…as popular Christian worship music gains a larger audience, Ari Kelman, associate professor of education at Stanford, has uncovered a surprising paradox. The very musicians, songwriters and music producers who create the music are increasingly sensitive to the “precarious relationship between rock music and worship,” Kelman said. (From Stanford News, article by Ashley Walters)

Kelman’s new upcoming publication Shout to the Lord: Music and Worship in Evangelical America, looks to be asking some important questions about the role of music in contemporary evangelical churches.  His research is revealing the secularisation of this music, where musicians are focused less on their role as leaders of liturgy and more as musicians trying to produce a good sound:

Kelman underscored the powerful role musicians and music producers assume in faith practices. “If people sing their faith, then those who write, perform and produce this music” become central to worship performance and practice.

Worship songs, Kelman noted, seek to model a “heavenly version of prayer” derived from Christian scripture. They attempt to deliver

theology while leading the audience through a performance by listening and singing along to a scriptural message.

Not all professional worship leaders and musicians attempt to address these issues. When Kelman was doing fieldwork at a school for worship leaders, he joined a class in which participants learned how to work with a worship band.

The rehearsal classes focused on instrumentation and arrangements, leaving “almost no room for questions about the religious purpose of their playing together.”

I’m looking forward to reading this musicological study.

Raising Hell for Jesus is a recent article in the Fairfax publication The Good Weekend.

I love the little window we get at the end of the article into how to write a contemporary worship song.  Ryan Smith is a relatively high profile worship pastor in a high profile pentecostal megachurch:

In a sound studio at the main c3 campus in Oxford Falls, I meet the church’s music director Ryan Smith and singer Dan Korocz, who give me a short lesson in constructing a contemporary worship song.

“That’s probably one of the hardest things in the world,” Smith says. “We might come up with a theme – ‘God’s unconditional love’ is a classic example. Then we start with a chorus.”

Smith strums his guitar in the key of F and sings in a soft voice: “Unconditional, unconditional, You have saved me, You have loved me.”

Korocz joins in: “Your love is relentless, Your love, uh, uh, uh, uuuhhhhh, love is relentless.” Then Smith: “Love is amaaaazing.”

Rhyming words always help, he says. “A lot of people are quite ‘Christian-ese’ about it, where you use words like ‘mercy’, ‘consecration’, ‘forgiveness’, ‘crucifixion’ .”

What rhymes with crucifixion, I ask? They think for a while.

“If it was crucifixion, you could rhyme it with ‘His love we’re in’ ,” Smith replies, finally.

“Or ‘salvation’,” Korocz adds.

In the early 1960s, young North American folk singers Joan Baez and Bob Dylan repackaged the songs of their poet strumming heroes Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and became megastars.  They were beatnik Greenwich Village radicals, anti-establishment prophets with dark glasses, street philosophers, anti-McCarthy, post-religion and yet oh so spiritual.  For a few years it seemed like there was a grassroots revolution of ideas led by intellectual doped out pop-stars.  They cried out against injustice; stood alongside Martin Luther King Jnr at march on Washington; created a sense of camaraderie amongst disillusioned youths; and they were very cool.  It was natural, then, for the parallel tribe of long haired baby-boomer Christians to be swept up by this tide and challenge church conservatism.  Instead of the formality of the robed choirs, grand organs and Hymns Ancient and Modern, they opted for jangly guitars and ballads about a Jesus in their own politics.  Many of the newly ordained wore side burns and bell bottoms with their clergy shirts and habits.  Then, as Dylan smashed the very genre he helped invent and scandaled his fans with folk-rock, so followed the church music of the Jesus freaks.

