Jesus on the Main Line – Part One

It's tempting to think about Christian worship songs with pop culture references as a recent thing. Of course, that's not true. People have been putting faith into words that connect with their current situation since the time of Jesus. In each generation those attempts are modern and most of them look dated or old-fashioned when we look back at them. Only a very few survive the test of time and become classic hymns of the church that seem meaningful from generation to generation. Any analogy that refers to some wondrous innovative modern technology is particularly prone to falling into the dustbin of history because as soon as we get used to that invention and start realizing how many downsides it has it doesn't seem like the divine gift it seemed to be at first.  

As new tech spread across North America from the big cities in the early 20th century, there was a whole burst of Christian songs about it. We still sing some of them now. “This train is bound for glory ...” and “This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it shine ...” come to mind although now that the songs are older it's tempting to reverse engineer the situation and assume that the light was a candle rather than a bulb. Between the first and second world war, there was a lot of popular fascination with the explosion (pardon the pun) of military technology among Christian songwriters. One popular song that we sang in Sunday School right up through the '70s because it managed to walk that fine line between fascination and distance from military force that Christians have had to navigate since the beginning. “I may never march in the infantry, shoot the artillery, fly o'er the enemy ... but I'm in the Lord's army. Yes Sir!” In the same way, the new interstate highway system in the US brought us truckin' songs, “Give me oil in my lamp keep it burning!” from a previous era became, “Gimme gas in my Ford keep me truckin' for the Lord keep me truckin' 'til the break of day!” And the televised space race in the '60s gave us gems that we sang into the '80s like, “Somewhere in outer space God has prepared a place for those who trust him and obey ... The countdown's getting lower every day.”

Not all of the songs glorified new tech. In the early days of audio recording and radio in the '20s, there was a massively popular gospel blues song that used an extended and complex allegory based on the sinking of the Titanic several years earlier after running into a very natural iceberg evidently provided by the hand of God to undermine sinful human pride and ambition. It's a bit hard to listen to by modern standards but “The Night That Great Ship Went Down” got a lot of airplay at the time and was used in revival preaching as a way of holding the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other to apply Christian teaching to contemporary situations.

It's interesting to me that our fascination with tech as a topic in worship music has dropped away. I don't hear glowing analogies about how much God is like the 5G internet. And I also don't hear negative analogies about how a SpaceX flight or an iPhone illustrates some sinful characteristic that we might avoid. While at one time there was a sense that God was like the newest shiniest technological advancement there seems now to be a sense that we get a clearer view of God by going 'back' to simpler approaches not mediated by technology. Some of that has to do with feeling burned by badly written or poorly applied attempts in the past – the line 'somewhere in outer space God has prepared a place' does happen to rhyme but is badly off-key both theologically and scientifically. But there are other things going on as well and maybe the 21st-century evangelical church no longer thinks of God in terms of progress towards a goal but would prefer to look back in time for cues on spirituality from the past. That's a topic that we can pick up another time.

My personal favourite Christian song about (what was at the time) new technology is “Jesus On the Main Line”. It was recorded by Mississippi Fred McDowell during a pop music fad for listening to traditional folk music in the late 1960s but the reason they recorded it to start with was that it was already old at that time. Through the years it has been recorded by Ry Cooder, Janis Joplin, all manner of family gospel acts, the lead singer of the Christian metal outfit Rez Band, and countless others. The simple analogy is that prayer is like the newly invented telephone except that you don't need to wait for the operator to connect you because Jesus is always on the mainline and you can tell him what you want. Since its first recording, the message has resonated with people who are frustrated with complex or institutionalized versions of religious faith and crave a sense of direct connection to God. But at the same time, there is the recognition that a connection might be available but is still at some mediated distance in the way that a person on the phone is both right in your year but also far away at the same time. Here's a recent version by my favourite band from Winnipeg, The Brothers Landreth.

Just like “I'm in the Lord's Army” referred to earlier, “Jesus on the Main Line” is musically and lyrically very simple but walks a fine line and the balance is what keeps it interesting. The songwriter emphasizes that you can tell Jesus whatever you want without inhibition and the verses go on at some length with examples. The gist of it is that Jesus will hear your prayers no matter what they are or who you are. However, the songwriter remains silent on whether Jesus will do anything about your request besides hear it. The lyric does not say, “Jesus on the mainline will give you what you want”. It's clear that you can tell Jesus whatever you want, but whether He gets off the phone and does something about it isn't your concern. The emphasis is on the way God hears you, whatever it is you have to say, not if or how God responds.

It's as if being heard is enough.

Stay tuned in two weeks for Part Two