Examples abound of individuals from our own times who went about implanting the seed of God’s Word in the cultural soil of our country. People like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who took the Word of God so seriously as to devote his entire public ministry to connecting the Gospel to the culture. “I have been to the mountain top! I have seen the Promised Land!” he heralded in his final sermon. And though he was shot down, his dream did not die because it was rooted in the Gospel. His words were the words of eternal life from the Book of Life, so they will last forever.
The late performer Danny Thomas experienced a remarkable upturn in fortune after decided to take Jesus and the Word of God seriously. Making a novena to St. Jude, Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes, the young Thomas promised to set up a shrine for the poor and hopeless if, through the saint’s intercessory prayers to Jesus, he would find his place and discover his vocation in life. He soon became successful as a stand-up comic with the U.S.O., and went on from there to succeed in radio, the movies, and finally TV with a hit show called Make Room for Daddy. The program provided a wonderful experience of hope for viewers. Later in life, remembering the promise he had made to St. Jude, he established the word-renowned St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, where he is now buried. Danny Thomas was someone who brought the depth of his faith, hope, and personal Spirit of Jubilee to of church can and should impact what goes on outside of church.
The American musical traditions of Gospel, Blues, and Soul all sprang from a rich Bible spirituality that took root in the culture of the Old South. Today we have MTV, which has little or nothing to do with any of them. It is a new idiom in a new medium, whose stunning growth has paralleled the rise of a new American culture — the Culture of Death. Fortunately, the roots of this new culture are shallow, and its messages of nihilism and despair constitute the seeds of its own destruction.
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