Congregational Song Research Articles

The Brazilian Hymnological Melting Pot: Investigating Ethnoracial Discourses in the Compilation of the Lutheran Hymnal Livro de Canto (2017)

In 1926, a New York Times article described the cultural and ethnic flows in south Brazil as a “Melting Pot”. The report predicted that German Brazilians, tied to their ethnoracial origin, would soon be Brazilianized. The study of congregational song practices offers insight into the relationship between migration, race, culture, and ethnicity. Moreover, investigating Brazilian Lutheran singing practices helps us understand how the New York Times’ prediction unfolded on the ground. This paper examines the Brazilian Lutheran hymnal Livro de Canto, published in 2017, and displays how Brazil’s ethnoracial diversity is manifested and negotiated in the Lutheran context, both musically and theologically. By interviewing members of the hymnal committee and investigating how they dealt with Brazil’s ethnoraciality in the context of the hymnal compilation, this paper demonstrates ways denominations and churchgoers negotiate theological, cultural, musical, and ethnoracial identities through congregational singing. More importantly, it showcases how Brazilian Lutheran church music practices inform broader social conversations around racism, nationalism, Blackness, and Brazilianness.

Understanding “Love” in the English Lyrics of the Original Songs by the Multilingual New Creation Church Singapore

Understanding “Love” in the English Lyrics of the Original Songs by the Multilingual New Creation Church Singapore

‘You Never Stop Working’

Abstract Theological analysis of the most popular worship song lyrics reflects that American Christians may be singing the American work ethic to the God who rested. Employing Brueggeman’s Sabbath as Resistance and Heschel’s The Sabbath alongside current discussions in evangelical liturgical studies, this article seeks to answer the following: 1) do the current most utilized congregational songs in America reveal a God who rests, and 2) what lyrical or musical possibilities exist to embody a theology of Sabbath rest. This analysis highlights liturgical and theological dissonance, while exploring musical and lyrical models that display a God who rests in an overworked culture.

Let Us Sing to God: The Value of Asian Congregational Songs for Liturgy and Mission

Presently, many Asian churches continue to depend on translated Western congregational songs in their public Christian worship. This essay investigates the historical development of localized Asian Congregational Songs describing how this development in worship music-making was influenced by the reorientation in missiological thinking in the early twentieth century that bore fruit in the 1960s as churches in the Global South became autonomous. Thereafter demonstrate how this genre of congregational songs, guided by theological hermeneutical principles, can offer a viable pathway for contextually determined Asian Christian identity in the twenty-first century through the postcolonial hybrid congregational song form—a genre that holds in balance the original cultural identity of the song and the adaptability of the genre to navigate cultural boundaries.

Liturgies of Livability or Liturgical Violence: What Kind of Space Is Christian Congregational Song Creating for LGBTQIA2S+ and Nonbinary People?

The liturgy is one of the most important places in which people are formed theologically through components such as prayers, music, visual art, and preaching. Yet, depending on the theology that is expressed, the liturgy can be a place that heals or harms. Because LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people are often excluded and made invisible in Christian worship, this article focuses on the importance of Christian congregational song and how—drawing from Nathan Myrick’s work—it can be ethical for LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people when it contributes to their flourishing. First is an articulation of a theology of “both/neither” which (1) acknowledges that LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people exist, (2) is based on a sexually polymorphic reading of Genesis 1:27 and asserts that LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people are made in God’s image, and (3) celebrates difference, diversity, and multiplicity. Next is a discussion of how enacting a theology of “both/neither” in the liturgy creates liturgies of livability for LGBTQIA2S+ and nonbinary people, whereas when it is not, it inflicts liturgical violence. This article concludes by exploring examples from Christian congregational song that support liturgies of livability through their expression of a theology of “both/neither.”

