Sunday, 7 October 2012
Friday, 5 October 2012
[Repost from Sept. 2011]
It seems like for the most part contemporary music won out. Where there was a struggle, new music won. Choruses and worship bands pretty much predominate evangelical churches, and quite a few mainline churches too. It's not like you can't find traditional Christian church music in an evangelical church, can't find a piano and a hymn book somewhere (or even, on very rare occasions, an organ), but, for the most part, that's not what happens in evangelical churches on Sunday mornings.
The new classics of Christian worship -- the songs that everyone knows -- are "Mighty to Save", "Lord I Lift Your Name on High", and "Shout to the Lord".
What I haven't seen, though, is a good account of why contemporary music won. The sense, at least for those who still sometimes pine for older songs and so still talk about those days of hymns of yore, seems to be that the change was inevitable and inexorable. That it had to happen.
I don't find the Hegelian idea of telologically-determined history satisfying, though, so I'd like to know why contemporary music, which was so controversial for so many, has come to be so broadly accepted.
Some guesses:
- The Scorsese thesis: The generational center of gravity has shifted, and those who came of age after 1960 now have the most power in American Protestant churches. As pastors, elders, board members, congregants, financial supporters, and as worship leaders. As Julie Ingersoll points out in "Contemporary Christian Worship Music" in Religions of the United States in Practice volume II, "Baby boomers were the first Americans to grow up with popular music as a continual backdrop to their lives." In the same way Martin Scorsese makes the soul of his movies pop music, Americans now find their souls moved by contemporary music.
- The church growth thesis: Those who wanted traditional music in churches focused on traditional music, but those who wanted contemporary music talked of it only as a means. The ends were things broadly agreed upon, such as growth. The church growth movement, with seeker sensitive mega churches, used contemporary music and demonstrated the usefulness of contemporary music not for its own sake, but for the sake of growth. As evangelical churches copied the model of Willow Creek, for example, they adopted the music without making arguments for the music itself, focusing instead on getting people into church. By whatever music necessary. Contemporary music "worked," according to the definition of growth, which most in these churches agreed was a good definition.
- The slipperiness of the slope thesis: A lot of the arguments against contemporary music depended on bad things -- horrible things -- resulting from abandoning hymns and traditional worship music styles. There were arguments from the mild, e.g. that Christian beliefs would basically wither in the "shallow ground" of choruses, to the extreme, e.g. that drums were linked to and would lead to Satanism, which depended on a clear connection between contemporary music and bad, bad results. Those arguments just didn't hold up. The doom didn't follow from contemporary music, and the traditionalists often ended up looking silly, and like they were just nostalgic for some imagined past, or, worse, cranky because they were losing control and ownership.
- The industry thesis: No one promotes hymns. There's no industry supporting and promotion and pushing traditional music.
- The compromise thesis: About half of all Protestant churches have "blended styles," according to a 2002 report from Barna. Seventy-three percent have multiple services, and half of those with multiple services have one with traditional music. In evangelical churches, "blended styles" sometimes means one hymn in a service, or a re-mixed hymn such as "Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)." Contemporary worship music, in these ways, is able to accommodate some traditionalism, where traditional worship music doesn't adapt and accommodate so easily. Even if a church is split down the middle on worship styles, contemporary music is more likely to appease more people, and that makes it an appealing choice, especially when church leaders are weary of "worship wars."
One place to start would be the question: why this music?
Wednesday, 3 October 2012
[Reposted from Oct. 4, 2012]
St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is today, is one of those once-powerful religious figures who've been totally domesticated. His radicalness, his weirdness, his challenge -- it's all smothered in quaint-saint gooeyness.*
The power's still there, of course, in potential, but Francis is made safe for the world (Catholic and Protestant, religious or not). We ensure he, the saint of the garden figurine, only ever works to affirm, always so supportive.
I am not saying, here, that it's other people who do this. I'm saying you do this, unless your first response to Francis is to want to punch him.
I'm saying I definitely do this.
I'm saying there's a covered-up part of St. Francis that we cover up that would make you and me go, what the hell...?
E.g.:
The weirdness and uncomfortableness of saints like Francis can be rescued and resuscitated, same as it can with the Bible, a book you're not really reading if it's not messing you up. It's possible to de-sentimentalize saints so they are challenging and personally controversial, which is to say useful.
