by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
For some years now Good News has been working for renewal and reform in the United Methodist Church.
We have maintained, and continue to maintain, that the greatest challenge facing the church has more to do with our fidelity to the truth of core doctrinal teachings than to organizational or structural matters. We have implored our leaders to clearly counter the corrosive claims of theological pluralism and agendas that seek to bring the church into conformity with popular culture rather than having the church serve as an agent for its godly transformation.
The General Council on Finance and Administration has determined that the economic and structural challenges facing the church warrant requesting that the Council of Bishops convene a special session of General Conference. We applaud GCFA’s attentiveness to the health and viability of clergy pensions. We certainly acknowledge that the church, along with individuals and organizations, has been adversely impacted by the economic downturn.
However, we also believe it would be a mistake to assume that macro-economic issues alone have led the church to our current financial and organizational crises.
Should the Council of Bishops determine to convene a special session to address not only the pension crisis, but reorganizational matters as well, we trust such a plan will not be based on the “World Wide Nature of the Church” amendments that were recently rejected by rank and file United Methodists around the globe. That plan failed to address deeper problems and instead proposed more bureaucracy as the way forward. We maintain that any reorganization plan must include at least the following: 1) the merging and/or elimination of various boards and agencies; 2) effective means for holding bishops, clergy and general secretaries accountable for the leadership of the church; and 3) the assurance that the church will remain firmly connected and not carved up into various regions.
We call on United Methodists to give close attention to the challenges facing the church and to pray for our bishops as they consider taking the extraordinary step of convening a special session of General Conference.
By Rob Renfroe, president and publisher of Good News.
Renewal group leaders meet with Bishops’ Unity Task Force
Statement from the Rev. Rob Renfroe, President and Publisher of Good News:
On November 5, 2009, twelve leaders of the renewal groups within the United Methodist Church met with the Bishops’ Unity Task Force. We were grateful for their invitation to meet at Lake Junaluska and to share our concerns about the unity of the church and how we can move forward in mission together. The same task force had previously met with a group representing the Reconciling Movement and the Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA). (See below for persons representing the renewal groups and for the bishops present for the meeting.)
We had a wide-ranging and forthright discussion about the matters that threaten the unity of the United Methodist Church. We spoke about (1) the theological differences that divide our church; (2) events at General Conference that have concerned us; and (3) activities and decisions outside of General Conference by United Methodist leaders which have, at least in our thinking, created divisions rather than unity.
We were very clear that we respect the office of bishop and that we want our bishops to lead us by defending and promoting the church’s positions on controversial issues as stated in The Book of Discipline. We also made sure to state that whereas we can respectfully listen to all opinions and we can act graciously towards all people, we cannot accept all positions or compromise on what God has clearly revealed in the Scriptures.
We were heartened by the desire of the Bishops to hear us and to understand us. It was also encouraging to hear from them that many of the issues that concern us have been discussed in the Council of Bishops. All of us present were in agreement that there must be a better way “to do General Conference” and some ideas were shared along those lines. We are now determining if and how the conversation will continue.Thank you for caring for the United Methodist Church and for the cause of Christ.
Those representing the renewal groups were:
Billy Abraham (Perkins School of Theology)
Steve Wende (Pastor, First UM Church, Houston)
Tom Harrison (Pastor, Asbury UM Church, Tulsa)
Steve Wood (Pastor, Mt. Pisgah UM Church, Atlanta)
Alice Wolfe (Pastor, Anna UM Church, Anna, Ohio)
Chuck Savage (Pastor, Kingswood UM Church, Dunwoody, GA)
Pat Miller (Executive Director of The Confessing Movement)
Tom Lambrecht (Pastor, Faith Community UM Church, Greenville, Wisconsin, and coordinator of the Renewal and Reform Coalition efforts at General Conference 2008)
Liza Kittle (President of the Renew Network)
Larry Baird (District Superintendent, Western New York Annual Conference)
Eddie Fox (World Director of Evangelism for the World Methodist Council)
Rob Renfroe (President and Publisher of Good News and Associate Pastor, The Woodlands UM Church, The Woodlands, Texas.)
Statement from Bishop Sally Dyck, Bishops’ Unity Task Force
Our meeting with the Renewal Groups occurred on November 5, 2009 at Lake Junaluska. We had an open and spirited conversation around such topics as what unity is theologically and practically. We also heard from them about their pain in terms of actions at General Conference (again we find that there is deep pain within our church around our divisions). We began to think about some of the ways in which we can work together (and across differences) to holy conference and will follow up on some of these ideas.
