Shouting to the Lord on American Idol

According to the Worship Matters blog, the song, “Shout to the Lord” was openly sung on American Idol this week. I missed it because I stop watching the show after the try-outs- because it no longer justifies me. This example, however, gives me another reason to talk about American Idol in my blog- because it relates to Christ and Culture.

Without having seen the performance of this song it seems to me that this example could fit into one of two possible categories. It could be like most examples of Christian music which use parts of culture to promote Christ, making it an example of Christ Above Culture. This is possible because of the influence of Christ throughout the seasons of the show. For instance, many of the contestants talk about starting to sing in their churches. A couple years ago I attended a worship service where Chris Sligh helped lead a song- after which they announced he would be on the upcoming season (and ended up doing fairly well). There are Christian overtones in many of the songs of the successful artists as well. This could be a possibility.

On the other hand a little more cynical interpretation would be to see this as the mainstreaming of Christ into culture which would make this an example of Christ of Culture. The way they changed the lyric, according to Worship Matters, to “my shepherd” instead of “my Jesus” is further evidence of this perspective- making Jesus more palatable to a general appeal of culture. This is especially true because we have no other reason to think that the show or its producers (ie Simon Cowell) have any particular desire to promote Christ (note: I am not making a judgment as to whether Cowell is a Christian or not, just saying that he’s never promoted Christ before on the show).

Of course, the best way to determine what perspective this is an example of would be for Simon or one of the performers of this song to take the Christ and Culture survey.