To do so would mean, though, that rather than easy adoration, the first response to St. Francis would be to feel appalled, threatened and offended. It would mean wanting to tell St. Francis he's wrong, wanting to disagree, wanting to fight.
I mean, seriously?, he denied the monk a psalter.
*TM.
**Speculum Perfectionis, ed. P.Sabatier (Paris, 1898), 10, 13. Quoted in William James, Varieties of Religious Experience.
St. Francis of Assisi, whose feast day is today, is one of those once-powerful religious figures who've been totally domesticated. His radicalness, his weirdness, his challenge -- it's all smothered in quaint-saint gooeyness.*
The power's still there, of course, in potential, but Francis is made safe for the world (Catholic and Protestant, religious or not). We ensure he, the saint of the garden figurine, only ever works to affirm, always so supportive.
I am not saying, here, that it's other people who do this. I'm saying you do this, unless your first response to Francis is to want to punch him.
I'm saying I definitely do this.
I'm saying there's a covered-up part of St. Francis that we cover up that would make you and me go, what the hell...?
E.g.:
"When a brother novice came to Saint Francis, saying: 'Father, it would be a great consolation to me to own a psalter, but even supposing that our general should concede to me this indulgence, still I should like to have your consent,' Francis put him off .... '[C]are not,' he said, 'for owning books and knowledge, but care rather for works of goodness.' And when some weeks later the novice came again to talk of his craving for the psalter, Francis said: 'After you have got your psalter you will crave a breviary; and after you have got your breviary you will sit in you stall like a grand prelate, and will say to your brother, 'Hand me my breviary.' .... And thenceforward he denied all such requests."**The only response I can summon is, what the ...?
The weirdness and uncomfortableness of saints like Francis can be rescued and resuscitated, same as it can with the Bible, a book you're not really reading if it's not messing you up. It's possible to de-sentimentalize saints so they are challenging and personally controversial, which is to say useful.
To do so would mean, though, that rather than easy adoration, the first response to St. Francis would be to feel appalled, threatened and offended. It would mean wanting to tell St. Francis he's wrong, wanting to disagree, wanting to fight.
I mean, seriously?, he denied the monk a psalter.
*TM.
**Speculum Perfectionis, ed. P.Sabatier (Paris, 1898), 10, 13. Quoted in William James, Varieties of Religious Experience.
Tuesday, 2 October 2012
There was a lot of celebration following the Supreme Court's decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC. For those who see themselves as defenders of religious liberty, the decision was a victory. A triumph. Religious liberty won, the "current Administration’s audacity" and "an unprecedented aggression" was "repudiated by a unanimous Supreme Court," and the "secularists" were taken to the woodshed.
So why are those who celebrate this victory systematically misrepresenting it?
In a prime example of this misrepresentation, Timothy George and Thomas G. Guarino summarize the case incorrectly at First Things. They write:
The word has resonances, obviously, with a narrative of conservatism as defense of the "way things are," resistance to government overreach and liberals' and secularists' radical attempts to restructure society. Those on the Hosanna-Tabor side of Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, are, in this rendering, not just on the side of religious liberty, but also on the side of tradition. The side defending what conservative thinker Russell Kirk would have called custom, convention, continuity -- preservation of these three being the second of Kirk's conservative principle. Defending, that is to say, vis a vis the third Kirk principle, "things established by immemorial usage."
As neatly as this narrative works, though, it doesn't fit the case at hand. The exemption at issue in the case is not traditional. According to the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court that found in favor of Hosanna-Tabor, this isn't an issue of tradition. The question is rather about the extent of an exemption, and understood, critically, as a question over the definition of "minister."
The question was whether the exemption that does have a legal precedent (in lower courts) should be understood to also include the specific, unusual kind of exemption from discrimination law that was claimed by Hosanna-Tabor, a Lutheran school that fired a teacher and rescinded her "calling" after she got sick.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the unanimous decision. That decision says: "Until today, we have not had occasion to consider whether this freedom of a religious organization to select its ministers is implicated by a suit alleging discrimination in employment."
As Roberts understands the issues of the Supreme Court decision, it's not a matter of upholding tradition. It's not -- contra First Things -- a case of rejecting a strange new governmental imposition of rules that ignore the freedom of religious exercise, citing precedent and being done with it. Rather, as Roberts puts it, it was a matter of considering the constitutionality of one kind of use of the exemption that has never been considered before.
