{"id":2676,"date":"2018-06-25T16:17:46","date_gmt":"2018-06-25T21:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/?p=2676"},"modified":"2018-06-25T16:24:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T21:24:27","slug":"key-take-aways-from-5-hours-of-religious-radio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/key-take-aways-from-5-hours-of-religious-radio\/","title":{"rendered":"Key Take-Aways from 5 Hours of Religious Radio"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every month I make the 6-hour drive from the south shore of Lake Superior to the southern tip of Lake Michigan.\u00a0 Except for Marquette at its northern outset and Milwaukee to the south, the route runs through rural country.\u00a0 I usually travel with an audio book, but on the last trip, my Great Course on How Jesus Became God was turgid and dull.\u00a0 I refocused on basic FM radio.<\/p>\n

South of Marquette, the NPR station got scratchy, patchy and then dead.\u00a0 Left to my own devices, I decided to give God and Jesus another chance and dedicated my car ride to religious FM radio.<\/p>\n

My knowledge of religion is scant to nil.\u00a0 Church was not part of my childhood.\u00a0 I can recite the Lord\u2019s prayer, but that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 I consider myself a \u201cblue domer\u201d who finds spirituality under an expansive blue sky, my venue for pondering wonder and awe, but what the hell, I thought, I\u2019ll give religion a big chance, be a willing captive for the next five hours.\u00a0 Bring it on.Here\u2019s what I learned:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0 It\u2019s everywhere<\/p>\n

Religious radio dominated the 100 empty miles between Marquette and Escanaba, the next town to the southeast.\u00a0 Evangelic radio waves pulsed through the ether, ranging from Bible thumping sermons to peppier Christian pop music.\u00a0 Even with the radio turned off, I felt their silent presence seeping into my brain.\u00a0 A disturbing kinship with paranoid schizophrenics emerged.\u00a0 Could a tinfoil hat protect me from the subliminal effects of pervasive radio waves?<\/p>\n

2.\u00a0 There is only one religion<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect any diversity, at least in rural Michigan and Wisconsin.\u00a0 It\u2019s all evangelical Christian palaver; there\u2019s no recognition that there could be any other \u201ctrue\u201d religion.\u00a0 Evangelicals are one confident lot.<\/p>\n

3.\u00a0 My car radio helpfully labeled the stations as country, pop, soft, R&B, info, religion, top 40, oldies.\u00a0 However, when instrumentals obscured the lyrics, the cross-over between country, soft and Christian music made it difficult to confirm the genre.\u00a0 In one song, the only lyrics I could discern were \u201cYour love sets my heart on fire.\u201d\u00a0 This could go either way, either a paean to JC, or to the saucy waitress at the A&W with the sculpted ass.<\/p>\n

With a little practice I had it nailed.\u00a0 Here are my tips:<\/p>\n

If the singer is male and singing about a \u201che\u201d and the station is labeled \u201ccountry,\u201d then that\u2019s a Christian song.<\/em><\/p>\n

If the singer is female, or a male or female is singing to a \u201cyou,\u201d you\u2019ll have to concentrate on the lyrics.<\/em><\/p>\n

o\u00a0\u00a0 If you catch the words \u201cfire,\u201d \u201cdark,\u201d \u201clift me up\u201d \u201cflesh\u201d or \u201cweak,\u201d then you\u2019ve got a religious channel.\u00a0 The combination of \u201cflesh\u201d and \u201cweak\u201d eliminates any doubt.<\/em><\/p>\n

o\u00a0\u00a0 The words \u201cstand by me\u201d suggest a religious channel, with the exception of everyone\u2019s favorite song \u201cStand By Me,\u201d from the movie of the same name.\u00a0 Don\u2019t worry, this distinction is easily made once you hear the chorus sing \u201cdarlin\u2019\u201d over and over.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

4. I didn\u2019t hate the music<\/p>\n

The pop tunes were palatable with a steady, toe-tapping beat.\u00a0 No screeching, no dissonance, no rap, right in the wheelhouse of an aging baby-boomer.\u00a0 One unwelcome interruption was the rasping noise of a practice alert for the emergency broadcast system (which fortuitously jolted me awake).<\/p>\n

