A few weeks ago, I was sitting at Joe the Art of Coffee on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, and this relatively new song — “Every Man Needs a Companion” — came on over the speakers (presumably through one of the barista’s playlists). I had never heard it, but I was taken up by the singer’s vocal aura. It turns out it was Father John Misty, also known as Joshua Tillman (formerly of Fleet Foxes). Check out his recent performance of the song here:

When the line about “Joseph Campbell and the Rolling Stones couldn’t give me a myth” filled the cafe, a few heads turned, and at least one woman smiled in acknowledgment. It reached me, too.

This is a song registering a deep struggle with what we have come to think of as religion, and I think it does speak and will speak to many precisely for that reason — or what I should say is: for that reason only because of Father John Misty’s affecting rendering, redolent of an ache that dances through each lyric phrase.

He mentions some major candidates for the religious attention of people in our culture: the Bible, Joseph Campbell, and the Rolling Stones. Because we make a fair number of references to the Bible and to classic bands here at Rock and Theology, let me say a brief word about Joseph Campbell. Professor Campbell (1904-1987) was a celebrated scholar of mythology and comparative religion who taught for several decades at Sarah Lawrence College. His work is now somewhat out of vogue, but in the 1980s and ’90s he achieved a (more…)

I recommend Bill Moyers’ excellent recent interview with renowned journalist and author Christopher Hedges. They discuss Hedges’ research on the ways that corporations’ and the US government’s widespread, unchecked, and nearly invincible capitalist commitments, have reached a new and deeply troubling apex of wreaking economic, social, and political devastation in the United States. They also discuss Hedges’ “faith” and what resistance to the dehumanizing effects of greed in our society means today. Hedges comes around to what he calls a theological point: the neglect of “the neighbor” in this society.

Here is the interview:

In recent years, I have grown more persuaded by analyses like Hedges’, as I take further stock of the perpetual war economy, the aggregation of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, the deep difficulties of most families in meeting basic necessities for surviving and thriving in life while maintaining a healthy family life, and the violence and human diminishment that our participation in the everyday economy–joining “us” to impoverished workers around the world–propagates.

Hedges calls for massive nonviolent resistance, and is untroubled by questions about its short-term effectiveness. He seems to return again and again to the question of duty, to what one must do in order not to betray oneself, whether or not the system is overturned in his/our lifetime. He also focuses continually on the matter of telling the truth about the world.

I think that however we construe the relationship between theology and music, the basic question about how we are being made

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