“This Is No Performance”: Exploring the Complicated Relationship between the Church and Contemporary Congregational Songs

“Performing” and “performance” are potentially contentious words within the context of contemporary Christian worship. However, performative elements are explicit in the lyrics of contemporary congregational songs (CCS), and in video recordings of CCS, through the actions of those on stage and in the congregation, as well as in the broader context of staging, lighting, projection, production, and video editing. However, to date, there is only a handful of scholarly works that explore performing in contemporary worship or contemporary worship as performance and most of them are ethnomusicological. This paper seeks to address notions of performing and performance through a broader lens of the most-sung CCS globally, examined through the disciplinary fields of performance studies, musicology, media studies and theology. It involves a two-fold complementary textual analysis of the most-sung CCS lyrics and the most-watched ‘live worship’ videos of those songs on YouTube. In so doing, this study identifies how the Christian music industry at large officially portrays and languages performance in worship songs and also identifies how performative elements are enacted in the live worship videos released. These analyses are finally synthesized to identify how performing and performance are understood and actively portrayed to and by the contemporary church.

“Blessed Is the One Whose Bowels Can Move: An Essay in Praise of Lament” in Contemporary Worship

The CCLI charts may not reflect it, yet one thing many Christian churches discovered as the pandemic raged across the world (and violence at home and abroad) was the need for songs of sacred lament. Unfortunately, many churchgoers, especially those who identify as practitioners of contemporary Christian worship, have cultivated a gap between the biblical give and take of praise and lament revealed most poignantly in the book of Psalms. This chasm between praise and lament is a problem, as a liturgical discourse about disastrous events is weakened. Churches sing congregational songs of praise in the church, the chorus of ‘what ought to be’. Meanwhile, outside the church, artists in genres as diverse as folk and rap sing the chorus of what frankly ‘is’. For the church to be transformative, it must be grounded in what is (lament) and aiming toward what ought to be (praise). This is the value of the cycle of praise and lament in the church’s liturgy. This article explores the impact of CCM (contemporary Christian music) and praise and worship culture as it laments the loss of lament in Christian worship. The essay articulates the missing sense of ‘Truth’ in contemporary congregational music, as defined by Don Saliers’ Worship Come to Its Senses. The article closes by amplifying emerging Christian songwriters reintroducing lament to contemporary worship.

The Eucharist and Congregational Song: Lifting Our Hearts (and Voices) to the Lord!

The Eucharist and Congregational Song: Lifting Our Hearts (and Voices) to the Lord!

How YouTube Mediations of Global Contemporary Congregational Songs Contribute to an Understanding of the Genre

Abstract Contemporary congregational songs (ccs) are a global genre of Christian worship, driven presently from Western production centres. Streaming media platforms, in particular YouTube, have become essential vehicles for disseminating these songs globally, as well as a way for fans to contribute to the popularity of songs through views, likes, comments, sharing, and uploading their own fan-created videos. While this activity has had some scholarly attention, it has not focussed on the varied forms these videos take and how they contribute to and nuance the definition of the genre. This article utilises the most sung songs data from recent Christian Copyright Licensing International reports across five regions to establish the 32 most sung ccs globally. A media studies analysis is then conducted, with contributions from musicology and theology, of the most viewed versions of those ccs on YouTube. Three typical video forms are identified and discussed in relation to the way they reflect and shape perceptions of the contemporary congregational song genre.

Our father, who art in heaven: The importance of the Lord’s Prayer in congregational song

The Lord’s Prayer is known to many, even as early as childhood those, who can and do recite it from memory. It is prayed often in the context of worship settings: regular corporate worship, as well as funerals and weddings. The “Our Father,” as the prayer is often called, is perhaps the most well-known prayer in the Christian faith, yet what many have learned to recite from memory is not consistent with what is recorded in Scripture. The intent of this article is twofold. The first section offers a brief interpretation of the prayer, using the KJV translation of the Matthew text (6:9–13) plus the traditional but added-later conclusion. The second section offers a “congregational song” analysis of the prayer, employing the model of British hymnologist Brian Wren, who asserts, “Whoever sings to God in worship, prays twice.”

