Graced Lightning

Honky-Tonk Gospel
by Gene Edward Veith and Thomas L. Wilmeth
Baker Book House, 2001
(188 pages; $12.50, paperback)

reviewed by Russell D. Moore

How can artists like Willie Nelson end a concert by moving, without comment, from crooning “Whiskey River, Take My Mind” to softly singing “Amazing Grace”? The authors of Honky-Tonk Gospel— published four years ago but still the only book of its sort—contend that this is not as contradictory as it seems, since the popular music and the popular religion of the American South feed off a common understanding of theological questions, such as the relationship between sin and grace.

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Russell D. Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.

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