5.\u00a0 Key changes are powerful emotional hooks<\/p>\n

Churchy religious songs started with a soloist, soon joined by a soaring chorus.\u00a0 The climax was often heralded by a change in key that nudged the song up a notch, thus increasing its intensity.\u00a0 I recognized this as a basic strategy for any patriotic song.\u00a0 I have always loved the Canadian anthem, O Canada, sung at hockey games.\u00a0 Now I realize the extra ascending C sharp thrown in at the end makes all Canadiens swell with pride and patriotism.<\/p>\n

One of the key-changing choruses reminded me of the song The Stag in the Forest from the movie Cabaret.\u00a0 It starts as a simple pastoral song sung in an outdoor beer garden.\u00a0 The music grows and swells as the patrons sing along.\u00a0 The key changes and the singing becomes more fevered and passionate.\u00a0 The key changes again and everyone stands up.\u00a0 In the final chorus, the young soloist gives a Heil Hitler salute.<\/p>\n

I have learned to be wary of the subtle power of key changes.<\/p>\n

6.\u00a0\u00a0 There are very few ads, an unexpected upside.<\/p>\n

Stations labeled religious alternate music with Bible study, but there were no ads.\u00a0 Covertly religious country stations would alternate music with call-in testimonials about the healing power of prayer, or pleas to pray for some poor soul or someone’s pet.<\/p>\n

7.\u00a0 The choice between religious radio and the local rural channels was a draw.<\/p>\n

There was still no NPR in Escanaba, but now I had the option for local channels.\u00a0 I decided to take a break from soul-saving and tapped into an interview with a woman who breathlessly charted the evolution of salad recipes for the community picnic.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the 1980s, we had lots of pasta salads, and it wasn\u2019t just spaghetti.\u00a0 The pasta came in all sorts of different shapes, elbows, corkscrews, trumpets.\u00a0 And then in the 90\u2019s we had lots of fruit salads and then different kinds of rice.\u00a0 Now we have something called quinoa.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I stopped for a snack, but the potato chips were paper thin and greasy.\u00a0 No kettle chips.\u00a0 I decided that easy access to NPR and good potato chips were inversely related to the abundance of religious radio, and also a good litmus test for red and blue communities.<\/p>\n

8.\u00a0 The self-righteousness and intolerance were scarier than I had imagined<\/p>\n

One minister railed against a school reading list that included books with LGBTQ themes.\u00a0 He frothed with religious fervor \u2013 I could picture him spewing forth droplets of spittle.\u00a0 He quoted Leviticus, which seems to be the go-to Bible passage for intolerance.\u00a0 He urged listeners to boycott the summer reading program.<\/p>\n

Finally, I arruved within reach of Milwaukee and Chicago stations.\u00a0 NPR was fund-raising and the classical music station was playing a whiny string concerto.\u00a0 I turned to another slice of life experience.\u00a0 Sports radio.\u00a0 The male-dominated ads were briefly entertaining \u2013 pajama-grams to surprise the wife, bizarre treatments for baldness (something supposedly painless called \u201ctotal follicular extraction\u201d), no-scalpel vasectomy (again supposedly painless), and most prominently an easy fix for low testosterone levels, with treatment discreetly mailed in unmarked packages.\u00a0 The talk show hosts introduced a segment called (wink, wink) \u201cmaster debaters,\u201d which discussed whether the long and unruly hair of pro athletes was disrespectful to the sport.<\/p>\n

My experiment was mercifully over.\u00a0 The experience reinforced that like chocolate and bacon, a monolithic diet is ultimately unhealthy.\u00a0 I wanted to nurture an open and questioning mind, but religious radio was not the right venue.\u00a0 But damn it, I really did want to address the cavernous gaps in my education and learn how Jesus became God.\u00a0 When I got home, I rummaged under the seat and extracted the audio book from the m\u00e9lange of pine needles, crushed potato chips, a plastic spoon, an Arby\u2019s curly fry and other detritus of long car rides.\u00a0 I placed the book on the passenger seat, ready for the next trip.<\/p>\n

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Every month I make the 6-hour drive from the south shore of Lake Superior to the southern tip of Lake Michigan.\u00a0 Except for Marquette at its northern outset and Milwaukee to the south, the route runs through rural country.\u00a0 I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-i-did"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVc8-Ha","post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2676"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2678,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2676\/revisions\/2678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fanagrams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}