Paul O'Donnell: March 2007 Archives

As a Christian rocker, TobyMac owes nobody anything. In the 90s as a founder of the rock-rap trio dc Talk, he wrote the group's signature song, "Jesus Freak," and imported mainstream producers to make dc Talk's albums and videos. He cut a new path for Christian groups in the realm of college radio and mainstream labels. In this century he's been discovering and producing new acts, like current hit Reliant K, while releasing three solo albums.

So enshrined is TobyMac (real name: Toby McKeehan), that it's been an unexpected delight to watch "Made to Love" from his new album, Portable Sounds, become an Christian radio hit. The veteran songwriter has been heard in interviews talking coltishly about finding "new weapons" in his voice and "new toys" to play with in his artistic toy box.

Much of the rest of Portable Sounds, though, has TobyMac rummaging through his usual tool set. The musical schizophrenia that normally keeps us off-balance and alert in TobyMac's work--melodies playing over heavy riffs, rap emanating from a small corner of the soundscape, and blasting rock--sounds here like a man looking to stir up excitement for well-worn themes about the joys of diversity and his availability to faith.

"Whatever I got to be, I'll be for you," he sings in "I'm for You." As music or message, it lacks a certain rootedness. The real discovery here is what happens with TobyMac when he pins a single, strong idea (that we're hardwired to look for a divine being) to an energetic, hook-filled romp with echoes of late Sting: A custom-built hit you can't resist cranking up in the car. Where's the anchor in this album?

When the tempest first broke about Elizabeth Hurley's Hindu wedding to Arun Nayar in Jodhpur, India, the headlines read "Hurley's Interfaith Marriage Contested by Hindu Traditionalists," and celebrity watchers and religion geeks scoffed in unison at the closed-mindedness of the Hindu hardliners. Wrote marriage maven Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway, "LOVE is the same, EVERYWHERE. From my perspective and experience, the soul makes no distinction between religion, culture, race." Case closed.

But when court papers were filed this week, the complainant didn't cite the marriage for mingling faiths. Instead, according to the Indian news site ApunkaChoice.com, the complaint charged that "since Hurley and Nayar had married in Britain in accordance with Christian rituals and started living as husband and wife, there was no reason to perform the marriage again according to Hindu traditions."

This may not make much sense to Western minds. Christian churches tend to be exclusive about their claims to religious truth and tradition, even when it comes to love (sad but true, Laurie Sue). Because we have firm denominational boundaries, we're used to tag-teaming with two faiths at our weddings: A reverend and a rabbi meet some couples at the altar.

There's been more than a few couples who follow a Las Vegas wedding with a Catholic ceremony to make it stick. Despite the hardliner's wish for racial purity, Hinduism is a little more porous. Imagine if a couple went around getting married in several Christian churches. At some point we'd cry blasphemy. Similarly, the complaint filed against Hurley and Nayar's Hindu ceremony claimed that the marriage "maligns the spiritual sanctity of the religion and Indian mythology."

The court case may be a mask for the original intolerance. But there is a little more to the complaint's spiritual wrinkle than simple prejudice.

There are two kinds of people in this world: Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles. Johnny Cash, particularly the Man in Black of recent memory, was strictly OT. His lined crag of a face projected righteous lament, matching a voice that boomed from somewhere beyond the clouds. "Ultimate Gospel," a posthumous collection of Cash's recordings of gospel tunes from across his long career proves that this was not the combined effect of legend and age. From his earliest days, Cash was a Jeremiah warning us about the wages of sin.

Take, for instance, "Belshazzar," the song Cash chose for his audition for Sam Phillips at Sun Records, included here. Never has this reprobate king's plight--he saw the original "writing on the wall," informing him God had found him wanting--been brought home so palpably. It must have put a discomforting fear of God in Phillips, who told the wannabe Cash to go away (which he did, though he later returned with "Folsom Prison Blues").

