Shout to the Lord on “American Idol”
I’m hearing words across numerous sources that American Idol had some sort of event when the contestants sung “Shout to the Lord.” Something made mention of a Dolly Parton relation or something.
Do I sound like I never watch television? Good, I’m not putting forward any false fronts.
Worship Matters and Josh Harris have put forward some very good analysis of the whole thing. I only wanted to put in a couple of personal cents into the matter.
Seventh grade was when I really started to read the Bible. I was entering my third year living in Hawaii, and my parents did not want to send me to a public school. Complicating that was that my Dad was very Catholic at the time and didn’t want to send me to a Protestant school. His priest even warned him that the school would turn me into a Protestant. He was right.
And while overall I did learn much from the Bible, the baggage included very unhealthy views in regards to anti-Catholicism, drinking, smoking, relationships, witnessing, CCM, etc. The vast majority of the teachers were recruited out of Bob Jones University. Knowing that alone, I probably won’t ever send my kids there. I still am a Protestant, mind you.
That CCM part utterly confused one of my female friends over there. I won’t mention her name, but I do hope she reads this. Her position was that as long as the lyrics glorify God, what’s all the opposition for? Ultimately, the school would only permit hymns, despite that the band had been practicing secular music. Mixing faith and “rock music” was not morally right. I, of course, in my militaristic followership, didn’t back her up. She would bring this up often in her justifiable utter confusion.
Accordingly, it seemed rebellious, almost wrong, when another open mic day came, and the entire student body of the campus’ intermediate (junior high) and high schools assembled in the auditorium. They always called me “future pastor” because I was able to put out a long message on the fly. Three of my female friends got up there and sung “Shout to the Lord” a capella.
I don’t think they got in trouble, and I didn’t really have anything against the song, but it seemed so modern. That just wasn’t what we did around there.
Fast-forward to 2007, and the World Wide Web, previously the domain dominated by Netscape 2.0, was now in full Web 2.0 mode. I started finding many of these old friends on Facebook, hoping to reconnect. As I typed in this particular female friend’s name, a group (not a profile) popped up. Why is that? I had apparently been paying to little attention to popular media to notice that someone of her name had been a finalist on American Idol. The pictures were too small to really tell it was her. I clicked the link over to Wikipedia, and it was definitely her. Things have changed, certainly.
There’s no telling whether she’s following the Lord at this point in her life, and that certainly doesn’t make her alone among kids raised as Christians, but perhaps having “Shout to the Lord” on American Idol was a way of calling her and others back, at minimum to that memory.
Praise the Lord!
Praise God in his sanctuary;
praise him in his mighty heavens!
Praise him for his mighty deeds;
praise him according to his excellent greatness!Praise him with trumpet sound;
praise him with lute and harp!
Praise him with tambourine and dance;
praise him with strings and pipe!
Praise him with sounding cymbals;
praise him with loud clashing cymbals!
Let everything that has breath praise the Lord!Praise the Lord!
-Psalm 150 (ESV