Suddenly there was an explosion of Jesus rock.  For every mainstream artist and style there was a Christian imitation.  And the music of the Christian copies shaped this new church music of the “radicals.”  As there was Dylan inspired Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, so there was a Dylan inspired Paul Clark and Phil Keaggy.  Larry Norman took on the blues folk rock of Country Joe and the Fish.  Led Zeppelin tried to buy their way into heaven, and then Resurrection Band showed the gospel way.  Joe Cocker had a little help from his friends and Randy Matthews had a little help from his congregation (with much less whisky).    Elton John flew with the Rocket Man, Billy Joel sympathised with the Piano Man, and Keith Green worshipped the Son of Man.  James Taylor swooned about something in the way she moved, but Al Mossburg’s woman drove him insane for introducing him to Jesus.  Bowie counted down with Major Tom but Agape was simply a Voyaging Pilgrim.  As Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks wailed “who do you love?”, C. McPheeters and the Bible Belt Boogie Band simply loved Jesus.  There was a Creedence Clear Water Revival, but the real move of the Spirit came with the Hallelujah Joy Band.  I could go on.  If there was a chart topping act, there was a Christian counterpart in your local Christian book store.  The key musicological point I am making is: as secular led – in most cases – Christian musicians followed.  And this pattern was reflected in church music led by local musicians who only had their record collection as a reference.

Of course there were some exceptions.  In my next entry I will write about the struggle for gospel pop artists to find acceptance in the mainstream . 

In my last post I declared my distress at the lacklustre state of Contemporary Christian Worship Music.  I am not, however, necessarily going to advocate a high brow alternative; it is good for churches to sing the music of the people if they want to.

When Gospel music emerged, it provided church music for common America: the uneducated classes, the slaves, famers, and factory workers. It was a fusion of the protestant hymn tradition and the African music introduced by the slaves of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries (see the Gospel history timeline ).   By the 1770s, the most popular hymn composer amongst slaves was Isaac Watts (1674-1749), whose pioneering influence over the lyrical and emotional content of Gospel Music should not be underestimated.  Watts controversially diverged from the starch musical tradition of his calvinistic English dissenting church (who made up a core part of the settler American church).  Watts reasoned,

Where the Psalmist describes religion by the fear of God, I have often joined faith and love to it. Where he speaks of the pardon of sin through the mercies of God, I rather choose to mention the sacrifice of Christ, the Lamb of God. Where He promises abundance of wealth, honor, and long life, I have changed some of these typical blessings for grace, glory and life eternal, which are brought to light by the gospel, and promised in the New Testament. Click here for more about Watts

Soon the slaves took the lyrical ideas of Watts, and brought their own sound.  Thus, out of the darkness of the slave-trade God made something beautiful.  At the beginning of the nineteenth-century, the first clear examples of Gospel music emerged in the form of spirituals, shouts, lined-hymns, and anthems.    While this music was aesthetically attractive and deeply emotional, with the “fear” and “love” of Watts, it was also music of the people.  Which is why the revival-pentecostal tent meetings from later in that century, under the leadership of evangelists such as Dwight L. Moody, adopted this style.  Moody employed the music of Ira D. Sankey, George F. Root, and P.P Bliss who published the song book ‘Gospel Songs’ in 1874 which was the first time a publication used “gospel” in reference to a musical genre.

In the early twentieth-century, the Pentecostal-holiness movement continued incorporating Gospel music in their meetings using guitars, tambourines and harmoniums for accompaniment.  The genre subdivided under the influence of  related genres blues, bluegrass and country.  And it soaked into the consciences and culture of influential popular artists who would start recording in the 1950s such as Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Mahalia Jackson.  Soon this music was broadcast over the newly invented radio playing the records of the Carter family, Arizona Dranes, the many gospel quartets and the songs of Thomas A. Dorsey.      In 1938, Sister Rosetta Tharpe sold one-million records with the single “This Train.”

After the second world war, the popularity of Gospel music elevated to the concert hall, and was appreciated by mass audiences for its true artistic significance.  Recording artists such as Mahalia Jackson, the Swan Silvertones, the Caravans, the Original Gospel Harmonettes, and the Clara Ward Singers all became world-wide hits.  This music inspired people because it was raw, it had ache and passion, it reached inside of you and connected you with God.

While Gospel music bloomed and became the staple for many American churches, the European hymn tradition continued in parallel for those churches who so desired.

In my next entry I’ll explain what happened when the logic of “church music for common America” evolved in the 1960s and 70s. 

This first entry comes from a speech I made a recent conference in the style of TED on new ideas for the church on 22 October 2012.

At the 2005 Guardian Hay festival, British television personality Stephen Fry made this statement in the “blasphemy debate”.

