Southern Gospel

Anne Wilson's “Southern Gospel” is a country portrait of a small-town church community. It lists the details of home: double wides and single mamas, back-pew gossip and beauty-shop drama, groceries from the Dollar Tree, a truck-stop ICEE, and saints and sinners swimming in above-ground pools.

The verses keep going with the habits of the people she knows: inside voices and outside dogs, bless your heart, mind your biscuits, pass the gravy, and potlucks in the barn. The chorus claims that red dirt, red words and redneck role models were all baptized by the southern gospel. The second verse opens the church door and points at the whole room, from the Sunday-school teacher to the parking-lot smoker, from the six-weeks pregnant to the six-weeks sober, brothers and sisters breaking bread at a fold-out table. The bridge asks for an amen, a “hey, howdy,” a hallelujah and a little rowdiness. The song celebrates the mixed, imperfect family that a church can be, and it ties the culture of the South to the gospel that shaped it. It is an easy pick for a homecoming service, a church picnic or a playlist for anyone who misses the small congregation they grew up in.

All having sinned and fallen short is Romans 3:23. Believers sharing their lives is Acts 2:44-46, and meeting together is Hebrews 10:24-25.