I discovered Unshackled! a few months ago and since then I’ve probably listened to a few too many episodes. Unshackled! is a Christian radio programme produced in the US but “for broadcast around the Earth” and each episode is a dramatisation of the true story of someone’s journey to becoming a born-again Christian. The stories tend to be a bit like the kind of thing you find in trashy women’s magazines (just with an extra dollop of evangelical Christianity) so they have exciting tags on their website such as “pornography,” “addiction,” and “the Occult.”
What’s so special about Unshackled! is that it’s been running since 1950 and in that time there have been little, if any, changes to the style of the programme. This means that the story of a drug-addicted prostitute will be interspersed with bursts of organ music as well as a man with a real “Golden Age of Radio” voice telling you all about the other work of the mission helping/converting the homeless.
The latest programme (programme #3157), on the other hand, is not about Satanism or prostitution but it is in fact all about marimbas. Lester plays the marimba but his music is taking him away from God (I’d never really thought that marimba playing could distract you from faith but clearly I was sadly mistaken.) However after a stint in hospital (replete with hymn-singing nurses) Lester is born again and becomes an itinerant marimba playing evangelist, a profession I never knew existed before. There’s also an odd episode were Lester gives his girlfriend lots of apples for no apparent reason and everyone has a good laugh and quotes the Bible.
Unshackled! is melodramatic and ridiculous but utterly addictive and if I’m ever in Chicago I will definitely be dropping into Pacific Garden Mission to watch one of their live recordings.
No comments:
Post a Comment