American Idol

Christians across the nation were pleasantly surprised on Wednesday when the hit TV reality series, American Idol, concluded their show with a rendition of the the praise song, "Shout to the Lord."

In this day and age, that a secular show with such wide appeal would feature a Christian anthem in it's closing act is no short of miraculous. On top of the fact that American Idol regularly draws 30 million + viewers on a weekly basis, they selected Shout to the Lord to be sung on their mid-season gala show, "Idol Gives Back", their celebrity-studded charity telethon which earned over $60 million in just a few nights. The "Idol Gives Back" episode likely drew millions more viewers than their normal numbers.

One peculiarity that many observers noticed was that Idol replaced the name "Jesus" in the opening verse of the song with "shepherd." To their credit, when they encored the performance on Thursday night's show (that's right! they sang it TWICE in one week! Amazing!), they rightly sang the verse by addressing the praise song to "my Jesus, my savior."

Here is Thursday night's performance with "Jesus":


I may be a little cynical most days, so I doubt myself when I make this speculation, but I wonder if there is a certain element in today's culture that is tired of the removal of God from all thing public and are simply ready for revival.

Pray that it is so!

Here is Wednesday' (inferior) performance with the word "shepherd":