The same haunting God-the-Father spirit carries through the early cuts on this disk, even the ones, like "It Was Jesus" and "I Was There When It Happened," that are set in Anni Domini. Each begins simply with one of Cash's signature one-string intros, followed by some inerrant truth about the weakness of man and the saving power of His sacred blood. On one Cash is even joined by that other Old Testament patriarch, Billy Graham, who intones scriptural preachments between Johnny's verses. In these days of squabbling about peripheral issues, it's refreshing to hear pure faith in the consolation of the cross uttered so plainly.

As Cash grows in stature the disk becomes a document of how cheesy the culture, especially country-music culture, got in the '70s. Strings swell, Cash talk-sings "How Great Thou Art" to a stagey piano backing, and you realize that the version of "Were You There When They Crucified My Lord" you've been waiting for is going to be hammy and overblown. Halfway through these 24 cuts, I'd begun to yearn for Elvis, who somehow preserved the sound of sweat and tears even when his gospel got grandiose. But no gospel-lover--New Testament or Old--will want to pass up the chance to download the first dozen or so tracks on "Ultimate Gospel."

Related Links:

• Listen to Johnny Cash sing "He Turned Water Into Wine."


• Watch Video: Rosanne Cash remembers her parents


• Watch clips and read a review of "Walk the Line," the movie about Cash's life
• Read about Johnny Cash's faith.

With "The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under," HBO has already rejuvenated the American television series. Can introducing the f-word, frank sex talk and better production values do the same for the "After School Special?" Set in the downtrodden projects of Brooklyn, "Life Support," starring Queen Latifah, takes up a serious issue (living with AIDS) through near-stock characters (a reformed cocaine addict, her doe-eyed, but critical teenage daughter, and her tough-love mother). Like ABC's grittily topical school day TV movies, "Life Support" exists more to instruct than to entertain in a style that is more journalistic than dramatic.

Ana Wilis (Latifah) has put her life back together after drugs gave her HIV and cost her Kelly, her daughter, who now lives with Ana's mother (a fierce Anna Devere Smith). She has a new husband and child and helps others as an outreach worker. "AIDS," she says, articulating an irony that recurs throughout the show, "saved my life." (A fellow sufferer predicts a bright future for himself, proposing that he might have the same strain of the virus as Magic Johnson.)

But she is not satisfied, so Ana tries to redeem herself in Kelly's eyes by locating Kelly's gay, HIV-stricken childhood pal who turns to hustling to survive on the streets. The story, sadly, is generic enough to be true. And the bet here is that the truth is, or ought to be, compelling.

If HBO comes close to winning that bet, it's because Latifah's smoothly natural acting style, seen in musicals and comedies like "Chicago" or "Taxi," translates seamlessly to drama. Latifah seems to relax into any role she's given (or takes for herself--she also produced). With the help of the raw language she's permitted here and her neck-weaving delivery, she brings the docudrama to life more than once.

Her Ana fights her way to the realization that if AIDS has saved her life, it's up to her to save her soul by accepting the forgiveness offered from those around her and moving on. For grown-ups, that truth is more compelling then the health ed lesson that surrounds it. It's a pity HBO didn't shoot a PG version to show on weekday afternoons.

A few months ago Idol Chatter noted that Episcopalians had taken to piping U2 songs into their churches, a phenomenon that's not surprising, given lead singer Bono's coy but steady relationship with Christianity and the group's redemptive musical themes. Evangelical kids have considered the band fellow travelers for years and have been often rewarded by winks and even pretty firm nudges: When U2 performed "Where the Streets Have No Name" at the 2002 Super Bowl as the names of the 9/11 victims scrolled behind them, they confirmed for many evangelical observers that the song's title refers to heaven, and the "you" in the chorus is Jesus.

But now Episcopals have integrated U2 songs into their services, a practice that has a name--"U2charist"--and has become a movement. Started by Sarah Dylan Breuer at St. George's Episcopal Church in New Harbor, Maine, the services pull youth from all Christian denominations (though they are largely held in Episcopal churches and are structured around the Anglican Mass), with an estimated 168 taking place so far across the country. The catchy name has been mentioned in Entertainment Weekly, and on Easter the BBC will broadcast a "U2charist" from Lincolnshire, England.

Will there be "Live U2charist"? The band hasn't shown up for any Masses yet despite that fact that most make contributions to the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, for which Bono is a global ambassador.