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And the most notable era of Scottish preaching was in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they had great power. In fact, the strongest reformational preaching going on in Europe at that time was in Scotland, the great preaching of the Reformation in Scotland. For two centuries it lasted. And Blakey writing in 1888 points out [...]

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I read, with a chuckle, that some of the writers here have been called Beethoven-only, a tongue-in-cheek, but ironically inaccurate nick.  Actually, some of us believe Western music began to go wrong with Beethoven, but let me not divert matters. I understand the idea behind the title. Scott has dealt elsewhere with the straw-man argument that [...]

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 I defend a conservative philosophy of worship not because I want to protect old in the rejection of new, but because I believe “traditional” forms (both old and new) are more flexible and elastic in what they can express in worship, are better suited to carry rich truth about God, and are more appropriate than [...]

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Unless you believe in orthopathy as essential to Christianity, the worship wars are much ado over nothing. They represent the dying thrashes of hide-bound traditionalists, raging against the waning popularity of those songs most familiar to them. They represent the immature clamor of people who do not understand the Romans 14 principle, [...]

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In the past week or so, we’ve seen some of the happenings at Northland expose (at least as far as the Internet can demonstrate) the fault-line that exists in Fundamentalism over music. Of course, the battle over music is by no means limited to Baptist Fundamentalists. It remains a matter of contention in Reformed, [...]

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Straw Men in the Music/Worship Debate

One of the most dangerous, yet easy pitfalls one can fall into when discussing music/worship issues is to misrepresent the opposing view (most likely unintentionally). This is easy to fall into because it’s always easier to blow down an opponent’s position if you get to invent a pretty weak [...]

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Several days ago, I watched a posted video of a previously streamed chapel service at an independent Baptist school located in the deep woods of Wisconsin. (The video from this chapel seems to have since been removed.) The chapel opened with a word from the president of that school. After a few pleasantries, he proceeded [...]

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