I don’t believe in God—at least not in the traditional sense. But I’ve always found myself drawn to religious music. It moves me. Not in a nostalgic or cultural way. In a crack-open-my-chest, tear-down-the-heavens, speak-in-tongues kind of way. Which is… inconvenient.

Today, I listened to three albums that span the genre of religious music in different directions, and they left me thinking about grace, reverence, and the human need for something larger than ourselves.

Grace in the Grit: 

Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven

 – Tyler Childers

This was the spark that lit the fuse—a Chillers entry that led me down this rabbit hole. Tyler Childers’ Can I Take My Hounds to Heaven blurs the line between the sacred and the secular. It’s the most accessible of the three, rooted in Childers’ Christian faith but shaded by modern doubt, discomfort, and grace found in unlikely places.

There’s a tension here: between Sunday morning devotion and Saturday night sin. Between the quiet ache of wanting to believe and the loud joy of believing anyway. Childers offers spirituality without judgment—he asks questions rather than demands answers.

Old-Time Religion: 

Hymns

 – Johnny Cash

If Childers questions, Johnny Cash proclaims.

Hymns is as traditional as it gets—classic church songs amplified by Cash’s train-style guitar and his graveled, booming baritone. There’s a call-and-response cadence that echoes small-town Baptist churches, and at times it feels like Cash himself is preaching from the pulpit.

You hear conviction in his voice. Reverence. A man in direct conversation with his God. And even without sharing his beliefs, I felt something stir. Maybe it’s the solemnity. Maybe it’s the sheer human depth of belief when someone means every word they sing.

The Blues as Prayer: 

B.B. King Sings Spirituals

You can’t trace the throughline of American music without making stops at both the blues and at spirituals—and B.B. King bridges that beautifully.

This album kicks down any remaining resistance you might have to religious music. King takes his signature wailing blues voice and blows out the chapel doors. It carries the same reverence as Cash, the modern edge of Childers, but it’s spoken in a distinctly King way: full of longing, ache, and joy-soaked pain.

There’s scripture in the lyrics, yes—but there’s also mourning. Survival. A desire to be forgiven that feels deeply personal and deeply human.

So What’s Left for the Godless?

It’s no secret that faith is declining. Gen Z is the least religious generation to date—34% identify as unaffiliated. And yet, the music remains. The need remains.

Childers wrestles with belief. Cash stands firm in it. King howls through it. But they all touch something in the listener that exists outside of doctrine. A raw nerve of yearning. A need for connection, for beauty, for transcendence.

Maybe that’s what religious music offers us now, even to the godless: a kind of spiritual infrastructure. A place to put the feelings that have nowhere else to go.

Final Benediction

Three albums. Three perspectives on faith. But what I walked away with wasn’t religion. It was something quieter, and maybe more human.

I didn’t find God.

But I found something close enough to kneel before.

Maybe it’s not about what you believe in.

Maybe it’s just about believing—with your whole chest, with your whole voice, with your whole trembling soul.