Call Me the Seeker

-One of very few books on religion and popular music
-Covers a wide range of musical styles, from heavy metal and rap to country, jazz and Broadway musicals
-The essays are written by academics and informed by their enthusiasm for the music
Many books have explored the relationship between religion and film, but few have yet examined the significance of religion to popular music. Call Me The Seeker steps into that gap.
Michael Gilmour's introductory essay gives a state-of-the-discipline overview of research in the area. He argues that popular songs frequently draw from and "interpret" themes found in the conceptual and linguistic worlds of the major religions and reveal underlying attitudes in those who compose and consume them. He says these "texts" deserve more serious study. The essays in the book start an on-going conversation in this area, bringing a variety of methodologies to bear on selected artists and topics.
Musical styles covered range from heavy metal and rap to country, jazz, and Broadway musicals.

Table of Contents
Introduction
Michael J. Gilmour. Radios in Religious Studies Departments: Preliminary Reflections on the Study of Religion in Popular Music
Section One: Religious Sources behind Popular Music
Daniel Maoz. Woman as Shekhinah: Kabbalistic References in Bob Dylan's Infidels
James Knight. "I Ain't Got No Home in This World Anymore": Protest and Promise in Woody Guthrie and the Jesus Tradition
Michael J. Gilmour. The Prophet Jeremiah, Aung San Suu Kyi, and U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind: On Listening to Bono's Jeremiad
Section Two: Religious Themes in Popular Music
Karl J. McDaniel. Suffering and Sacrifice in Context: Apocalypticism and Life beyond Les Misérables
Brian Froese. Comic Endings: Spirit and Flesh in Bono's Apocalyptic Imagination, 1980
Anna Kessler. Faith, Doubt, and the Imagination: Nick Cave on the Divine-Human Encounter
Paul Martens. Metallica and the God That Failed: An Unfinished Tragedy in Three Acts
Harold Penner. The Nature of His Game: A Textual Analysis of "Sympathy for the Devil"
J. R.C. Cousland. God, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Vi(t)a Negativa of Nick Cave and P. J. Harvey
Randall Holm. "Pulling Back the Darkness": Starbound with Jon Anderson
Section Three: Religion and Popular Music's Audiences
Angela M. Nelson. "God's Smiling on You and He's Frowning Too": Rap and the Problem of Evil
Tim Olaveson. Transcendent Trancer: A Scholar Experiences Rave in Central Canada
Andreas Häger. Under the Shadow of the Almighty: Fan Reception of Some Religious Aspects in the Work and Career of the Irish Popular Musician Sinéad O'Connor
Thomas Nesbit. Planet Rock: Black Socioreligious Movements in Early 1980s Electro
Melanie Takahashi. Spirituality through the Science of Sound: The DJ as Technoshaman in Rave Culture
Maxine Grossman. Jesus, Mama, and the Constraints on Salvific Love in Contemporary Country Music
List of Contributors