The Music of Willie Johnson with Chris EW Green

Earlier this year, I committed to a writing project. For me, this was a challenge and one that took hard work. Like all endeavours that are worth something, this venture was at the same time enjoyable but also a strain; pleasant, but at the same time, it pressed on some scars or perhaps wounds. I thought my adventure of contemplation into the music of Willie Johnson was over. This was until I stumbled onto a lecture by Dr Chris EW Green.

Although I have become very familiar with Dr Green and his work in recent years, you may not have heard of him. As well as serving his church community as a Bishop, Chris is a Professor of Public Theology at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida and leads the Worship and the Arts interest group at the Society for Pentecostal Studies. Chris, an artist himself, often gives lectures on the intersection and interplay between the arts and theology. He does this from a background in the Pentecostal church, something we have in common. The lecture I came across recently involved Blind Willie Johnson and two of his most well-known songs, John the Revelator and In My Time of Dying. Given the project I had just completed, I thought to myself: what better way to cap off the series than to have a conversation about Johnson and his music with someone far wiser than I?

So, I reached out to Dr Green, and he graciously accepted my invitation to spend some time talking about the arts, Johnson, his music and all the places that takes us. The conversation gets into some terrifying personal memories from each of our childhoods, and as you would expect from speaking to theologian, we end up talking a lot about the Bible. I do not think it is in any way an overstatement for me to say that Chris is one of the wisest people I have ever come across when it comes to handling the Scriptures with careful attention and reverence.

I hope you enjoy the conversation and if you are interested in finding out more about Chris’s books, lectures, sermons, and artwork, you can check it out at https://www.cewgreen.com/.