Last week, I visited Ottumwa, Iowa, where I lived as a child in the early 1970s. Ottumwa is a relatively small town (population 25,000) and I thought that I caught there some images of shifts in smaller-town America: a once vibrant and now sleepy downtown, a community of once charming (and remarkably stately) middle class homes fallen frequently now into disrepair. Among the primary employers are a community college, Hy-Vee and Wal-Mart, and Cargill Meat Solutions and John Deere.

While I walked through the downtown, I noticed two storefronts that, in their juxtaposition, hinted at another American story. There was the Heartland Assembly, an evangelical church, right next door to the offices of Ottumwa radio stations.

Three of the four stations were music-oriented, and featured “today’s hits and yesterday’s favorites,” “classic rock,” and “new country.”

This local next-doorness of a Christian church and pop music radio stations made me immediately think about the larger history of the intermingling of religion and rock and roll, from its origins to the present, but it also made me wonder about the ways that the relationship between the two is communicated on a local level. This was a nice symbol of it, and reminded me of what I

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