By Steve Beard

When Albert Einstein first introduced his theory of relativity dealing with space and time, it was widely joked that there were only three people in the world who comprehended it. During a question and answer time after a lecture, the acclaimed British scientist Sir Arthur Eddington was asked if he was one of the three. After a lengthy pause, Eddington replied, “I’m trying to think who the third person is.”

Original art by Zela Lobb – zelalobb.com.

Although the story may be apocryphal, it still grants a sigh of relief to all those who struggled with science in school. It is not as though most of us sit around and chat about energy equaling mass multiplied by the speed of light squared, more commonly known as E=mc².

As a cultural icon, Einstein was the ultimate caricature of an absentminded professor. When he was young, the family maid referred to him as the “dopey one.” As an adult, his moustache was too bushy, his hair untamable, and his clothing unfashionable. His most famous portrait is of him sticking out his tongue. You gotta love a physicist who knows the pose that even makes a kid laugh.

Walter Isaacson’s book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, intrigued me because of its lengthy chapter on faith. I had wrongly assumed that Einstein was an atheist. What I discovered was quite the opposite. In addition to wanting to know why the sky is blue and the quantum theory of radiation, this man of unsurpassed genius and unquenchable curiosity was enamored with figuring out the most profound of mysteries. “I want to know how God created this world…I want to know his thoughts; the rest are details,” he said.

Einstein was raised in a secular Jewish home and attended a large Catholic school at the age of six. He was the only Jew among the seventy students in his class. As was expected, he studied Catholicism; as wasn’t expected, it turned out that he enjoyed it.

As an early manifestation of youthful rebellion toward his non-observant parents, young Albert became a devout Jew. “He was so fervent in his feelings that, on his own, he observed Jewish religious strictures in every detail,” his sister recalled. He followed the rules of the Sabbath, ate no pork, and kept kosher. “He even composed his own hymns, which he sang to himself as he walked home from school,” reports Isaacson.

At age twelve, prior to preparing for his bar mitzvah, he suddenly gave up his zealous faith. Although he gave up his observant Judaism, he was still perplexed and curious about the harmony and beauty of creation that he would later call the “mind of God.” He settled into a deistic faith that embraced a non-intervening Creator.

As he grew older, Einstein became more outspoken about his beliefs. At the age of fifty, he granted an interview that delved into his Jewish upbringing and religious beliefs:

To what extent are you influenced by Christianity? 

“As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.”

You accept the historical existence of Jesus? 

“Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

Do you believe in God?

“I’m not an atheist. I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see the universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws but only dimly understand these laws.”

Einstein’s comments address the pervasive myth that religion and science are necessarily in conflict. It is also mistakenly assumed that all scientists are non-believers. Despite the arguments from some of the more vocal atheist scientists—“I am attacking God, all gods, and everything supernatural,” writes Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion—it is not true today, and it certainly was not true for Einstein.

Quoted in Isaacson’s book, Einstein said, “There are people who say there is no God. But what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.” The famous atheists of his day such as George Bernard Shaw, Bertrand Russell, and Sigmund Freud had a keen taste for denigrating those who believed in God. Einstein, on the other hand, was not shy about expressing his feelings about non-believers. “What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos,” he explained.

“The fanatical atheists,” he once wrote in a letter, “are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’—cannot hear the music of the spheres.”

What is so striking about Einstein’s writing is his humility and poetic sense of creation. Not even eloquent theologians use such refreshing phrases as the “music of the spheres.”

In 1929, Einstein and his wife were at a dinner party and the discussion turned to astrology. Einstein denounced it as superstition. One of the other guests likewise derided religion as mere superstition. When pressed to explain his own views, Einstein said, “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.”

Later, he further articulated his viewpoints in his essay “What I Believe.” “The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science,” wrote Einstein. “He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead, a snuffed-out candle. To sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is something that our minds cannot grasp, whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly: this is religiousness. In this sense, and in this sense only, I am a devoutly religious man.”

The mop-top genius who captivated the affection of the world with his quirky brilliance was insatiably curious as a child about why the compass always pointed north. He knew there must have been a reason. As a mature scientist, his desire to know true north led him on his quest to grasp the mind of God.

At a conference on science and religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York, Einstein said, “Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion.”

The lecture garnered major press coverage and his conclusion became widely quoted: “The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” If anyone earned the right to make such an authoritative statement about science and religion, Albert Einstein would be the one.

By Steve Beard

Unbeknownst to him, Professor Thomas C. Oden was the prime agitator to the agony and ecstasy of my seminary experience. It was wading through 1,400 pages of his three volume systematic text books that introduced me to his dear friends Athanasius, Basil, John Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzen, as well as Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine –– that’s just to name a few.

To be honest, sometimes it felt like fraternity hazing and at other times it read devotionally, healing the wounds of my worn-out and stretched mind.

Looking back on it, I would not have had it any other way.

There are a few notable reasons I have always trusted Oden.

First, he is steadfastly committed to the historic teachings of Jesus. He’s made a professional vow to be theologically “unoriginal,” a counterintuitive move for a brilliant mind within a culture where newer is always considered better and theologians huff and puff to “keep pace with each new ripple of the ideological river.” Oden is sold out to the witness of the martyrs, saints, and prophets –– the faith that has been “everywhere and always and by everyone believed” to be the truth of Christianity.

