I just wrote a "gospel" song

[leftofthedial]

I'm a professional songwriter. I don't have a religious belief in my body. I believe the world would be better off if we could magically make religion disappear right this second. But this song kicks ass.

so why does gospel music, especially the swampy, rootsy, bluesy, down and dirty kind have so much power?

I reference Buddy Miller's latest record, _Universal United House of Prayer_ as a prime example.

My song isn't overtly religious. It doesn't reference "god" or scripture, but it's undeniably "gospel."

I guess the latent questions here are:

"Why is religion so powerful for those who embrace it?"

AND

"Why is religion so seductive to those in need"?

In my own defense, I'm using the gospel form to convey a message of peace and unity.

[fshrink]

1. I think it is

a survivance of our childhood. Where our world was ruled by those "gods", the mother first, the father next. These gods we could also ingratiate through "prayer", hallucination and our belief in our, and their, magical power. When brainwashed with the external equivalents of these gods of ours we wind up prolonging them, and giving them a sort of reality, confirmed by the fact that our belief is shared by others, an extension of our family, of our original world. When in pain, in need or in despair, we turn to them... Or we are alone. In other words, this is infantile!

[leftofthedial]

2. but is it a good thing?

or a bad thing?

[fshrink]

3. It's a fantasy. I don't think it's good.

But lots of us prefer the intensity and the reassurance of fantasies to the less spectacular and more ambiguous pleasures offered by reality. I don't think it's a good thing because resorting to fantasies prevents us to actually change reality and to make it more fulfilling. It's a form of addiction in fact!

[leftofthedial]

4. as a music form, irrespective of its religious connotations

I'm not advocating religious content as a "crutch" of some kind.

It's just a style of music. but I find it to be very powerful.

I guess one could put it in its rightful context and juswt call it "proto-blues."

[0rganism]

5. Opiate of the Masses

"Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions."
-- Karl Marx, Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegels Philosophy of Right

I would add, in this context, there is no more poignant outcry of suffering and protest than the African-American gospel music that was born amidst the cruelest of social and economic inequalities.

[leftofthedial]

6. I haver always agreed with the MArxist view of religion

but is not the "suffering and protest" real, heartfelt and musically moving, despite its delusional object?

I'm an atheist. I have no doubt that there is no deity. But I've been walking around for days now with "Shelter Me Lord" and "Don't Wait" from Buddy Miller's record rattling around in my brain.

[fshrink]

7. That's the power of music. If you

sing Lalalala instead of jesusjesus it will have the same force. You can also put "The german ideology. Theses on Feuerbach" on it, it'll be even better!

[0rganism]

8. Absolutely, the suffering and protest are real and heartfelt

The pain of oppression is as real as anything, not just an abstraction concocted by 19th century philosophers. The expression and easing of that pain through religion is also real, whether or not the objects of faith are real outside the subjective experience of the sufferer.

But religion is no more helping with the underlying cause of the problem than the morphine one takes before surgery is itself performing the surgery.

[robbedvoter]

9. Childhood memories, music...,for some - peer pressure.

I was always fascinated with the question about cults - what makes people fall prey to those? And the hardest one was a japanese cult (the one that ended spreading some poisonous gas in subways in Tokyo). the puzzlement was that it's members were all young, educated scientists who somehow believed that joining that cult would give them superpowers (flying was involved).

[fshrink]

10. Talk about childhood fantasies!!! eom

[leftofthedial]

11. what difference is there between belief that joining a cult

will give you superpowers like flying

and belief that joining a cult will grant you eternal life?

[robbedvoter]

12. That is exactly the question on my mind: how much of ourselves are

we willing to abandon/trade for the need to conform/safety in numbers/illusion of superpowers/chance to belong to the group who "gives it" to others"...

My first thought: those who do, are so unaware of their own self that the notion of "trade", abandonement" if never entertained. It's an overriding need to ride with the herd, to replace the void within. Feel free to add others.