We Jesuits at The Post make it our mission to seek God in all things. We put great effort into parsing the sacred and secular amidst a bounty of holiday tunes. Well, seems like Sufjan Stevens is trying to put us out of a job. He does this better than we ever could. J.J. Wright explains thus:
This is the interesting thing: only in Post-Modern America will you find a gathering of over a thousand hipsters (I’m assuming many of whom are not regular churchgoers) in an old remodeled and repurposed Methodist Church, singing songs about the Incarnation of Christ in the context of this seemingly borderline absurdist artistic presentation…here lies the genius of Sufjan Stevens.
Sufjan Stevens – Detroit’s indie king – this year released Silver and Gold, his second three-hour, five disc Christmas collection. In support of that release, Sufjan performed a series of holiday concerts – or, in his words, “The Surfjohn Stevens Christmas Sing-A-Long Seasonal Affective Disorder Yuletide Disaster Pageant On Ice.” J.J. Wright – a student of sacred music at some Catholic university in Indiana – had the pleasure of attending one of the SSCS-A-LSADYDPOIs and explains how Sufjan finds the sacred in the secular in the rest of his illuminating piece.
Here’s a sneak peak: Sufjan’s wrapping up “Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming” and starting into his techno take on “Do You Hear What I Hear.”
(h/t: Chris Grodecki, SJ)
