Dave at Aropax Nation points out that perhaps Mrs. Driscoll isn’t the only one who oughta hit the treadmill and refers to this passage in my book:

Christian culture’s strong preference that young people marry rather than date has not just resulted in a divorce rate higher than the national average, it’s produced a bumper crop of chunky singers. It’s a sad fact that once men are freed from the fear that each woman they meet may be their last chance at happiness, they tend to scarf that third hot dog without reflection. The net effect of this is a business filled with stocky musicians whose ring fingers flash in the stage lights as they play.

I believe this, as much as anything else, is holding back Christian rock from greater commercial acceptance. Rock stars aren’t supposed to look like normal people. That’s why we pay them so much money. We want rock stars to be everything we’re not—impossibly skinny, stupid rich, unshowered, smelly and miserable. If we wanted to see happy, pudgy dudes with Van Dyke beards and spiky haircuts onstage, we’d pay more attention to the roadies.

Mark Driscoll takes an unusual rhetorical tack with the argument in this blog post:

Most pastors I know do not have satisfying, free, sexual conversations and liberties with their wives. At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.

Emphasis mine. Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan.

UPDATE Apparently this post has been attracting a lot of attention. Dan Savage asks, in essence: If Haggard was straight and his wife hadn’t been lighting his candle lately, wouldn’t he have had an affair with a woman?

Logical. Yes. But that would suggest that homosexuality wasn’t a choice, a point I suspect Driscoll (as well as much of the church) isn’t willing to concede.

I honestly can’t say. My day job has kept me busier than I could have ever imagined, but book stuff has been going on. I’ll try to catch up in the next couple of days, but for now here’s a piece about my book that ran in yesterday’s Washington Times.

An interview with yours truly by Matt Fink. Apparently a second part will run on Monday.

I did two interviews this week with New Zealand Christian radio stations; Frank Ritchie, the host of one of the shows, has put the audio of our interview up on his blog. All right, mate!

I’m going to be on Interfaith Voices, a public radio show that strives to engage all sorts of viewpoints. The show is on public radio stations around the country; if it’s not near you, it’s available as a podcast.

An extremely fair review of my book from Josh Riley over at blog.worship.com. He rightly takes me to task for not talking to more fans but is mostly positive. Here’s an interesting bit:

You probably won’t find this volume in your local Christian bookstore, and our online sales affiliate does not carry it; nonetheless, the perspectives presented in this book are not without merit, and it is helpful to see the industry through the eyes of one who is outside the faith, whose view of Jesus is largely influenced by those involved one way or another in the modern (or post-modern?) CCM industry.

I haven’t talked about this on the site yet, but while I’m not surprised that my book isn’t carried by most Christian retailers (there is profanity in it, all quoted for what it’s worth), I continue to be baffled that the majority of Christian-media attention to this book has come from blogs and smaller zines. I can’t help but wonder why Christianity Today is the only major Christian publication to do anything on a mass-market book about Christian music. I’d be happy to entertain theories in the comments section.

My editor at Da Capo says he thinks I’ve written the only book that’s gotten good reviews from both Christianity Today and Mother Jones. I don’t know about that, but after the Mother Jones review ran, I did an interview with Mother Jones radio. And you can listen to it here.

Next Friday, July 28, I’ll be returning home to Richmond to read at Chop Suey Books, my favorite bookstore in River City. The reading’s at 7 p.m. and unless Ward, the store’s owner, has undergone some sort of deep philosophical shift, it’ll be free.

So come on down. I don’t know where we’re gonna stay, since our house’s new owners are closing on it that day, but I’ll probably be up for an adult beverage or six afterwards.

For the first time in my life, my dad can’t ask me why I only got an A-.