The Fatherless and the Widow

"Pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world." James 1:27

Most of the talk about orphans and widows from the Bible gets thrown around in a real Social Gospely way today, and there's nothing wrong with that. We like having a God who throws in with the underdog, anyway.The Fatherless and the Widow are more than talking points for social justice on this song, though, and from the first slow notes of that drop-D guitar riff -- which is much more persistent and in-your-face than you'd expect on a song like this -- we're drawn intimately not into poverty or weakness, but spare and stark grief. A mother and child who aren't being visited in their trouble, no recipients of this pure and undefiled religion, and horribly spotted by this world if anyone is. 

"Behind closed doors/they cry their tears/and behind closed doors/they reveal their fears/to the God in Heaven above." Leigh Bingham hadn't yet come into that effortless, airy voice she's now known for. There's an earnestness and heft to her vocals here, even at seventeen years old, surely too young to feel a lyric like "stricken down by the hand of death." 

One ought to hesitate before reading a songwriter's autobiography into his material (just ask Matthew Perpetua after Michael Stipe gave him a stern talking-to). But it is worth noting that The Fatherless and the Widow is dedicated to Slocum's (deceased) father, Joseph Thornton Slocum.