Val Stoecklein’s “David to Bathsheba”

“Shame on my soul for loving you”: A doomed romance subverts a Christian concept album

Album art (photograph by the author of this article), Oak Records

Plethora of Pop challenge: Tell us about your favorite concept albums and why you love them.” My response: I don’t love this particular album but I love how one of its works calls into question its fundamentally flawed concept of sin and redemption.

Truth of Truths

Concept albums are often criticized for elevating pretentiousness over musicality. To my ear, several concept albums from the 1960’s based on Christian beliefs (Jesus Christ Superstar, Godspell, both of which spawned a couple of commercial hits — “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”; “Day by Day”) are better characterized as religiosity than spirituality, but surely one of the most godawful examples of commercial piety is Truth of Truths, which re-enacts the essential stories of the Bible into a double album of songs by various writers, featuring the “character” of God played by Jim Backus (“Mr. Magoo,” “Gilligan’s Island”). Some Christian fundamentalists love this album, but none of the champions of Truth of Truths seem to notice that one of the album’s contributors has penned a doubter’s view of their sacred text.

From a fundamentalist Christian’s viewpoint, the Bible presents a progressive /…