A few more reflections on country music and Christian concerns:
Have no fear: this website is not becoming a home for all things country music. There have been however a number of articles over the years on music of different sorts, and there will likely be more in the days ahead. But given that I just recently wrote a piece on country music, looking at some Christian connections, indulge me once more as I speak a bit further to this. The previous piece is here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/05/21/country-music-comfort-and-christianity/
The other day on the social media I discussed how country music deals so often with the sadder side of life, whether a broken relationship or the passing of a loved one. One friend made this response: “Sooo much though is about divorce, sadness, drunkenness, hardships and despair. Be careful to not let it depress you.”
Yes, fair enough. I replied: “I discussed that in my article – like the blues, it looks at life honestly and does not sugar coat things. But sure, one needs Christian assessment of everything.”
And she then said: “Agree. I think music (and a LOT of things) can affect us SUBLIMINALLY. Just be cautious! And fill your heart, mind and soul with that which UPLIFTS! (and I KNOW YOU DO THIS!!!!).
Yes, and biblical balance is needed here. Verses like Philippians 4:8 come to mind: “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
But we are also not to hide our heads in the sand as to what is going on in the world. Simply being able to help and minister to others means being aware of the hardships, sufferings and vicissitudes of life. See more on this issue here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2013/04/15/difficult-bible-passages-philippians-48/
As mentioned in my previous piece, many rockers were heavily influenced by both country and the blues. And many blues and country artists were influenced by gospel music, spirituals, and old hymns. So the very roots of both genres have a strong Christian connection. That of course does not mean that most blues and country stars today are Christians, but most would admit at least the debt they owe to gospel, especially black gospel.
All this has come up for me of late because of stumbling upon a documentary about this. An 8-part, 16-hour series called Country Music by Ken Burns appeared back in 2019. If you want to get any sort of understanding of how country music arose in America’s south (as did the blues – both impacted by things like slavery), plus plenty of good music, this is a must-watch series. https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/country-music
Here are the contents of the series:
Episode 1: The Rub. See how what was first called “hillbilly music” reaches new audiences through phonographs and radio, and launches the careers of country music’s first big stars, the Carter Family and Jimmie Rodgers.
Episode 2: Hard Times. Watch as Nashville becomes the heart of the country music industry. The genre grows in popularity during the Great Depression and World War II as America falls in love with singing cowboys, Texas Swing and the Grand Ole Opry’s Roy Acuff.
Episode 3: The Hillbilly Shakespeare. See how the bluegrass sound spreads in post-war America, and meet honky-tonk star Hank Williams, whose songs of surprising emotional depth are derived from his troubled and tragically short life.
Episode 4: I Can’t Stop Loving You. Travel to Memphis, where Sun Studios artists Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley usher in the era of rockabilly. Ray Charles crosses America’s racial divide by recording a country album. Patsy Cline shows off Music City’s smooth new Nashville Sound.
Episode 5: The Sons and Daughters of America. See how country music reflects a changing America, with Loretta Lynn speaking to women everywhere, Merle Haggard becoming “The Poet of the Common Man” and audiences looking beyond race to embrace Charley Pride.
Episode 6: Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Learn how country music responds to a nation divided by the Vietnam War, as Army captain turned songwriter Kris Kristofferson sets a new lyrical standard, and artists like Bob Dylan and the Byrds find a recording home in Nashville.
Episode 7: Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way? Witness a vibrant era in country music, with Dolly Parton finding mainstream success; Hank Williams, Jr. and Rosanne Cash emerging from their famous fathers’ shadows; and Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings launching the “Outlaw” movement.
Episode 8: Don’t Get Above Your Raisin’. Learn how “New Traditionalists” like George Strait, Randy Travis and the Judds help country music stay true to its roots. Witness both the rise of superstar Garth Brooks and the return of an aging Johnny Cash to the industry he helped create.
Let me offer some words from the beginning of Episode 1:
Kathy Mattea: When I first moved to Nashville, I was 19. I was too young to wait tables, so I got a job as a tour guide at the Country Music Hall of Fame. And it turned out to be such a blessing because I got to listen to so much music all day, every day, I got to– It was my job to learn the history of country music. We had this painting in the museum called “The Sources of Country Music,” the last painting of Thomas Hart Benton. I had to tell people about it. I hung out with this painting a lot. Looking at this painting is like looking at an old friend for me. So it shows the barn dances, it shows the railroad, riverboats, the gospel choirs, the lap dulcimers, and the fiddles. And it shows the cowboys and the banjo coming from Africa and the slaves, and how all of this came together. It’s just a beautiful thing to look at because it’s the– It’s the closest thing, visually, really, to what country music sounds like. It’s so colorful. There’s so much energy in it.
Narrator: Country music rose from the bottom up, from the songs Americans sang to themselves in farm fields and railroad yards to ease them through their labors, and songs they sang to each other on the porches and in the parlors of their homes when the day’s work was done. It came from the fiddle tunes they danced to on Saturday nights to let off steam and from the hymns they chanted in church on Sunday mornings. It filtered out of secluded hollows deep in the mountains, and from smoky saloons on the edge of town, from the barrios along the southern border, and from the wide-open spaces of the western range. Most of all, its roots sprang from the need of Americans, especially those who felt left out and looked down upon, to tell their stories.