Second, he has a past. For some reason, I trust those whose skeletons have already been laid bare. He wasn’t always a bleeding heart for orthodoxy. As a “movement theologian,” he dabbled in theoretical Marxism, existentialism, demythologization, Transactional Analysis, Gestalt therapy, humanistic psychology, and parapsychology. Oden liked the bandwagons and everyone winked and nodded. Everyone, that is, except the late Jewish scholar Will Herberg, a brilliant colleague at Drew University who hounded Oden to rediscover his Christian roots.

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By Steve Beard

January 9, 2013 Good News

She captured America’s heart every week as the divine messenger with the lilting and soothing Irish accent on Touched by an Angel. He is the creative genius behind Survivor, The Apprentice, and The Voice. Together, Roma Downey and Mark Burnett are one of Hollywood’s most uniquely equipped married power couples.

Beginning March 3, you will be able to catch their latest ambitious venture on the History Channel. The Bible is a fabulously scripted five-part docudrama produced by Downey and Burnett after a 4 month location shoot in Morocco.

The 10-hour version of this Biblical epic was conceived after the husband and wife team watched the spectacular Ten Commandments by legendary filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille (1881-1959) for the first time since childhood. “Give me two pages of the Bible and I’ll give you a picture,” DeMille once said. With this new venture, Downey and Burnett have produced an entire photo album. Her is my interview with the pair.

How did this become a project that you both wanted to do? 

Roma Downey: Well, that was a God thing. I believe we were called to do this, for such a time as this. We are at the fortunate place in our careers where we can choose projects that honor and are pleasing to God. And we joined forces, bringing our talents together and our faith and our love and it has been the most exciting and thrilling and humbling few years of our lives as we’ve brought this to light. And we are so excited because it’s within inches of being finally finished, Steve.

How do you go to the History Channel and make this pitch in a way that they’ve not heard it before?

Roma Downey: Well, if you were me, you would go and knock politely on the door and wait until you’re invited in. But if you were my husband, you would arrive and you would kick the door down. And you would just somehow go in there and present it in such a way that they absolutely knew they had to be part of it.

I love that. And Mark, how did you go about doing that? 

Mark Burnett: We heard of a documentary someone was going to make about the Bible that was asking why God is so mean to everybody and why would God flood the earth and kill everybody, why would God tell Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, et cetera, et cetera. Roma was so offended and she said to me, “You know, we should just do a Bible project on…” I said, “What, the whole Bible?” She said, “Yes, we should do that.” I said, “Roma, you’re crazy. There’s no way. Who do you think we are? Cecil B. DeMille?” She said, “Maybe. We should do this.” I said, “Roma, this is impossible, you know.” And she said, “Well, so was Survivor, so was The Voice. Why don’t we do this. We love the Bible, we love these stories, we believe.” And I said, “No, no, no, this is crazy.” And then a couple of days later I decided, you know, maybe she’s right, maybe I should listen to my wife.

We took a year and a half to think exactly how to present it in a way that would be impossible to say no to. There is an art form to how to present an idea in our business, to get someone to say yes.

Mark, you certainly know how to do that.

Mark Burnett: Yes, I’m probably the most experienced person in television at doing exactly that.

This obviously is much more serious than anything else we’ve ever done. But you have to decide upon what’s the entry point and what’s the three-line message? What is the story of God’s love for all of us? And realize that the worst thing you can present is like a rule book: Don’t do this, don’t do that — and in a dry kind of way. If you do it in a dry kind of way, why would someone want to see it on television?

If you want to do it on television, it better be a fresh visual, emotionally connecting way of presenting the sacred text. And I think that’s what we did. Rather than telling you the rules from the Bible, we tell stories and the moral underpinning and rules are evident in the stories of the interaction with the characters. And that’s what we’ve done. And it just took a while to figure out exactly how to do it.

Ten hours of television is nearly the equivalent of half a season. That is a gift-wrapped blessing in Hollywood. What stories did you tackle? 

Mark Burnett: They are not going to give us 100 hours, you know, which is what you’d need. So obviously, if you were approaching this as almost a Sunday school greatest hits, there’s certain things you’ve got to do, right?

What we outlined was Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, Samson, Samuel, Saul, David. Then on to Zedekiah, which led nicely into Daniel and Cyrus and the releasing of the Jews from Babylon and Daniel’s dream about the coming of the Son of Man which was the entry point, naturally, into the New Testament. The New Testament is through the Gospels and then dealing with Stephen, his martyrdom, and dealing with Saul/Paul and on to Revelation.

As we were filming, we realized something had to give. Eventually the story we didn’t film was Joseph. It was Moses or Joseph and we had to do Moses. You just have to because of the parting of the Red Sea, the Ten Commandments and leading into Joshua, because otherwise, that’s the entry point of how you meet Joshua at Jericho. Obviously we wanted to do more, but that’s how we did it.

Roma, how much praying did you have to do through all of this because everything didn’t go as planned? I’ve got to assume there was all kinds of headaches. What was it like going through this process with your husband? 

