How can Music History Help Faith Reconstruction?
What does music history have to do with faith reconstruction? Can music aid in the journey back towards a full and vibrant faith?
These were not the questions I was asking a few months ago when I clicked “order” on Ted Gioia’s Music: a Subversive History, I was more interested in his provocative promise of an “alternative approach to music history.”
But as I began to read, I was struck by just how much music history reveals about humanity. We have always yearned for encounters with the divine. We’ve always needed to find belonging. We’ve always found ways of subverting tyrannical authority. Throughout human history, music has been a medium used to meet those needs. Number one on Ted’s forty-point-non-manifesto is, “Music is a change-agent in human life, a force of transformation and enchantment.”
I began reading with the hunch that music had more to offer faith reconstruction than I was giving it credit for. Five-hundred pages later I was sure of it.
Singing has always made words easier for me to believe, but I’ve always been plagued by a vague sense of “cheating” when I rely on a worship song/hymn to get me to the place I want to be spiritually. “Is it just the music? Do I even believe any of this?”
Gioia’s book presents example after example of how much music has been feared throughout history. It’s been feared for its power of persuasion, its ability to spark change, and its ability to enchant. Always. Which makes me ask, what makes enchantment seem so dangerous? So worthy of a fight?
Early in recorded human history, music’s power to alter consciousness and emotion was identified and feared. During the rise of Christianity, the issue rose to prominence. Here’s what Gioa has to say (emphases mine),
“With the rise of Christianity in the Western world, romantic lyrics were scrutinized not for their teachable lessons, but in order to eradicate their metaphysical danger to the souls of believers. At this junction, the notion of sin moved to the forefront of musicology and would stay there for a thousand years and beyond. Every aspect of music was now scrutinized for signs of profanity and impiety- not just the lyrics, but also the instruments, the time and place of performance, the character and sex of the performer, and the emotions stirred by its melodies and rhythms. Priests fulminated against the evils of music from the pulpit, church councils issued rulings on its use, theologians disputed its nature, even the pope intervened on occasion, clarifying and condemning as the situation warranted. All this was handled with the most deadly seriousness: after all, salvation of damnation in the next life hung in the balance!” Ted Gioia Music: a Subversive History
This paragraph resonated deeply with me. Back in high school youth group we used to worship to the song, The Heart of Worship, which begins like this:
When the music fades, all is stripped away, and I simply come.
Longing just to bring something that’s of worth that will bless your heart…
I’ll bring you more than a song, for a song in itself is not what you have required.
You look much deeper within, through the ways things appear, you’re looking into my heart.
Cue the introspective youth group tears!
The songwriter of The Heart of Worship may not have been concerned about music interfering with salvation, but he did succeed in warning sensitive high schoolers that there’s a difference between worshipping God in truth and worshipping with an emotional high.
Moral of the story: emotion, even in worship, needs to be approached with skepticism.
But what if musical enchantment wasn’t dangerous (at worst) or an interference (at best)? What if it was something the Lord embedded in the world to help us find him, not something that we need to extract from truth? What if our physiological response to sound wasn’t an enemy to be feared but a reality to be harnessed?
Put more metaphysically: does truth have a sound?
Now I’m getting myself into waters I can’t swim in.
What I’m really trying to say is that I want to start intentionally tapping into music’s enchantment. There are mountains to scale in the journey towards a restful, peaceful relationship with Jesus. Prayer and Bible reading still aren’t getting me where I want to be. I’m easily frustrated with the Bible and prayer is as hard as it’s always been. But these practices don’t have to be soundless. Plenty of scripture is set to music; all worship/hymn lyrics are essentially prayers of song. Lyric-less music presents a blank canvas with which the soul can join its joys and petitions.
Music is surely a type of mercy. Ted Gioia puts it a little differently, “religions require trance as much as they do dogma, perhaps even more.” We need this experience and this mercy.
I must insert one more relevant story. In the mid-2010s (prior to our deconstruction), my husband filled in as worship leader one Sunday at our non-denominational (and, I kid you not, John MacArthur approved) church. Ben populated the set with a mix of ancient and modern hymns sure to appease each represented generation. Afterwards, a man of an older generation (and a graduate of the aforementioned seminary) came up to Ben, shook his hand and jubilated, “Excellent worship young man, none of this flimsy chorus stuff! Music should be TEACHING!”
This man was definitely on team lyric, not team emotion. And definitely on team John MacArthur.
“Religions need trance as much as they do dogma, perhaps even more so.”
Dogma just isn’t enough, experience matters. Music is a huge part of experience. I know that Jesus is the Son of God, I know that he died and rose again, I know that he’s supposed to offer us freedom and be the ultimate source of love. But I need help with the deeper part of knowing, the type where knowledge becomes a part of your body. I think music has the power to get people there. I think God intends it to.
There is untapped potential in deeper, more intentional applications of music to the faith experience. Yes, we all include singing of some sort in our Christian worship services. But I wonder if there is more to it; if there is a more strategic way to approach both music listening and music-making in a way that deepens the parts of faith that isolation of dogma has left shaky.
I’m off to find what that might look like.