Blessings on you!
Those representing the Bishops’ Unity Task Force were:
Sally Dyck, Chairperson (Minnesota)
Mike Lowry (Central Texas)
Minerva Carcano (Desert Southwest)
Peter Weaver (New England)
Daniel Arichea (The Philippines)
Joao Machado (Mozambique)
by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Joseph Slife
A representative of the United Methodist General Board of Church and Society (GBCS) appeared at a news conference on November 16 to denounce an amendment—included in the House-passed health care bill—that would prohibit taxpayer-funded abortion.
Linda Bales Todd, director of the Louise and Hugh Moore Population Project at GBCS, was among several speakers at the National Press Club briefing, which was sponsored by the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.
Todd said the House health bill’s “Stupak amendment” (named for its author, Rep. Bart Stupak—D-Michigan) “penalizes women and immigrants [who don’t have the] economic resources” to pay for an abortion.
The amendment, which passed the House by a vote of 240-194, would prohibit any public health insurance plan, or any private plans that receive federal subsidies, from covering abortion services. (GBCS later lobbied against the Senate version of the amendment, proposed by Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), a member of Rockbrook United Methodist Church in Omaha. The Nelson amendment was defeated 54-45.)
At the November news conference, Todd criticized the Stupak amendment, which was supported strongly by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, as being guided by a “narrow” religious viewpoint. “Measures like this effectively limit access and delivery of reproductive health care based on one, narrow religious doctrine,” she said.
Speaking at the same news conference, Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said he would rather Congress fail to pass health care legislation than to pass a final bill that includes the Stupak language. “I believe it would be better to dump this entire bill than allow it to become law with these noxious provisions intact,” he said.
Other speakers at the news conference included Carlton W. Veazey, president of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Sammie Moshenberg of the National Council of Jewish Women, Jon O’Brien of Catholics for Choice, and Sandra Sorensen of the United Church of Christ Justice and Witness Ministries.
Earlier, the General Board of Church and Society issued a written statement about the House bill, noting that its opposition to the Stupak amendment is based on Resolution 2026 in the 2008 edition of the United Methodist Book of Resolutions. That awkwardly worded resolution—carrying the title “Responsible Parenthood”—says in part: “We therefore encourage our churches and common society to: …make abortions available to women without regard…to economic status.”
(Note: Apparently due to an editing error that has not been previously noticed, Resolution 2026 also includes extraneous words that make the passage actually read as follows: “…make abortions available to women without regard to economic standards of sound medical practice, and make abortions available to women without regard to economic status.” This error has appeared in The Book of Resolutions since at least 1996.)
A recent report by Liza Kittle of Renew, a network for evangelical women within the UM Church, noted that most items in the Book of Resolutions were written by personnel of various UM boards and agencies.
“The majority of the resolutions which ultimately are included in The Book of Resolutions, and which drive United Methodist policies and social action, originate from a handful of boards and agencies within the Church,” Kittle wrote. “These groups, in turn, use the resolutions to advocate political and social agendas…[that] do not reflect the diversity of beliefs present among United Methodist Church members.”
The Renew report notes that of the 352 resolutions in the current Book of Resolutions, more than two-thirds originated with the General Board of Church and Society, the General Board of Global Missions, or the Women’s Division.
Although resolutions are not binding the same way that language in The Book of Discipline is binding, items in The Book of Resolutions are often used to justify board and agency policy.
In many cases, as noted above, boards and agencies actually write the resolutions, which are then passed at the General Conference with no debate—either due to time pressure or because the items are bundled together with other unrelated matters as part of a “consent calendar” (an omnibus piece of legislation intended for quick passage on a single vote). Once passed by the General Conference, the resolutions are then used to authorize the policies and actions of the boards and agencies that wrote the resolutions in the first place.
Most of the language of the current Resolution 2026 dates to the 1976 General Conference. Delegates, facing heavy time pressure on the final day of the 1976 conference, passed the Responsible Parenthood resolution, authored by the Women’s Division, with no debate. The resolution has stayed largely intact since then.