Roma Downey: The fact that we have gotten through the project and we haven’t killed each other yet, I think, is a testimony to our faith. [laughter]

And our God is a good God. We had a few moments where the challenges were great. There were logistical challenges on the set. We filmed in Morocco. We were there from the beginning of February to the beginning of July. We crossed all seasons and all kinds of terrain and there were snakes and scorpions and there were casts of hundreds and herds of sheep and chariots and horses. You can imagine the endless things that might go wrong and they did go wrong, but ultimately I think the hand of God has been on the project from the beginning. We have great teams of people who have been praying with us and for us and in the way that the sea parted for Moses, unbelievably things just kept turning up for us and the right people kept arriving for us and things that we did not know how to do, suddenly somebody was there who did know how to do it. And even in terms of casting, we were challenged right up to the last minute with finding the actor who would play the role of Jesus for us, which was our singular most important cast member.

Very understandable. That’s one casting decision you want to have serious faith in. [laughter] 

Roma Downey:  We were just a month away from filming and we hadn’t found him yet. We were praying, we were looking for Jesus everywhere. And we had everyone we know praying for him. And then, he just remarkably showed up and he was the perfect actor and he brought all of the qualities that we were hoping this actor would have for this most important part. We cast a Portuguese actor called Diogo Morgado and he is simply sensational. He brings the qualities of the lion and the lamb to this role. And his natural charisma and his natural humility and his natural strength all come off the screen in this beautiful and authentic way. No one has ever played Jesus like this before and I think that his performance is going to touch the hearts of millions of people around the world.

That was a very key piece of casting for us. And there were other moments, too, where God just kept showing up.

One night we were filming a scene where Nicodemus asks Jesus about the kingdom of God and Jesus tells him that he, too, can see the kingdom of God – that he has to be born again of the Spirit. Nicodemus doesn’t fully understand what that means and Jesus describes to him how the Spirit can blow like the wind and it goes where it wishes. And suddenly, as if on cue, the most amazing wind on this very still night blew in through the camp as if God was saying, “Here I am, I’m right here.”

Everybody had hairs stand up on their arms and we all looked at each other in awe. And thankfully, the actors never broke concentration for a moment. And even though the trees were blowing behind them and the hair of the actor playing Jesus was blowing, they both held the moment and it’s just a fantastic moment on camera where it really felt like the Holy Spirit showed up. And there were numerous moments like that for us throughout the experience.

You filmed in Morocco. You’ve mentioned a Portuguese actor and a British actor. What was the international flavor of the rest of the cast? 

Roma Downey:  The cast is mostly made up of UK actors – English, Scottish, Welsh, and a good healthy sprinkling of Irish.

I love it. I’m a seventh generation Irishman in the United States so that warms my heart. [Laughter.] 

Roma Downey:  Oh, you are, really? So I have to tell you that King Saul is Irish. Our Moses is Irish. And I stepped myself into the role of Mother Mary. And as you know, I am Irish.

Splendid. I was going to ask if you crossed lines from co-producer to actress. 

Roma Downey: I hadn’t planned to play the part, but we had cast the younger Mary through the annunciation and through the Nativity – a beautiful young English actress. And we knew that we would have to find someone that would bear some resemblance 30 years later to the actress picking up that role through the mission of Jesus and then through the Passion of Jesus and so on.

Sounds like a perfect fit. 

Roma Downey:  Mark said to me, you know, of all these actors that we’re considering for the Mother Mary role, you actually look more like the young actress than any of them. Would you not consider playing it yourself? And I hadn’t really considered playing any part at that time. I had my producer’s hat firmly on my head, but I thought, well, I’ll pray on it. It was the right thing to do and I’m so glad that I did. It was just such a fantastic experience for me. I have loved Mary my whole life.

Oh, believe me, I’m a big fan of her’s as well. I’m glad you took the role. 

Roma Downey:  It was maybe through loving Mary that I really came to love Jesus. My own mother had died when I was a little girl and the role of Mary in my life became very much like a nurturing mother figure that I didn’t have.

I simply love that. Let me shift gears here. I think a lot of people would be surprised to discover that there is a very vibrant faith within the Hollywood zip code and in the creative world. 

Mark Burnett: Let me say that what we’ve done on this project is the best collective work of our entire careers. And that means everything from Roma’s incredible portrayal early in her career of “A Woman Named Jackie,” playing Jackie Onassis, as well as “Touched by an Angel,” “Survivor,” “The Apprentice,” “The Voice,” “Shark Tank,” the Emmys, all the things we’ve done. I don’t lightly say this, the Bible project is the best work we have ever been involved with or made.

That is quite a statement. Are people surprised to discover that the guy who created “Survivor” and “The Voice” is a Christian?

Mark Burnett: My answer is, why not? Why would you assume that because someone was really good at making commercial television they wouldn’t be a Christian? Why would that matter? You’d be pleasantly, happily surprised at the enormity of people of Christian faith within the creative community. That is not the challenge. The challenge is to actually get something about faith on television.

People are very quick to want to put shows on which call faith into question or shows that might say was Jesus married, was the parting of the Red Sea a phenomenon of nature, all these sort of shows are on TV that you’ve seen. Why would they do those? Because, I guess, they think it’s sensational and shocking. But when you want to make the story of God’s love for all of us, people are a little slower for whatever reason to buy into it. Well, we were called because we’ve got great credibility and people think we’re really good at our jobs and we got the opportunity and we’ve made it and we are really grateful to History Channel to seeing that and stepping up for us and with us. No one in our zip code in Hollywood will be surprised that Roma and I are Christians and have made this.

