Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation - Rodney Clapp

Clapp sees Johnny Cash as an iconic American poet who embodies all the contradictions of America: lonesomeness and community, holiness and hedonism, tradition and progress, guilt and innocence, and violence and peace.

These contradictions have shaped America. Oftentimes, the consequence of embracing the contradictions leads to major personal and social problems. For example, in regard to lonesomeness and community: "As never before in our history, we prize individualistic liberty above all other goods, but we refuse to recognize that favoring this good so extremely may inhibit or even eliminate the realization of other goods. We want to be self-sufficient, yet loved and loving. We each want to do everything on our own terms, and yet simultaneously belong to a community. We desire our self-interested freedom from others above all things, and at the same time we want never to be lonely" (20).

Country music allows people to "freely and openly confess their pain and need": "Cash's songs, like those of other country singers, are replete with complaints, wheedling, abjection, and weeping, entire litanies of misery and weakness induced by the vagaries of love, work, natural and humanmade disasters, God's silence, and so forth" (24). Johnny Cash once told Bob Dylan that Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" was the saddest song he had ever heard. The steel guitar - a staple instrument in country music - whines, moans, laughs, and cries.

Many sad country songs are about lost love. It is the social disadvantage of the average person that places the weight on love and sex: "When there is little or no hope for education or artistic pursuit, when holding political office is inconceivable, when work is soul-numbing drudgery with little dream of advancement, more weight rests on love and sex for the attainment of a life worthwhile and satisfying" (28).

Because of his life-long career, the aged Cash was able, through his cover of Trent Reznor's "Hurt," to admit and regret the damage he had done throughout his life (42).

Clapp shares similar insights on other American contradictions, while calling us to a more responsible and sane democracy. We certainly have our contradictions, but we can unite the extremes, like Cash did.