What is wrong with contemporary worship music? Or: Why our music must be cruciform.
I recently found myself having to walk out from a worship service at a Baptist Church, as I could not stand the kind of worship music that is becoming the norm among Evangelicals. This happened when the European Baptist Federation celebrated the opening of its annual conference, this year in Lviv, Ukraine. As it was a celebration the volume was extra high, etc., making the music quite intolerable.
I would normally argue that as long as we are gathered in the name of Christ, no question of aesthetics can justify leaving church – no matter how bad the music is! While I still think this is true in principle, I felt this time I had to go and breathe some air (and get a beer) in order to reflect upon what it is with contemporary worship music, that I dislike so much. What I found is that it’s not just a matter of taste and style, but a matter of how form relates to content.
The misconception that the gospel must in some way be given an arbitrary form that does not follow from its content, but is a matter of ”taste”, runs parallel to the modern (Kantian) conception of the world as a formless noumenon that must have a form imposed on it by the human subject. Radical Orthodoxy has made the point that this kind of subjectivism is a kind of idolatry as it makes the form constructed by the human subject a kind of false god, that determines how we relate to reality and ultimately God.
But the form of the gospel is not something we choose and produce arbitrarily. The form of the gospel must be derived from its content. The form of the gospel is the cross.
Our music must be cruciform. As Luther and the Dionysios knew, God hides in suffering and dwells in an inapproachable darkness. It could be argued that the original Baptists or the Quakers acknowledged this most fully when they rid the worship of music altogether. Perhaps silence is the only adequate response to the godforsakenness of the cross. But then again. Neither does silence by its formlessness suffice to acknowledge the peculiar form of the gospel.
The gospel is not just a set of propositions about certain facts – states of affairs – in the world. The gospel is God’s revelation of himself in the world. The gospel is Jesus Christ. Our words and songs about the gospel uncovers aspects of the gospel, but do so not just by descriptive language, but also by participating in the gospel itself (Christ!) by acquiring its form. Only a pragmatic(ist) understanding of language will work here.
It is hardly a coincidence that traditional protestant hymnsinging developed the way it did. Neither is it a coincidence that pentecostalism and charismatic evangelicalism has developed the peculiar kind of aesthetics that it has. The worship songs popular in contemporary evangelicalism often convey a theologia gloriae rather than a theologia crucis. Much is said about the power and greatness and glory of God, but very little about the weakness and meekness of the suffering Christ on the cross.
A theology that is all about power and glory does not have much time for solemn hymns. A theology of the cross must, however, convey its content with a certain degree of solemnity. This is not to say that we cannot sing songs of joy, but only that joy is to break out of solemnity as Jesus from the grave.
It is easy to idolize Primitive Baptist singing with its solemn acapella-style, but this should of course also be avoided. No form perfectly expresses the infinite meaning of the gospel. Nevertheless, there are arguably some musical styles that do the job better than others.
I would normally argue that as long as we are gathered in the name of Christ, no question of aesthetics can justify leaving church – no matter how bad the music is! While I still think this is true in principle, I felt this time I had to go and breathe some air (and get a beer) in order to reflect upon what it is with contemporary worship music, that I dislike so much. What I found is that it’s not just a matter of taste and style, but a matter of how form relates to content.
The misconception that the gospel must in some way be given an arbitrary form that does not follow from its content, but is a matter of ”taste”, runs parallel to the modern (Kantian) conception of the world as a formless noumenon that must have a form imposed on it by the human subject. Radical Orthodoxy has made the point that this kind of subjectivism is a kind of idolatry as it makes the form constructed by the human subject a kind of false god, that determines how we relate to reality and ultimately God.
But the form of the gospel is not something we choose and produce arbitrarily. The form of the gospel must be derived from its content. The form of the gospel is the cross.
Our music must be cruciform. As Luther and the Dionysios knew, God hides in suffering and dwells in an inapproachable darkness. It could be argued that the original Baptists or the Quakers acknowledged this most fully when they rid the worship of music altogether. Perhaps silence is the only adequate response to the godforsakenness of the cross. But then again. Neither does silence by its formlessness suffice to acknowledge the peculiar form of the gospel.
The gospel is not just a set of propositions about certain facts – states of affairs – in the world. The gospel is God’s revelation of himself in the world. The gospel is Jesus Christ. Our words and songs about the gospel uncovers aspects of the gospel, but do so not just by descriptive language, but also by participating in the gospel itself (Christ!) by acquiring its form. Only a pragmatic(ist) understanding of language will work here.
It is hardly a coincidence that traditional protestant hymnsinging developed the way it did. Neither is it a coincidence that pentecostalism and charismatic evangelicalism has developed the peculiar kind of aesthetics that it has. The worship songs popular in contemporary evangelicalism often convey a theologia gloriae rather than a theologia crucis. Much is said about the power and greatness and glory of God, but very little about the weakness and meekness of the suffering Christ on the cross.
A theology that is all about power and glory does not have much time for solemn hymns. A theology of the cross must, however, convey its content with a certain degree of solemnity. This is not to say that we cannot sing songs of joy, but only that joy is to break out of solemnity as Jesus from the grave.
It is easy to idolize Primitive Baptist singing with its solemn acapella-style, but this should of course also be avoided. No form perfectly expresses the infinite meaning of the gospel. Nevertheless, there are arguably some musical styles that do the job better than others.
