WORSHIP WARS:

Christian Music the Awful Truth

by P.C. Brewer

                                                                                                               

Not Age or Generational.  The thinking person who asks sensible questions about the banishment of Melody, Harmony, Rhythm, acoustic pianos, and Hammond B3 organ-driven church music in favor of pelvic Rock-and-guitar-driven worship and praise music is not a luddite, not going into senility--not outdated or old fashioned. This discussion is for the young at heart and young of spirit.

Culture War vs. Cultural Coup: Shift Happens.  Is the Culture War over on some fronts?  A cultural coup has been scored in so many aspects of American life--the tentacles of this coup (in this case, the de-defining of Christian worship and praise music) reaching into the community of the redeemed.

{The prison riot is over when the inmates occupy the warden’s office--running the prison, feet on his desk, smoking his cigars.}

Esthetic Entropy: Soul Erosion.  In postmodernism-influenced American churches there may be little controversy and sparse argument left regarding the nature of Christian music.  The Revolutionary Dialectic crept in with such incremental stealth, and with congregates so sophomoric, that few noticed the (nevertheless hostile) takeover of beautiful Hymnody, songs based on the poetic King James Version of scripture (Psalm 9; Psalm 34: 1-4; Psalm 72, I John 4: 7-8) and melodious contemporary devotionals (As the Deer, Make Me An Instrument, I Will Come and Bow Down, I Just Want to Praise You, Abba Father) by Alternative Rock and five-note Eastern Mystical and Third World impoverished tone scales.

(There will be folks who cannot think outside the box of Rock-n-Roll who'll not grasp the point of this essay.)  When I took Keyboard Harmony, Music Theory, and Composition in college, I found that even Dave Brubeck’s Take Five (with its 5/4 tempo) honored classic Western composition.  But paradigm shift anti-harmonics foists a contradictory premise upon good music.  Worship becomes often more of a chant (more Buddhist than Gregorian) than a song or psalm--edging entropically toward the barbarian and away from the Western Christian esthetic culture.  For example, the jumping of fifth-intervals in Heart of Worship was written especially to discourage harmonizing.  And it is also an amateurish violation of the Art of Melody--avoiding any organic pattern of segue notes and forcing the singer to crudely reach and screech for the high note--after previously jumping down five notes at the start of a phrase.  What is under assault here is Beauty itself.

When New Age music came on the scene fellow musicians would say to me, “This music never really goes anywhere--never resolves.”  And that was true.  Good music has resolution.  It has a beginning, an integrally connecting bridge, and an ending--a climax.  Good music leaves you with a sense of ‘It Is Finished’--a sense of completion and closure.

Multiculturalism propagandizes a false cultural relativist viewpoint--in which all cultures are considered equal in value.  911 helped Americans realize that wasn’t true sociologically--and spiritually--although we’d already realized that fact after studying the Mafia, gangbangers--or their ancestors in the gene pool--now dead Aztec, Incan, or Mayan blood cultures which ripped the hearts out of virgin maidens in worship of demon gods.  Some cultures are cursed by God to go into extinction.  They are not equal or of equal value.

{In biochemistry, a toxic, cancerous culture is inferior to a healthy culture.}

Grunge-influenced This Is the Air I Breathe, Heart of Worship, the boring Blessed Be the Name, or the anti-musical How Great Is Our God (yes, the kind of negligible music this writer/musician is allergic to) has modern day dead heads and philistine Millennials thoughtlessly droning out the words on giant screens of Emergent Churches draped in black.


(Two Alternative Rockers and a Paradigm Shifter were stalking me the week before Halloween because of this Blog....heh-heh.)


I have a tape set of an early Vineyard worship seminar in which the presenters announced that contemporary worship and praise music was moving away from pretty music and music that people could harmonize with--because beauty is distracting.  The late John Wimber related that he'd once played keyboard for the Righteous Brothers in Las Vegas and that they had purposed to avoid pretty music in favor of a harder and rougher street-rock yell (e.g.: 'You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin').

{There are Some Who Have Not Bowed the Knee to Baal. Yet, thankfully, there are brilliant Millennials everywhere--playing Baroque, Classical, Romantic Period music in Aspen, Colorado, studying classical and jazz guitar in New York, or playing improvisational Urban Gospel piano in Chicago, New Orleans, and Phoenix--Millennials who know, appreciate, and play Beauty--in Christian music. Gaither Concerts, Southern Gospel, Classical Country Gospel, and Gospel Bluegrass will always hold their own.}

{Even the praise song, Shout to the Lord, presents a pleasing composition with an interesting melody, diminished chords and substitutions. The two versions of Our God Reigns will never be outdated. The same is true for Lord, Make Me an Instrument,  Unfailing Love, We Are An Offering, and the rousing exhortation, Lift Him Up.  It Is the Cry of My Heart, a fine childrens song yet still edifying for adults is effective accompanied by Caribbean metal drums, stand-up acoustic bass, and acoustic piano.}

Melody, Harmony, Rhythm (except for the music of Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir, Christ Church, Nashville, the Classical-influenced, and the likes of great African American jazz-influenced Urban Gospel) are being kicked to the curb by rocker, guitar-driven followers--the likes of the late Kurt Cobain.  

