I have tried to suggest that lots of music reviews are humid with theological atmospherics. Now comes this review in today’s New York Times, by Ben Brantley, of a new production here in NYC starring Sherie Rene Scott at the Second Stage Theater. It is titled “Everyday Rapture.”

Brantley reports on Scott’s being “torn between two lovers” — Jesus and Judy Garland… along with her memorable rendition of “You Made Me Love You” — directed to the Son of Man.

Brantley’s review of Scott’s show gives a nice illustration of how “secular” musics get a figuring role in spiritual experience, insofar as a great many of us live in cultures in which secular tunes are training for the comprehension of many different kinds of divine and human loving.

“First it was Donald Duck and now it’s Clark Gable you’re crazy about!” “And mind you, no dreaming about them, either.”

Tom Beaudoin
New York City

Cross-posted to Rock and Theology

 Tom Beaudoin is associate professor of theology at Fordham University, in the Graduate School of Religion. His latest book is Witness to Dispossession: The Vocation of a Postmodern Theologian.