Where were they Then?

Although the public’s morbid curiosity is fed by those “Where are they now?’ updates on child stars who ended up penniless and in rehab, Christians seem more interested in the back story, the “testimony” outlining how someone got from there to here.

In order to be a good history editor, you really have to love following rabbit trails, which is precisely what I was doing when I ran across the story of Roger McGuinn’s conversion.

Roger is a pretty good guitar player, and has spent the latter part of his life travelling around the country with his wife Camilla giving concerts and visiting antique shops. I’ll admit that one of the things I really like about McGuinn is that after he became a Christian, he didn’t immediately switch to singing sappy Christian pop. In fact, he just kept on Pete Seeger, 1955 singing folk music, which is what he still does today. Actually, he always sang folk music, even during his “famous” period, we just didn’t recognize it as folk because of the “jangle”.

I didn’t know it was called that back then. All I knew was that Mr. Tambourine Man was an incredibly infectious song. All someone had to do was mention the title and I’d be humming it most of the day. Then came Turn! Turn! Turn!, again by a group called The Byrds, with that jangly guitar. It was practically word for word from Ecclesiastes 3, “To every time there is a season….”