Beauty has become the hateful philosopher, intellectual, poet, artist--the bourgeois culprit which must be hunted down and brainwashed (or esthetically-banished to the Gulag Archipelago or Mongolia) by the emergent church’s KGB-Red Guard.

{In secular music, harsher, repetitive Righteous Brothers tunes, and later Pop, Motown, Rap and Hip-Hop marginalized The Great American Songbook (the bible of Jazz) and the genius of Gershwin, Mercer, Bernstein, Rodgers and Hammerstein et al Show Songs.}

{In the Art World, so few gallery attendees seemed to notice the De-Definition of Art Movement which claimed Art could be a gash in the earth, a sledge-hammered grand piano, a spilled box of cornflakes--until, perhaps, something so egregious as a cross in a bottle of urine or other scatology was touted as fine art in the media of Sodom--or the Tate Museum in London.}

Art vs. Propaganda.  Christianity is Art--not Propaganda. Art draws the appreciator close, attracting with its beauty, attention to craftsmanship, God-honoring view of the world, incarnational living, empathy, and truth--albeit with logical consequences for trampling on the Blood of Christ, grieving the Holy Spirit--and running from God Who is Love.

Propaganda depends on vain repetition, thought reform, brainwashing by Orwellian control freaks, policy wonks, authoritarian Mind Control--and lots of heavy bass drumming.  The Prophets of Baal illustrated propaganda-driven religiosity during the Elijah Encounter screaming, dancing, flagellating, and cutting themselves to induce their gods (charis-manically) to fire up the sacrifice.

Demythologization.  Destruction of old wives tales and urban myths delights the artist, creative thinker, and social critic.  Analysis of Contemporary Christian Music offers an excellent debunking opportunity. There is the myth of older generation music vs. younger generation music. Of course, there are only two kinds of music--good and bad (or nourishing vs. toxic).  There is the myth of Seeker Sensitivity (Sensitivity to Jesus is the only imperative).

Emergent-Churchers (postmodern-guitar-driven-Alternative-Rock millennials) belly ache about Gospel Music, Hymnody, Urban Gospel, Bluegrass Gospel, Folk Music, Country Gospel, Southern Gospel, Jazz and Classical based arrangements and worship styles--foolishly claiming it to be old folks stuff.  Most rockers have poor musicianship and questionable talent--and only play primitive chord patterns.  The more skillful Alternative Rock guitar players still only operate within what I call The Grateful Dead or chordal cliche grunge music paradigm--One Chord, Four Chord, Five Chord, Six Minor Chord, Two Minor Chord, Three Minor Chord.  You will rarely even hear (a la Joe Cocker) a 'You Are So Beautiful' One-7, Two-7, Three-7 pattern with cadences.

The secular researcher will have to travel back in time to some of the old Beatles better-written pieces (Blackbird, Good Day Sunshine, Here There & Everywhere, Michelle, Yesterday) to find (healthy-and-pleasing-non-Alternative Rock) diminished and augmented chords.


Seeing a humungous garage band drum set squatting intrusively all over a church platform is a tipoff that you should turn around and leave (after you've downed your java 'n doughnut, of course, heh-heh.)  Orchestral acoustic instruments played by the gifted will restore sanity. And Instrumental minimalism serves much better.  An of out-of-sight snare / top hat used with brushes only (a la a traditional jazz combo, a stand-up acoustic double bass, and an acoustic grand piano can accompany soloists to ensembles to the gathered worshippers--and set us free from the tyranny of electronic instruments, crashing drums, and greenhorn rockers gyrating with air guitars mimicking Jimi Hendrix.

The Myth of Paradigm Shift.  In the late-Sixties-early-Seventies, Christian Contemporary Music began to make its appearance.  In the mythology of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology there is what this writer calls the paradigm shaft--the revolutionary force-feeding and experience of the Thesis-Anti-Thesis-Synthesis (Hegelian) Dialectic. The Purpose-Driven and Emergent Church rationalizes their Market-Driven ('Jesus--On-Sale-Half-Price') using the same dialectic--and claiming that this (ecclesiological Arab Spring) is a revolutionary paradigm shift which will eventually re-wire, re-write, and re-define Christianity as we've known it for 20 centuries.  The Christian Faith, Belief, and Practice does not re-define, shift, re-wire, or re-invent itself.  Christianity will never become Chrislam--or silly Universalism--in which even The Devil will allegedly ‘get saved’.  God is Love.  But Love is not God--despite Rob Bell's ruminations.

There are only two kinds of people: nourishing and toxic.  And there are only two kinds of Art: nourishing and toxic.  And there are only two kinds of Music: nourishing and toxic (Or...good and bad).

WORSHIP WARS:

Christian Music the Awful Truth

by Phil Brewer

Copyright © 2011 by Philip Clarke Brewer

All Rights Reserved