SOURCE: Patheos
This is the coolest thing I’ve seen all day.
The backstory goes like this: I was talking with Ken Mansfield, author of The White Book and Stumbling on Open Ground. He mentioned Chris Hillman, one of the founding members of the Byrds, and said he was a Christian. I’ve been a fan of the Byrds since I was a kid and knew Roger McGuinn was a believer, but I didn’t know about Hillman. Ken told me to check out an interview Hillman did with CBN. Here’s the video. You’ll only need one guess as to why it’s the coolest thing I’ve seen all day.
The icon corner! I was surprised when I saw it. And the stacks of liturgical books. This guy’s Orthodox, I thought as I watched. Right then I nearly jumped off the video to find out more online, but I slowed down and decided to be patient and keep watching. To CBN’s credit, they highlighted Hillman’s Orthodoxy — even showing him reading from the Little Red Prayer Book with his wife. How cool is that?
If you dig the era and the music, find time and watch this next video too. It’s Hillman talking at the Library of Congress, telling his story. It’s long but full of great moments. About finding his voice, for one example, he says, “I’m still learning. You know what I do on Sundays? I sing in a choir. I sing in a Greek Orthodox choir, and I’m the only hillbilly tenor in the Orthodox Church.”
Speaking about the Byrds’ hit “Turn, Turn, Turn,” he says, it was “[p]robably the only time a song was at No. 1 on the charts right out of the Bible. I know Pete [Seeger] made his half of the publishing. I don’t know if King Solomon’s heirs ever got a dime.”
