The Aberdeen Oxfam book shop is a place of surprises. I always go in by to see what's new, and they're good at making sure there's a regular turnover. One of the quiet enjoyments of these visits is the unforeseen and therefore unexpected. Like today.
In the window was a book by my friend Ken Jeffrey. I read it when it came out a while ago, but it disappeared, I think borrowed and never found its way back. It's an important study of the revival phenomenon in Scotland, focusing on the mid 19th Century revivals along the Moray Firth. This is contextual history, and therefore an important stepping stone to a contextual theology of revival experience. The book remains the definitive study of the North East revivals, their sociological context, historical precedents and developments, and is based on deep digging in archives, newspapers, church minute books and wide reading.
Then I came across in the American Milestones edition, the live recording of Johnny Cash at San Quentin. This was broadcast by the BBC in 1969 and I still remember the hair rising on the back of my neck at the raw emotion, defiant lyrics and see through humanity of Johnny Cash. So next time I'm in the car by myself, and heading to Montrose, this will be on, and the volume will not be low!
So an academic analaysis of 19th Century religious revivals amongst farming and fisherfolk in a wee corner of a wee country, and a CD of one of the truly iconic evenings of country music breaking through all kinds of barriers to entertain and try to instil hope in one of the bleakest prisons in the United States. There's something deeply satisfying and reassuringly strange in that combination of my enthusiasms.
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