Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
Playlists and pluralism

Playlists and pluralism

Last updated on: October 25, 2026 at 4:02 pm by Fred Clark

0 Comments

Playlists and pluralism 2026-10-25T16:02:15-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I have a lot of rules for our unload crew. Like, for example, “Always remember the truck is trying to kill you.” And “Never trust a box of Rain-X.”*

Another one of those rules is that everybody who wants to gets a turn as DJ.

Some folks on the crew have prepared carefully curated playlists. Others just hit shuffle on their phone and let it rip. Sometimes it’s Spotify or Pandora. Or you can just pick a radio station. Whatever. But the rule is that everybody gets a turn and if nobody wants to that night then we just go with the default Pandora channel on my phone.**

This is sometimes a lot of fun. One member of the crew used to like sneaking “The Day the Music Died” into her playlists just to yank my chain.*** That led to one of the older-than-me guys on the crew being appalled to realize that none of the younger-than-my-kids guys on the crew knew who Buddy Holly was. And so the next night one of those “kids” put on a Buddy Holly streaming channel and we unloaded the truck to “Peggy Sue” and “That’ll Be the Day” and Fats Domino and Little Richard, etc. Educational and fun.

And but so anyway, the other night nobody wanted to DJ and my phone was at, like, 15%, so I couldn’t just put on the Bad Bunny, etc., default playlist. So one kid just put on the radio. And since he’s a good guy and he was throwing the truck**** that night, everybody agreed to let him pick the station.

That station turned out to be Word.FM. This is a CCM/Worship Music “Christian” station with the tagline “Where life change happens.”

Having that station on for an hour and a half at work raised some interesting First Amendment and HR questions. Not from the music itself, so much, as from all of the interstitial stuff — it’s an automated station without a human DJ — and from the ads.

So I’m hearing all of this while we’re unloading the truck and pondering that in terms of pre-Corrupt Roberts Court First Amendment law. I’m a supervisor in a workplace and our official workplace boombox is playing what is clearly pervasively sectarian proselytizing.***** That seems problematic.

But on the other hand, the everybody-gets-a-turn rule is the sort of generally upheld neutral acceptance-of-pluralism guideline that allows for everything from after-school Bible studies renting publicly available space in public schools to town council invocations from local Satanists. If everybody gets a turn to play whatever they want, this kid has the right to his turn too.

I think that rule makes it clear that permission to DJ is not establishment or endorsement on behalf of the MOD present (me) or of the company as a whole. But is that neutrality and non-endorsement undermined by the fact that I, personally, am a Christian and thus might be perceived as implicitly endorsing the Christian messaging of this Christian radio station?****** I started imagining some scenario in which I could defend myself against such suspicions by presenting HR with emphatic statements from prominent evangelicals that I am most certainly Not One Of Them.

That raises further questions about whether I’m perhaps being overly hostile to this evangelical radio station due to my banishment from that subculture. Or perhaps I am being overly solicitous towards it in an unbalanced effort to avoid the hostility or the perception of hostility to which I might therefore be predisposed.

I’m still not quite settled on the workplace/HR/First Amendment aspects of all of this, but I am convinced that CCM/Worship Music ca. 2026 is not a great vibe for unloading a truck.

This music may be, as Word.FM says, “positive and uplifting,” but it’s positively not what you want to hear while lifting. Songs intended to get you to close your eyes and sway gently are not quite the heart-thumping rhythm best suited to that task.

* If you’re going to ship your product with six one-gallon jugs in a cardboard box, then you need to invest in cardboard boxes designed to support the combined weight of six one-gallon jugs. Rain-X has not done this.

They sell a fine windshield washer fluid. They ship it in a lousy box.

** Everybody on the crew gets to pick one artist to create this channel. The artists chosen by the crew for the latest iteration of this Pandora station were Bad Bunny, Bad Bunny, The Weeknd, Bad Bunny, Fleetwood Mac, and Stevie Ray Vaughn.

And then I add Michael Jackson, of course, because that’s just science.

Years ago, I tracked the truck size and the unload times every night in a little notebook. Then I also started keeping track of what music we had going each night. Two years of data confirmed that trucks get unloaded faster and more efficiently when you’re playing some MJ. Yes, Michael’s legacy is troubled and troubling. But you can’t argue with science.

Prince is also very good for unload times. And anything disco — 120 beats-per-minute is a good way to beat 4-cartons-per-minute.

I stopped keeping that notebook because the company now requires me to use an app to track unload times. (The notebook worked. The app does not.) My non-scientific sense is that Bad Bunny is at least as good as disco as far as unload efficiency goes.

*** It’s way too slow and maudlin for unloading trucks, for one thing. And it’s way too long. And also you can’t have an allegory in which “the king” is sometimes Elvis and sometimes JFK. And also how the heck can you claim to be offering a panorama of American pop music in the ’60s without ever mentioning The Beach Boys? Grr.

**** This means he’s the one who goes inside the trailer and puts everything on the conveyer belt. It’s a physically taxing and sometimes dangerous job (again: the truck is trying to kill you). And also whoever’s doing it is stuck in there with me. So it’s a thankless task, basically.

***** The explicit proselytizing is odd, given that the audience for this station is likely overwhelmingly Christian. It reminds me of the altar calls we regularly had at church growing up even when the pastor and everybody in the congregation knew that everyone present that day was a long-term member of the church who’d gotten saved and baptized a long time ago.

This hard-sell evangelism also distinguishes Word.FM from the other pervasively sectarian radio sometimes broadcast from that same boombox in receiving. That happens whenever Tony comes in for Saturday overnights because he always puts on WDAS (“Philly’s Best R&B”) back there and at some point the Sweat Lodge segues into Donnie McClurkin’s early Sunday morning Gospel show. Years of this have conditioned me to think “Ah, Gospel music. Almost time to go home. Amen, amen.”

****** I’m pretty sure I will not and should not get in any trouble for letting a member of the crew put on his choice of a “Christian music” station, or for not singling out his choice of station as uniquely forbidden. If anyone wanted to nail me on religion-in-the-workplace grounds they could, instead, just point out that for years I’ve been reciting from the Sermon on the Mount almost every night at our freight team meetings — “Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow can worry about itself” — without anyone noticing that yet.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

October 23, 2026

LBCF: Body and Soul

Recent Comments

0 | Leave a Comment

"Money. The first Halloween made a boatload of it, and it was a/the major player ..."

Vucodlak

LBCF: Body and Soul

"He doesn't believe women are actually intelligent, AFAICT."

P J Evans

LBCF: Body and Soul

"One possible interpretion? The men who own businesses despite not having college educations can produce ..."

Carstonio

LBCF: Body and Soul

"As I understand it, the Halloween franchise was originally planned to be an anthology; with ..."

reynard61

LBCF: Body and Soul

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who's sight was restored by Ananias in Damascus?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Paul of Tarsus King Saul Saul of Tarsus Pontius Pilate