It’s likely that relatively few readers of the Catholic Herald have ever heard of the late American musician, Rich Mullins, who died in a late-night car accident 25 years ago this past 19th September. Even in the United States his music is probably better known through performances by other singers, most notably crossover pop artist, Amy Grant. Grant’s 1982 cover of Mullins’s song “Sing Your Praise to the Lord” was his breakthrough in “Contemporary Christian Music” (CCM) by which he emerged from the obscure Christian coffee house scene to relative fame and financial security. Later, Grant recorded Mullins’s “Doubly Good to You”, which appeared on her 1984 album Straight Ahead, rereleased in 2007 by the secular label A&M. But allow me to introduce my late friend to a new audience, which will appreciate the decidedly Catholic turn that his life and music took at the end of his life.
Mullins developed his own recording career from the success of Grant’s covers, achieving critical and commercial success in the modest world of CCM, dominated by Protestant and evangelical Christian acts. He was at the height of this success when the car he was riding in collided with a long-haul truck, and he was killed on 19th September 1997, at the age of 41. He was also on the road to probable full reception into the Catholic Church when his life was so dramatically cut short.
I had ridden in that very vehicle, because Rich was a good friend of my wife and myself. Beginning when I was in high school and he was an off-and-on student at Cincinnati Bible College, our friendship continued when we both began to move to various places around the country. Rich would often show up unannounced at our house, where he would spend a few hours (or a few days), regaling us with stories of his developing career, and always playing and singing for us. A virtuoso musician, especially at the piano, Rich was known for featuring hammer dulcimer in many of his songs, but he could play any instrument one put in his hands.
While Rich was as an evangelical of varying ecclesial communions, he seemed to be on a fairly public journey toward Rome at the end of his life. The last time I saw him, just a few months before his death, we sat in a San Antonio, Texas bar, where he talked candidly about his exploration of sacramental and liturgical Christianity, rooted as his music already was in the Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth, the name of one of his albums. He had read Chesterton, and was immersed in the stories of Flannery O’Connor. Indeed, he told me that he had sketched an outline of a short story or novel, inspired by O’Connor’s fiction. And he had completed the Rite of Initiation for Adults at a parish near his home in New Mexico. It was there that Rich lived among and served the Navajo nation, giving his time and treasure to the poorest of the poor.
This movement toward Catholicism is illustrated in Rich’s concept album, A Liturgy, A Legacy, & A Ragamuffin Band, which loosely followed a liturgical formula unfamiliar to most evangelical Protestant listeners. The album included the song, “Creed”, a musical setting of a loose version of the Apostle’s Creed, in which he sang, “I believe in the Holy Spirit/One Holy Church/The Communion of Saints”. And he confessed to the sacramental nature of his growing faith: “And I believe what I believe is what makes me what I am”, he sang. “I did not make it, no it is making me/It is the very truth of God and not the invention of any man”. The apologetic inflection of these lyrics is noteworthy, as they are not typical of evangelical Protestant theologies. Indeed, the Communion of Saints is expressly rejected by most such traditions. And in his song “Peace”, from the same album, he also struck some strongly Catholic chords: “In His Blood and in His Body/In this Bread and in this Wine/Peace to you/Peace of Christ to you”.
I am not making the claim that Rich would have entered into full communion with the Catholic Church, even though there were clear signs that it was his intention. Rich was a spiritual vagabond, living and serving his fellow vagrants on the fringes of society and ecclesial identification. So, I don’t know where he would have wound up on this earth. But I am confident that I know of no one who better fit Jesus’ commendation, “When you saw me hungry, you fed me. When you found me thirsty, you gave me drink. When I had no place to stay, you invited me in, and when I was poorly clothed, you covered me.” I hope that Rich’s legacy is remembered (or introduced) for that rather than his erstwhile ecclesiastical journey. Rest in Peace, Richard Wayne Mullins, 25 years on.
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