But I wanted to let you know how deep the community is and that many of us who choose to walk in the creative arts also have deep faith. And every now and then you get an opportunity to live that out in the project.

How do you hope the viewers who usually turn to the History Channel for “American Pickers” will experience your project on the Bible? 

Roma Downey: Well, the over arching embrace is of God’s love for us, it’s woven through every segment of the show, leading through, of course, to the New Testament, that He loved us so much that He sent His only Son to redeem us. So it’s a beautiful story of love and redemption. And it is our hope that the series goes out and that it touches people’s lives and that it is a great reminder that God loves them, and that it draws people back to the book itself, that they are reminded of how amazing our story is because it is our story, you know, we are those characters.

It’s as current today as it was when it was written. We all go through the same journey. The situations have changed but the feelings are the same, the challenges are the same, the hopes and dreams are the same. So it’s our story. They mirror us. There is such an opportunity here for the faithful, yes, but for people maybe who have never opened a book or who have never stepped inside of a church, but who will get to turn their television set on and see something like this. It’s just a very exciting prospect for the Kingdom.

I should say it is. Thank you both so very much for your time. 

Roma Downey: Good. We appreciate you. Thank you for your partnership on this, in helping us to spread the Good News.

By Steve Beard

“I’m never sure of what I’m looking for,” John Coltrane once told noted jazz critic Nat Hentoff, “except that it’ll be something that hasn’t ever been played before; I know I’ll have that feeling when I get it.” In the world of jazz, Coltrane was Ponce de Leon with a saxophone tirelessly searching for a mystical fountain of rhythms and harmonies. He practiced relentlessly, stretching every conceivable note to conform to his will.

“A man who studied all religions as well as Einstein’s theory of relativity, Coltrane dared to try to discover through music a way toward what Stephen Hawking has called ‘the mind of God’ for modern man,” writes Eric Nisenson in Ascension: John Coltrane and his Quest. “That quest was not just pretense on his part. Anyone with ears and heart and soul could hear and feel it.”

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• Whispers of Faith in a Postmodern World: The myth of secularism triumphant in the arts is just that—a myth. By Gregory Wolfe (Wall Street Journal)

• Rich Man, Poor Man: The radical visions of St. Francis. By Joan Acocella (The New Yorker)

• From ‘borderline bordello’ to the pulpit (UMNS)

• Crying at the movies: Michael Gerson on Les Miserables (Washington Post)

• Alfred Hitchcock’s Surprise Ending: A biographer said that the director, at the end of his life, shunned religion. Not true. I was there. By Mark Henninger (Wall Street Journal)

• Pastor goes all out for images—and for Africa (UM Reporter)

• Wanda Jackson: Unfinished Business (Rockerzine)

• The Hell-Raiser: Rob Bell’s search for a more forgiving faith. (New Yorker)

By Steve Beard

When British musician Elvis Costello was asked if he had ever had a religious experience, he responded, “No, but I have heard Al Green.” Not a bad compliment coming from Costello, a musical legend in his own right.

Al Green rose to international fame with timeless hits such as “Let’s Stay Together,” “Call Me,” “Take Me to the River,” “I’m Still in Love with You,” “Tired of Being Alone,” and “Love and Happiness.” In the early 1970s, he sold more than 20 million albums. He was the Prince of Love, the man with the trademark smile that made women swoon in near-riotous concerts as he tossed long stem red roses to adoring fans. A few years ago, Rolling Stone declared that Green is “the greatest popular singer of all time,” describing his songs as “unsurpassed in their subtlety, grace, intimacy, and invention.”

His silky smooth voice was coupled with stage charisma, sex appeal, and undeniable charm. He was the consummate ladies’ man. His voice was a liquid calling card, wooing the listener into a sensuous and lush boudoir of his own creation.

In the summer of 1973, he had an experience that would forever change his life. He had flown from San Francisco to Anaheim, California, for his next show. Shortly after four in the morning, he was awakened by the sounds of shouting. “I sat bolt upright in bed, frightened that some crazy fan had broken into the room,” he remembers. Green then realized that the commotion he was hearing was coming from his own mouth. “And while the words I shouted were of no earthly tongue, I immediately recognized what they meant. I was praising God…and lifting my voice to heaven with the language of angels to proclaim his majesty on high.”

He laughed. He cried. He knocked on doors of the hotel, telling complete strangers what had happened to him. One woman slammed the door in his face. Someone eventually called security.

Saint Paul was converted on the Road to Damascus; Al Green was made righteous off Interstate 5 near Disneyland.

Green had been singing about love and happiness, but there was a war going on inside—a battle for the substance of his soul. He eventually abandoned his mainstream singing career and began pastoring Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, Tennessee.

For eight years, he sang only gospel until he sensed God give him the green light to sing his old songs. Today, the soul man still puts on the pizzazz in mainstream venues. Resplendent in his white suit and Ray Ban sunglasses, and loaded with long stem roses like a florist, he still has the magic to commandeer the human heart, making it pulse in romance or worship—our very own funky St. Valentine. “Now I am comfortable mixing everything up, and my audience has responded favorably,” he reports. “When I finished a short prayer at this gig…, people stood up and cheered. That told me that I could give audiences a little bit of the Reverend and they’d likely rejoice.” He sings “Amazing Grace” in casino showrooms in Las Vegas and Lake Tahoe, knowing that many of his admirers hunger for redemption just as he once had.

