The Gospel According to Country Music Revisited: My Apologies to David Allan Coe

After my Gospel According to Country Music bit, I thought I had written the perfect Country and Gospel blogpost. But, a friend of mine wrote me back and told me that I had NOT written the perfect Country and Gospel post because I hadn’t said anything about Momma, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or gettin’ drunk. So, I sat down and wrote a Part II to this post and I felt obliged to include it on this blog, and it goes like this here:

Despite what most of us have been taught all our lives, Jesus was and is not a stuffy, churchy, religious deacon-type driving a Cadillac and wearing a suit following all the rules and living quietly and fading demurely into the proverbial sunset. Not even close, He made it apparent that he preferred hanging out and serving the “least of these” including those whom Country Music lovers would easily recognize: thieves, sluts, liars, not to mention the lowest of the low, those tax collectors. Of course, Jesus didn’t want these folks to stay in their sinful conditions, but it’s pretty clear as I read the Scriptures that He preferred the Bible-era Bubbas and the Bethlehem rednecks gettin’ drunk as opposed to the super-religious stuffed-suits of Jerusalem.

It has been said that if a Country Music singer makes it to Nashville, they will likely already know Jesus but if they don’t they better learn in a hurry. The big wig music execs could probably care less with their business motto of “show me the money”, but the fans, the audience wouldn’t cotton to kindly to an unclean heathern or a treacherous vixen a singin’ to ‘em if’n they hadn’t been washed in the blood of the Lamb.

Confederate Railroad will take it from here:

She never cried when Old Yeller died
She wasn't washed in the blood of the Lamb
She never stood up for the Star Spangled Banner
And she wasn't a John Wayne fan

Speaking of Confederate Railroad, they reminded me that Jesus and Momma Will Always Love Me. My friend was right, Country Music just ain’t Country Music without Momma. Merle Haggard’s Momma tried to raise him better, but her pleading he denied. His Momma seemed to know what lay in store, but despite all his Sunday learning, he turned 21 in prison doin’ life without parole. Turns out, like Paycheck, he was the Only Hell [His] Momma Ever Raised.

Josh Turner churned out a classic Gospel-inspired Country song with his, Long Black Train, the hauntingly memorable story about temptations and allurements of the world. He encourages the listener to believe that there’s Victory in the Lord (I say) and he warns us that the Devil is driving that long, black train.
Well, this brings us to trucks and trucker songs and of course there’s the classic and my favorite trucker song of all - Convoy. Even C.W. McCall honored Country Music’s Gospel roots, uh sort of, as he sings about the eleven long-haired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse micro-bus.

It can be argued that the premise of the Gospel is that Jesus was human, God in the flesh. I realize that this post and the post before it have been quite theologically thin, but as well as just having fun with my Southern, Country Music, and Christian roots I think it is important that we realize while He was fully God, Jesus was also fully human. From the classier Country tunes of Patsy Cline to the raunchier redneck ballads of David Allan Coe to Charlie Pride’s enduring love song Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’, Country Music, perhaps better than any other genre, best represents the human condition and our need for a Savior.




* The Ryman Auditorium image (The Mother Church of Country Music) is from www.keywest-art.com.