Religious music for less than devout

@ghosthouse Wow, really? The topic of the thread is music for less than devout. My reference was intended was a humorous take on the thread topic. If you are offended then that is on you. If you are that sensitive then perhaps you should have avoided the thread entirely. I feel no obligation to attempt to to oblige the myriad of religious beliefs of humanity.

@falconquest  That particular movie, at least when it came out, was very offensive to Christians. It has pretty much faded from the Christian and public consciousness. As a Monty Python fan and a Christian, I found that the movie was irreverent and moderately offensive....and not one of their better efforts. I still love Monty Python.

I agree with you that how someone responds to something in regard to being offended is on them. We can't control what other people say. We can only control how we respond to it.

However, I think we have to be careful about having a double standard. It is currently very much okay and PC to offend Christians and Jews. Nothing is off the table. On the other hand, there are other popular religions that no one is willing to mock or offend in even the slightest way. That is a double standard that is not logically consistent or fair. Further, there are other groups and belief structures that are totally off the table when it comes to humor or irreverence with a strict PC code dictating what is okay and what is not to say or discuss.

All I ask from a society of political correctness is consistency. What is okay for one group or belief should be okay for all. If it is incumbent on Judeo-Christians to buck up and deal with irreverence and insults then that should apply to others as well.

Personally I think we all need to be a little more thick skinned. Humor, when not vicious, is great for all of us. But it should be okay for _ALL_ of us. Not just certain ones.

@n80 I appreciate your comments and am more then happy to have a dialog regarding the subject. I had no intention as I stated to offend anyone and if someone is offended then to me that is simply irrelevant. It is the person who is offended that has created that feeling within their own mind.

I cannot possibly go through my day and understand what actions I take may offend one religious believer or another whether they be christian, jew, muslim, bhuddist.....etc. etc. The movie clip just popped into my mind when I read the OP. I agree, people have to be less sensitive and not hold undue standards for others to bear while in their particular presence.

@falconquest : "I cannot possibly go through my day and understand what actions I take may offend one religious believer or another"

Sure, tact, decorum and manners require an effort.  And just because there are easily offended people out there doesn't mean (to me) that I can abandon thoughtfulness, even though I am often very guilty of doing so.

@falconquest : "It is the person who is offended that has created that feeling within their own mind. "

Well, there are plenty of things that are by their nature offensive. And there are plenty of things that are intended to be offensive and hurtful. It is a two way street. Or a double edged sword, if you will. It is not simply a matter of overly sensitive people.

And part of my point is that it is not simply the religious who are easily offended. In fact, there are a few precious societal groups who enjoy full PC protection from ever hearing anything that disagrees with them. Just wondering if, in your mind, it is incumbent on those groups to be thick skinned as well?

Anyway, speaking of potentially offensive religious themed songs:

Steely Dan's Godwhacker. According to Wikipedia:

Godwhacker" developed from a blasphemous lyric Fagen wrote a few days after his mother died of Alzheimer's. "It's about an elite squad of assassins whose sole assignment is to find a way into heaven and take out God", he later explained. "If the Deity actually existed, what sane person wouldn't consider this to be justifiable homicide?"


As it turns out it isn't a very good song.

I wanted to mention a source I greatly enjoy. There is a church named “Church of Christ” that has as one of it’s teachings that liturgical music must be A Cappella. Then they can play a musical instrument later on in the day, just not at church.

 

Sometime in the early 1980’s a group from that church started a group named “Acappella” and I like their stuff very much, I think own 59 of their CDs which should amount to almost their entire catalogue.

 In the early days of the group Acappella was a performer named Keith Lancaster who at some point slightly more serious, less popular and more liturgical vision.

 I had eight Keith Lancaster Acappella CDs, all praise and worship which I delight in. The most recent was four years old so I ordered about another eight this week. I can not find them used on Amazon, I have to pay retail. It is not as bad as it may sound because every CD is filled to the brim with high quality praise and worship music.

 RE Monty Python et al.

 For most of the first 35 years of my life I kept Jesus safely at an arm’s length. A divorce was painful enough for me to reconsider. Folks who knew me well assumed my conversion would never last. I remember some of the things I said in those days. It causes me pain and shame.

 Unlike Muslims I don’t feel the need to violently defend Jesus against infidels. I am confident at a God who can speak the Word in to Darkness and create everything can take care of himself. I also imagine a Supreme Being; the embodiment and perfection of all divine attributes would have the ultimate sense of humor. I would point out that a jest from a friend is not the same as the same thing, be the words identical, as an expression intended with malice and contempt.

 Be careful with blasphemy; one day you may need Him.