Special Report
Engaging God with music
By Uwe Siemon-Netto, UPI Religion Correspondent
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
WASHINGTON, Nov. 22 (UPI) -- One of the most fascinating preoccupations in Protestantism today has to do with the role of music in worship. Should it be a kind of holy entertainment that draws boomers and busters into megachurches by the thousands each Sunday? Or should music constitute an essential part of the interaction between man and God? Should it tickle the ears of audiences lolling in cozy seats, as if they were in a cinema? Or does Martin Luther's observation still stand that man alone, of all creatures, was given a voice in order to praise God in word and song?
To stretch the argument a little further, who has the right attitude -- the Eastern Orthodox, whose hymns of praise are the same their ancestors sang 1,500 years ago, or postmodern evangelicals, whose melodies and lyrics, which are often painfully trivial, survive at best for a few months?
Some traditionalists, especially musicians, speak of a veritable worship war that involves the wanton destruction of organs by modernists and rescue operations for the "queen of instruments" by traditionalists. However, pollster George Barna denies this on the basis of a series of studies on this subject.
"Most of the church people who fight about their musical preference do so because they don't understand the relationship between music, communication, God and worship," he said in a lecture at Baylor University in Waco, Tex.
"Church leaders foster the problem by focusing on how to please people with music or how to offer enough styles of music to meet everyone's taste rather than dealing with the underlying issues of limited interest in, comprehension of, and investment in fervent worship of a holy, deserving God."
In a way, it makes sense that the conflict should primarily affect Protestantism, because congregational singing was the major contribution of Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, Methodist and Baptist churches to Christian culture.
In what amounted to a democratization of worship, Luther altered the Catholic Mass by allowing congregants to participate in the liturgy. Until the early 16th century, the people were essentially spectators and auditors in church, while the priests, the choir and the organist were the performers.
Since the Reformation, worshipers responded to the text read from the lectern, and to the sermon, with theologically loaded hymns. Chorales replaced the elements of the Latin Mass, such as the Gloria Patri (Glory be to the Father...), the Kyrie (Lord have Mercy), the Gloria, the Agnus Dei (Lamb of God) and the Sanctus (Holy, holy, holy).
Much of Johann Sebastian Bach's cantata work is based on these chorales. At the same time, Calvinism in Geneva, the Netherlands and Scotland, Anglicanism in Britain and Methodism throughout the English-speaking world developed powerful hymnodies, which still dominate Sunday services, especially in North America.
As Barna said, 46 percent of America's Protestant congregations still offer at least one Sunday service featuring traditional worship music, while another 43 percent blend traditional and contemporary tunes.
Some traditionalists bemoan the trend of megachurches to borrow from the tastes of popular culture. In principle, though, there is nothing wrong with that. Luther himself was not above transforming secular tunes into pious song.
One day he walked through Wittenberg's market and heard a professional colporteur of news from around the country intone, "From far away to you I come." Luther rushed home and turned this song into one of the world's most beloved Advent hymns, "From heav'n above to earth I come."
At issue, then, are not the origin or age of a hymn but its content and musical quality -- and even more so its purpose. George Barna observed a remarkable difference of opinion among ministers and congregants on this subject.
"More that four out of five pastors said music was very important to facilitate effective worship," he said. "However, barely half of the congregants agreed. In fact, in assessing the ranking of the ten worship elements studied, pastors rated music second only to prayer (as, by the way, did Luther).
"Congregants, however, rated music in a tie for fifth place, following prayer, the sermon, communion and a time for reflection."
In a curious way, then, many American Protestants are in the process of going back in liturgical history to pre-Reformation times, becoming increasingly passive in worship where their forebears had been active.
This has its perils. For as Jay Rochelle, a former Lutheran professor of liturgy, now a sub-deacon in the Antiochian Orthodox Church, observed, "When Eastern Christians listen to their ancient liturgies, they identify with a great tradition spanning a millennium and a half."
But what of those who sit the soft megachurch
seats, taking in soothing or exciting sounds emitted by praise
bands? What will they pass on to subsequent generations -- anything
comparable to St. Ambrose's powerfully inspired Te Deum? Or to
Gregorian chant? Or to Luther's stirring "Mighty fortress"
and Louis Bourgeois' wonderful doxology, "Praise God from
whom all blessings flow?"
"None of that," said Rochelle sadly, "all they'll
be left with will be wimpish, limp-wristed stuff."