Sound Theology

Jonathan Rundman, Sound Theology (Salt Lady, 2000), available at www.saltlady.com.

JONATHAN RUNDMAN is not into "Christian music." He's a fairly typical barroom ball, deer who played clubs in and around Chicago, although he's recently moved to Minneapolis. In 2000 Rundman released a rather atypical, two-disc set of 52 songs geared to the Sundays of the church year. The album Sound Theology presents a weekly reflection of one churchgoer's worship experience at an average, midwestern Protestant church.

There are, however, diverse sources of inspiration for this song cycle. "Let Me Be Yours" from "Epiphany 1" has obvious connections to baptism, but on the week the new church directories arrived Rundman ignored lessons and liturgy and meditated on that glossy text instead. Likewise, on "Easter 2" he sings about a romantic infatuation with a girl (named Carol) who plays in the handbell choir. The cleverly titled "Carol of the Bells" finds him gushing, "she rings G and she rings A ... they don't trust those notes with anyone else." He reflects on his mortality when he gets ashes put on his head; he wonders about how something Dietrich Bonhoeffer said might apply to some "teenage smokers, standin' on the corner, cussin' and complainin"; and he muses about all the junk for sale in Christian bookstores with the memorable line, "If Jesus hadn't risen, he'd be rolling in his grave." On one occasion this ELCA Lutheran visits a Missouri Synod Lutheran church and writes a song afterwards about being denied communion for doctrinal reasons he doesn't even understand ("I knew that we were different / But I didn't know it would hurt so bad").

The artistic conceit should not be pressed too hard. Bundman didn't literally write one song each Sunday for a year; some of the material is years old and "Carol" is actually a cover of a song by another band. Still, Rundman's songs offer wry Garrison Keillor-ish observations that let us imagine a more or less typical yearlong encounter with American religion. He comes off as a Christian who takes seriously the priesthood of all believers and strives, with halting success, to integrate what happens on Sunday morning with life in a workaday world.

COPYRIGHT 2002 The Christian Century Foundation
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning