We Need a Savior More Than a State

Years ago, a Roman Catholic friend lamented to me that he had to go to an evangelical church to hear "good old blood hymns." He found it inconceivable that a church structured around the real presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Mass would be so reluctant to sing about blood. He shared, though, that it was getting harder even at evangelical churches to hear bloody music. "Your churches get successful enough where they find it gauche to sing about being washed in blood, so they go with songs more spiritual and abstract," he said. "But when you find the poor and the hurting evangelicals, that's where you hear it: power, power, wonder-working power, in the blood of the Lamb."