2 of 5

In other words, long before the contemporary "worship wars" that have become such a central feature of both church formation and church division in North America, battles over song littered the historical landscape—from full-scale encounters in the Reformation era to major skirmishes in the early 18th century over introducing the hymns of Isaac Watts (who offered loose paraphrases of Scripture), then a bit later over the hymns of Charles Wesley and other notables of the evangelical awakenings (who mostly gave up paraphrasing in favor of biblically normed accounts of Christian experience), over the use of organs and choirs (much debated throughout the 19th century), over whether and where to sing the gospel songs of Fanny Crosby and Ira B. Sankey (much derided as dangerously sentimental), over how to regard the burst of hymn-writing attending the rise of Pentecostalism (ditto), and, most recently, over what to make of the Jesus People bringing rock-n-roll into the church (the Jesus People and their heirs have triumphed, though many true lovers of rock regard the outcome as a Pyrrhic victory).

This long history of both solidification and division raises an important question: What explains the power of song so powerfully to shape, anchor, encourage, disturb, unite, divide, and distract Christian communities?

It is a much better question than can be answered in a brief essay on what the churches must learn and unlearn in order to be agents of God in the world. Yet at least part of the answer is that singing is a deeply rooted expression of culture. Becoming self-conscious about culture and why, as illustrated by Christian experience of song, reactions to cultural expressions are so powerful has become imperative. With people, goods, and communications both electronic and print now flying around the globe at unprecedented speeds, and—more important—with almost all Christian communities daily confronting ever-expanding instances of cross-cultural commingling, the church's effectiveness as the herald of salvation and the hands of Christ for service in the world depends, now more than ever, on self-conscious attention to cultural differences.

Culture is defined in various ways, but I am using it to mean the frameworks of understanding, in the broadest sense, under which people carry out their lives. One classic definition came from the recently deceased anthropologist Clifford Geertz: culture, in his depiction, is "an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, and systems of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which [people] communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life." Thus, song as a cultural expression is made up of verbal and aural symbols that express, or heighten, meaning because of how people have experienced music throughout the life course.

In these terms, culture is substantially assumed, given, unquestioned, and instinctive—though it can also become self-conscious over the passage of years or when alternative expressions intrude into daily life. For example, you can become aware that your instinctive emotional reaction to an old hymn, a school fight song, or a snatch of elevator muzak is not a universal human reaction but something resulting from your own singular biography and the associations you have experienced in connection with those particular songs.

next page... |  2 of 5

share this page