First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder is a folk record with funk elements and street singer and psychedelic elements which Todd Snider calls it "P-Folk" or "Folkadelic." "With this album I had the idea for the sound first, I think. I wanted to do what I was calling funk in back and busking up front with [Beatles'] white album-y shit scattered about. I had done a lot of listening to and looking into Parliament and James Brown and lots of reggae music, too," Snider says. The album was borne from Snider's popular weekly live stream series from The Purple Building in East Nashville (pictured on the album cover)

"The songs started for me when Jeff Austin passed away. I made up "Sail On, My Friend," then the touring stopped, and so I started a Sunday morning show," Snider adds. "Viewers started jokingly referring to it as a church and to me as a reverend. I've only reverend-ed twice. But I have the license so in my mind this opened me up to play bossy kinds of songs...then John Prine passed away, and I made up a song for him ['Handsome John']. By the end of it I started thinking I could make it kinda like the Red Headed Stranger or something where it's a Sunday service at the First Agnostic Church of Hope and Wonder, and the preacher is full of shit, and when everyone starts to realize it he asks God to help and God does. Proving once and for all that God is hilarious. And the preacher is like, "I Knew It."