Your Neighbor's Hymnal

Book excerpt: Your Neighbor's Hymnal provides a winsome and thoughtful exploration of popular music, from rock to hip-hop to metal to soul, as a vital source contemporary culture continues to go to learn about faith, hope, and love. Where some Christians have kept their focus only on a hymnal found in their church or formed by the genre of Contemporary Christian Music, Keuss argues that your neighbor's hymnal is filled with great music that God is using and deserves a deeper listen. Offering forty songs spanning time and genres, each section includes a number of representative reflections on the history and artist that created the song, reflections on its lyrical content, and theological and biblical connections that will hopefully show some ways in which the song illustrates how your neighbor is hearing, seeking, and finding faith, hope, and love through popular music. This book can be approached in a number of ways. As an introduction to this stream of popular culture, the overviews and short introductions to each song provide a glossary useful in courses needing texts in theology and popular culture. For use with church groups, whether adult bible studies or youth groups, Your Neighbor's Hymnal provides points of reference for connecting key aspects of the Christian faith with illustrations readily available for discussion. For interested music listeners, the book will provide a means of giving voice to their own musings on faith. As with faith, good music is meant to be shared, and Your Neighbor's Hymnal offers a wonderful opportunity to do both.