Holly Williams: There’s something about the lyrics, to me that just separate it from everything else… Songs that you go, “That happened to me yesterday,” Or, “That happened to me last week,” Or “I’m going through that heartbreak right now,” you know.
Kris Kristofferson: Well, to me, it’s soul music. It’s probably the white man’s soul music. And it comes from the heart.
Charlie Pride: I believe that you can go look and find a country song to fit any mood you’re in, any song that will help you feel better. Sometimes it might make you cry, but you’ll feel better, you can find that song. That’s what I believe.
Harold Bradley: Lovin’, cheatin’, hurtin’, fightin’, drinkin’, pickup trucks, and mother.
Carlene Carter: You also have to hand in there a few death, murder, mayhem, suicide, you know, songs, you know, that are real.
Dolly Parton: I think it’s just simple ways of telling stories, experiencing and expressing feelings. You can dance to it, you can cry to it, you can make love to it. You can play it at a funeral, you can– It’s just really has something in it for everybody, and people relate to it.
Merle Haggard: It’s about those things that we believe in, but we can’t see, like dreams and songs and souls. They’re hanging around here, and different songwriters reach up and get them.
Garth Brooks: Country music comes from right in here, this heart and soul that we all have. It’s great music that really hits us, because we’re all human.
Narrator: “Country music,” the songwriter Harlan Howard said, is “three chords and the truth.”
Rodney Crowell: Truth telling, which country music at its best is… Truth telling, even when it’s a big fat lie.
Ketch Secor: It’s what American folk music has come to be called when it followed the path of the fiddle and the banjo. All of American music comes from the same place. It’s just sort of where it ends up, and country music is one of the destinations….
Rhiannon Giddens: Country music is the music of the working class, is the music of people who don’t have a lot of power. We like to talk about the founding fathers a lot, but the people who built this country, that’s the people where country and blues come from, you know, are those people. And you don’t have America without them….
Narrator: Nowhere was music more essential than in church. The hymns people sang on Sunday mornings warned them of God’s eternal judgment, but also offered the promise of salvation, even to the sinners who had been out carousing Saturday night.
Don Reid: The best Christian in the world is the one who realizes that he needs to be. You know, you’ve got to experience Saturday night sometimes to know what Sunday morning’s all about.
Wynton Marsalis: Human beings, what do we think about? We got very basic things. We think about our sexual relationship, that we need to propagate our species that makes our life sweet and also bitter, and our relationship to whatever our Lord is. So, we put those two things right together. The Saturday night function and the Sunday morning purification. And you got to get purified on Sunday so you can do the same thing again next Saturday. Come on, now.
Ralph Stanley: Well, I went to the old ‘primitive Baptist’, where they all get up together and sing the same part, no music, or nothing. Everybody sung lead. That’s the way it was in the old Baptist sound. Someone would lead the song, and give it out. You call it ‘lining.’ You say, ‘tarry with me, oh, my savior.’ They knew what to do.
Narrator: Most people couldn’t read music, so singing schools were organized to teach them a basic system called shape notes. Songbook publishers dispatched traveling quartets to demonstrate how to add harmony to the songs, and then sell their products. People congregated at singing conventions and gospel tent revivals, where they sang old spirituals born in black churches or popular hymns like “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” And a cheery gospel tune, “Keep on the Sunny Side,” inspired by the writer’s invalid cousin who asked that his wheelchair always be pushed “on the sunny side” of the street. Sometimes, revival organizers simply set religious lyrics to popular melodies everyone already knew. ‘Why: the saying went, ‘should the devil have all the good tunes?’….
Betty Johnson, singing “I’ll Fly Away”: That makes you feel good. You can have a hip hurting, you can have arthritis, you can have anything wrong with you, but, again, if you can sing that song, you’re gonna feel better.
Rhiannon Giddens: Jazz emphasizes this, and blues emphasizes this, and country emphasizes this, you know, but where they all start is in this beautiful sort of boiling American music pot….
That extended quote gives you a good feel for how the series proceeds. If you can get access to it, it is well worth viewing. A short official trailer for the documentary is found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVOZl671ssY
Closing word: A few years ago on the social media I posted a link to a western swing song on the page of a good friend from Texas. He was not impressed. His sort of Texas music was more in the lines of ZZ Top! Hey, I like both, but not everyone is a country fan. So if you cannot stand country music, feel free to give all this a miss!
2 Replies to “More on Christianity and Country Music”
Thanks Bill.
I hesitate to respond to this post and the previous one about Country and Western music, but I am constrained to make some comment just the same. I will restrict myself to three points:
1. The various artists you cited in the earlier post are quite unfamiliar to me. Moreover, back in the early 1960s I became attracted to classical music, and so I switched to all things classical, and was determined to learn the structure and features of baroque, strict classical, and the romantic music of the C19th. I still liked the Seekers, and one or two others in the more popular vein, but as (in my view) music degenerated from the late 1960s onward I disdained those genres and saw them as trash, e.g. I never liked the Beatles, and could not (and still don’t) understand what people saw in them.
