I am quite excited to find Cannons’ Hurricane (2022) on YouTube. It opens up an honest conversation on Pentecostal Sociology and Theology in the year 2023 among those interested in the related history of popular culture studies.
We are in a cosmic shift for Americanised and populist Christianity. The only way forward for the Americanised Evangelical Right in its 30 years of extremism is for a civil war in the United States, with the condemnation of the rest of the world. There is plenty of sociological evidence in the United States, though, that the Evangelical Right has lost the history-culture war. Not only is Cannons a popular culture expression in the rejection of the Evangelical Right, which includes the Neo-Pentecostal-Megachurch phenomena, the institutions are quickly abandoning the Evangelical Right with the failure of Trumpism – if they had not done before, or if they actually started with the many Evangelical Left critiques in the last three decades. How many fools forget their history! Remember Jim and Tammy Bakker. The 1980s had been uncovered in my 1995 doctorate. See the link to the short article at the end of this blog article.
Little known, though, there were traditional Pentecostal congregations and theologians who were “weeping before the Lord” and horrified by “the compact with the devil.” Their story in the experience of betrayal to the integrity of faith is as important as that of other sociologists and historians.
The promises of the Neo-Pentecostal-Megachurch phenomena were false:
I can bring a change
I can bring the thunder and the rain
Everything around me
Everything will rearrange
Lest we speak out, the Evangelical Right will continue its the history-culture war in the pattern of the American South’s “Lost Cause” narrative:
I’m coming back like a hurricane
I’m gonna take you higher
On a cloud of silver haze
I wanna take you higher
Away, away, away
The narrative is about power, and much less about a genuine spirituality:
We can blow them over
We can take them out if you stay
This is just a warning
Nothing’s standing in my way
I told you before
The historical and sociological questions, and the perennial theology questions, have to be asked, where are you taking me?
Take you somewhere far away
Take you somewhere far away
Away, away, away
I’m coming back like a hurricane
I’m gonna take you higher
On a cloud of silver haze
I wanna take you higher
Away, away, away
Cannons’ Hurricane (2022) on YouTube
Source: LyricFind
Songwriters: Michelle Lewis / Paul Daniel Davis / Ryan Clapham
Hurricane lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
The Link is the supporting article, “I forewarned the Direction of the Megachurch 25 years ago…in Queensland” May 23, 2022:
Neville Buch