He racked the pistol slide as the Byrds’ “Oil in My Lamp” played in the background. “Sing, oh sinner, to the King—keep me burnin’ till I burn away.”

He smiled with no hint of irony.

The crows outside the stained glass window flew dolefully away as the music faded.

Randal D. Williams is currently working on a doctoral dissertation concerning sacred and profane motifs in early hillbilly music. Mr. Williams proudly calls himself a hillbilly scholar and a scholar of all things existentially hillbilly.