Wired Word Lesson of the Week
Topic for Sunday, November 30, 2025:
New Voices Emerge in Arts and Culture: This week we look at the emergence of several new voices in the arts to consider what our faith teaches us about the role of music, art, drama and skillful word use in shaping our worldview and response to current events.
In the News
Individuals are encouraged to read the news below related to this topic before the November 30th bible study to be prepared for an engaging conversation:
Singer-songwriter Jesse Welles, 32, is taking the internet and the music world by storm with little more than an acoustic guitar, a mouth organ and a raspy voice a bit reminiscent of Janis Joplin and Bob Dylan. Up for four Grammys this year in the folk and Americana categories, Arkansan Welles is just one of a variety of musicians who are stirring the soul of the disaffected with protest songs expressing a hunger for hope.
Tammy L. Kernodle, a musicologist and professor at Miami University, says "folk music ... developed out of the everyday experiences of people ... articulating people's frustration." Protest songs and art emerging today express the trauma people feel, desire for meaning and authentic relationships, and demand for social change from governments and other institutions.
"True protest music ... reflects on the past. It is documenting the present, and what it is speaking to is the hope of the future," Kernodle says.
Irony and satire may clobber or sneak up on the listener of a Welles song such as "War Isn't Murder" or "Join ICE."
Mon Rovîa, born in Liberia and adopted by an American missionary family, writes songs such as "Heavy Foot," protesting greed, oppression, gun violence and war and suggesting the need for a return to kindness and care for others.
"I think the important piece about protest music is the truth factor," he says. "I think it becomes protest because we put that word around it, but really it's just a search for the truth. To reveal it and to say it as it is and not beat around the bush."
Folk singer-songwriter Jensen McRae uses her music to tell stories as a way to address "the historical moment that we're in" and "sneak vegetables into people's brownies," speaking to date rape, deportation of migrants, school violence and injustice issues. In her song, "The Men Are Disappearing," she writes a modern version of the word "Hosanna": "Surely someone's coming to save us ... When the knights we pick to save us cash out, well, then, what does that mean? ... It's their last chance at redemption, it's the end of history ... Surely someone's coming to save us. Surely someone's coming."
"The Blues Man," Andrew Dykes, sings "We cookin' up the blues like a home-cooked meal ... Let the healing roll. ... Let's eat!" about how music helps feed the hungry soul in "That Brother Starvin'.
More on this story can be found at this link: