Before us today is a serious issue—a salvation issue, one might say, dealing as it does with the afterlife. Did the post-Diana Supremes employ their irresistible harmonies and dead-on psych-funk influences to promote the notion of marriage in the afterlife? That’s just what Wikipedia claims about their classic single “Up the Ladder to the Roof”:
The lyrics to the song feature Terrell inviting her lover to be hers forever, through all of the good and bad in life, and eventually into the afterlife, where they will climb “up the ladder to the roof” to be “closer to heaven.”
Christ taught that “in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” (Matthew 22:30). An opposing view is taken by the Mormon church which affirms a doctrine of “celestial marriage.” Where do the Supremes fall? If they took the latter and Latter-day view, then the Mormon church, which already claims Gladys Knight, will be able to boast an enviable domination of soul divas.
I am not quite ready to pit soul sisters against church fathers. After all, the song was written by one Vincent DiMirco (a Catholic name, surely?) and seems to have more to do with drugs than doctrine. But then, I guess you could say that about most religious texts.
Developing . . .