The matter came to the floor of the conference on May 7, 1976—the last day of the week-and-a-half-long gathering. The Responsible Parenthood resolution was only one section of a larger eight-section, 6,500-word omnibus resolution on “Health, Welfare, and Human Development.” The full resolution filled more than 16 pages in the Journal of the 1976 General Conference.
Each of the eight sections was to be presented separately for debate and then a separtate vote. However, Section IV (the section on health care) engendered so much discussion that, with time running short, Sections V, VI, VII, and VIII—which included the Responsible Parenthood section—were never debated.
The 1976 Responsible Parenthood resolution was amended slightly in 1996 (apparently this is when the editing error mentioned above was introduced) and the item was readopted—again without floor debate. The resolution was bundled with several unrelated items on Consent Calendar B06 and was passed on April 26, 1996.
In 2004, the Women’s Division submitted a petition asking for readoption of the Responsible Parenthood resolution. Again, there was no floor debate. The matter was added to Consent Calendar B04 and was passed.
Two slight changes were made to Responsible Parenthood at last year’s General Conference, and the resolution was again readopted, via Consent Calendar B04, on April 30, 2008.
Although the basic language of Resolution 2026 dates to 1976, the United Methodist Church has turned in a decidedly pro-life direction in the years since then. The 2008 General Conference, for example, passed legislation acknowledging “the sanctity of unborn human life” and noting that United Methodists are bound to “respect the sacredness of life and well-being of [both] the mother and the unborn child.”
It remains to be seen whether delegates to the 2012 General Conference will insist on a full floor debate regarding the future of the “Responsible Parenthood” resolution, as well as other resolutions that have never received a full airing at any General Conference but are nonetheless guiding board and agency policies.
Joseph Slife is a certified lay speaker in the North Georgia Annual Conference and an adjunct instructor in the Department of Communication at Georgia’s Emmanuel College. He blogs at www.MethodistThinker.com.
by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Liza Kittle
Preparing for a new year of ministry at Renew, I have been pondering “big picture” things. One of the challenges of leading Renew is striking a balance between engaging the spiritual battles of the United Methodist Church and promoting the formation of alternative women’s ministries. Both are important.
Although God has clearly shown Renew that building transforming women’s ministries is our primary focus, we must continue to be involved in reform and renewal of the church. We persevere, knowing that our cause is just, our calling secure, and our commitment steadfast.
Our cause is just. It involves upholding scriptural Christianity and bringing spiritual vitality to our troubled denomination. It means upholding our Book of Discipline and insisting our appointed leaders enforce it. It means standing for biblical truth in the Christian faith and against pressures to abandon or alter it. It means allowing the Holy Spirit to do a “new thing” in our midst.
One doesn’t have to look far to see where the church is growing—in Africa, where the Word of God is preached, scriptural Christianity is upheld, and lives are being transformed. Growing and healthy churches in the United States are also Christ-centered, committed to scriptural integrity, and focused on evangelistic mission outreach. These churches advocate a proper balance between personal and social holiness, key tenets of Wesleyan theology.
Most of our growing, vital churches also have alternative women’s programs. Renew remains committed to encouraging our pastors, bishops, and the General Conference to recognize and support other women’s ministries within the church. Less that 15 percent of the women in the UM Church participate in United Methodist Women, the only officially sanctioned women’s ministry in the church. The time is now for our church to embrace variety in women’s ministry programs—especially in a denomination that celebrates diversity and open-mindedness.
Our calling is secure in the hands God. Renewal and reform within the UM Church is not an easy task. Those called to this task are deeply passionate about the future of our denomination. God has given encouraging signs of affirmation to this calling over the past year. Constitutional changes that would have separated the U.S. and Central conferences were soundly defeated in annual conferences. Changes that would have removed pastoral authority regarding readiness for membership were also defeated.
Many in the church believe these amendments were initiated by liberal groups who continue to promote the acceptance of homosexuality practice. By removing any barrier to church membership and silencing the voice of African delegates, who tend to be theologically orthodox, these groups would have greater success in changing our stance on this issue. By 2012, it is predicted that 30 percent of the delegates at General Conference will be from Africa. (In 2004, the African delegation made up 10 percent of total delegates in 2004 and 20 percent in 2008.) The votes of our African brothers and sisters are critical for maintaining the historic doctrines of Methodism.
