Songs for the Faint of Heart

MUSIC NOTES

Songs for the Faint of Heart

talk to help us do what we do really well but rather a lament for a calling immersed in utter failure, a sliver of hope that “all unity may one day be restored.” Save for a couple of black graduate students and our Latino guests on this special occasion, Emmaus Way at 5 p.m. on Sunday is every bit as segregated as every other church B y J esse J ames D e C onto is at 11 a.m.

Our marriages fail just like everyone We sit in a renovated storefront in down- else’s.The people we love suffer and die; town Durham, N.C., encircling Wade we lose our jobs and have trouble findBaynham as he strums the chords of ing new ones, just like everyone else.

Christian communitarianism’s favorite But here at Emmaus Way, thanks in no anthem: “They Will Know We Are small part to Baynham, his guitar, and Christians.” The Duke lacrosse scandal his warm baritone voice, we don’t preof 2006 has shed light on the deep tend any different. We not only admit racial tension in this segregated city but that life is a whole lot tougher than the obscured a more recent trend: Durham’s Sunday school songs and praise choHispanic population has grown from ruses ever taught us to believe, we also almost none to some 25,000 in less than sing about it.

Baynham finds the material for cortwo decades, and these new brownskinned neighbors are seen alternatively porate worship not in hymnals or youth as victims (of black crime or white exploi- group songbooks, but in his vast music tation) and criminals (for crossing the collection, from singer-songwriters to border from Mexico and “stealing our full-on rock bands. Singing along to jobs”).Yet here they are, a dozen mem- Rich Mullins or U2 will not surprise bers of Reino Hoy—“Kingdom Today” anyone familiar with attempts to (post) —a fledgling Latino congregation, sitting modernize Christian worship. But in our midst.We, the overeducated, mostly Baynham digs deeper, finding words of white members of the creative class— wisdom in the songs of Emmylou Harris, doctors, teachers, writers, musicians, tech- Julie Miller, Jewish songwriter Peter nophiles, graduate students, theologians Himmelman, Over the Rhine, even —make up this emerging church called secular hit-makers like Bruce Hornsby.

Baynham says he’s not looking for Emmaus Way. As we sing Carol Arends’ words,“We “doctrinal propaganda,” or even a hipwill work with each other, we will work per worship experience, but simply side by side, and we’ll guard each one’s excellent art.

“It will not allow you to walk away dignity and save each one’s pride,” we might be tempted to pat ourselves on the from it.You have to interact with it,” he back. Here we are, embodying these says. “[The songs] tell real stories about words, worshipping together across eth- brokenness and loss and heartache.”

We all have these stories, but church nic lines, as if to say, “Screw the most segregated hour of the week! We meet is all too rarely a place to share them. at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, thank you Baynham and his rotating team of guest very much.” But those of us who attend musicians are shifting the paradigm, Emmaus Way know that the irony is because they have their own stories and not lost on Baynham. He has told us what the music they share has helped them he thinks of Arends’ song: It’s not a pep to heal. Baynham made seven studio

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records and toured for 20 years with his wife before their marriage ended in divorce, destroying both his personal and professional life. Fellow musician Mark Williams’ sophomore album, Journals of a Recovering Skeptic, earned accolades from CCM magazine, and 7ball magazine named him one of the top 25 independent artists in the nation in 1997. But his solo career stalled and his marriage fell apart after tens of thousands of miles on the road together.

Drummer Dale Baker lived his rockstar dream with Sixpence None the Richer, touring Europe and playing on Letterman, Leno, and Saturday Night Live before leaving the band over money and hurt feelings. All of them have felt the sting of betrayal.

So when Baker’s drums and Baynham’s guitar carry lyrics like Emmylou’s, we believe them, and we can sing with them: “Our path is worn, our feet are poorly shod, we lift up our prayer against the odds, and fear silence is the voice of God, and we cry Alleluia.” I personally suffered through a failing marriage for years and didn’t know who could hear my pain or possibly understand it; the musicians at Emmaus Way made it easy to unload and probably saved my life.

There is hope in the pain, and there are Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants in our white-bread church. The secondlanguage Spanish-speakers among us are translating our testimonies and Scripture dialogue so our guests can understand, and the rest of us are waiting patiently, just to get a taste of the unity we seek.

Maybe the world doesn’t know we are Christians by our love just yet, but we cry “Alleluia” anyhow.

Jesse James DeConto is a staff writer at the News & Observer in Chapel Hill, N.C. He writes and performs with the folk-rock band Oscar Begat and lives in Carrboro, N.C., with his two daughters. He has been writing for PRISM since 2000.