By JJT (written for ThinkChristian.net)

A surprisingly spiritual figure, Prince married the unseen with the seen, the ecstasy of the spirit with the ecstasy of the flesh.

Although his sexy and hypnotic blend of pop, rock, soul and R&B caused great consternation among Christians and other moralists, Prince Rogers Nelson was, above all, a surprisingly spiritual figure. With his death yesterday at the age of 57, we lost a unique voice in an environment that is otherwise soaked in humanism, hedonism and glamour.

This is the man who recited the entire Lord’s Prayer right in the midst of his less-than-chaste hit single “Controversy,” all the way back in 1981. He constantly referenced God, talked to his audiences about taking them to church, quoted Scripture and prayed on and offstage. On his 1987 album Sign O’ the Times he included a gospel song called “The Cross,” which left nothing to the imagination. “Don’t die without knowing the cross,” he chanted. The style and energy of gospel music was intrinsic to his sound, of course, but there was more to it than that. For Prince, everything was spiritual, even things that made Christians like me very uncomfortable.

It seems that Prince simply didn’t recognize boundaries. Whether it was the way he melded the grit and groove of traditionally African-American musical styles with the bravado of white rock, or the way he invoked Biblical images and Christian references while celebrating unbridled and frequently ambiguous sexuality, he seemed to not care if others thought such things belonged together. While it’s clear that, at least in his first few decades of creative output, Prince was no advocate of anything resembling a traditional theological understanding of self-discipline, holiness or chastity, there’s no way to see his music as inherently secular. The Seventh-day Adventist faith of his youth permeated and informed his work, even if it didn’t form it entirely. He seemed to keep the parts he felt he needed, while setting the rest aside.

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