The Rebel Religion of Outlaw Country Singers

In his new book, Too Sick to Pray: A Theology of Outlaw Country (Fortress Press), theologian C. M. Howell explores how these musicians found, in their status as outsiders, a creative space for engaging with religious questions that haunt the American landscape. The theology they articulate is not formal or ortho­dox but can speak to other rebels and dreamers who linger in liminal spaces, neither in the church nor wholly outside of it—and to those who push back against the societal conventions determining who is in and who is out.