The Similarities Between Baroque and Rock Music

History is one of elitism’s greatest enemies.  The more I study history, and particularly that of music, the more I realize that there is nothing new under the sun. 

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Review of Love Shine Through, by Tim Hughes

Tim Hughes, Love Shine Through (Kingsway)
Released: April 19, 2011 

Tim Hughes is not necessarily a household name in evangelical modern worship, but his breakout song, “Here I Am to Worship,” has established him as a notable songwriter, despite the fact that his material since then has probably gone under-noticed and under-appreciated.  In my opinion, he is on par with the other Brits (e.g. Matt Redman, Vicky Beeching) who continue to trend toward greater biblical and theological depth in their text-writing.  Hughes’ home base is Holy Trinity Brompton, a vibrant and evangelical community of the Anglican Church in London.

SUMMARY

Love Shine Through is a rich 12-track album (with one repeat song).  Musically, it is well-produced and sonically creative within the broad pop rock genre, and textually it is solid and biblically-informed.  The songs I would most likely incorporate into my church’s worship context would be “Counting on Your Name,” “Jesus Saves,” and “Keep the Faith.”

MUSICALITY

The album is a polished, in-studio project complete with masterful mixing and effects, and yet it is well-rounded in its musical expression such that it can’t be accused of being “pop kitsch.”  From flanged vocals (“Wake Up”), to pulsating loops (“Jesus Saves”), to programmed synths (“At Your Name”), the work is a treat for the ear.  Tim Hughes has a clear and enaging voice, with a surprisingly high range and beautiful color on the top end.  Counterbalancing the programming, there is tasteful employment of strings (“Keep the Faith”) and magisterial bursts of brass (“Love Shine Through”).  There are moments of soaring black gospel-style (“All Glory”), intimate solo piano ballad (“Ecclesiastes”), and everything in between.

THEOLOGICAL CONTENT

Love Shine Through is a biblically-rooted, God-centered record.  Traditionalists may still balk at the repetitive nature of the songs, but we can no longer accuse modern worship of being “fluffy.”  To date, there are too many counter-examples for this to be accurate even as a generalization, at least among the current heavy-hitters in modern worship.  Perhaps there is no shortage of first personal pronouns on this record, but that observation does not take away from the fact that the trajectory of the texts is away from self and toward God.

“Ecclesiastes” is an intriguing song.  It’s not quite a lament, though it’s not really a typical “worship song,” either.  It’s an attempt to offer the congregational song a voice for the polarities and vicissitudes of life so well-captured in the book of wisdom that gives the song its name.  Here’s verse one:

There’s a time for tears
And a time to dance
There’s a time to let go
And a time for romance
There’s a time for war
And a time for peace
There’s a time to embrace
And a time to release

It has been said well by many worship thinkers that if the church could expand her worship-vocabulary to more adequately reflect the full range of humanity captured in Scripture, she would be prepared to more steadily handle the ups and downs of life.  A Christian wouldn’t be shaken in the face of suffering or war or disaster.  Often times, Christians who fall away from “the faith” have fallen away not from the faith but from some poorly constructed, highly diluted form of Christianity.  And often this is a result of the impoverished and emaciated worship language they have engaged in when they’ve attended worship services.  Songs like “Ecclesiastes” continue to fuel me with hope and excitement that our mainstream worship songwriters are sensing this impoverishment and addressing it. 

Modern worship albums are often found requesting God’s “fire to fall.”  The phrase is a bit nebulous, though it seems (given modern worship’s heavy charismatic influence) that the request is for the Spirit’s presence to fall like the tongues of fire at Pentecost (Acts 2).  “Keep the Faith,” interestingly, makes the request with an entirely different biblical allusion in mind:

I’m laying out all the pieces of my life
On the altar I’m your sacrifice
Let your fire fall
I’m waiting here
Come and take it all
This heart of fear

This fire is not that of Pentecost but of Carmel.  It is a beautiful twist on this oft-used phrase (“let your fire fall”), melding the “living sacrifice” themes of Romans 12 with the Old Testament episodes of miraculous heaven-borne bursts of flames which all but incinerate their target.  It’s a powerful image of the intensity of our offering ourselves to God—the wholeness of consecration.

American evangelicals know “Jesus Saves” as a Jeremy Camp radio hit, but this exciting and mission-focused song actually belongs to Hughes and co-writer Nick Herbert.

