The Organ of Meaning

Those of you who follow my blog relatively closely know that I’ve been reading (for close to a year now) a book called Christianity’s Dangerous Idea which is an account of the history of the Protestant branch of the church history. As I have read, I have at times found it encouraging and at other times found it painting a bleak picture of the history of this movement and wonder how much of it is completely tainted by that effect that humans have on everything we do.

Tonight, I found it amusing.

I am reading the section where the author (Alister McGrath) is walking through some of the major developments of worship style in the different branches of the Protestant Church – specifically music. To fill in some gaps, my first real contact with music related to worship that I have any real recollection of was within the (Plymouth) Brethren assemblies – almost always hymns with no instrumental accompaniment (other than at summer camp where we sang choruses and “contemporary” praise songs set to keyboard); I still love to sing those hymns (but I prefer them with some instrumentation). Now, I attend a church that does full on rock-styled “praise & worship” in the services and I love that too.

Over the past decade or so, I have had numerous conversations with people from a lot of different denominational family backgrounds who hold an issue with “Christian rock” music. They seem to think that because rock essentially stems from music that is steeped in rebellion and closely associated with certain lifestyles that it is inherently tainted, which is where the humor comes in; apparently, when hymns first started to come on the scene of worship just a few years after Luther there were similar concerns.

A brief synopsis of how it went down… before the Reformation the Catholics didn’t sing a lot, they might read a Psalm and reflect on it (or, more correctly, have it read to them, in a language they probably didn’t know and reflect on their guilt for not knowing it). In the early stages of the Reformation different branches started to set some Psalms word-for-word to chant-style music while others paraphrased it to make it more singable. Johann Christian Bach actually played a significant role in this by writing songs known as cantatas that were relatively close in musical form to Opera… *gasp!*

Pietism emphasized musical simplicity and had no place for anything other than unadorned motets and musically simple hymns… in particular, Pietist were implacably opposed to the cantata, which they regarded as modeled after opera, the most secular of all secular models. For the Pietists, the cantata represented the secularization, even desecration, of sacred music.

Holy crap! This is the same argument that I’ve heard from modern day legalists and tradition-ist Christians. That they are “implacable opposed to ‘praise & worship’ music, which is modeled after rock-and-roll, the most secular of all secular models; it is a secularization and a desecration of sacred music!”

We’ve come so far.

This is why I am glad that the Epistle to the Hebrews (New Testament) says this:

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

He never prescribed what kind of musical worship we should use… neither did Paul other than the list of “Psalms [check], hymns [check] and spiritual songs [praise & worship - check].”

Yesterday a friend posted his playlists and asked others to do the same. I ran into a problem.

I like too many songs and my playlists have a lot of overlap. I feel like I have a pretty wide range of styles, a lot of hardcore, punk and metal – and I love cover songs.

Anyway, here’s the whole list (after the jump), it’s all of my favs (4 and 5 stars in iTunes):
Read the rest of this entry »

…but awesome.

[DLS]

I was in the same room as the punk/hardcore legend today.

Not really a big deal.

That is all.

Wow.

Tonight, on the way back from Clarion, Carrie and I were listening to Derek Webb’s newest release Mockingbird. Which was recommended by a friend of ours that we met on Summer Project(s), when she recommended it she sent an email that said something along the lines of, “I really think you’ll like this!”

She was right. I don’t know why I had put off listening to this til now; probably because I keep thinking he’ll sound like his old band Caedmon’s Call, who were good in their own right but just aren’t where my ears want to be lately – well he doesn’t much, but is excellent as well. On the way back I was tired and fell asleep as Carrie drove, but was vaguely aware of some of the words to some of the songs. I woke up as a truck swerved a bit in front of us which made Carrie brake and I heard

…but nothing unifies like a common enemy
and we’ve got one, sure as hell
but he may be living in your house
he may be raising up your kids
he may be sleeping with your wife
oh no, he may not look like you think

I knew that he’s been writing some stuff that has struck a chord with people, some a very good chord and some toes that have been stepped on. Seriously though, I figured out why my friend sent it to me… Derek’s an honest-to-God liberal who is really honest to God! Look at some of his lyrics from this thing

A King & A Kingdom

there are two great lies that i’ve heard:
‘the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die’
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him

my first allegiance is not to a flag, a country, or a man,
my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood
it’s to a king & a kingdom

My Enemies Are Like Me

peace by way of war is like purity by way of fornication
it’s like telling someone murder is wrong and then showing them by way of execution

Love Is Not Against The Law

are we defending life when we just pick and choose
lives acceptable to lose and which ones to defend

A New Law

don’t teach me about moderation and liberty, i prefer a shot of grape juice

Rich Young Ruler

come on and follow Me, but sell your house, sell your suv,
sell your stocks, sell your security
and give it to the poor

Yes. Yes. Yes. YES! Amen!

Serously, I don’t know why it took me this long to discover this guy. I mean, I remember being in college and singing one of Caedmon’s Calls’s (is that correct punctuation of a band’s name with an apostrophe in it?) songs during a worship service and being very moved by the honest difficulty that it took to really sing the lyrics and mean them.

If this has piqued your interest at all, go to FreeDerekWebb.com and download the WHOLE cd for free. It really is amazing.

…I am thankful.

On a completely separate topic, the new Internet Explorer 7 release is out. And, while I consider IE only for those that are… less than computer savvy and think that it is inferior to Firefox and the vast majority of other browsers it has moved toward displaying CSS better, which is not the same as perfect. So, I’ve reinstated my style to the page. If it doesn’t look correct now you need to download the new browser, or better yet get Firefox… you only have yourself to blame.