Whenever the question is asked whether associations matter in musical choices, people usually fall into one of two camps. First are those who strongly believe that associations matter. If a particular song is in any way associated with a raunchy lifestyle, errant theology, or questionable movement, then we must avoid using that song, whether or… Continue Reading
On Saturdays we repost articles from the archives that apply to current issues. The following article deals with the issue of cross-cultural musical meaning. The original article can be found here. __________________________________________________ The theme of the latest issue of “Worship Notes,” written by Ron Man, is “Making Musical Choices.” Man writes, The most consistently asked question of… Continue Reading
When Martin Luther (1483—1546) sparked a Reformation of the Church by nailing his Ninety-Five Theses to the Church door at Wittenberg in 1517, he challenged the Roman Church’s doctrine and practice, but never its musical forms. The musical forms of the Reformation continued to follow in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The most significant change Luther made for… Continue Reading
When Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 with the Edict of Milan, and Christianity soon became the religion of the entire empire, the cultural conditions within which the Church thrived changed into a situation that had not been enjoyed since before the Hebrew exile. Soon the Church gained prominence over all aspects of politics and… Continue Reading
The hymnody of the early church was naturally an extension of Hebrew hymnody.1 Therefore, we can expect the hymnody of the early church to have the same general characteristics of Hebrew hymns: Early church hymns were word-centered, modest, and distinct, and they continued to nurture the forms they inherited from Jewish worship. The only change would… Continue Reading
There has been a lot of talk in recent years on the internet and at conferences about why young people are rejecting fundamentalism and/or a conservative philosophy of worship. Everyone likes to play the blame game, but the issue that seems to get most often cited is music. Young people are being attracted to the… Continue Reading
No Googling or looking anything up. Just off of the top of your head, who said the following? The first to guess correctly will win a prize. Our music cannot be like the music of the world, because our God is not like their gods. Most of the world’s music reflects the world’s ways, the… Continue Reading
Today we finally arrive at a discussion of the nature of rap itself. This post will be beneficial for you, however, only if you accept the following assertions on made on Monday: Man is completely depraved and thus cannot trust his own preferences implicitly. Music is a medium of human communication and thus must be… Continue Reading
It seems as if several themes have been reoccurring on this site, Paleoevangelical, and a few other places over the last few weeks. These themes have to do with musical associations, indigenous church planting, and musical universals. Here are the posts I’m talking about in case you need to get caught up: On Taxonomies of… Continue Reading
We must evaluate both the intrinsic meaning within music and the potentially negative associations of a song before we adopt it into Christian worship. The theme of the latest issue of “Worship Notes,” written by Ron Man, is “Making Musical Choices.” Man writes, The most consistently asked question of me in my international teaching is… Continue Reading
In my post on associations, I made it very clear that I do think we must at least wrestle through association issues, so I do think associations can be significant enough to render even a good song unusable for a time. But as I’ve considered common discussions of association problems in some circles, I have… Continue Reading