Here is an excerpt of what he said:

 I mean it’s perfectly obvious that if there were ever a God he has lost all possible taste….you know God once had Bach and Michelangelo on his side, he had Mozart, and now who does he have? People with ginger whiskers and tinted spectacles who reduce the glories of theology to a kind of sharing…?

This was a cheap shot.  Fry made me so annoyed.  Why? Because it’s true.  I reference Fry’s statement as a way to launch into a rant about “contemporary worship music.”  Which, in case you are wondering, is a genre of church music, that gradually emerged starting in the late 1960s and being in full swing by the 1980s. In 2012, most mainline Christian churches sing these songs; if you go to churches in India, America, Europe or even China, you will experience the same.

I am going to argue that much contemporary worship music is aesthetically poor (the music and the lyrics), and as a result, is playing a part in hindering the worshipping life of the church, it is limiting the Church’s cultural appeal to the wider society (contrary to what we tell ourselves), and it reveals something about the church’s theology and self-perception.  I’ll return to that in a later post…

The English academic and worship song composer, Vicky Beeching  commented that it’s as if many of the contemporary worship songs were written blindfolded with a box of Christian fridge magnet poetry. She wrote,

Friends of mine joke that they play ‘worship cliche bingo’ when they hear a new contemporary Christian CD. They can basically guess what the next line and the next chord progression will be, as everything is starting to fit a predictable grid.

And Beeching is right about the predictable grid.  I once played keyboard in a worship band for a youth worship conference and for about thirty minutes, all of the songs used almost the same chord progression, in the same key, with only slight variation. And the same emotional structure of: soft opening with a gradual build to an epic rock out two thirds through, with a quiet drawn out ending.

You might like contemporary worship music.  You might like the repetition.  Well…I think it’s because you have been conditioned to like it.  You are like a child who has been brought up on McDonalds and thinks that’s the best food life has to offer – you haven’t discovered the splendor and variety of the world’s cuisine.  But there is so much more in store for you.  Did you know that God has in his record collection a library of wonderment, and it’s as if you’re only going back to the same old lame album (which he only has to be ironic.)  Don’t feel too bad if you have been brainwashed.  The weird thing is that most of the really gifted musicians in your church also have come to accept this sorry state of affairs.  They go home, listen to great music, and then come to church and leave their musical brain and heart at the door.

Have you ever wondered why non-Christian people don’t care about contemporary Christian worship music?  They don’t know much about it, they don’t buy it, and they don’t seem to choose to listen to it.  If they go to iTunes to download music with Christian content, it is almost guaranteed that it will either be African American gospel music (such as The Blind Boys of Alabama or Mahalia Jackson), perhaps some gritty folk country album (Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan), or classical music (requiem masses, cantatas, choral music etc…)  But you won’t find them downloading contemporary worship music.

Similarly, in my home city, Melbourne Australia, apparently there are 141 choirs (not including from schools) listed on the guide to Melbourne choirs.  Of those listed, roughly 90 percent included either gospel or traditional Christian choral music as part of their repertoire – but none of them sing contemporary worship songs.  Secular choirs, the world over, look at the enormous canon of Christian music, and filter out everything labelled “contemporary worship.” I don’t blame them.

You might think I’m being elitist.  Isn’t it simply the case that we are now in a new egalitarian era when artistic brilliance in the church no longer matters, and where it’s better to encourage anyone who wants to, to get up and lead us in a song?  Shouldn’t anyone have the freedom to strum a few chords on a guitar and start a singalong.  Answer: yes, but why not have a singalong which is artistically pleasing, musically strong and inspiring?  Who wants to have to sit through a poor rendition of a poorly composed song?

You might question me from a spiritual point of view, arguing that all that matters is that you have a genuine person up the front, filled with the Holy Spirit and “focused on God.”  I agree.  But you can have both.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the church could once again inspire the world with music just as it has for most of its history?  Wouldn’t it be brilliant if contemporary worship music was such that it communicated the heights and depths of the majesty of God?  Wouldn’t it be great if you were moved to tears in the worship – not tears of laughter as you play worship-cliche-bingo to the latest Jesus is my boyfriend song – but tears that come from hearing an incredible band, or putting on your favourite album.

In my next post I’ll explain the history of the formation of Gospel music and how it spoke to common America.