Praising the Non Denominational Lord

GOSPEL SINGING went well today, maybe the best ever for me. My bass-baritone voice is improving, I know the songs better, feel more at ease. We sang my personal favorite, "How Great Thou Art", as we do every Monday, upon my request/insistence. Not only is it my favorite gospel song, but also, among my faovite songs period, secular or sacred. What I like most about the song is its lack of any references to anyone's sins being washed away by the blood of Christ. No blood sacrifices for me, thank you... All over the world in ancient times primitive barbaric peoples convinced themselves that the great anthropmorphic sky God is a meat eater, and would be satiated and placated by a blood sacrifice, human or animal, and it would rain, and the crops would gorw, and starvation would be averted. Fertilitiy cults, they call them. Primitive, barbaric. One of my song writer friends said it best, in a song: "You can keep the cross, just give us Jesus". The Christian religion is one of them - a fertility cult gone viral. Just ask Bart Ehrman, the world's leading scholar on the early history of the Christian religion. Or, as Goethe said, paraphrased: "The Christian religion began as a political revolution against Roman oppression, which failed, and turned moral, turned inward, turned toward heaven and away from eartlhy oppressio and temporal reality.Then too, my favorite sacred-secular song is "Holly Holy", by Neil Diaimond, a Jewish kid from Brooklyn who made it good in music. Maybe my grandmother (1892-1971) influenced me in my love for "How Great Thou Art". But she also loved "The Old Rugged Cross", which is not among my favorites. My intent is to print our about twenty copies of the sheet music to "Holly Holy", and recommend it to the group... Stay tuned. If it aint in the Hymnal, it might not fly. Their loss. What I like about How Gerat Thou Art, other than the melody and lyrics, is the universiality of it. Read the lyrics. The song could be applied to any religion in the world, including the Christian one. Oh, there is a reference to Christ, and to his being the "savior", but its really aimed at God, and is essentially an ode to my religion, or rather to my religiosity, Pantheism. (birds, singing sweetly in the trees, mountains grandeur, rolling thunder..nature, baby..) Religious dogma I eschew. I would just as soon sing in an Islamic gospel group, if there were such things, or a Hindu, or Buddhist, or any of the thousands of other religious traditions. "How Great Thou Art" would be relevant to any of them. For me, singing is the thing, a fine community activity, good for the heart and lungs. I'd like to form a secualr singing group at the Senior Center; we could go through the great American song book. Simon & Garkunkel, Beatles, Stones, you name it, we could sing it. Just how well that would go over here in mainstream Bible belt America I cannot say, but I sense that a few folks would be interested. Meanwhile, I happily shall continue to praise my pantheistic God, in Christian gospel song.