The ever-controversial Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O’Connor is releasing a new double album entited “Theology”. The songs are all biblically-themed (including a cover of the Jesus Christ Superstar song “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”), and is being specifically marketed to Christian retail outlets.

“Yet with her soon-to-be-released double album Theology, the Grammy Award-winning O’Connor will make a foray into the mainstream Christian music market by distributing the album in major Christian retail outlets, including Family Christian Stores and Lifeway Christian Stores … The move, O’Connor says, is not as out of character as it may seem. “By blood and by birth I am a Catholic, and I am extremely inspired by that,” she says in a telephone interview from Dublin. “I wanted to acknowledge music as a way of talking to God.” But will the Christian market buy it?”

This represents yet another theological shift for the mercurial singer. More than ten years ago she was exploring goddess spirituality, and included the Charge of the Goddess in the liner notes of her 1994 album “Universal Mother”, and sang about pre-Christian conceptions of God on her 1997 “Gospel Oak” ep.

“I guess it’s called gospel oak because the songs are hymns, really, hymns / lullabies which i dedicated to the idea of God which existed before ‘religion’, in inverted commas, came along. It was basically the idea of God being a feminine principal, God the mother, which was symbolized by the oak because it’s such an ancient, ancient, tradition. Also the worship of God the mother used to take place in what they would call sacred oak groves – so that’s basically why.”

More recently, O’Connor caused religiously-themed headlines when she accepted ordination into an Irish splinter Catholic organization, and ordination that persists to this day, though she refuses to talk about it to the press.

“Is it a good time to mention her ordination as Mother Bernadette Marie in 1999? ‘That area is better for me not to talk about.’ Her mouth is set. ‘I shouldn’t talk about it at all: it’s a very private thing.’”

But lest anyone think the singer has truly repented from her theological roamings, recent comments seem to find her as heretical as ever (at least by the standards of the Christian audience she is trying to win over).

“I went to a convent, but I didn’t imbibe any of the negative things about Catholicism. The fact there was badness about it didn’t stop me from taking on board what was good about it so I’m equally inspired by Catholicism as I am by Hinduism and Sufism and all the other religions which inspire me.”

So while O’Connor’s new album (you can listen to samples at her MySpace page) tries to win over the Christian market, does she pray to a universal Mother or a stern and jealous Father?

Tags: Christianity, music, Paganism, Sinead O'Connor, The Goddess