This month’s Christianity Today has a couple of articles that probe the differences between contemporary praise songs and old hymnody. In general, I find that both sides of the “worship wars” tend to provide fancy rationales for justifying what we like better. But there is some important theology to grapple with as well.
John Koessler’s piece, “The Trajectory of Worship,” is self-conscious about both. Or, at least, he’d have us think so. On the self-consciousness part, he says, “I am reduced to that most primitive test of aesthetic values: ‘I may not know what art is, but I know what I like.’”
It seems we’re in for a confession that the reason he prefers old music is because he prefers old music. But then, it takes a turn: “Or, rather, ‘I may not know what worship is, but I know what it isn’t.’”
Ah… So the contemporary music you don’t like isn’t actually worship.
His problem, as he goes on to describe it, is that modern worship moves as though it’s from us to God, not a practice that originates in heaven and envelops the earthly worshiping community.
That’s fine theology, but is it really the case that old hymnody captures the “participating in angel choirs” note that modern worship misses? I think he was more on target in his self-evaluation when he was talking aesthetics.
Because anybody who wants to poo poo modern praise music is going to have to start with this: a vast majority of modern praise songs are singing of psalms or other bible passages. It’s going to be very difficult to sustain the argument that the theology of the songs themselves is wrong using the sorts of litmus tests Koessler sets out.
Here’s my take on contemporary music: if it’s a repetitive song, whose words are more or less from the Bible, and accompanied by guitar and drums we call it a praise chorus and deride it. If it’s a repetitive song, whose words are more or less from the Bible and accompanied by the piano or sung a capella, we call it Taize and celebrate it.
In the second article, an interview, T. David Gordon explains the widespread disdain for classical-music hymnody by the prevalence of pop music in our society. Based neither on theology or aesthetics, the change to contemporary music in church is due to a “media ecology”: a change in our environment that causes nothing but pop music to sound like music to our ears.
Gordon urges us to cultivate a new musical sensibility to help connect us with the great musical tradition of the church.
He says that not all hymns are good, and not all praise songs are bad. There are both in both. In the interview he then goes on to say that there are objective categories for evaluating music–and that hymns shouldn’t strive to the level of musical excellence that would make them unsingable for most of us.
In fact, says Gordon, “musicologists argue that hymnody is actually a subcategory of folk music… But folk music, by name, suggests music produced by the people. It’s the way people join their heritage, and it’s participatory in its very nature.”
Exactly.
So which is more “the people’s music”? The music that is currently being produced by people who are participating in the “the people’s culture” of pop music, or the music that reflects an earlier generation’s sensibilities?
Gordon argues that this isn’t about aesthetics, but I’d say it is: the “media ecology” he describes has developed a certain aesthetic in society–and it happens to be one that he doesn’t resonate with. If we have to “cultivate” a liking for the music he wants us to like, in what sense is it our own folk music any longer?
One other thing that struck me about the interview with Gordon is Anglo-centric his assessment of worship is. Perhaps Gordon celebrates the videos he sees of Africans in traditional garb singing 18th century English-penned hymns. They make me weep. Ok, that’s a bit strong: I’m glad that they sing our songs and participate with us in our worship. But it also strikes me as a failure of the gospel to take hold of the hearts, failure of western missionaries to give freedom to people in a new context to reexpress the praise of God in their own tongue, to have them sing our songs.
And with our own now being a more missionary situation, I wonder if promulgation of the old hymns isn’t as culturally inappropriate.
Look, I like hymns as much as anyone. I love that so many of them contain rich lyrics and rich theology.
But I also believe that when the Psalmist says he will “sing a new song,” he is not actually asking the people of God for the next 4- or 5,000 years to sing his new song–old song that it is to us.
In fact, I would argue that what we see in scripture is that new song is exactly what we should expect any time that God is at work in the world. Yes, Koessler is correct: worship begins with God. But the worship we sing is, as often as not, about how that God in heaven has intersected tangibly with the world down here. Worship is not about the God who remains afar off in the heavens, it’s about the God who has, or should have, acted here on earth for the good of God’s people and all humanity.
Put differently, a church with no new songs to sing is a church where God is not at work.
A culture that cannot express its encounter with God in its own idiom is a culture where the gospel has not taken root.
And, if we’re not careful, an insistence of the singing of only the old songs might become a convenient theological cover for the reality that our own lives need a fresh visitation, that our eyes need a new vision, of the Kingdom of God come near.
