have confided their faith to me have often sworn me to secrecy."

After giving the matter careful thought, Luo did mention his public lecture at the evangelical college -- "Articles of Faith: A Believer's Journey Through The New York Times" -- on his Facebook page.

The Harvard graduate has faced more than his share of tricky situations, whether reporting in war-torn Iraq or in the culture wars of two White House campaigns. After one of his many Times pieces on loopholes in gun-control laws, AmmoLand.com ran his photo with a caption that called him a "biased anti-gun" reporter.

During the 2007 Values Voters Summit, Luo tried to assure participants that he was a churchgoer who genuinely wanted to understand their beliefs. One activist then introduced Luo to a prominent conservative Christian by saying, "Don't worry, he goes to church." The leader responded, "Well, he'll have to prove it," with a snarl.

"I was thinking," Luo recalled, "what am I going to have to do, quote my favorite Bible verses or give him the Four Spiritual Laws?"

On the other side of the church aisle are well-meaning Christians who insist that Luo's goal should be to "bring Christian truth to the pages of the Times." The implication, he said, is that he should smuggle an evangelical agenda into the "newspaper of record" and let it shape his work.

That would be a disaster, Luo said, and would allow other professionals to label him that "Jesus freak guy" or a "religious zealot." This would destroy whatever trust and respect he has earned during his decade at the Times, which recently led to his appointment as deputy metro editor with much of his work focusing on investigative reporting and, yes, religion coverage.

Luo stressed that one of his goals is to live out the recommendations of a 2005 Times self-study -- entitled "Preserving Our Readers' Trust" -- that urged editors to do more to cover "unorthodox views," "contrarian opinions" and the lives of those "more radical and more conservative" than those usually found in their newsroom.

In addition to seeking diversity of gender, race and ethnicity, the report said: "We should pursue the same diversity in other dimensions of life, and for the same reason -- to ensure that a broad range of viewpoints is at the table when we decide what to write about and how to present it." It would help, the report noted, if Times editors sought out "talented journalists who happen to have military experience, who know rural America first hand, who are at home in different faiths."

Thus, Luo said he has tried become a resource to help the newspaper do fair, accurate, informed news coverage of a wider variety of religious believers. The goal is to avoid "loaded language" that frequently confuses "theological terms with political ones." It also would help, he said, if journalists spent more time covering religion stories rooted in the details of daily life, rather than focusing almost exclusively on political conflicts, both in pews and in public life.

"I would argue that when we screw up, it's not because of some sort of overt prejudice," he said. "The problem usually is that you can't know what you don't know. ... So ignorance can obviously lead to inaccurate and misleading characterizations and, yes, it can lead to bias sometimes seeping into the ways Christians are depicted."