Tuesday 20 May 2008

Contemporary worship songs

“Worship tunes tend to evince an adolescent theology, one that just can’t get over how darn cool it is that Jesus sacrificed himself for the world.”

—Andrew Beaujon, Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock (De Capo Press, 2006), p. 159; cited in Daniel Radosh, Rapture Ready, p. 158.

6 Comments:

Anonymous said...

This seems to me one of those easy-to-make caricatures that sounds right in a general sense but, when specifically investigated, is wildly overstated.. Worship throughout history, starting with the psalms, has been a combination of simple heart-expressed gratefulness as well as deeper cries of lament, complaint and petition.... The two contemporary songs that have gained the most traction in the last 40 years would be arguably 'This is the day' and 'Shout to the Lord' both taken from the language of the Psalms..... Maybe he just didn't like the music.... [Phil Baker]

Anonymous said...

This is wonderful quote! Thanks for sharing it.

Anonymous said...

Yes, we can't over-generalize, but Beaujon does have some praise for those legitimate artists in the Christian music scene -- namely David Crowder Band, who he treats on pages 236-244. It's a great account of Crowder and will inspire hope for what Christian music can accomplish, as it did for the Methodists and other legitimate revival movements.

Alex said...

Sounds a lot like today's American Reformed movement. They just can't get over how darned glorious God's sovereignty is. People have often mentioned to me how cerebral the Reformed (P.C.A.) movement is. I have always thought the opposite. I think they are typically intellectually lazy.

Pieter Pronk said...

"a theology that just can't get over how darn cool it is that Jesus sacrificed himself for the world."
A description of Barth's Church Dogmatics?

I'm not ashamed I can't get over how darn cool it is that Jesus sacrificed himself for the world. It would be worse to sing songs that are "over it".

Paul Buckley said...

Phil Baker writes: "The two contemporary songs that have gained the most traction in the last 40 years would be arguably 'This is the day' and 'Shout to the Lord' both taken from the language of the Psalms."

If you're talking about the "This Is the Day" that I know, I'd say that the music is ill-suited to the text. I can't help but feel that such music is unable to bear the weight of the verse's Psalm 118 context.

As for "Shout to the Lord": To these ears it sounds, like so many other "praise songs," like Psalms Lite.

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