The Power of Israel

With Israel Houghton's first solo release in March, The Power of One, the already eclectic artist reached new heights of variety, crossing genres and cultures and voices. What unifies the record, however, is a theme that now pervades Houghton's life: Social justice. From the simple kindness of a woman to which he credits his very existence to a call to help orphans in South Africa, Houghton represents a wave of consciousness in music. In many cases, Houghton's included, that awareness is leading to action.

Your new CD is called The Power of One. What is the power of one person to change the world?

Israel Houghton: I would reference my own story. My mom is white and my father was black, and my mom got pregnant when she was 17. She was advised to have an abortion. She chose not to. She got kicked out of her father's house, was disowned for a while, and ended up out in Southern Cal. She's eight months pregnant, she's messed up on drugs, she and my father have split up. It's bad. The State has said, "When your child is born, we're taking him, because you're an unfit mother." As daunting a situation as you can imagine. The power of one is that this lady came up to my mom, just out of the blue and said, "Hey, I don't know you, but I really felt like I'm supposed to tell you that Jesus loves you, and cares about you, and you're not forgotten." She loved on my mom and led her to the Lord, right there on the street. The power of one for me is that lady's decision.

Israel Houghton is a two-time Grammy winner

A lot of times when we talk about the power of one person to change the world, there's this sense of, well, you've got to go cross the ocean and go to Haiti or Africa or India to really change the world. I'm saying no, that lady just crossed the street and changed the world. We all have that barrier that says, DO NOT CROSS. She crossed it. As a result of that one encounter, my mom's life was changed, and my life was changed. God intervened, and I was with my mom ever since. I never became property of the state. I've given my life to being that one person who hopefully starts a chain reaction in the lives of other.

We all hope to have that ripple effect.

Houghton: That's the whole purpose of this record, is that you can do something. It's a real challenge to the American church mentality that essentially says, "Somebody else will do it." This is saying, no, what if it's just you? What if you're the one to start this chain reaction? People think you've got to be Bono in order to really do it. I'm saying, Bono started somewhere. It started in the heart. It's crossing the room. It's crossing the street. It's showing kindness in your immediate surroundings and it grows from there.

Do you think the church is any more or less complacent than in the past?

Houghton: I think it's less complacent. I feel like we've got a long way to go, but I do want to find the optimism. We've had a couple of things—9/11, Hurricane Katrina—that have been these really strong wake-up calls to the church to shake us out of our routines. When Katrina happened, a lot of churches became shelters in the Baton Rouge area, in Mississippi, and they just went for it. Six or seven months later the government offered to reimburse the churches for all their efforts, and all of the churches said, "Don't you dare. We're a church! This is what we do!" I just loved that.

I look at those moments and I think, if we could keep that perpetuated, wouldn't it be fantastic if the government said, "Hey, you guys are doing it. Keep on doing it. You guys have got the whole poverty thing covered, you've got the whole welfare thing covered, you just keep that going." Dude! I think if you really boiled it down, that's the job of the church. Jesus said reach out to the least of these. Give the poor a voice. Give the orphan a home. Give the widow shelter. I am looking toward a day when that becomes as common as us singing together.

How do you define the term "Social Justice"?

Houghton: We define justice as apprehending the disposition of God's heart toward the broken. Worship is not just music and singing. If anything, those are just vehicles to the real issue which is the placement of the heart. Those of us who call ourselves Christians have the advantage of hearing God's heart, and understanding what it's involved with.

Houghton performing

I remember struggling with feeling uneasy after we've just had a great time of worship. What next? I've been a World Vision artist for a long time, trying to help get kids sponsored, and it is amazing to me, and probably to every artist who stands up and tries to give an appeal inside the life of a concert, that it's just a drag. You've gone from this incredible, exuberant thing that meets the "what's in it for me?" cry of most of our hearts, and that is, "I want to feel good right now, I want to sing along, I want  to jump, I want to dance, I want to cry, even, and I'm going to feel great about that." But then, the second you go, "Hey, I'll tell you what we ought to do with all this worship. What if we took the euphoria that we're all feeling right now, why don't we help some kids? Help them experience a little slice of what we've just experienced?" Man, all the air goes out of the room, all of the "Here we go" kicks in with people and they sit down and the moment is [snaps fingers] lost that quickly, and you're just going , "Aw, people, come on!"

I went to Amos 5, and the Israel Houghton translation of this is basically God saying, "Hey man, I appreciate the songs you write for me, but I'll tell you what, I'm not even going to listen to your songs anymore. I couldn't care less about the melodies of your songs." And you're sitting there going, "But this is what we do!" And God's going, "Let me tell you what I care about. I want justice." Amos 5 says he wants justice. Oceans of it. Let justice roll down like a river and fairness and righteousness as a mighty stream. The lights and camera and smoke and action and songs and shouts really don't turn God on. Because if all this is is some sort of big country club Christian gathering in which only we know the language and we've got the secret handshakes and all that, and then we do nothing from that, and there's no sense of worship growing legs and turning into action, then what's the point?

Do you think we've misplaced the idea of what biblical worship is?

Houghton: Definitely. I don't want to paint with a broad stroke here, but worship has almost been relegated to a feeling. Sadly, it's even been relegated to a genre, a style that we play on the radio, and a bigger aisle in the bookstore, as opposed to a heart. And it really does come down to the heart.

I've grown very weary of, "Let's all get together and jump around and then get on the bus and go to the next city." I'm thinking, How do we do something far more effective than that? Does that mean we stay in a city longer, or is there something that we can do that has a perpetual effect? We might rally around somebody who's already doing something, and we're going to equip them with what they need, and we're not going to wait for the government to subsidize that. We're going to do it. Those are the kinds of things I'm really wrestling with right now. I don't want to be a part of just in and out and off to the next thing.

Your mission work has expanded globally. You're working with your wife, Meleasa, to support an orphanage?

Houghton: Yes, in Capetown. We're really trying to do something that will truly make a mark. The first time I went was in '94, and I had one of those experiences landing in the city. I just started weeping, landing in the city, and it had nothing to do with the beauty of the city. I felt this connection before I ever landed. I have been maybe 30 times since and every single time, I could be half asleep, I could be listening to music, and something just flips and I feel this—I don't know if that's the feeling of home, and don't hear this the wrong way—like a prophetic connection. I'm still trying to figure it out. I've got to pay attention to that, because I don't feel that anywhere else in the world.

South Africa is a place of contrasts. You have such beauty and such devastation at the same time. Such wealth and such poverty at the same time. We visited this orphanage a number of years back and made such a connection with the directors and kids there.

Is there a groundswell of at least awareness of social justice themes in music right now?

Israel Houghton: Yeah, I would say it's germinating from the Delirious guys, the Passion guys, and the Hillsong guys. There are others, but they've done such a good job of finding the correlation between worship and justice. Everlasting God, Brenton Brown's song, is an incredible vertical worship song, but it declares, "You're the defender of the weak. You comfort those in need." It never feels forced. It never feels like there's worship, and then a blunt edge, and then justice, but that there's this real smooth correlation of the two. I think more songs need to be written that way.

Do you see the themes in secular music?

Houghton: I see a lot of it. The first two that leap to mind are U2 and Coldplay, who say we want our music to point to an initiative and point to action, and whatever can be done to accomplish that we're going to do it.

I really do admire anybody who has a platform of celebrity that could be used for anything, and they use it toward the plight of the poor. Whether you agree with their lifestyle or their music or whatever, at the end of the day, God wants to see this done. If the church is slow to respond, he'll still use somebody.

Copyright © 2009 Christian Music Today. Click for reprint information.