“There Is a Higher Height in the Lord”: Music, Worship, and Communication with God

Therese Smith

doi:10.3390/rel6020543

Abstract

Music is so vital in the services of African American Baptist churches that there are few moments in the service when music—either congregational or choral singing, or instrumental music of some sort—is not being performed. Sustained as an auditory or imagined presence, music acts almost as a timbral membrane for the presence of the Holy Spirit throughout the service. The Holy Spirit is physically manifested (inspiration by the Holy Spirit) in the church membership, predominantly (if not exclusively) in a musical context. In order to ground the general in the particular, I will give detailed consideration to two musical instances or events from the Sunday morning service at Clear Creek Missionary Baptist Church on 4 November 2012, contextualising those within a broader context.

Highlights

Music is vital in the services of African American Baptist churches
As I do here, when music is sustained in this way as an auditory or imagined presence, it functions as almost a timbral membrane for the presence of the Holy Spirit throughout the service
Embedded in the seemingly simple identification of Clear Creek outlined in the previous paragraph, is a plethora of historically documented facts, statistics, and assumptions, ranging from definitions of the nature of Southern religion—meaning “of the American South”—to the statistical and numerical supremacy of the Baptist denominations, to assumptions about what constitutes a “typical” African American church

Summary

Introduction

Music is vital in the services of African American Baptist churches. There are few moments in the service when music—either congregational or choral singing, or instrumental music of some sort—is not being performed; especially in southern churches, the whole service may be underpinned by a coherent tonal system (often, but not exclusively, predicated on 3rd and 5th relations of closely related tonal centres). Embedded in the seemingly simple identification of Clear Creek outlined in the previous paragraph (as typical, Southern, African American, fundamentalist and evangelical), is a plethora of historically documented facts, statistics, and assumptions, ranging from definitions of the nature of Southern religion—meaning “of the American South”—to the statistical and numerical supremacy of the (several) Baptist denominations, to assumptions about what constitutes a “typical” African American church. Each of these labels must be examined as they simultaneously delineate identities and resonate with the social and cultural spaces that surround them

African American Christianity

The American South

African American Church Congregations

The Religious Context

10. The Text-and-Context Sermon

11. Conclusions