Music is such a personal, touchy subject—as is worship. Put them together and you might as well be mixing sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter. Nonetheless I will boldly go where too many have gone before, in order to draw attention to “Pop Goes the Worship,” an interview in Christianity Today (March 2011) with T. David Gordon, author of Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns: How Pop Culture Rewrote the Hymnal.
I wasn’t expecting much when I began the article (who writes these titles, anyway?), but was quickly drawn in. A sure way to my heart is to say what I’ve been saying myself, or wanted to say, only much better and with authority. The article is worthwhile in its entirety; here are a few excerpts to whet your appetite—or raise your blood pressure. [Emphasis in the following is mine]
T. David Gordon argues that modern worship choruses have trumped hymns in many congregations because for decades, we have been inundated with pop music—to the point that many of us don't know better. If you eat nothing but Big Macs, Gordon says, you will never appreciate a filet mignon.
Regarding church music, Gordon says, media ecologists should ask how music, "once a participatory thing, became a passive thing. What happens when people who used to sing folk music around the house are now surrounded by Muzak? How does that alter our sensibilities of music?"
Many are promoting an "aesthetic" that it is our duty to patronize living artists and not artists who are dead. Should we also not read books that are more than 50 years old, or enter buildings that are more than 50 years old? Christians aren't abandoning their buildings, and they haven't stopped reading Spurgeon or Edwards or Luther or Calvin. We haven't rejected other art forms that are not new. We've done so only with music.
Unless an individual chooses to listen to different kinds of music, the only thing that individual will hear (most of the time) is pop. Sure, one's sensibilities can be shaped deliberately, and many of us have developed tastes that we once did not have. (I spent years cultivating a taste for Brahms, whom I now love, and I spent about two years cultivating my appreciation for jazz.) If I did not believe that sensibilities could be cultivated, I wouldn't have written the book; it is, in some senses, a plea to shape them differently from the way commercial pop culture shapes them. But for people who do not take ownership of the cultivation of their sensibilities, other cultural gatekeepers will shape them for them—and in this case, they will shape them to prefer pop.
In the book, I candidly state that many traditional hymns are outright dogs—just terrible. I never give specific examples, however, because there are always some people who love those dogs, and if I call their beloved song a dog, they will never hear anything else I say. I also think some contemporary hymns are very good; I especially appreciate Getty and Townend (e.g., "How Deep the Father's Love," "In Christ Alone").
Hymns should be easy enough to learn for people who do not read music, so people can pick up the melody quickly. When I was a young child and we'd take drives, the family would sing folk music or hymns. If Mom or Dad started singing "Fairest Lord Jesus," we sang along, and before long we were harmonizing. And we couldn't read music. Hymns aren't too difficult to sing; most of them are easier to sing than the contemporary stuff. I find it ironic that if I'm attending a blended service, the hymns will have the full musical score, though they don't need it, while the contemporary stuff, which is unfathomable without the musical score, doesn't have it. It's just lyrics up on the screen.
[Modern tunes] are not really easier to learn than hymns (unless they are profoundly simplistic). They seem easier to some people whose sensibilities have difficulty with anything that is not pop. But musically speaking, they are not, as a genre, substantially easier; they just sound more familiar to our culture. When people describe them as "easy," what they mean is "familiar-sounding."
Thank you, Dr. Gordon. I am so tired of people telling me that "praise music" is easy. Now I know there are at least two of us in this world who find it "unfathomable" without the music. (I'm getting better, with practice, at muddling through when I can get my hands on the sheets the band uses, which have chords as well as lyrics; that's rather fun, actually. I'm still hopeless in the congregation.)
What Why Johnny Can't Sing Hymns will contribute to the ongoing music and worship conflagration discussion, I can't predict. All I know is that the article cheered me up.
Add another one to your list of people who find the modern songs unfathomable without the music.
I don't find "praise music" unfathomable; I find unknown ones pretty easy to guess, but that's probably due to a combination of familiarity and cliché writing.
What I regret with the loss of four-part harmony is that nearly all melodies are a bit too high for my taste, and generally the refrain is higher than the verse and gets repeated more often. I guess it stretches my range, but it doesn't make singing particularly pleasant.
As someone who grew up in the Episcopal tradition where we are often locked into a liturgy straight out of the Reformation, I "get" the problem modern folk have with old church music. I know for a fact we drive people away with the good old, unsingable, unhmmable, 7-verse hymns we insist on using. They're very comforting for those of us who have been going for 50 years, but they undermine our desire to be a welcoming church. If I want to be musically challenged I'll take a course at the local college. If I want to be inspired, give me something I can sing.
