Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.
Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.
“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.
Many older hymns were religious words added to melodies ripped off from pub/folk songs. Perhaps surprisingly, some hymnals attribute the original composers or mention where they were adapted from. Perhaps unsurprising, I was so bored with hearing the same sermon messages throughout my youth that I would read the hymnal indices to figure out which composers I liked the best…