Thus: a new thing.
Lyle Dennison, a journalist who has covered the Supreme Court for 54 years, reported that what the court did, in this decision, it did for the first time.
He wrote, "the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously gave its blessing -- for the first time -- to a 'ministerial exception' to federal, state, and local laws against virtually all forms of discrimination on the job."
And, "The Court, as it acknowledged Wednesday ... has never recognized an explicit 'ministerial exception' to anti-discrimination laws at any level."
Again, it's not about tradition and upholding tradition. So why represent it that way?
If you read John Roberts' decision, which is easy enough to do, it's clear that there were three arguments in the case, all of which came down to the issue of what should define a "minister" for the ministerial exemptions to equal employment opportunity law.
In the first argument, Roberts writes that,
In the second argument, where Roberts turns specifically to the case of Hosanna-Tabor firing a teacher, the issue is the same. It's the question of definition, not tradition or traditional exemptions. Roberts writes that the teacher in the case was a minister because she was "held ... out as a minister," by the church, "with a role distinct from that of most of its members." He writes that, further, the teacher "held herself out as a minister of the Church." Roberts adds that there was a process she had to go through and additional training she had to undertake to get the title, "minister," and that in that capacity she did serve "important religious functions" for the church.
In the third argument, Roberts responds to those arguing against Hosanna-Tabor. He writes why the EEOC is wrong,and its argument has to be rejected. Critically, he doesn't say they're wrong because they think the government has the right to interfere with religious groups' internal decisions about who will minister. Contrary to those who supposedly celebrate this decision, the decision isn't about state interference, but the definition of minister, according to Roberts. He writes that the EEOC was
Any Supreme Court ruling of course works on several different levels, in different spheres. One is the legal, how the ruling is understood by judges and lawyers in all the federal courts, how it shapes future decisions of the EEOC and lawmakers, etc. Another one, though, is how it's understood culturally.
It seems to me that, culturally, this case is consistently represented as something it's not. The court's decision is being misrepresented by those who like it and celebrate it. Though the decision really only did come down a short time ago, the memory of it seems to have gotten kind of turned around.
The misremembering seems like its in service of a larger narrative. The question is, is it strategic?
So why are those who celebrate this victory systematically misrepresenting it?
In a prime example of this misrepresentation, Timothy George and Thomas G. Guarino summarize the case incorrectly at First Things. They write:
"Not long ago, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) challenged the 'ministerial exemption' traditionally granted to churches so they may choose their ministers according to their own criteria, unhindered by state interference. The arguments advanced by the executive branch of government, in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, would have significantly reduced those protections. Fortunately, the United States Supreme Court, insisting that religious freedom is the cornerstone of democracy, unanimously supported the traditional exemption."In case you weren't counting, the brief summary used "traditional" twice. Once: the exemption that is "traditionally granted." Twice: the "traditional exemption."
The word has resonances, obviously, with a narrative of conservatism as defense of the "way things are," resistance to government overreach and liberals' and secularists' radical attempts to restructure society. Those on the Hosanna-Tabor side of Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, are, in this rendering, not just on the side of religious liberty, but also on the side of tradition. The side defending what conservative thinker Russell Kirk would have called custom, convention, continuity -- preservation of these three being the second of Kirk's conservative principle. Defending, that is to say, vis a vis the third Kirk principle, "things established by immemorial usage."
As neatly as this narrative works, though, it doesn't fit the case at hand. The exemption at issue in the case is not traditional. According to the unanimous opinion of the Supreme Court that found in favor of Hosanna-Tabor, this isn't an issue of tradition. The question is rather about the extent of an exemption, and understood, critically, as a question over the definition of "minister."
The question was whether the exemption that does have a legal precedent (in lower courts) should be understood to also include the specific, unusual kind of exemption from discrimination law that was claimed by Hosanna-Tabor, a Lutheran school that fired a teacher and rescinded her "calling" after she got sick.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the unanimous decision. That decision says: "Until today, we have not had occasion to consider whether this freedom of a religious organization to select its ministers is implicated by a suit alleging discrimination in employment."
As Roberts understands the issues of the Supreme Court decision, it's not a matter of upholding tradition. It's not -- contra First Things -- a case of rejecting a strange new governmental imposition of rules that ignore the freedom of religious exercise, citing precedent and being done with it. Rather, as Roberts puts it, it was a matter of considering the constitutionality of one kind of use of the exemption that has never been considered before.
