The Music the PCA Founders Heard
The Billboard chart toppers of December 1973 evoke the days of the denomination's birth - by Brad Isbell
Late 1973, when the Presbyterian Church in America1 was formed, was a long time ago—the world was a different place, as the world is wont to be. Whether you were alive then or not, many songs playing on the radio or selling as 45 RPM singles at local five-and-dime stores then may yet be familiar. Reminding ourselves of what the Billboard hit songs for the first week of December 1973 may provide a little more perspective on the cultural moment of the PCA’s birth.
Since the churches that formed the PCA were almost exclusively in the Southeast, most presbyters drove to the Birmingham assembly at Briarwood Presbyterian Church. Car radios in those days had push-button presets for local stations. Driving longer distances meant spinning the dial, trying to find something distracting on the AM-FM radio.
(The best-selling car of 1973 was the slightly jaunty Chevrolet Monte Carlo, often in earth tones or glorious maroon. A few polyester-clad elders may driven such rakish two-door hardtops, but it’s easier to imagine them in something like a Ford LTD family sedan. In fact, if you listen to the recordings of the 1973 General Assembly you’ll hear Morton Smith announcing that just such a vehicle’s headlights had been left on in the Briarwood parking lot.)
So what songs might the PCA’s founding fathers have been enjoying (or tolerating) on the drive to Birmingham? The number one pop hit for the week of December 1st, 1973 was peak 70s anodyne pop schmaltz: “Top of the World” by the Carpenters.
Everything I want the world to be
Is now comin' true especially for me
And the reason is clear, it's because you are here
You're the nearest thing to heaven that I've seen
I'm on the top of the world lookin' down on creation
And the only explanation I can find
Is the love that I've found, ever since you've been around
Your love's put me at the top of the world
This inoffensive song had a bit of a country vibe so it’s easy to imagine its optimistic verses earworming some the PCA founders that week, but we are quite sure that most of them were made of more sober stuff and understood what it meant to “rejoice with trembling.”
Certainly, there was some sense at the PCA’s founding that the denomination needed to be a “crossover” denomination that would eventually break out of the Southeast with churches in rural settings, small towns, suburbs, and even big cities. There were lots of “crossover” pop hits in the 70s and one of these by Arkansas native Charlie Rich might well have appealed to the mostly-Southern men who met in Briarwood: “The Most Beautiful Girl.”
This song topped out at number 10 on the Billboard pop chart but was number one on the country charts. Southerners usually felt a certain pride when a country artist made it big and had national success. The PCA was looking for national success, too, as evidenced by their first chosen name: The National Presbyterian Church.
At number three on the pop charts that week was Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” from a massive, 20-million-copies-selling album of the same name.
The song’s lyrics speak of ambition and its discontents, of identity and heritage—issues with which the PCA has had to deal (more or less) in the last 50 years.
When are you gonna come down?
When are you going to land?
I should have stayed on the farm
I should have listened to my old man
So goodbye yellow brick road
Where the dogs of society howl
You can't plant me in your penthouse
I'm going back to my plough
At number seven was another song about leaving and returning: “Midnight Train To Georgia” by Gladys Knight And The Pips (woo woo!). “Said he's going back to a simpler place and time”—no doubt some PCA founders believed that in leaving the mainline PCUS they were returning to a true presbyterian church. As moderator Jack Williams exhorted in 1973:
We have committed ourselves to the rebirth and continuation of a Presbyterian Church loyal to Scripture, the Reformed Faith and committed to the spiritual mission of the Church as Christ commanded in the Great Commission.
There was a sense of loss and of hope at the first general assembly.
Let’s close with a country classic (then number 11 on the charts) since it’s almost certain this sort of song would have appealed to those separating Southern Presbyterians, many of whom came from humble beginnings: “If We Make It Through December” by Merle Haggard.
The PCA was never an exclusively blue-collar denomination, but there were tough times for some of the churches and churchmen that formed the PCA—some lost buildings, friends, respectability. The cost was often high, but 50 years and a few months later most in the PCA would say that the work and the sacrifices were worthwhile.
The popular songs of 1973 reflected both hope and trepidation. And the headlines of that year are stunningly similar to those of today: political scandal (Watergate), a Mideast war (Yom Kippur), the oil crisis and economic uncertainty, authoritarianism on the right and the left, and terrorism. There really is nothing new under the sun.
The first paragraph of the new denomination’s Book of Church Order, then as now, reminds us of the only hope of the church, her king:
Jesus Christ, upon whose shoulders the government rests, whose name is called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; of the increase of whose government and peace there shall be no end; who sits upon the throne of David, and upon His kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and justice from henceforth, even forever (Isaiah 9:6-7); having all power given unto Him in heaven and in earth by the Father, who raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand, far above all principality and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come, and has put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the Head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all (Ephesians 1:20-23); He, being ascended up far above all heavens, that He might fill all things, received gifts for His Church, and gave all offices necessary for the edification of His Church and the perfecting of His saints (Ephesians 4:10-13).