Hughes and his songwriting cohorts, perhaps typical of modern worship, lyricize more often impressionistically than in complete sentences or progressive thoughts.  “Saviour’s Song” reads:

The Creator
Humbled by creation
You kissed a world in mercy
Embraced us at the cross

“All Glory” sings:

How great is Your love
It never gives up on me
Stronger than shame
It carries me back to You
Jesus, my redeemer
You have made a way

Much of the album is expressed in this manner.  Two things are noteworthy about this phenomenon in modern worship songwriting.  First, it is a departure from how nearly every generation has expressed its sung praise to God.  From our earliest hymns, through the Reformation, and into the twentieth century, our hymns have been more or less readable as stand-alone poetry, with more cohesive expression and thought-patterns.  Second, it is at least partially indicative of the erosion of language which can be attributed to a text-messaged, Twitterized culture—short bursts of expression with less need for grammatical and conceptual connections from one line to the next.  Is this a direct criticism of Hughes and Love Shine Through?  By no means.  I am merely pointing out indicators and attempting to raise awareness.  As a worship leader, though, I want to temper this kind of linguistic expression with what is more typical of the last two thousand years of worship songwriting.  

It is interesting to examine modern worship albums through the lens of sociologist-anthropologist Jenell Williams Paris, whose chapter in The Message in the Music (2007)¹ explored the use of romantic language in the top CCLI songs between 1989 and 2005.  She summarizes her findings by saying that our songs exhibit “an overreliance on the American romantic ideal in worship.”²  Prevalent stylistic motifs convey God as a "knight in shining armor" and "riding off into the sunset" with His beloved.  Paris is not criticizing this expression as much as its prevalence and dominance in our worship.  With this grid in mind, I believe Paris would point out the line in “God is Coming”:

Here You come
Running to find me
King of the universe

Hughes seems to balance this well with other takes on our relationship with God throughout the album, but perhaps with the abundance of such expression, our modern worship songwriters can continue to broaden our worship expression beyond the romantic.

All in all, Love Shine Through is a wonderful record, musically and textually, and it is worth a listen, especially for worship leaders scouting out new material that may be slightly off the beaten path.

¹Jenell Williams Paris, “I Could Sing of Your Love Forever: American Romance in Contemporary Worship Music,” in The Message in the Music: Studying Contemporary Praise & Worship, ed. Robert Woods and Brian Walrath (Nashville: Abigndon, 2007), 43-53.

²Paris, “I Could Sing,” 45.



Tradition vs. Traditionalism: Worship, Idolatry, and the Heart

Part of the reason Lent exists is for us to confront our sin and idolatry head-on... 

"Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. Tradition lives in conversation with the past, while remembering where we are and when we are and that it is we who have to decide. Traditionalism supposes that nothing should ever be done for the first time, so all that is needed to solve any problem is to arrive at the supposedly unanimous testimony of this homogenized tradition." - Jaroslav Pelikan, U.S. News & World Report, June 26, 1989

When God called me to my church almost four years ago, I sensed that a primary call of mine would be to help pastor our congregation, both corporately and individually, away from traditionalism and toward a Christ-centered embrace of tradition.  I'll be candid in my analysis of the situation. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we are one of the last standing evangelical churches with vibrant traditional worship.¹  To be sure, there are churches in Denver with strong traditional worship, but most of them do not have evangelical pulpits.  And certainly there are churches in Denver with committed, orthodox preaching, but almost all of them are “contemporary,” stylistically.  This puts us in a very peculiar place because, as evangelical churches have swung away from traditional worship, we have become a haven for what I call “evangelical traditionalist refugees”—people whose hearts most intimately connect with traditional worship who have no other place to go for evangelical preaching.  (There are, of course, many things to lament about how deeply embedded consumerism is in the evangelical psyche, such that we find ourselves in this place, but that is for another time and another post.)

The net effect of our church being a Traditionalist Refugee Camp is that, left unchecked, this has a hardening effect on the ethos and mindset of our people.  Our worshipers have often left their previous churches scarred, alienated, and hurt.  They therefore enter our doors with pain and sometimes a chip on their shoulder.  They find like-minded commarades—a community which shares their values and sensibilities—and they tend to, often in private conversation or small groups, disparage other forms and expressions of worship.  The deep wounds feed fear of change.  Fear of change begins to grip the heart, and a healthy appreciation of tradition is corrupted into a worship of tradition.  This is traditionalism.

The difference between tradition and traditionalism is an issue ultimately of the heart.  Tradition is a beautiful thing.  In fact, tradition is necessary to truly be the Church.  The Church, at any point in time, must recognize that it is a trans-temporal community.  Saints who have gone before and saints who will follow are, ongoingly, our brothers and sisters.  One of the reasons we embrace Church tradition is simply because it is part of what it means to truly be the Church.  To ignore tradition would be to cut ourselves off from a huge part of the body of Christ, the “catholic Church” (in the words of the Apostles’ Creed).  But, as Tim Keller has said time and again, idolatry occurs when we take good things (like tradition) and make them ultimate things. 

