Listening to Ocean’s Put Your Hand in the Hand and contemplating the lines:
My mama taught me how to pray before I reached the age of seven.
She said: There’ll come a time when there’ll probably be room in heaven.
And thinking what a terrible thing to tell a 5 year old, “You’re gonna die so you better pray somebody didn’t pay their heavenly rent so there’s some heavenly room to let.”
Anyway, that’s not what this thread is about. There are a lot of Top 40 songs that are vaguely, sorta spiritual and if a choir sang it, it wouldn’t be out of place in a church. A lot of love songs that fit this definition. But I’m talking about no-doubt-about-it, this song is most definitely about religion. Not only is it about religion but if you heard it in your place of worship sung by your religion’s version of a televangelist, no one would bat an eye. So Joan Osborn’s What if God Was One of Us probably wouldn’t count.
I can think of only one more song off the top of my head and that’s Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit In The Sky. I’m sure there are more, I just cant think of them. I hear Kanye West is starting up a church based on his latest album but I can’t say I’ve heard any singles off of it. Yet. So, any others out there?
I have heard John Lennon’s “Imagine” in a church. A Mennonite church, of all places. I don’t remember if they changed the “and no religion too” line or not.
My grandma, who is ex-Amish, had never known the song before she’d heard it in church and thought it was the most beautiful thing. Bless her.
Is “Dust In The Wind” overtly religious? Or just philosophical? I know that Kansas had quite a few songs that could considered spiritual or Christian, but they weren’t usually beat-you-over-the-head obvious about it.