Our commitment is steadfast. I have seen firsthand the devotion of clergy and laity called to this noble endeavor of reform and renewal in the UM Church. Renew was privileged to participate in a dialogue between renewal leaders and the Council of Bishops’ Unity Task Force in November 2009 at Lake Junaluska, N.C. (see page 7). I witnessed servants of the Lord speaking up for biblical truth and denominational integrity with humility and grace.
As a church, I encourage you to participate in this movement through several means. One is through prayer—for our church, bishops, and leaders. Another is through knowledge and participation. Stay informed about the issues facing the church, engage in dialogue with church leaders, and be able to clearly articulate your Christian beliefs.
And, very importantly, support renewal groups through generous regular giving. It takes tremendous financial resources to engage our brothers and sisters in Africa, send a renewal coalition to General Conference, communicate with constituents, speak to congregations and groups, and provide resources for the church. There is no greater cause than helping maintain the scriptural integrity and future growth of the United Methodist Church.
For the ministry of Renew—holding workshops, producing Christ-centered materials, planning leadership conferences, expanding our organization, communicating with our network, and participating in renewal efforts—your giving is also essential.
I pray that everyone will join this just cause, seek God’s guidance about your own calling, and be steadfastly committed to reform and renewal. Your participation will bring honor and glory to God. Won’t you partner with us in this just and noble cause? I pray that you will.
Liza Kittle is the President of the Renew Network (www.renewnetwork.org ), P.O. Box 16055, Augusta, GA 30919; telephone: 706-364-0166.
by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Duffy Robbins
“Let him (or her) who has a mouth to speak listen to what the audience says…”
One of those youth ministry proverbs that we hear over and over again is this: “You’ve got to earn the right to be heard.” Kids will not donate their attention.
Wise youth workers will always shape their programming and their messages with the notion that the first task is not to speak to the kids; the first task is to get the kids to listen. And getting a teenage audience to pay attention to a speaker usually begins with a speaker who pays attention to the audience.
Let’s say it’s February, and you’ve decided for your mid-week Bible study to do a four-week series on sexuality and issues of sexual purity. Typically, there will be a range of responses, from “Great!” on one end of the spectrum (meaning genuine openness: “Oh, man, I’ve got a lot of questions about that stuff”) to “Great” on the other end of the spectrum (meaning complete rejection: “Oh, brother, not that topic again!”).
For the most part, the students in your youth group know you. From that standpoint, they might be a little more receptive to what you have to say about sexuality and sexual purity (or, depending on what they know about you, maybe not). And, it seems fair to say, there will be some curiosity about this topic. That also helps you gain their attention. It beats the heck out of your six week series on supralapsarianism. On the other hand, sexual purity is a topic that will probably make a lot of your students uncomfortable. After all, some of the biblical notions about chastity and modesty are fairly counter-cultural. So, we might expect the audience response to be mixed, and skewed to an unwillingness to hear.
The key here is: we want to think in advance about the range of responses so we can know best how to pitch our message. Obviously, we’d use one type of talk if the continuum was heavily weighted to the hostile end, and we’d use a totally different type of message if we were speaking to an audience sympathetic and eager to learn. Let’s flesh this out a bit more.
Speaking to a hostile audience. As a result of your February series on sexuality, one of your students persuaded her high school health teacher to invite you to speak in her sex education class. It’s a pretty cool opportunity, but it’s also a pretty different venue. The kids don’t know you, and a biblical view of sexuality is quite different from the one they’ve been hearing about in class from a teacher they do know. This is apt to be a fairly hostile audience, and they may make that clear from their comments, their questions, their disinterest, perhaps even their desire to disrupt your presentation.
For the most part, your best approach is to merely entertain. Now, don’t assume that means stand-up comedy, because it doesn’t. For one thing, there’s nothing less entertaining than someone who is not funny trying really hard to be funny. If you read this column very often, you probably already know how true that is. Entertain, in the sense we mean it here, is what happens when someone is invited over to your house for the first time. You entertain them. You’re trying to make them feel comfortable. You’re trying to build a bridge so that, later on, maybe the bridge can provide a connection.
Think, for example, of the decision to confront your neighbor about his pit bull because that cute little guy (the dog, not the neighbor) keeps chewing the bumper off your Hummer. You and the neighbor both know what this conversation is about, and that it could be uncomfortable. You’re concerned that he could just storm out of the house and never listen to you again. It makes little sense to come out with guns blazing, complaints spewing, and threats flying. Your neighbor simply isn’t going to hear it.
