MUSIC IN SCRIPTURE

Over thirty years ago, when I wrote and attempted to introduce new song material into the Christian liturgy of an evangelical outreach facility, I was told not to bother, music had already been written (in earlier centuries) for Christian worship.  I was also told as much by the man who initially led me to Christ in Germany, a Plymouth Brethren missionary, when I played for him music I had composed to one of David’s psalms.  In another church where I presented my music to the choir director, I was stonily confronted with the question, Did I think I was better than Johann Sebastian Bach? 

To the pastor who told me music necessary for Christian worship had already been written, I should have responded, “Then why has God gifted new composers?”  But I was young, unwitting, and easily dissuaded by a respected pastor.  For years I remained disturbed remembering that this pastor, who had also told me not to waste my time making new music, was generally unavailable because of his pursuit of an advanced college degree.  Though new music is not the point of Christianity, evidently college degrees are. 

If music is not important, why have any music at all? 

“All the evidence gathered by the scholars in anthropology and comparative religion, and by the pioneers on the mission field, shows that music of a primitive but recognizable kind is not only a natural activity of man at all stages of his development, but is peculiarly natural to that region of consciousness which we call religious.”⁷⁴ 

Failing to provide a forum or format on a regular basis for new music under Christian auspices in Christian community is thoroughly unwise, as the advance of non-Christian culture into the sanctuary has already begun to show.  Christianity is more than in its proselytizing, in its talkers.  There is the existential fact of just being Christian, the day-to-day, nitty-gritty living of it.  And that includes support in real terms.  Preachers, for instance, who understand the necessity of tithing, will argue that they see nothing in  the New Testament for music to be paid.  Despite that there is also no instruction about tithing in the New Testament, God maintains these preachers in their earthly needs - as though by example - in the tithing.  Denying new music support in real terms is an example of church “utilitarianism” (the teaching that usefulness is the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions⁷⁵). 

Isn’t it interesting that almost all the prophets in the old testament were associated with music and poetry?  Most of them wrote in poetic forms - much of it to be sung or chanted.  The great king of Israel, David, was a musician-poet. 

Tithing was not reinstated until restoration of the Levite musicians and singers was complete (Ne 13:10-12). 

Musical skill is acknowledged (1 Ch 15:22); and given position (1 Ch 15:22b); skill is urged (Ps 33:3b); instruments are to be tuned (1 Ch 15:20, 21); and new songs are stressed (Ps 33:3a; Rv 5:9a). 

Music is an arm of prophecy and an inspiration for prophecy (1 Ch 25:1, 2, 6-7; 1 Sa 10:5-6; 2 Ki 3:15).  Music repels demons (1 Sa 16:16f). 

Music without words is good as expression of the heart (Is 16:11); for joy (1 Sa 6:5; 1 Ch 15:28); for mourning and despair (Ps 43); as celebration (1 Ch 13:8; 1 Ch 15:28; 16:5-6; 2 Sa 6:5); as part of officiation (2 Ch 29:25-26) and for for giving thanks (Ps 33:21). 

The Lord’s arrival is prepared by music inspiring people to praise (2 Ch 5:12-14) 

Music is warned against being part of profane assembly (Is 5:11-12); music is not only shown as being important for God’s community, but is exemplified for where it is provided (1 Ch 15:16-22; Ne 12:46); 

Music being removed from human society is punishment (Rv 18:22); and music is the one kind of activity in the human sphere that goes on eternally in the heavenly (Rv 5:9f). 

What point is to be made by saying, as some evangelists have, that music is not important?  Okay, let’s say that music in Christianity is merely an accommodation.  Why is it, in our multi-cultural society, that certain culture is not accommodated, leaving some out in the cold?  Are we about encouraging a constant stream of breakaway congregations as a result of inappropriate culture, misapplied culture, or cultural stagnation in order to continuously sing without thought, to be lifelessly engaged in the familiar without discovery?  Or, in the case of our younger generations, by trying to beat the world at its game by bringing the hit-parade into church?

Although Christ is not anchored to a culture, culture is the context in how we can understand.  And art - i.e., poetry, music, dance, and such - is the better part of culture.  Opportunity and Big Bucks have eaten out the soul of this erstwhile God-fearing nation, resulting in self-satisfied, lukewarm Christianity - the American-Laodicean church.  To paraphrase Francis Schaeffer: the American church has come to equate the mores of the middle class with the Christian Way; and sees Christianity as the means to bring peace in order to enjoy the rewards of affluence. 