Full Gospel Tabernacle’s unassuming geodesic sanctuary is tucked in on the side of a quiet residential road, a few miles south of Graceland, off Elvis Presley Boulevard. It has played host to a myriad of music fans who make it a part of their Memphis pilgrimage. They stick out like sore thumbs, showing up promptly at 11 a.m. for a service that will not start for another half-hour. One Sunday while I was visiting, they appeared from Ireland, Arkansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, North Carolina, and England.

The visitors are greeted warmly. After all these years, the congregation has become very familiar with the novelty factor involved with having a musical icon behind the pulpit. Nevertheless, they are here to get down with God, not impress the guests (for example, there are none of Green’s Greatest Hits collections sold in the church lobby). The choir marches in and the B-3 Hammond organ starts to crank up the funk, while the electric guitar starts to wail.

Reverend Al walks around the sanctuary fiddling with his lapel microphone, gently patting visitors on the shoulder as he glides to the back of the sanctuary to adjust his own sound at the mixing board.

Back at the pulpit, Reverend Al is feeling the “unction of the Holy Ghost,” as he calls it. He starts to bob and weave like a boxer as he delivers his sermon on faith. “Hold on, God is coming!” he shouts. “Help is on the way,” he purrs. When he calls for the assembly to give a wave offering by lifting our arms, you can see the nervousness rise in the visitors. Awkwardly, we wave our arms in the air. Who is going to refuse Reverend Al? “Thank you, Jesus! Thank you, Jesus! Stop looking at Al Green,” he says. “Al Green himself came to worship God. He’s been soooo good to me,” he starts to sing as the musicians crank up the volume.

When he starts singing “One Day at a Time, Sweet Jesus,” you know you have been to church. “You are not here by accident,” he says. “I am the same person you heard sing all those songs, but I am not the same person,” he testifies. “I couldn’t preach for 25 years if something didn’t happen to me.” Speaking to the visitors with a winsome grin, he says, “Come and see Al, but Al doesn’t hold the key to your salvation. I can sing ‘Love and Happiness’ four times and I still will not hold your salvation.”

The Reverend closes out the 11 o’clock service at 1:25 p.m. with a soul-felt version of “Gonna Sit Down on the Banks of the River” by blues legend Reverend Gary Davis. He leaves us at the banks, and the decision is ours. Shall we jump in or walk away? You can tell what Green has done. You can see it in his eyes, in his smile, in the intonations of his honey-like voice. Otis Redding died in a plane crash at 26, Sam Cooke was shot at 33, Jackie Wilson’s career was over at 41, and Marvin Gaye was killed by his father at 44. Al Green is alive—and he is grateful. Somebody shout, Amen!

It is one thing to sing about love and happiness; it is an entirely different enterprise to experience it. As he grabs hold of the pulpit, festooned in his preaching robe, you can see it on his face. He arrived at the river’s edge and took a dive into faith. He looks up at us with a grin and seems to say, “Hop in. The water’s fine.”

Steve Beard is the founder and creator of Thunderstruck.org. This article was adapted from his chapter on the Rev. Al Green in Spiritual Journeys: How Faith Has Influenced Twelve Music Icons (Relevant Books).

By Steve Beard

I was 12 years old when I first saw Rocky. Thirty years ago, the film made such a deep impression on me that I actually arose early one morning and guzzled the raw egg concoction that Rocky drank while training. Before I could get out the door to jog around the block, I threw up. That was the last time that I sipped from the dreadful cup, but I never forgot the values of the film—pride, determination, and faith.

Original art by Zela Lobb – zelalobb.com

The recently released Rocky Balboa is the final installment in one of the most successful film franchises in Hollywood history. Inspired by the Muhammad Ali-Chuck Wepner fight in 1975 and with $106 in the bank, screenwriter and actor Sylvester Stallone created an Academy Award-winning cultural icon stitched together from blood, sweat, and a black eye. Rocky rose above his circumstances and proved he was not “just another bum from the neighborhood.”

The films had nothing to do with winning or losing. They had everything to do with getting back up on your feet after getting punched in the face. The films were tutorials on respect—for yourself, your opponent, and the opportunities that life presents.

Although he does not take home the championship belt in the original film, Rocky walks out of the ring with his pride, reputation, dignity, and honor. He is the classic portrait of the head-held-high underdog.

In each film, Rocky takes on an antagonist such as Thunderlips, Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, and most recently Mason “The Line” Dixon. He is always proving to himself that he can still lace up the gloves. When life gets rough, he climbs back in the ring. When his manager dies, he climbs back in. When his wife falls into a coma, he climbs back in. When he loses all his money, he climbs back in.

This is Stallone’s swan song in the ring. Make no mistake about it, Rocky Balboa is not a stinker like Rocky 5. Stallone is well aware that viewers are apprehensive about seeing an embarrassing conclusion to a beloved character. Stallone deals with the concern through the dialogue of his on-screen son played by Milo Ventimiglia. His son’s awkward uncertainty is the way any son would feel about his father facing a potential public embarrassment. Stallone treats the understandable skepticism with well-allocated humor.

The film is a respectful, even spiritual, reminder of the Italian Stallion’s humble beginnings. Flashbacks from the original Rocky are well placed throughout the film. Pauley is back at his side, Adrian is tenderly honored after her death, and Rocky is back pounding a side of beef in the meat packing plant.