A “Sloppy Wet Kiss”? Intralingual Translation and Meaning-Making in Contemporary Congregational Songs

Translation as a form of music localization does not only occur in diverse cultural or lingual contexts, it also occurs within an ostensibly homogenous culture and language. The global genre of contemporary congregational songs (CCS) is written and performed through a variety of theological lenses. Sometimes a theological position conveyed in, or ascribed to, CCS can be problematic for certain local expressions of the Christian faith to replicate without needing to alter lyrics, and/or musical content, or at least reinterpret those lyrics in a way which aligns with their theological understanding. This article explores popular CCS, as measured by Christian Copyright Licensing International (CCLI) which have been either accepted, rejected, reinterpreted, or otherwise altered in order to play their part in defining local (English-speaking) church worship and identity. Translation studies and music semiology are applied to selected CCS to demonstrate this nuanced interpretation of “translation” in the localizing of religious musical practice

Protestant Congregational Song in the Philippines: Localization through Translation and Hybridization

Historically, the language of Protestant congregational song in the Philippines was English, which was tied to that nation’s twentieth-century colonial history with the United States. The development of Filipino songs since the 1970s is linked to this legacy, but church musicians have found ways to localize their congregational singing through processes of translation and hybridization. Because translation of hymn texts from English has proven difficult for linguistic reasons, Papuri, a music group that produces original Tagalog-language worship music, bypasses these difficulties while relying heavily on American pop music styles. Word for the World is a Pentecostal congregation that embraces English-language songs as a part of their theology of presence, obviating the need for translation by singing in the original language. Day by Day Ministries, the third case study, is a congregation that translates beyond language texts, preparing indigenous Filipino cultural expressions for urban audiences by composing hybridized songs that merge pre-Hispanic and contemporary forms.

Why Don’t We Sing about That?

One of the most common pieces of advice given to fledgling hymnwriters by their more experienced colleagues is to write about topics that are underrepresented in congregational song. Yes, a general...

White Pop, Shiny Armour and a Sling and Stone: Indigenous Expressions of Contemporary Congregational Song Exploring Christian-Māori Identity

It has taken many years for different styles of music to be utilised within Pentecostal churches as acceptable forms of worship. These shifts in musical sensibilities, which draw upon elements of pop, rock and hip hop, have allowed for a contemporisation of music that functions as worship within these settings, and although still debated within and across some denominations, there is a growing acceptance amongst Western churches of these styles. Whilst these developments have taken place over the past few decades, there is an ongoing resistance by Pentecostal churches to embrace Indigenous musical expressions of worship, which are usually treated as token recognitions of minority groups, and at worst, demonised as irredeemable musical forms. This article draws upon interview data with Christian-Māori leaders from New Zealand and focus group participants of a diaspora Māori church in southwest Sydney, Australia, who considered their views as Christian musicians and ministers. These perspectives seek to challenge the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations within a church setting and create a more inclusive philosophy and practice towards being ‘one in Christ’ with the role of music as worship acting as a case study throughout. It also considers how Indigenous forms of worship impact cultural identity, where Christian worship drawing upon Māori language and music forms has led to deeper connections to congregants’ cultural backgrounds.

‘The Harmony of One Choir’? Music and Social Unity in Reformation Heidelberg*

Abstract: From early in the Reformation, Protestant leaders viewed music as a powerful tool not only for educating their followers, but also for forging unity within diverse and dispersed communities. Such a belief found expression in official and unofficial religious contexts, and left its mark on printed devotional material, congregational hymn books, public policies of church authorities, and the musical activities of individual churches. At the same time, the manner in which a person accessed, experienced and produced music in a Reformation urban environment was conditioned as much by social factors such as age, gender, social station and personal contacts, as by confessional affiliation and policy. Using a corpus of previously unexploited sources from the Protestant city of Heidelberg, this article challenges the rhetorical and outdated binary notions of social ‘harmony’ and ‘discord’. It argues that music in a Reformation city — whether congregational song in churches, secular song in taverns, inns and streets, or domestic devotional song — could function as a powerful platform for emphasizing rather than dissolving a range of meaningful social differences, even as it created new kinds of unity across urban society.

The Songs We Sing: A Textual Analysis of Popular Congregational Songs of the 20th and 21st Century

Contemporary worship songs have been the subject of criticism over their lyrical quality. Objective assessment of the veracity of the criticisms has been difficult to achieve. This research seeks to address this issue by performing a textual analysis of the most popular hymns of the 19th and 20th centuries and contemporary popular worship songs and comparing the results. The research concludes that although there are differences in the lyrical content they are not crucial and that both contemporary worship songs and traditional hymns should find a home in congregational song.

