I'm Christopher Leiden, and this is open source with the writer Paul Eli, recalling the moment when popular culture came to sound like public prayer.

When you call my name, it's like a little prayer. I'm down on on my knees I want to take you there

Give me my prayer

I can feel your heart

Just like a prayer

You know I'll take you there

This was Madonna in 1989

singing her number one hit

Like a Prayer The song is a marker in 1989, singing her number one hit like a prayer.

The song is a marker for what our guest, the historian Paul Eli, calls

crypto religion. Let's call it the artistic underground where unlabeled church themes

took root in our lifetimes. It's where religious mystery went, but not to die. Almost the opposite.

The crypto zone is where pop culture stars found a space for moods and visions they had known

growing up. Think Leonard Cohen and his all-time hit with Hallelujah. Think Prince singing, I would die for you.

Think Bob Dylan in his gospel period

with Gotta Serve Somebody.

Yes, you are, you're going to have to serve somebody.

Serve somebody.

Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you're going to have to serve somebody.

And it's not just songs.

Crypto-religion is the zone where the filmmaker Martin Scorsese imagined the last temptation of Christ.

It's where the pop artist Andy Warhol, himself a Catholic, made endless versions of Leonardo

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