Rocky, however, is reminded that he is “living backwards” in the fanfare of the past, as well as being hamstrung by the sentimental memories of Adrian, his beloved. Unexpectedly provocative and entertaining, Rocky Balboa is as much about growing old on your own terms as it is about any of the other virtues in the film such as tenacity, humility, self-confidence, and love.

After the fight, the hot-shot reigning world champion says to Balboa, “You’re one crazy old man.” Rocky deadpans, “You’ll get there.”

In promoting his latest project, Stallone has been emphasizing the spiritual journey of his prized character. The opening shot of the original Rocky is a picture of Jesus. Since they were filming in a chapel-turned-gym, the camera slowly moves from the face of Christ to the rafters and finally to Rocky’s face. “As he’s being hit, with the picture in the background, you know that the man was being chosen for a spiritual journey, like I was,” Stallone says. Despite his violent line of work, Rocky was humble, respectful, and self-sacrificing.

Stallone wanted Rocky Balboa to “say something about how I’d been sort of wayward and lost and how would I get on my feet again.” He wanted Rocky to reflect the kind of dramatic ups and downs that he faced in his own life. Stallone is honest about Hollywood’s seduction.

“It’s a very, very morally weakening situation because you are given the keys to a candy store,” Stallone confesses. “People will say yes to you when you’re wrong. Your morals, and your outlook on life, are corrupted. You actually start to believe your hype. And when that starts to happen, you just want to surround yourself with people who will never tell you the truth and will only tell you what you want to hear.” Stallone confesses that it was when he gave in to these landmines of fame that his career took a downward spiral.

“Everything that I’ve done that has been bad deserved to fail because it had no spiritual message—nothing,” Stallone candidly admits. And he has been in some stinkers. As life often imitates art, Stallone’s career often mirrored his personal life. He admits to giving into “the lackadaisical, irresponsible, immature lifestyle that a lot of stars live.” Having hit rock bottom after the failure of his second marriage and the stagnation of his career, he looked hard for a moral compass and tried to point it in the right direction.

Stallone had been raised in a religious home and attended Catholic schools. “I was taught the faith and went as far as I could with it,” he says. “Until one day, I got out in the so-called real world and I was presented with temptation. I lost my way and made a lot of bad choices.”

Ironically, his catapulted career proved to be counterproductive in his search for happiness and purpose. “After you’ve been knocked down a few times, and the world has shown you its dark side, you kind of realize that you need light, you need guidance, you need God’s word, you need spiritual help,” he says. “And that’s when your journey will begin.”

Stallone testifies that his faith has given him peace—a valuable commodity in Hollywood. “The more I go to church, and the more I turn myself over to the process of believing in Jesus and listening to his Word and having him guide my hand, I feel as though the pressure is off me now,” he says.

At the same time, Stallone is still making his appeal to relevancy to a new generation. Even though the notion of a 60-year-old man climbing back into the ring for one more fight sounds absurd, one need only see Stallone’s chiseled physique to realize that it might not be a far-flung stretch of the imagination. He is packing muscle and swinging like a welterweight.

“An artist dies twice, and the second death is the easiest one,” Stallone told the New York Times regarding his career’s ebbs and flows. “The artistic death, the fact that you are no longer pertinent—or that you’re deemed someone whose message or talent has run its course—is a very tough piece of information to swallow.”

I’m not sure he has to worry about that just yet. When Stallone walked out onto the sidelines of Lincoln Financial Field during a recent Monday Night Football game in Philadelphia, the 60,000 fans in the stadium began chanting, “Rocky! Rocky! Rocky!” His character is etched in the soul of that city. There is an eight-and-a-half foot statue of Rocky outside of the Museum of Art—the site of one of the most memorable scenes in film history. Who can forget Rocky climbing up the seventy-two steps of the museum and raising his arms victoriously? In tribute, the footage during the closing credits of Rocky Balboa shows people of all shapes, ages, and ethnicities climbing the steps.

When I was a child, my family lived a few blocks from those steps. The site has become such a landmark that Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Michael Vitez and photographer Tom Gralish produced Rocky Stories: Tales of Love, Hope, and Happiness at America’s Most Famous Steps to chronicle those who climb the steps and strike the Rocky pose. They come from all kind of circumstances: a recovering drug addict, a track team from Belfast, a race car driver, professional wrestling fans from Australia, a struggling actress, a Turkish woman who overcame tremendous odds to attend the Wharton School of Business.

“I discovered many things at the Rocky Steps. People came to propose marriage,” writes Vitez. “Or because Rocky had given them hope and direction during troubled times in their lives. They came because they had overcome cancer or other trials and felt that they, like the movie character, had surmounted much in life.…The steps have become a place where people can bring to life the message of Rocky—that with hard work, faith, and support from people you love, you can accomplish almost anything. People are always happy at the steps. Running up and celebrating at the top offers a tonic to the world’s problems, if only for a moment.”

Not a bad gift. Thanks, Sly.

 Steve Beard is the creator and editor of Thunderstruck Media Syndicate. This column originally appeared in the January/February 2007 issue of Risen Magazine. 

By Steve Beard

Some of my churchgoing friends were perplexed by my recent praise of Sinead O’Connor. They still have visceral memories of a brash young woman tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on national television fifteen years ago.

