Atlanta Church Opens Worship Service with Prince's 'Purple Rain'

the late Mr. Nelson’s membership in the Jehovah’s Witnesses was well known.

Hoping to shed more light than heat..

Even apart from double entendres I’m not “getting”, one would figure that anyone who, say, googled the lyrics might figure out that there is something really, really creepy about this song. It’s a somewhat autobiographical (IMO) song from Prince as he deals with the fallout of a relationship she took a lot more seriously than he did, and it speaks strongly to our hookup culture—if not perhaps in the way he intended.

Well, at least if you read the lyrics and figure out what he’s singing about.

And I can’t blame the JWs or Adventists (he grew up Adventist, so to speak) for this one. There are a bunch of pieces of evidence that he did not seem to have a fixed moral center, but rather—drugs, fornication, public sexuality, use of Hindu and Buddhist imagery and names for his bands, etc..—was making it up as he went along. For example, his most recent band, 3rdEyeGirl, is named after a Hindu concept.

And of course, that doesn’t let Buckhead—a spinoff from Andy Stanley’s NorthPoint—off the hook, either. One would have to figure that the band was singing the lyrics without thinking about what Prince was talking about. Yikes!

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

“One would have to figure that the band was singing the lyrics without thinking about what Prince was talking about.”

They were not unaware. Sadly.