As we all often need to be reminded, the goal here is not winning an argument; it’s winning a person. What is the point of providing really great content to your students if they aren’t even going to hear it? From research on persuasion, we know that the harder an audience feels pushed, the more likely they are to push back. So, you entertain. It doesn’t mean that you say nothing; it means that you realize that you don’t need to say everything on the first visit.
Surely, this is why we read so many accounts of Jesus entertaining drunkards, tax collectors, and sinners (Matthew 9:11, 11:19; Luke 5:30, 15:2, 19:1-10). It wasn’t that he had nothing to say to them; he just knew it was useless to say much until they were willing to listen.
Duffy Robbins is Chairman of the Department of Youth Ministry at Eastern College in St. Davids, Pennsylvania, and a long-time columnist for Good News.
by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Frank Decker
A defining moment in a Japanese restaurant near my office took place when a number of us from various ministries around the world were chatting about missions over lunch. The conversation was candid and stimulating. After one African leader had shared about ambitious plans to reach Muslims in the northern half of his continent, his rather traditional strategy of extracting Muslims from their cultural context was challenged by a man who had over three decades of experience ministering among Muslims in Asia. “That method hasn’t worked in 1,400 years, what makes you think it will work now?” Our conversation eventually shifted from discussing tactics to identifying the reasons for those strategies as the leader of the Asian ministry looked his African brother in the eye and asked this simple question: “What is the gospel?”
The question, albeit basic, is essential. If a missionary is not cognizant of the distinction between the transcendent gospel of Jesus and the post-biblical traditions familiar to the missionary, then both the biblical message and the cultural traditions will likely be presented indistinguishably together in a package that is presented as if it is the gospel, the whole gospel, and nothing but the gospel. This is one reason why I often ask prospective missionary candidates, “What, exactly, is your message?”
The altar call, the sinner’s prayer, church buildings, the distinction between clergy and laity, and the current role of the professional pastor are five of over sixty post-biblical traditions cited in Frank Viola and George Barna’s Pagan Christianity? Exploring the Roots of our Church Practices. These things are not necessarily bad; they simply are not the gospel. They have helped people live out the gospel in certain cultural contexts, which may or may not be helpful in other contexts. Even the assumption that all believers in Jesus should be referred to as “Christians” is not an inherent part of the gospel message, and is a conjecture that foments the fallacious and even obstructive assumption that Jesus came to start a religion rather than usher in the kingdom of God.
One could argue that even the creeds were hammered out in a particular cultural context; and so they might have legitimately been quite different if they had been initially written, say, in China. And, as E. Stanley Jones has reminded us, our historic creeds are sadly lacking in an important emphasis (or even mention, in the case of the Apostle’s Creed) of the kingdom of God, a crucial element of Jesus’ teaching.
Ever since I entered full-time ministry almost 30 years ago I’ve been revisiting that crucial question, “What is the gospel?” In the process, I began to notice passages of Scripture that give a summary of the gospel message, and began making a list of these “nutshell gospels.” I Corinthians 15:1-8 and I Peter 2:21-24 are two examples from different New Testament authors.
Biblical scholar C.H. Dodd’s research of the content of scriptural apostolic preaching has helped me conclude that a solid, biblical summary of the gospel is this:
• In the fullness of time, God sent Jesus Messiah as the scriptures foretold.
• He died in shame on a cross, bearing our sins.
• He rose again from the dead.
• He is now Lord, which he proves by his Spirit today.
• God’s kingdom will be consummated when Jesus returns.
• Therefore repent, believe, and live as a member of God’s kingdom.
I normally don’t recite these points when witnessing to someone, but I find this to be a helpful outline to keep in mind. It is a message that finds its way into other cultures without necessarily being wrapped in western Christianity. It enables the non-believer to see Jesus rather than a religion. And, while the end result may not look like First United Methodist Church down the street, the point is that people meet Jesus.
Even if the gospel we share is biblical, it is not attractive to others unless the work of Jesus is evident in our lives. Otherwise, the message becomes merely theoretical; a danger in our age of information. In fact, I am convinced that the less we actually experience the living Jesus, the more apt we are to depend on intricate theologies in order to explain his apparent absence as a reality in our lives.