While their reaction is understandable, I have asked them to lend her an ear. Quite literally, I have encouraged them to listen to her new double album Theology—a stunning collection of songs taken from the Old Testament books of Psalms, the Song of Solomon, and Samuel. Also on the album are covers of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar and Curtis Mayfield’s “We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue.”

Even though Theology will most likely not be sold in those well-manicured religious book stores, it is a soulful and contemplative masterpiece. Back in the 90s, I was struck by the way her powerful vocals reverberated through every note of her 1990 mega-hit “Nothing Compares 2 U” written by the equally enigmatic Prince. The song’s unforgettable video focused entirely on her face and culminates with a lone tear rolling down her cheek. I was mesmerized by her eyes, conviction, and dagger-through-the-heart intensity.

Along with her shaved head, O’Connor has always been recognized for her righteous indignation. She won a Grammy for “Nothing Compares 2 U,” but boycotted the awards ceremony because of their commercialism. O’Connor refused to appear on Saturday Night Live with misogynist comedian Andrew Dice Clay. She disallowed the traditional recording of the American national anthem to be played before a concert in New Jersey.

When she did finally agree to being the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, she committed an incendiary protest that had all the subtlety of a car-bomb. During a version of Bob Marley’s “War,” she added several unscripted references to child abuse and as she sang the final verse, O’Connor tore up a picture of the Pope.

The phone lines at NBC were scorched by thousands of angry callers. To this day, the network refuses to rebroadcast the footage. Two weeks later she was booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan tribute concert in Madison Square Garden.

American fans were bumfuzzled at her vitriolic protest. They largely had no idea that her actions were targeted toward scandalous reports in her home country of Ireland regarding abuse committed by priests. O’Connor believed that the Vatican had been covering up the allegations and silencing the families of the victims.

Irish playwright Sean O’Casey once said, “It is my rule never to lose my temper till it would be detrimental to keep it.” Sinead reached that point. She was Catholic by birth, culture, and blood. O’Connor was grief-stricken and enraged to think that men of the cloth would violate the innocence of devout children—a sobering and volatile emotion that American churchgoers have had to experience for themselves in subsequent years.

Compounding the news of the scandal in Ireland, O’Connor was dealing with the residual pain of her own abusive childhood. In talking with Risen Magazine, O’Connor said that in the midst of her traumatic upbringing she formed a very tight relationship with God. “When I was being set upon I used to see Jesus in my mind, in particular the crucifixion,” she said. “And I would see Jesus’ blood coming from his heart to mine and that gave me the ability not to feel pain. So I really do believe in Jesus as savior from that point of view.”

Five years after the tumultuous Saturday Night Live taping, she asked the Pope to forgive her. In an interview with an Italian newspaper, O’Connor said that tearing up his picture was “a ridiculous act, the gesture of a girl rebel.” She claimed she did it “because I was in rebellion against the faith, but I was still within the faith.”

As time passed, O’Connor realized that as just as her cause and indignation may have been, the nature of the act would never be understood. A few years later, she reemphasized her assessment: “I’m sorry I did that, it was a disrespectful thing to do. I have never even met the Pope. I am sure he is a lovely man. It was more an expression of frustration.”

“I know that I have done many things to give you reason not to listen to me, especially as I have been so angry,” O’Connor sang on her 2000 album Faith and Courage. “But if you knew me maybe you would understand me/ Words can’t express how sorry I am if I ever caused pain to anybody/ I just hope that you can have compassion and love me enough to just please listen.” She was quoted in Rolling Stone at that time as saying, “If I want to get heard, it’s important that I accept humility.”

In her discussion with Risen, she said, “I usually find forgiveness easy because I have so much to be forgiven of.” From the beginning of time, there seems to be two irrefutable and universal human needs: love and forgiveness. Sinead O’Connor is no different than any of the rest of us in need of a second chance at grace—or, in her case, a second listen.

Make no mistake about it, O’Connor is more reform school than charm school. She is combative and contrite, brash and brilliant, tough and tender, intemperate and introspective, course and comely, radical and religious. She smokes like a freight train and curses like a drill sergeant. She finds solace in the book of Jeremiah and loves Bob Dylan’s Slow Train Coming. Dr. Phil would have a heyday sorting through her relationships (she has four children from as many different men). She’s an earthy punk rock mom trying to find peace in a war-torn world and grasping to strengthen her spiritual devotion when religion sometimes acts as if it doesn’t need God.

O’Connor is an astute student of world religions and was even ordained eight years ago by the Latin Trindentine Church—a maverick Catholic offshoot not recognized by the Vatican.

Although she is remarkably candid about her controversial life, the one area that she refuses to discuss is her religious vocation. While recognizing that her course of action is not acceptable to Rome, she is adamant about not making a publicity issue of her ordination. Instead, she is quite content to say, “My singing is my priesthood.”

When you hear her new album, you might even agree with her.

Steve Beard is the creator and curator of Thunderstruck.org. This article appeared in Risen Magazine.

By Steve Beard

It was an oddly surreal experience to be walking down one of the gold-record adorned hallways of Graceland and spotting Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy and his then girlfriend Ashlee Simpson in front of me checking out Elvis’ sequined jumpsuits. Wentz was in Memphis for a gig and swung through the King’s old haunt before the show. With the exception of a few giddy and gawking female fans, the two pop stars were able to make their way through the mansion unfettered.