Thus: a new thing.
Lyle Dennison, a journalist who has covered the Supreme Court for 54 years, reported that what the court did, in this decision, it did for the first time.
He wrote, "the Supreme Court on Wednesday unanimously gave its blessing -- for the first time -- to a 'ministerial exception' to federal, state, and local laws against virtually all forms of discrimination on the job."
And, "The Court, as it acknowledged Wednesday ... has never recognized an explicit 'ministerial exception' to anti-discrimination laws at any level."
Again, it's not about tradition and upholding tradition. So why represent it that way?
If you read John Roberts' decision, which is easy enough to do, it's clear that there were three arguments in the case, all of which came down to the issue of what should define a "minister" for the ministerial exemptions to equal employment opportunity law.
In the first argument, Roberts writes that,
"We agree that there is such a ministerial exception. The members of a religious group put their faith in the hands of their ministers. Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision."The fact that the court ruled that there is such an exemption as the the ministerial exemption is important, but the more significant fact to note, here, is how that position eligible for the exemption is being defined. It's being defined by the religious group itself. There's no objective standard, dictionary definition, or legal requirements for a minister. Religious groups decide and define for themselves.
In the second argument, where Roberts turns specifically to the case of Hosanna-Tabor firing a teacher, the issue is the same. It's the question of definition, not tradition or traditional exemptions. Roberts writes that the teacher in the case was a minister because she was "held ... out as a minister," by the church, "with a role distinct from that of most of its members." He writes that, further, the teacher "held herself out as a minister of the Church." Roberts adds that there was a process she had to go through and additional training she had to undertake to get the title, "minister," and that in that capacity she did serve "important religious functions" for the church.
In the third argument, Roberts responds to those arguing against Hosanna-Tabor. He writes why the EEOC is wrong,and its argument has to be rejected. Critically, he doesn't say they're wrong because they think the government has the right to interfere with religious groups' internal decisions about who will minister. Contrary to those who supposedly celebrate this decision, the decision isn't about state interference, but the definition of minister, according to Roberts. He writes that the EEOC was
"contending that any ministerial exception 'should be limited to those employees who perform exclusively religious functions.' We cannot accept that view. Indeed, we are unsure whether any such employees exist. The heads of congregations themselves often have a mix of duties, including secular ones such as helping to manage the congregation's finances, supervising purely secular personnel, and overseeing the upkeep of facilities."In Dennitson's gloss on this, he writes that, essentially, employees are not protected by anti-discrimination laws or employment laws if they work for a religious organization that defines them as ministers. And "the employee could be anyone from the congregational leader, on down to any worker considered to be advancing the religious mission" by the religious organization, according to the religious organization's internal criterion.
Any Supreme Court ruling of course works on several different levels, in different spheres. One is the legal, how the ruling is understood by judges and lawyers in all the federal courts, how it shapes future decisions of the EEOC and lawmakers, etc. Another one, though, is how it's understood culturally.
It seems to me that, culturally, this case is consistently represented as something it's not. The court's decision is being misrepresented by those who like it and celebrate it. Though the decision really only did come down a short time ago, the memory of it seems to have gotten kind of turned around.
The misremembering seems like its in service of a larger narrative. The question is, is it strategic?
Monday, 1 October 2012
"Then Sister Rosmarie told us to go back to our work. Which was a perfectly silly thing to say because when Sister Rosmarie was in your class you paid attention to Sister Rosmarie. Even the kindergartners knew that.
"So, our eyes stayed on Sister Rosmarie as she grabbed the chair, dragged it across the floor to the front of the room, then she stood on the top of the chair with her back to the class. In our classroom, just like in every class room, there was a crucifix. The crucifix had a blond wooden cross with a figure of Christ suspended on it. Then, with her back to the class, Sister Rosmarie teetered on her tippy-toes, firmly grabbed the bottom of the crucifix, and took it off the wall.
"By this point, no one was reading or even pretending to pay attention to anything else. She placed the cross aside, reached up, again on her tip-toes, and replaced the old crucifix with a new one.
"And on this cross was a black Jesus."A story by Sonari Glinton about his church in Chicago in the 1970s.
Anyone interested in this subject would do well to check out the new book by two scholars of American religion, Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum, The Color of Christ.
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