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by C. M. Howell (Author)
Too Sick To Pray: A Theology of Outlaw Country explores the imaginative world that comes to form in Outlaw Country--that musical expression of Nashville rebels in the 1970's. Far from being comprised of uneducated hillbillies singing recycled gospel songs, Outlaw Country is filled with Oxford scholars, literary geniuses, and poets in the making. The genre not only redefined the music industry it broke open the mold for political, social, economic, and, most importantly, theological topics in country music.
C. M. Howell shows that the theological dimension of Outlaw Country can in no way be drawn in a straight line to more conventional, organized, or academic sense of Christian theology. Rather, Too Sick to Pray argues that the Outlaws are involved in a mode of theological play. Play, here, gathers three key functions: it is a form of aesthetic judgement, therein alleviating Outlaw Country from the burdens placed on more exacting forms of theology; it is a mode of phenomenological presence, signaling that Outlaw Country is full of aesthetic tension and hermeneutical possibilities; and it is a form of disinhibited productivity, a type of action which cannot be reduced to the aims of the agent, but one in which the agent discovers their own sense of identity.
