April 7 marked the four-year anniversary of the death of John Prine. A beloved American singer-songwriter, Prine was one of the first victims of COVID-19 when the disease took his last breath in the spring of 2020. The multi-Grammy-winning storyteller had an amazing knack for capturing the absurdities and profundities of the life of common people.
Among the many themes Prine explored, one of the most recurring was that of faith. His churchgoing days were mostly in childhood when he worshiped alongside his grandfather. Prine captured that experience with these lyrics from “Grandpa Was a Carpenter”:
Well, he’d drive to church on Sunday
And take me with him too!
Stained glass in every window
Hearing aids in every pew.
Although not an active churchman, Prine often spoke of his belief in God and a fascination with Jesus. What he had no interest in was professing a false narrative about the purpose, superiority or efficacy of religion in the real world. He had a healthy disdain for the hyperbole, judgmentalism and sentimental claims made about God’s work in human life by segments of the church.
His weariness with the inflated view religion often has of itself is seen in one of his most cherished songs, “Spanish Pipedream.” As Prine visualized a life of simplicity and faith, he advised the listener to:
Blow up your TV, throw away your paper
Go to the country, build you a home
Plant a little garden, eat a lot of peaches
Try and find Jesus on your own.
In an effort to deflate the ego of all faiths, the Illinois native leveled the playing field in his song “Pretty Good” in which he offered the perspective:
I heard Allah and Buddha were singing at the Savior’s feast
And up in the sky an Arabian rabbi
Fed Quaker oats to a priest.
Pretty good, not bad, they can’t complain
Cause actually all them gods is just about the same.
Prine’s disdain for pomposity in all religions comes through in his critique of Christian nationalism in the song “Your Flag Decal Won’t Get You Into Heaven Anymore.” According to Prine, rabid patriotism (and the violence it produces) is antithetical to the teachings of Christ (as well as any truly holy one) as revealed in his lyric:
Jesus don’t like killin’, no matter what the reason’s for,
and your flag decal won’t get you into heaven anymore.
The man often credited as the “Father of Americana Music” also had more personal reflections on the place of faith in his life. In the middle of his whimsical song “Fish and Whistle,” Prine speaks directly to God about the unfairness of life:
Father forgive us for what we must do,
you forgive us, we’ll forgive you.
We’ll forgive each other till we both turn blue
Then we’ll whistle and go fishing up in heaven.
Prine had no hard feelings toward God for the pain of mortal existence, but he was not going to pretend that belief in God sheltered anyone from suffering. Whether theologically correct or not, virtually everybody has had a few sorrows for which they must forgive the Almighty for allowing. John was too honest to deny this reality.
That honesty is most laceratingly expressed in Prine’s finest work, “Sam Stone.” After describing in heartbreaking detail the relentless agony endured by a Vietnam veteran and his family, Prine sings in the voice of the vet’s son:
There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes,
Jesus Christ died for nothing, I suppose.
Many believers, confronted by the inescapable pain and wounds of life, have wondered whether the death of Christ conquered any present evil or if it did, why that evil continues in such unabated forms. The church grows mute in the face of the pervasive wreckage of human life in our world. Prine did not.
His final album was the Grammy-nominated album and winner of the Americana Music Honors and Awards trophy for album of the year, The Tree of Forgiveness. Prine professed in that recording that despite his lifelong argument with God over his own sin and the Lord’s inability to rescue his creation from peril, all would be forgiven in the very end. In his song “When I Get to Heaven,” Prine imagines that when he reaches the pearly gates:
I’m gonna shake God’s hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand.
Later in that same song Prine promises that with “God as my witness” he’s going to “forgive everybody ever done me any harm.” Then he says he hopes to:
Get a cocktail, vodka and ginger ale
Yeah I’m gonna smoke a cigarette that’s nine miles long.
Maybe those celestial benefits are not reported in Scripture, but most of us hope heaven holds a place in God’s presence where we can finally be ourselves in all our glory and frailty. As so often happens, Prine’s music is more popular now than at any point before his death. Thank God. For in the myriad streams of music that seem to think God and country are one word, in the choruses of gospel music that claim God fixes everything for the faithful, in the hymnody of the church that sometimes overpromises the victory and understates the trials, we still need Prine’s commitment to tell the truth about a life of faith.
John Burns
John Burns retired in 2023 from University Baptist Church of College Park, Md. He is the author of Modeling Mary in Christian Discipleship. This piece originally appeared in The Christian Citizen.