Making Congregational Music Local, edited by Monique M. Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe C. Sherinian

By providing a comparison of congregational music-making in Christian communities worldwide, editors Monique M. Ingalls, Muriel Swijghuisen Reigersberg, and Zoe C. Sherinian offer a compelling account of music production through the interplay among structure, agency, change, and continuity. The book is a part of Routledge’s Congregational Music Series and offers snapshots of the vibrant process of making Christian congregational music local. As a more accurate description of the complex processes of making music, the authors opt for the term “localization” rather than the more common and contested terms “indigenization” or “inculturation.” As such, they argue that “localization” captures the processes by which Christian communities adapt, adopt, create, perform, and share congregational music.The volume’s twelve ethnographic case studies on six continents integrate disciplinary insights of ethnomusicology, anthropology, cultural geography, mission studies, and practical theology. They define congregational music-making broadly: “Congregational music-making is a multidimensional social activity encompassing a wide range of materials to interpret, including creative practices, social processes, institutional dynamics, beliefs, and values, and elements of material culture” (15). This definition might be too broad for some. But it does give the authors ample room to explore the multidimensional aspects of the processes of the localization of congregational music. Throughout the volume, significant attention is directed to how Christian assemblies use musical practices to position themselves relative to other groups, Christian and otherwise, with some authors relying on the insights from the architects of world Christianity: Andrew Walls, Lamin Sanneh, and Kwame Bediako.Part 1, “Engaging Musical Pasts: Continuity and Change in Congregational Song Practices,” focuses on how Christian communities employ past musical materials to create a distinct sense of the local. Here we learn about the role of subjunctive visions with vernacular Catholic practice (Brazil), the ways in which song leaders have transformed older hymns to become mechanisms of the supernatural (Navajo, USA), and the mainline Protestant adoption of evangelical hymns in a retro turn that creates a usable past in order to reposition themselves in response to their declining numbers (USA).Part 2, “Congregational Music and the Politics of Indigeneity,” highlights what are oftentimes competing powers of different sorts. This section looks at the creation of new forms of creativity and productivity that bridge the indigenous and cosmopolitan (Northern Territory of Australia), the challenge of utilizing hybrid musical forms to engage top-down inculturation (East Africa), and attempts at constructing religious repertoire that elevates local cultures with an aim of creating overarching unity for all Catholics (Indonesia).Part 3, “Rifts, Reconciliation, and Coexistence: Congregational Music-making in the Diverse Locale,” conveys how social interactions impact the localization of congregational music. This section explores different kinds of sustained localization, even in the face of the domination of English and Western hymnody in Anglican church music (South Africa), a government’s involvement to translate the Christian songs of an ethnic minority farmer’s chorus into usable, nationalistic songs to meet the government’s political demands (China), and the shifting performative relationships between Christian and Hindu music to create emergent religious pluralism (Indonesia).Part 4, “Christian Musical Cosmopolitanisms: Producing the Local Across Racial and National Lines,” underscores the positioning of local congregational music-making vis-à-vis other communities. This set of case studies presents a snapshot of longer processes of the integration of diverse racial groups and the emerging common ground centered on musical and linguistic accommodation (South Africa), and, among other interesting topics, the role that baptism plays in the experience of religious belonging, with singing as the primary conduit of the ritual (Ireland).While the case studies are regional in scope, some reflection on the near unidirectionality of global flows of congregational music from Global North to Global South, and urban to rural, would have been welcomed. While the volume focused on congregations, it would seem important to investigate the phenomenological site of transformations of the individual, thus to feature the experiences of ontological change that might suggest more is happening than just enhancing the experience of community. Rupture and discontinuity may well result in ontological change. An inclusion of not only the social and cultural dimension but also the spiritual and ontological might have unearthed more of what is unique about Christian congregational music in relationship to other forms of music.The volume is to be commended for filling a lacuna left by studies that overlook the contextual nature of congregational music making. This highly attractive collection makes a significant contribution to the study of congregational music.

We’re all “Bananas and Coconuts”: Congregational Song in the Global South

Abstract This essay presents the grassroots’ common practice of congregational music making seen through an embedded long-term participant-observer’s perspective. Through this approach, it argues for a realistic means of “closing the loop” in the goal of self-determination for Global South churches by proposing a thoughtful worship renewal process guided by an enlightened theological ethos that privileges local expressions.