In many ways, Memphis is to music what Kitty Hawk is to aviation. It’s the cradle of rhythm ’n’ blues and rock ’n’ roll—the distillery of black and white musical moonshine. Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins revolutionized American culture in the scrappy Sun Records studio. Across town, Otis Redding, Carla Thomas, and Booker T. and the MG’s found their groove at Stax/Volt records. On the legendary Beale Street, B.B. King still holds court occasionally at his restaurant, while Isaac Hayes fronts his nightclub a few blocks away.

The city is also the site of two of the most profound tragedies in our nation’s pop culture—the murder of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the balcony outside of Room 306 of the Lorraine Hotel in 1968 and death of the King of rock ’n’ roll at Graceland nine years later. The National Civil Rights Museum was created next to the Lorraine in order to pay respect to one King, while the gates of Graceland are opened to honor the other.

Elvis’ mansion is strangely magnetic. It’s kitschy, fairly modest by Cribs-standards, and slightly mystical. I was particularly intrigued by Wentz’s presence because of his own struggle with severe depression and seclusion—the very demons that wrestled with Elvis. A few years ago, Wentz swallowed a handful of Ativan anxiety pills in what he called “hypermedicating” to deal with his darkness.

The Graceland tour is a $25-per-person reminder that fame and fortune doesn’t equate to happiness. Sometimes clichés are true: Money can’t buy love. The wrought-iron gates around Graceland kept the crazies from knocking down the front door, but it also sequestered Elvis into a loathsome existence with cannibals devouring his cash, a manager who ruthlessly pimped out his talent, and sycophants who doped him up.

Raised in poverty and southern Pentecostalism, Presley was a country boy from Tupelo, Mississippi, who shook his hips and shot through our tightly-wound cultural atmosphere like a meteor. Fame brought him misery and the pills warped his personality. He struggled and prayed and tried to fight the darkness by singing gospel songs around the piano. Elvis was no saint, but he was not terribly different from you or me. He just did it with more swagger.

As I smiled at the funky furnishings of the Jungle Room, my blood ran cold when I realized that Elvis died right upstairs. Surrounded by the redneck grandeur of Graceland, I was curious how Wentz was processing the experience. I recalled his starkly honest admission regarding his struggles with fame and hopelessness in a Risen magazine interview two years ago.

“I traversed two ends of the spectrum where I wouldn’t care at all if I was alive or dead and I didn’t care about anything. On the other hand I was scared to leave the house,” Wentz said. “I was nervous and thought that everything was going to kill me. I would have the longest conversations with guys from the bands who were Christian. It was a very desperate feeling of wanting to believe. I found myself wanting to believe so badly that it almost hurt. It keeps me awake at night. At the same time I felt overly pragmatic. I want someone to give me the map of heaven before I sign on. It’s weird for me….I don’t know where I am with belief, but I want that and it’s really important for me to have that in my life.”

Elvis sang the same tune. He became obsessed with figuring out his place in the scheme of things, his purpose for life. During his first meeting with hairdresser Larry Geller prepping for a movie role, Elvis said, “Larry, let me ask you something….What are you into?” Geller responded, “Obviously, I do hair, but what I am really more interested in than anything else is trying to discover things like where we come from, why we are here, and where we are going.”

This was the key to unlocking Elvis’s attention. “Whoa, whoa, man. Larry, I don’t believe it. I mean, what you’re talking about is what I secretly think about all the time,” said Presley. “I’ve always known that there had to be purpose for my life. I’ve always felt an unseen hand behind me, guiding my life. I mean, there has to be a purpose.”

Geller was asking the kind of transcendent questions that Elvis was not getting with the Memphis Mafia—his team of security and advance people. Elvis experienced the shallowness of stardom but was a prisoner to his own success. “All I want is to know the truth, to know and experience God,” Elvis told Geller. “I’m a searcher, that’s what I’m all about.”

These are the kinds of quests that spark our interest at Thunderstruck. We put a premium value on creativity, spirituality, artistry, and redemption. In the midst of the big questions, we have always striven to dig in a deeper well. We have never been shy about our questions regarding faith, hate, loneliness, fame, love, and what lurks on the other side of life.

Perhaps that’s why on the day after visiting Graceland, I slipped into a pew at the Full Gospel Tabernacle to hear the Reverend Al Green—the indescribable soul singer who sold more than 35 million albums. After 31 years, the modest congregation has become very familiar with the novelty factor of having a musical icon behind the pulpit. Nevertheless, they are here to have church, not impress the looky-loos (none of Green’s Greatest Hits collections are sold in the lobby).

“If you feel like shouting, go ahead,” Rev. Al says among the hanky waving and amening. “If God’s been good to you, somebody needs to tell him thank you. He can make a way where there is no way!”

Rev. Al has been sick all week and his doctor warned about not “sweating and carrying on.” Fat chance, Doc. Bedecked in his preaching robe and bling, Rev. Al talks about recently seeing Terrence Howard’s film Hustle and Flow. “How many pimps do we have in here?” he asks with a gleaming smile. “Anybody who works for a pimp?” He knows the answer, but wouldn’t be surprised to see a hand lifted up. In talking about his own shortcomings and redemption, he says, “God looked beyond my fault and saw my need.”

Not a bad message—especially in the shadow of Graceland.

Steve Beard is the creator and editor of Thunderstruck Media.