How can one know when tradition has been corrupted into traditionalism?  It’s all about symptoms which betray the root disease.  Symptoms can include:

• reaction of fear, defensiveness, or anger when any deviation from the norm takes place
• an unloving or judgmental attitude toward those who do not embrace tradition as you do
• a persistent need to speak your mind about the matter to and with others
• a strong penchant toward defending tradition at every turn
• comments which use possessive and personal pronouns: “what speaks to me,” “what I love,” “my preferences,” etc.

What is the cure?  The cure is only apparent when an adequate diagnosis is given.  We could encourage traditionalists to “be more loving” or to, in the words of Philippians 2, “consider others better than yourselves.”  We could preach against the sins of bitterness, fear, and wrongly-expressed anger.  But none of these things get at the heart of the matter.  The issue lies at the throne of the heart.  If tradition reigns on the throne of your heart, you will defend it at any cost.  You will find fault with anyone who challenges it.  You will protect it as a loyal servant would his or her lord and master.  You will judge those who do not equally revere it as you do.  Lords, masters, and kings demand that kind of allegiance.  The diagnosis, then, is ultimately misplaced affection.  You love tradition more than you love Jesus.  No, you would never say that, because, theologically, you know that’s wrong.  But your actions betray what’s truly in your heart.

When Christ is on the throne of your heart, tradition cannot be corrupted into traditionalism.  Christ reigns, without peer.  When we love Christ more than tradition, we can say, “Though I don’t go hog-wild over repeating refrains, drums, blocks of songs, and electric guitars, I recognize that some are freed up to engage with God there, and I’m not going to break fellowship over it.  I’m going to sing alongside my sister, giving it my best.” And by the way, this goes both ways.  When it comes to worship, if the gospel is taking root in a community of faith, we will see the kind of mutual submission described in Ephesians 5.  We will see people joyfully laying down their preferences.  The lion will lie down with the lamb, babies will play in snakes’ dens, and traditionalists will worship with contemporary folks.  We will see contemporary folks laying down their idolatries of, in the words of T. David Gordon, “contemporaneity-as-a-value” (i.e. what’s new is what’s best) and embracing tradition because they love all of Christ’s body.   

¹ The label “traditional” is nearly as broad and nebulous as “contemporary,” of course, and I share a grief over the deficiencies of these terms and over the division in Christ’s church that such polarization has caused.  Nevertheless, I haven’t found better terms to use as I seek to speak into this issue.  Our traditional worship, if I can speak in spectral terms, puts us on the 75-mark between “low church traditional” (0; more Baptistic/revivalistic) and “high church traditional” (100; more Anglican/classical/liturgical).  So our service tends to have a Presbyterian liturgical structure, a more classically-oriented stylistic expression with choir and organ, alongside occasional revivalistic expressions.

Contemporary Worship Threw the Baby Out when it Critiqued Traditionalism but Abandoned Tradition

 The latest edition of Neue Magazine contains a great little article* by Chuck DeGroat, pastor at City Church San Francisco.  I’d like to quote extensively from it:

Several decades ago, the Western church integrated new experiments in musical expression, aesthetics, communication and more. Responding to the stagnancy of churches caught in endless intellectual debates between fundamentalism and liberalism, some chose to put the past behind them, creating the contemporary American church. The Church needed renewal, and it needed to engage the demands of modern life.

But the response was extreme. It critiqued traditionalism but threw out tradition in the process. The historian Jaroslav Pelikan has said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead; traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” The longing for a rooted faith re-emerged in young men and women who, in the 1990s, left contemporary churches in significant numbers for Orthodox, Catholic and Anglican churches.  Some in the U.K., New Zealand and the U.S. began experimenting with classic liturgical expressions re-presented in new forms and music. It was the resurrection of the living faith of the dead.

Several thoughts.  First, I’ve never thought of the connection between the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early 20^th century and the rise of the “contemporary church” and “contemporary worship.”  That’s a fascinating observation that I haven’t heard anyone else make to date.  It makes sense, then, that some of the anti-intellectualism, emotionalism, and experientialism that has shaped and characterized modern worship may be a reaction to the high emphasis on truth and tradition, which evangelicalism held high during the fundamentalist-modernist controversy.   It is interesting that those years have perhaps planted a subconscious anti-intellectual bias deep in evangelicalism’s institutional memory.  If this is the case, what DeGroat says makes sense.  For, with a broad brush, it was the boomer generation that shirked the tradition and traditionalism of its fathers and mothers, and it is the children of that generation which are re-discovering this lost tradition.