2. Sacred music should be seen as a genre in its own right, and reserved for the worship of God. It troubles me that the notion that the Wesleys, Frances Ridley Havergal, John Newton, and even Martin Luther borrowed popular, “honkytonk” tunes from the tavern and the burlesque theatre and attached them to sacred hymns, still persists. It is a myth, pure and simple, and it is his high time it was abandoned. To take Wesley, for example: apart from the tunes he appropriated from the Herrnhut community, which he visited in 1738, he would adopt folk tunes from the various places in England, but he never adopted these simpliciter; but his musicians, John Frederick Lampe (who died in 1751), and thereafter Thomas Butts, adapted these tunes for sacred use; then and only then we’re they attached to the hymns which Charles Wesley composed. Moreover, the great composer, Georg Friedrich Handel, composed about 40 tunes for Wesley’s hymns. It is therefore time we abandoned the use of secular music genres, and especially these from the “rock” scene, for the worship of the Triune God. I lay it down as a principle: music in worship is for worship; it is not primarily a means of evangelism, “to get people in”. If people are brought to faith by the words of hymn, as has indeed happened, then that is something for which we give thanks to God, but it is not the primary purpose.
Some will say I’m terribly old-fashioned in this regard, and out of tune with the times. Well, I don’t care a scrap about such criticism. I stand for “the old paths, where the good way is” (Jer 6:16).
3. Even a cursory analysis of what passes for music today will reveal that much of it is not really music at all: when someone strums chords on a guitar, but has little idea of, or ability to play melody we are not hearing music, but merely a succession of sounds, and all too often a monotone. Music must have the following components: harmony (too much of what passes for music is discordant); melody (a flow of notes with variations of pitch and length); rhythm, (as opposed to heavily syncopated “tunes” she hear today, but instead a regular alternation of stressed and non-stressed notes). Altogether this will make for a tuneful rendition, pleasant to the ears.
You may disagree with this presentation, but I thought it appropriate nevertheless.
Thanks Bill, I like country music but don’t get to hear much, however, a few days ago I heard Kenny Rogers sing The Coward of the County https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv15QC-Gu8s and I’ve been humming it ever since. Country music definitely is soul and heart music.
Thanks Bill.
I hesitate to respond to this post and the previous one about Country and Western music, but I am constrained to make some comment just the same. I will restrict myself to three points:
1. The various artists you cited in the earlier post are quite unfamiliar to me. Moreover, back in the early 1960s I became attracted to classical music, and so I switched to all things classical, and was determined to learn the structure and features of baroque, strict classical, and the romantic music of the C19th. I still liked the Seekers, and one or two others in the more popular vein, but as (in my view) music degenerated from the late 1960s onward I disdained those genres and saw them as trash, e.g. I never liked the Beatles, and could not (and still don’t) understand what people saw in them.
2. Sacred music should be seen as a genre in its own right, and reserved for the worship of God. It troubles me that the notion that the Wesleys, Frances Ridley Havergal, John Newton, and even Martin Luther borrowed popular, “honkytonk” tunes from the tavern and the burlesque theatre and attached them to sacred hymns, still persists. It is a myth, pure and simple, and it is his high time it was abandoned. To take Wesley, for example: apart from the tunes he appropriated from the Herrnhut community, which he visited in 1738, he would adopt folk tunes from the various places in England, but he never adopted these simpliciter; but his musicians, John Frederick Lampe (who died in 1751), and thereafter Thomas Butts, adapted these tunes for sacred use; then and only then we’re they attached to the hymns which Charles Wesley composed. Moreover, the great composer, Georg Friedrich Handel, composed about 40 tunes for Wesley’s hymns. It is therefore time we abandoned the use of secular music genres, and especially these from the “rock” scene, for the worship of the Triune God. I lay it down as a principle: music in worship is for worship; it is not primarily a means of evangelism, “to get people in”. If people are brought to faith by the words of hymn, as has indeed happened, then that is something for which we give thanks to God, but it is not the primary purpose.
Some will say I’m terribly old-fashioned in this regard, and out of tune with the times. Well, I don’t care a scrap about such criticism. I stand for “the old paths, where the good way is” (Jer 6:16).
3. Even a cursory analysis of what passes for music today will reveal that much of it is not really music at all: when someone strums chords on a guitar, but has little idea of, or ability to play melody we are not hearing music, but merely a succession of sounds, and all too often a monotone. Music must have the following components: harmony (too much of what passes for music is discordant); melody (a flow of notes with variations of pitch and length); rhythm, (as opposed to heavily syncopated “tunes” she hear today, but instead a regular alternation of stressed and non-stressed notes). Altogether this will make for a tuneful rendition, pleasant to the ears.
You may disagree with this presentation, but I thought it appropriate nevertheless.
Thanks Bill, I like country music but don’t get to hear much, however, a few days ago I heard Kenny Rogers sing The Coward of the County https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv15QC-Gu8s and I’ve been humming it ever since. Country music definitely is soul and heart music.