“. . . . the majority in the middle class have no real basis whatsoever for their values since they have given up the Christian viewpoint.  They just function on the ‘memory.’  This is why so many young people feel that the middle class is ugly.  These people are plastic, ugly and plastic, because they try to tell others what to do on the basis of their own values, but with no ground for those values.  They have no base. 

 “They have no categories to say this is right and that is wrong. 

 “Not long ago John Gardner, head of the Urban Coalition, spoke in Washington to a group of student leaders.  His topic was on restoring values in our culture.  When he finished, there was a dead silence.  Then finally one man from Harvard stood up and in a moment of complete brilliance asked, ‘Sir, upon what base do you build your values?’. . . He simply looked down and said,  ‘I do not know.’. . .  Here was a man crying to the young people for a return to values, but he offered nothing to build on . . . .  Functioning only on a dim memory, these are the parents who have turned off their children when their children ask why and how.  When their children cry out, ‘Yours is a plastic culture.’ they are silent.”⁷⁶ 

So steeped are we in the mercantile ethos, that turns preacher into salesman and art into commercial, that culture itself specifically by way of music has become merely another commodity in which memory, in an increasingly speeded-up process, is being erased nearly every generation. 

Each generation says to the previous: you learned what you learned.  Now we learn what we learn.  And ne’er the twain shall meet. 

When the American Revolution severed its people from the aristocracy it also put away from itself the class that supported the arts, without taking up the responsibilities thus left unattended.  The moneyed class in America, that described in Baltzell’s book, Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia [see references cited], as the Philadelphia Man, as a class, felt no sense of responsibility towards the arts, although there have been some exceptional men and women to come out of that class in this regard. 

There is a sense among many of the churches, especially among the musicians, that the traditional music is not cutting it in the modern world for the Christian purpose.  They have fallen behind, a strange concept for evangelical Christianity to have.  Music directors are looking this way and that for what to do next.  There being no particular place at the local level to look, far as a Christian is concerned, for fresh forms of music, some of them are actually asking children and other untutored young persons of varying and idiosyncratic musical skills for direction.  Thus the flow into the churches of popular musics. 

Thinking to serve youth by capitulating to that which stems from their untutored natures, and bringing it into church, is not serving youth but giving in to exactly what they need to be drawn away from. 

Post-modern Jazz and musics of the 20th century classical discipline are not being argued here to replace common-song.  That is not possible, nor is it the purpose.  It is their being given proper place within the Christian sphere of cultural influence that matters.  Relative to that, what may also emerge, as a by-product, is new and perhaps more authentic offering for the greater congregation.  

“Erik Routley, in writing about differences between good and bad music, says, ‘What is “new” must be in controversy with what is “old”, and the real vice that lies behind this kind of composition is a fear of that controversy, a fear of “newness”.’  Jazz is such a new kind of composition in the precincts of the church; . . . it does, nevertheless, number among its functions the heightening of awareness, the inducement of reflection, the stimulation of imaginative comprehension, and the nurturing of objective ideals - all these in relation not to the music itself but to the area of religious ideas.  When any kind of musical expression fails to convey these qualities in sum or in part, that music is open to valid criticism from all who are within its sphere of influence.  Unless the adoption of a new musical style were intended to upset all current practices and standards, the inclusion of jazz would have to satisfy one or more of these functions or substitute others that are noticeably superior to them.  Whether jazz style is able to stimulate any of the attitudes mentioned above depends upon its relative newness.  The perception of such music with its many complexities requires serious attention and, for the inexperienced, can greatly detract from the purpose of worship.  If the listener’s attention is directed principally toward such matters as elaboration of melodic or harmonic patterns, or the complexities of rhythm, his thoughts are divorced from the proper area of religious meditation, whether the music in question be new or old.” 

Therefore, as will be discussed later, the need for a Christian-run, physical locations outside the church - centers where there is no critical reason to leave the Christian environ in order to experience the innovative [see JOB’S PIANO - A PERFORMING ARTS CENTER {Segment 14}], not unlike as it was for Bach at the Court of Coethen [see PURITANS].  It is precisely in helping to overcome the “shock” of the new which detracts from worship that defines one of the primary reasons such centers are needed.  Striking innovation, for reasons mentioned above, should not take place during worship service. 

“The tendency of the church to be nervous of human inventions - even when it has turned out that the hesitation was purely precautionary - has already been mentioned, and is well known, especially to its detractors.  This hesitation has, of course, been the result of the necessity under which any responsible organ of the Church must refer any new invention to categories of judgment far more profound and numerous than those with which the non-religious thinker has to deal.  Atonal church music, therefore, is hardly to be found at all.”⁷⁷ 

Yet another reason for Centers.