The Hymnal: A Reading History by Christopher N. Phillips

BOOK REVIEWS 121 The Hymnal: A Reading History Christopher N. Phillips John Hopkins University Press, 2018. 252 pp. $39.95 hardcover. Within a few pages, I realized two things: first, the author is a very fine writer—one who chooses every word with care; second, he has lived with this topic for many years and produced a scholarly work of the first rank. Christopher N. Phillips is Professor of English at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, focusing on eighteenth and nineteenth transatlantic literatures , literary history, and religion and literature. He brings the skills and knowledge implied by these research areas to bear in The Hymnal. Phillips’s research is organized around the use of the hymnal as a physical artifact for reading and reflection in three venues: church, school, and home. He takes a largely inductive approach that draws the reader into specific narratives. For example, three “Interludes” situate the reader in a specific context, almost like a short story. While there is a cumulative effect in reading The Hymnal from beginning to end, one would benefit from reading just one of the three large sections or, for that matter, even selected chapters. It was tempting to read the text for fascinating anecdotes such as the statement by Oliver Wendell Holmes, “Sometimes when I am disinclined to listen to the preacher at church, I turn to the hymn-book, and when one strikes my eye, I cover the name at the bottom, and guess. It is most invariably Watts and Wesley; after those, there are very few that are good for much” (64). As fascinating as such details are, Phillips’s presentation of the topic provides an account that glues the “facts” of well-known hymn writers and collections into a cohesive narrative. As a hymnologist concerned primarily with the act of singing together in worship and the role of congregational song in shaping faith, Phillips has added a careful analysis of how the hymnal spans the world’s public and private reading of the texts as well as their public singing. While scholars have long been aware of the devotional use of hymnals, less careful thought has been given to how the combination of individual reading of texts and congregational singing coalesce to deepen faith. The author’s distinction between hymnbooks—collections of texts only, often for public or private reading—and hymnals, heavier books containing music usually left at church, clarifies the fluid use of collections between the public and private spheres of activity as well as the sung and spoken realms of experience (8). Among the more intriguing themes, perhaps the most prevalent refrain throughout the book was that all roads lead from Isaac Watts. Long called the “Father of English Hymnody,” the author deepens the understanding of Religion & Literature 122 Watts’s influence in American eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cultures in the three main provinces of learning and formation: church, school, and home. While the American adaptations such as “Joel Barlow’s Watts” (1785), “Timothy Dwight’s Watts” (1797), and “James Winchell’s Watts” (1818) are often referred to, Phillips expands his reach into the realms of devotional experience as well as into children’s educational formation and pre-literacy (140-41). Such a comprehensive discussion of the relationship between the hymn and the poem is rare. Rather than treating them as distinct genres, it was helpful to see how some editors explored the liminal space between the two, for example, Samuel Longfellow and Samuel Johnson’s A Book of Hymns for Public and Private Devotion (1846). Phillips adds considerable context to this often-neglected area. The chapter, “Did Poets Write Hymns?” will become required reading in my hymnology courses. Two chapters that might stand alone, though they do contribute to the broader narrative, are “Singing as Reading, or, A Tale of Two Sacred Harps” and “Emily Dickinson’s Hymnody of Privacy.” The former chapter compares and contrasts the better known The Sacred Harp (1844) by White and King with the earlier The Sacred Harp, or, Eclectic Harmony (1834) by the Mason brothers, Timothy and Lowell. Among the threads that are woven together are the relative use and importance of Watts in each collection and the Masons...

MELIHAT KEMUNGKINAN MODUS GEREJA SEBAGAI DASAR BAGI PENYUSUNAN MUSIK UNTUK HYMN

The standard major and minor scale have been used to compose millions of congregational song. After years of listening to music based on the same old scales, there is a way to break away from convention but still keep the music interested and more fresh. A great way to start exploring interesting and new sounding melodies and harmonies is to use modes (church modes). Modes are scales that use the same pitches of the standard major scale but in new and different ways. Because of one or two discrepancies from the typical major or minor scale, a mode can sound fresh, intriguing, and grab your listener's attention as something new.