Second, the Pelikan quote is potent.  As far as I can track it, the reference is to an article found in the June 26, 1989 edition of U.S. News & World Report.  The distinction between tradition and traditionalism is one many have made, and it’s a very important clarification to make.  DeGroat goes on:

Though I’m glad liturgy is “cool again,” renewed interest in traditional liturgical expressions seems to be accompanied by the notion that classic practices like the Eucharist or the Call to Worship are choices in a grand liturgical buffet.  In other words, renewed liturgical expression can come with a lack of good thinking around liturgical integrity—the purpose of the liturgy as a whole.

The elements of liturgical worship are not choices in an ecclesial buffet line. Rather, as a whole, they tell a Story.  And that Story counters the stories we are told in the many liturgies we practice every day.  The elements of the liturgy are not merely cool sacred opportunities. Together, they form (and re-form) us, telling a different Story than we typically encounter.

This is a valuable reminder to evangelicals drawn to liturgy and tradition.  Evangelicals, especially from low church traditions (like me), won’t have the foundation to understand elements of liturgy like those from high church traditions.  They did not grow up with it.  They did not experience its cohesion, its Story.  So, it can be tempting for worship planners and leaders who want to “use more liturgy” to take this a la carte approach, procuring a Book of Common Prayer and pulling prayers, statements, and elements out for more randomized usage.

I’m one that does this, so I’m not totally against using aspects of tradition where appropriate.  But, we need to understand that liturgical traditions have been fashioned over decades and centuries, and many pastor-theologians have been a part of the crafting of these Gospel Stories. 

Here's one example to put feet on these admonitions.  It's how I process my own denominational tradition (presbyterianism) in light of what has been called the "Great Tradition."  For Presbyterians, we have a way of telling the liturgical Story that has been handed down from our predecessors.  The modern American Presbyterian Story-shape has a path that looks something like this:

New Testament / Apostolic Church
Early Church & Fathers
Medieval Catholicism
Reformers (esp. Bucer, Calvin)
Knox / Anglicanism / English Puritanism
American Revivalism
20^th & 21^st Century American Church

All these factors have shaped the liturgy of my evangelical denomination, and similar factors have shaped others.  The point is that as we “experiment” with liturgy, we must be aware of these greater shaping forces and the Story they’ve been trying to tell over the history of our worship.  If this topic is of interest to you, Robert Webber’s Worship Old and New is a great place to start.  Bryan Chapell's Christ-Centered Worship is a way to go even deeper than that, because it analyzes the common liturgical themes that spread across almost all major Christian traditions (see my review of that book).

*DeGroat, Chuck. “Life as Liturgy: Seeing What Shapes Us.” Neue. February/March, 2011: 22.



What Would Jonathan Edwards Think About Modern Worship?

I used to be “us vs. them” when it came to worship.  I used to associate myself with the the thoughtful folk who were quick and clear in pointing out all the theological and pragmatic deficiencies of contemporary and modern worship.  Their voice is still heard today.  They’re quick to sniff out charismania.  They’re quick to label with words like “hype,” “emotionalism,” and “manipulation.”

A big traditionalist criticism of modern worship is that it insists upon emotional euphoria in every service and every song.  This criticism is not without warrant.  It is simply fact that much of the character of modern evangelical worship is shaped by Azusa Street-style charismatic worship habits.  The modern charismatic renewal, beginning in the early 1900s, seemed to insist upon similar pinnacles of euphoria as litmus tests for the presence, power, and movement of the Holy Spirit.   Many, many people have exposed the shortcomings of such a criterion.  However, our quickness to criticize and disassociate ourselves may be a baby/bathwater moment, and I think Jonathan Edwards’ posture toward similar happenings in his own day is instructive here.

The more I read Edwards, and the more I read about him, the more I want to be like him—at once theologically tenacious but experientially generous.  Some consider Edwards America’s greatest philosopher.  Whether or not this is true, the fact that he is even considered in the rankings tells us that he had a superior intellect and that he wasn’t merely a biblical scholar or puritanical evangelical.  Edwards is an intellectual Renaissance man—a historian, a philosopher, a theologian, a psychologist. 

