In this Easter season, the mental weight of current events brings to mind Prince’s song ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ where he begins the sermon with “Dearly beloved…” over the initially celestial gospel organ music.
As he prepares his listeners for the forthcoming sermon about what heaven is like, we hear the drumbeat accentuating our futile dependence on psychiatry (from Prince’s lyrical perspective) over Jesus’s healing, or to put it as Prince did: “Dr. Everything’ll Be Alright / Make everything go wrong”, to help us be well. But what are we to do to heal ourselves from evil? Read the lyrics, then listen to it again.
This could easily be an Easter existential anthem if you can tolerate putting the sacred (scripture) and profane (funk and rock music) in tension. If there is one theological task Prince was expert in, it was putting the sacred and profane in tension. Deeply experiencing his body of work can help us do the same.
Prince fans may recall the songs and albums ‘Controversy’, ‘1999’, ‘Sign O’ The Times’, and ‘The Rainbow Children’ as a few of his most obvious pleas for his fans to ready themselves for Armageddon, but it takes a careful reading of the lyrics (what I call “theolyricology”) and contemplative listening to the music through and between the lines and beats to understand Prince’s gospel.
Prince’s decades-long gospel project made him the “preacher in the boudoir.” Yes, he was most known for peddling sexual debauchery, but this narrow understanding comes from abstracting his hits from his canon and the perplexity of his song, album, and movie Graffiti Bridge. When we think about Easter (and the day after, the anniversary of Prince’s death), as I think we all would do well to do, who can we look to and learn from about how to be victorious in times of oppression? Let Prince be one of those prophets.
As a pastoral counselor and chaplain who is interfaith in thought and practice, and a lay Buddhist leader, we can take inspiration from the life of Jesus who consorted with a variety of people deemed to be impure and therefore, oppressed. Not only did Jesus enjoy the company of those deemed unworthy of love, but he also even uplifted the “impure” Samaritan as someone others should aspire to be like.
That Good Samaritan lesson obviously caught on through the centuries, for even today, far away from Bethlehem, Nazareth, Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee, in every state in the U.S. and the District of Columbia, there is a Good Samaritan law to encourage us to do good by those who are vulnerable, especially when the vulnerability is caused by oppression.
We can be victorious in times of oppression when we begin to dissolve the ‘us’ and ‘them’ separation, the worthy versus the unworthy.
We can be victorious in times of oppression when we begin to dissolve the ‘us’ and ‘them’ separation, the worthy versus the unworthy. Prince’s art can be situated in the spaces in between the ‘us’ and ‘them’ mentality. Remember ‘Darling Nikki’? This most profane and crude song is situated on the Purple Rain album between ‘Computer Blue’ where he sings about finding the righteous one, and ‘When Doves Cry’ and ‘I Would Die 4 U’, songs using Christian tropes and messages about being victorious over death. This is nondual psycho-spiritual gospel genius!
This Easter, the season of Spring with all its religious devotion and commercial opportunity, we can choose to refrain from contributing to destructive forces in the name of purity. We can learn to tolerate the ever-present contrasting symbols that represent sacred and profane dualisms, and when we are better able to abide in uncertainty, we can put the dualisms in tension to discover what might emerge.
What I’ve found in these experiments is the cultivation of curiosity, compassion, humility, and revelation which is always surprising! When constrained consciousness is broken open, I feel free and the comforting love that comes from an open mind. Listening to Prince and understanding his art more deeply, I feel so grateful.
This Easter season, we should contemplate how we as a species are going to get through this thing called life and enter into paradise, or at least a mental state akin to nirvana. Prince called us to this existential question. Diametrically opposed dualism about the fundamental makeup of human beings, who are worthy or unworthy of our mercy, is proving over and over again (in an unending cycle of suffering) that oppression is a factor in this time of national and global crisis.
How are we going to get through this thing called life? How will we experience victory? The recording artist Prince left us a body of work that, when taken together, demonstrates how the sacred and profane, both seemingly separate concepts, are in reality more like opposite illusions that, when put in contact and tension with each other, may produce cohesion, insight, and healing.
With the dualisms at work causing humanity to be at diametrically opposed odds during an environmental situation affecting us all, isn’t this an opportune time at Easter––Christian or not––to consider what it will take to move towards reconciliation, love, and justice?
We don’t have to be Christians to be inspired by Jesus’s relational ethics. Jesus, a master teacher of simple stories with mysterious and deep meaning, told a story to a clever lawyer who asked him about how one might experience everlasting life. Jesus told him what is widely known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
We should not rely on law, sacred or profane, over the real lived experiences of vulnerable people in need of help. If we all stop what we’re doing to serve others, then we will have a better chance of humanity surviving. People are hurting. Let’s serve one another this Easter and every day and take inspiration from the sacred and profane in tension, as Prince, through the profane while using the sacred, taught us to do.
Pamela Ayo Yetunde, J.D., M.A., Th.D.
Author of Dearly Beloved: Prince, Spirituality, and This Thing Called Life (Broadleaf Books, 2025)
ayoyetunde@gmail.com
Chicago, IL
