In a society many consider now to be post-Christian, with traditional rituals and expressions of belief and faith struggling to maintain their appeal, we desperately need different signs and symbols to help us realise afresh the message of the Christian Gospel and the importance of faith. Ivor Moody argues that the songs studied in this book can provide a way to do just that. They are familiar, much-loved icons of music played and admired by millions and famous throughout the world; but also, they might contain a message to the world of faith and spirituality to look again at how the sacred can be found within the secular. They are stories of a priest and a parishioner feeling crippled by their loneliness; a musician who has ended up in a dead-end bar with others who need to blot out life for a little while; a community living with division and repression, a dying soldier, a singer experiencing a kind of epiphany and people living with mental illness. Each song connects us to something in our own story. Songs which have been with us for years and which thread through our lives but which could provide those new signs and symbols which will be able to inform and enrich our relationship with God.