The interesting thing about your comment, Eric, is that SursumCorda could say the exact same thing replacing "old" with "new" and exchanging one genre with the other. A music theorist might have the authority to decide why one genre is easier than another, but if someone says "this is hard for me" we should avoid being so egotistical as to say we know better than they do what is hard or easy for them. Part of why the music in church discussion often disintegrates is that neither side feels heard. If we could get to the point where people of opposite opinions feel respected and listened to, I wonder what the core issues would really be. Is it whether we should sing hard music in church? Is it whether we should let the world's music influence church music? Is it that people disagree on the purpose of music in the church in the first place? Why is music even in church? These questions hardly ever get addressed because the more surface problems are dismissed as invalid. I think some people do try to dig deeper, but as soon as they show themselves to be on the "other side" they more likely than not loose their audience. But is there space in a CT article to build up your opponents before presenting contrary opinion? But is there any point if you don't?
As a Catholic, I think we often get stuck in our traditions and rituals, and don't allow ourselves to adapt enough.
The kids aren't singing folk songs any longer. Oh, they do in church, but that's forced on them and frankly, they don't even pay attention to the meaning of the song or prayer any longer.
Yet, when I play some of the new "hard" rock Christian music, they go "Hey! I like that song!". Even Octane, one of Sirius/XM satellite radio's hardest channels, plays bands like Skillet and Red, and they're as Christian Rock as they get ...
I play both bands at the ice rink public sessions, and watch as kids sing along with "Awake and Alive", "Hero", and other songs where the lyrics are noticeably Christian:
AWAKE AND ALIVE by Skillet
"I'm at war with the world
'Cause I ain't never gonna sell my soul
I've already made up my mind
No matter what, I can't be bought or sold
When my faith is getting weak
And I feel like giving in
You breathe into me again..."
So my opinion is ... we shouldn't get stuck on the format if the message is right. And sometimes, just sometimes, if done correctly, you can slip the message into the conversation with music without bashing someone over the head with a bible. When I tell someone that AWAKE AND ALIVE is a Christian song, for example, I often get ... "It is?"
Both Eric's and Bill's comments clearly illustrate Gordon's point that our taste in music has been largely determined by commercial pop culture. As he says, "People reach a point where nothing but pop music sounds like music." It is important to acknowledge that we must work with the situation that exists, and do what is necessary to speak to each person in his own "heart language." That's the raison d'être of Wycliffe Bible Translators, after all. But it is one thing to meet people where they are, and quite another to leave them there. We think Luther still has something important to say to us; why not Bach? (Well, okay, Bill might not agree about Luther...but how about Aquinas?) It seems the height of chronological snobbery to reject out of hand the contributions of the past, not to mention toying with the Fifth Commandment (Fourth if you're Catholic or Lutheran).
Lutheran, Methodist, Catholic ... to me it's flavors of ice cream. All worthwhile, all delicious :)
I once told some kids at school who had asked my opinion on it:
"My opinion? It's like if we all decided - right now - to go to Dairy Queen ((kids cheering)) ... not, we're not. ((awwwww)) But IF we did, some might take a car, a truck, a bike ... Others might walk, or take a bus. Some might take US 192, other Tenth Street ... HOW we get there might be a little different variation on the same basic path, but we're all trying to get to the same destination.
And the same ice creamy goodness at the end of the trip.
KID: So can we go to Dairy Queen now?
LOL.
Another thought. Gordon said, "I spent years cultivating a taste for Brahms, whom I now love." But Brahms stays Brahms.
With Heather's help, I spent one Lent cultivating a taste for pop Christian worship music in hopes of being able to worship with less distraction in churches where that genre is sung. I was pleased with the effort and largely successful: I found myself enjoying many of the songs and singing them easily.
But it wasn't long before the songs and styles I had learned to like became "too old." Our own church, in particular, switched to a whole new set and style of songs, with those I had worked so hard to appreciate relegated to whatever trash heap receives pop songs when they are no longer popular. I won't say my work (and Heather's) was entirely wasted, but that's a depressingly short return for the investment.
My impression is that the differences often go beyond merely musical style. Praise songs seem to be more visceral, more spontaneous personal outbursts in reaction to a personal God experience. If you're there, or have experienced something that resonates with what the writer is after, it can be powerful. If you haven't, it can be boring after a few repetitions.
Hymns often come with more reflected text, with a more theological bent and higher poetic ambition (at least as determined by strictness of rhyme and measure). Hymns can be boring when you hope to experience something or sing something that reflects your experience. Instead, hymns tend to remind and teach, and when you're ready for that, they can be powerful.
Mind you, I have only spoken about the lyrics, not the music. All Irishoboe's questions remain unanswered: Why do we sing (aside from the implied commands)? Why do we have music, and what should it accomplish? The discussion over "hard," "easy," "familiar," and the like should only be tackled once we've settled on the foundational questions; along with "hard" and "easy" we can then also begin debating "who" and "how" (and "how much").
I just wanted to chime in that I know Dr. Gordon. He was one of my professors at Grove City College. I enjoyed his class on the book of John very much.
