Featured Explicit Lyrics Prompt Lifeway to Yank Album from Shelves

Looked up the lyrics (Piano Break, 33 AD). Seems like a lot of noise about nothing, IMO.

If Lifeway doesn't want to sell this album, that's their prerogative. It is NOT censorship.

 

I think that I will need time to process this bit:

"Time to startle my Reformed friends and list some of the Reformed (and reforming) rappers who have lyrics on the doctrines of grace (aka five points of Calvinism..." (from the reformed rappers link)

 

And?...

 

And?...

(Please make your point)

 

The language is inappropriate, unnecessary and this move was completely necessary.

 

Yeah, that's a tough one.

I believe he could have gotten his point across in that verse without using the phrase comm9n idiom "thinking with your..." To be fair, he used the medical term, and nothing crude. But I can see why Lifeway acted on the complaints.

If your goal is to edge right up to the line, well, these things will happen.

 

It is crude. It is understood as crude by a great many people. If it were to be posted on this site it would be edited and rightly so. While it may have been used as a medical term it as also been used un a crude fashion and therefore it is in and of itself crude. Lifeway is correct.

 

Blame it on the "white" Christians!

 

Lifeway should stop selling all of Sho Baraka's products.

 

My first response to Sho Baraka was "who?"

I guess as one of those white conservative Christians he seems to have a problem with, I guess it's not surprising I have never heard of him before today.

 

We can make all of our language benign, but what's the point? Art - even art I don't like, such as rap - is meant to prod us, to provoke a reaction using non-benign means.

There are times and places for certain things to be sure, but the Bible has a number of passages that are not benign and G-rated. Should the pastor not preach on them? Should we simply ignore parts of scripture? I hope not. If we don't ignore much stronger stuff like that from the pulpit, then perhaps we shouldn't try to censor art that does not say inappropriate things. Put a parental advisory sticker on it and move on.

I think there's a presupposition that Christian music is for children and teens. There are passages of scripture that I won't teach to children, but by the time they are teens, we will deal with it because teens are old enough to handle it.

When I was a teenager, I was actually relieved to see that the Bible had some hard and explicit things to say about the world. It showed me that the biblical characters and God were grounded in the reality that I experienced.

 

Exactly. If this seems explicit, I'm not sure what anyone would call Ezekiel 23.

 

Do you run around calling black people Negroes? Do you take dumps on your front lawn? Why would you say it's not vulgar? Outside a clinic, it is vulgar.

Even if the rapper didn't use that word, I have no doubt that most of his rap is vulgar.

 

What in the world are you trying to say?

Apples to oranges much?