When the Great Awakening unraveled in the United States, people (as we always do) picked sides.  There were the sold out bandwagon-ites who believed that these emotionally driven revivals were pure, unadulterated God-work.  There were the hard-lined skeptics who were quick to explain away the work.  Then there were those like Edwards who stood somewhere in between.  Could it be that one of the most well-versed philosopher-theologians to ever exist had anything kind to say about the ecstatic charismania of his day?  Apparently so.  Religious Affections, alongside a few other works, was the published wrestling of Edwards on this topic.  Edwards was not interested in proving that the Great Awakening was true and legitimate; he was committed to discovering, both from exegeting culture and the Bible, just what was true and legitimate about America's "new birth."  Contra traditionalists, Edwards was not willing to label all the emotionalism as hype, because Edwards understood biblical anthropology—we are whole creatures.  Nor, therefore, was the stirring of emotion a necessary evil.

Can we even stop right there and learn a few things from one of the most learned Americans about our own analysis of modern worship’s emotionalism?  I’ll leave that question largely rhetorical while pointing out something about the traditionalist thought-pattern I encounter in my church (I am using “traditionalist” not necessarily in terms of worship style but worship approach…I know several people who are fine with contemporary worship who approach worship from a “traditionalist” view).  I observe them, sometimes, to be terribly conflicted people.  I observe that some tend to overly compartmentalize their lives.  It says something to me when, in another context, they are full of emotion and bodily energy (such as when they're watching a football game), but when corporate worship rolls around, they're Narnian statues.  It further says something to me when they develop theological constructs to defend their stone-iness: “I worship from my heart,” or “Outward expression does not befit the reverence God demands in worship.”

Edwards would remind us that not all emotionalism is bad and that emotions can be a sign of heart-affections spilling forth.  In short, I think Jonathan Edwards would approach processing modern worship similarly to how he handled the Great Awakening—with some sympathy and support and some careful theological analysis and clarification.  Can modern worship be overly ecstatic?  Yes.  Does emotional manipulation exist in modern worship contexts?  Sure.  Can these experiences lead people to develop an unhealthy appetite for emotional euphoria, leading them to crave the experience more than long for God?  Certainly.  But a reaction to bag it all would be to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Why Traditionalist Criticisms of Modern Worship End Up Being Criticisms of the Bible Itself

You must read through the whole blog post (and track what he's doing in the links) to realize what Jeremy Pierce is doing here.  Outstanding.  Pierce says and defends biblically in fewer words...and much more cleverly...what I've tried to say in many posts for well over a year.

If this guy showed up at my doorstep, I'd kiss him.  On the cheek.  In a brotherly sort of way.  With my wife watching.  And my elders praying.

The Artistry of the Ancient Won Me Over...I Kept Coming Back

I see this testimony time and again.  It is my own story, too.  I continue to meet young people, attracted to the ancient faith that their parents abandoned and they never knew.  Ritual…liturgy…hymns.  This is the testimony of Stephanie S. Smith at worship.com.  It’s written so well.  Here’s the first half, but you can read the full post here.  It's just another example of why new generations are interested in the convergence of old things and new things: old hymns to new music; new expressions of ancient liturgy.

Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer pews to movie theatre seats in a church.  One of my favorite things about visiting Europe was the cathedrals.  Hymns are endeared to me, beloved and familiar, and I feel swept up in the liturgy as we worshippers all join together in a common response.  There is certainly beauty and truth in all worship, but for myself I have always experienced a particular sense of awe through older spiritual traditions.

In college I started attending an urban megachurch, the kind with its own podcast and concert lighting, but then gravitated towards a small, liturgical church instead.  My friends and I called it “high church for low people” because the service consisted of formal liturgy and hymns but met in an old theatre where remnants of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” adorned the stage where the altar might have been. 

Worship was a strange medley of old and new: congregants wore street clothes and toted travel mugs into the service, yet sang hymns written by church fathers to the classical consort complete with violin and penny whistle.  The pastor wore a sweater instead of the traditional stole or clerical collar, yet led us through a liturgy of “Thees and Thous”.  The artistry of the ancient won me over; I kept coming back.

I loved this little church because its liturgy offered me something solid.  And you have to understand: I am the kind of person on whom measuring cups and day planners are lost.  Blame it on my creative assets, but I do not do well with structure.  However, I found that the structure of the creeds and prayers actually appealed to me.  Rather than being rote and routine, the liturgy acted as an anchor for me in my transitional college years.  The ancient script allowed me to join the ranks of saints who affirmed these very truths centuries before me, even as I stood: a college student with midterm eye circles and a penchant for picking pennies from the sidewalk.  In this recital of truth, I felt I was participating in the great “cloud of witnesses” spoken of in Hebrews 12, who encourage us to press on in the race they have already won.