People from all cultures and religious traditions are hungering for Jesus—not necessarily our brand of religion. Whether or not they see him could depend on how we answer the question, “What is the gospel?”
Frank Decker is the vice president for mission operations at The Mission Society and a long-time columnist for Good News.
by Steve | Jul 23, 2010 | Magazine Articles
By Steve Beard
“I’m never sure of what I’m looking for,” John Coltrane once told noted jazz critic Nat Hentoff, “except that it’ll be something that hasn’t ever been played before; I know I’ll have that feeling when I get it.”
Within jazz, Coltrane was Ponce de Leon with a saxophone tirelessly searching for a mystical fountain of rhythms and harmonies. He practiced relentlessly, stretching every conceivable note to conform to his will.
Throughout his illustrative life (1926-1967), Coltrane shared the stage with jazz masters such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Theolonious Monk, and Dizzy Gillespie. In 1997, Coltrane received a posthumous Special Citation from the Pulitzer Prize Board for his “masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship, and iconic centrality to the history of jazz.”
Those packed into the gritty jazz clubs such as Birdland, the Village Vanguard, or the Half Note would all testify that Coltrane could light the joint ablaze—sometimes logging 45 minute solos. Saxophonist Dave Liebman described one scene: “En masse, cats started to put their hands up to the ceiling and the whole place stood up. It was like those holy-roller meetings. It was unbelievable.”
Liebman’s comparison is fascinating. Of course, a notable difference between a church service and a Coltrane gig would be the use of words. For most mortals, worship is solely expressed through prayers, creeds, and hymns. For Coltrane, it was expressed through sweat, overlapping chord progression, bulging neck veins, blasts, and wails. For him, to play was to pray.
The potency of his musical genius was not always so easy to recognize. Miles Davis had to kick Coltrane out of his band in 1957—for the second time—because of intense addiction to alcohol and heroin. Coltrane was nodding off on the bandstand, appearing disheveled, always running late or never showing up at all.
Coltrane retreated for a two-week stay at his mother’s house in Philadelphia where he locked himself in a room to kick the addiction. Trane is said to have heard the voice of heaven during his withdrawls.
“During the year 1957, I experienced, by the grace of God, a spiritual awakening which was to lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life,” Coltrane wrote many years later in the liner note of his masterpiece, A Love Supreme. “At that time, in gratitude, I humbly asked to be given the means and privilege to make others happy through music.” His recovery was jaw-dropping.
Even those around him who were uncertain about the existence of God knew Coltrane had met Him. He began playing in Thelonious Monk’s band and recorded Blue Train. Shortly thereafter, Miles Davis asked him to rejoin his group.
Seven years after his battle with heroin, Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme. He had been sequestered to a section of his Long Island home for four or five days. “It was like Moses coming down from the mountain, it was so beautiful,” Alice Coltrane recalls. “He walked down and there was the joy, that peace in his face, tranquility.” She asked him to tell her what he was experiencing. “This is the first time that I have received all of the music for what I want to record, in a suite,” he told her. “This is the first time I have everything, everything ready.”
A Love Supreme is introduced with a Chinese gong and then the listener is ushered into a mosaic of sound and energy. This is not elevator jazz; this is jazz as an exclamation point—tortured souls finding liberation, exorcism, and deliverance. Within the confines and liberties of jazz, it is Jacob wrestling with an angel, the parting of the Red Sea, the kiss of betrayal from Judas, and the empty tomb.
In the liner notes, Coltrane writes: “God breathes through us so completely … so gently we hardly feel it … yet it is our everything. Thank you God. Elation—Elegance—Exaltation—All from God.”
A few years ago, Rolling Stone ranked A Love Supreme #47 of the 500 greatest albums of all time. “For all its thunder you can hear yourself think when you listen to it,” commented The Village Voice, “primarily because Trane achieved the unthinkable: creating a secular form of God-loving music for the godless universe of Western modernity.”
You often hear about the blind having a stronger awareness of their other senses, particularly hearing and smell. Coltrane had the accentuated senses of a blind man who had been healed—eyes wide open and soaking up a dazzling vision from a heavenly realm.
“My goal is to live the truly religious life, and express it in my music,” said Coltrane. “If you live it, when you play there’s no problem because the music is part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am—my faith, my knowledge, my being.”
A love supreme, indeed.
Steve Beard is the editor of Good News.
