Most “Christian” music is taken from the secular world. People might have nice feelings about Jesus by listening to it, but the secular music was designed to produce certain types of feelings, and why should those warm sentimental feelings or hard emotional feelings be linked with worship?
A friend of mine used to quip, “When you’re talking about Christian music it’s pretty safe to substitute ‘bad’ for ‘Christian’.
Who hasn’t had to endure a Christian rock band or sit through a worship with some aging trendy strumming a guitar and inflicting folk music or light rock on everyone?
Why is it that so often Christian music is so awful? I think there are a couple of reasons. The first is that the musicians and their audience mistake a worthy message for talent. Then they get a martyr complex if they’re criticized. “You’re obviously not very spiritual if you can’t enjoy my music! The second problem is that the audience are often either totally uncritical or they haven’t the ability to criticize intelligently. Too often the audience actually like the junk that is being dished up. The third factor is that market forces are usually not in play. Market forces often have a surprisingly sharp and salutary critical effect. Market forces weed out the junk, but in the Christian market they’re doing it for love, not money, so no one is telling them to get off the stage ’cause it won’t sell.
These are all the practical problems. There is, however, a deeper problem. Christian popular music is almost always pretty bad, but the problem with most “Christian” music is that it is secular music with Christian words. In any decent art style and substance are supposed to match up. The meaning and the media are supposed to harmonize.
Most “Christian” music is taken from the secular world. Whether it is the music of Broadway musicals, Country Western, Las Vegas ballad crooners, or light rock, or heavy rock-and-roll, it’s secular, not sacred. When you then add sacred words to the secular music there is a natural disconnect. That’s why so much Christian music (even when it is well-written and well-performed) doesn’t really work. Oh sure, people might like it. They might even have nice feelings about Jesus by listening to it, but the secular music was designed to produce certain types of feelings, and why should those warm sentimental feelings or hard emotional feelings be linked with worship?
We might like listening to Christian country Western or a sweet Broadway type ballad about Jesus or we might get all hyped up listening to Christian rock, but is it worship? Is it really inspiring us to draw closer to God? Is it really deepening our spiritual life or is it just music we like which makes us feel good and it makes us feel even better because it talks about Jesus too? Forgive me for being cynical, but think about it. The worst example is Christian Rock music. At the risk of sounding too puritanical, rock and roll music was, from the beginning highly sexualized, laden with rebellious, heavy and nasty rhythms linked with the drug culture–designed to alter consciousness and demolish self restraint. The acid rock and heavy rock was also obviously linked with an occult and demonic sub culture.
So you want to put cozy Christian words to all that? To my mind that’s like putting a gospel tract inside a porn magazine.
The same criticism applies when the musical style is not quite so bad as acid rock. You name the popular secular style–the music wasn’t written to deepen prayer, lead to worship or open the soul to the sacred. It was designed to produce shallow emotions about love and romance at best, and lust and sex at worst. Pope Benedict XVI comments on this in his book The Spirit of the Liturgy. He acknowledges that down through the ages this has been a recurring problem in the church. Sometimes the hymn writers put Christian words to beer drinking songs. At other times they adopted the popular operatic style. Now they adopt light rock, hard rock, and virtually every other secular style.
The antidote is to be more aware and appreciative of sacred music. There is a kind of music that on its own—even without words—is designed to open the mind and heart to the sacred. Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony which evolved from it–is the music of worship. Especially in the liturgy this is the music which we are supposed to use because the music lends itself to worship. It opens the heart and mind to a new dimension and reveals the spiritual aspect to our lives in a way that secular music with Christian words does not. That’s what sacred music is. What is required is catechesis about this music and an effort to appreciate it. Truly sacred music is an acquired taste. It takes some effort. It also takes some effort to produce it at a good and worthy level.
The problem in most mainstream Catholic parishes is that they’ve had nothing but junk music in church for as long as anyone can remember. The people actually think its okay because they have never heard anything else. They take on board the blend of muzak, Broadway tunes, folk music and light rock thinking that this is all there is. Then if they ever do hear Gregorian chant or sacred polyphony they hold their ears and say, “Geesh, why does Father want to bring in all that gloomy music? We’re outta here.” Alas. It’s true.
Does this mean that Christians should listen to nothing but Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony? Is that all we should ever use in the liturgy? The purists would say so. But I’m of the opinion that we have to work with what we’ve got. We have to meet people where they are and move on from there. Chant and polyphony are the foundations of the music we should use. In addition to this we have the library of sacred hymns (and there’s enough there to warrant another blog post completely) the worthy ones of which will serve to complement the words and actions of the sacred liturgy.
If that doesn’t please you–I guess you can always enjoy Jesus is My Friend…
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Republished with gracious permission from the author from Patheos.
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In principle I like being this old-school, but in practice some Gospel, Jazz, and Folk inspired Catholic music has given me joy and a feeling of connection to higher things too.And sometimes done better at distracting me from sexual OCD thoughts than the more traditional.
Now on Rock, yes Rock & Roll has always had a sexual component but it’s kind of also had a religious component from the start. The Pentecostal music tradition has some influence on it. The mix of sacred and sexual was understandably scandalous and I think many people my age and younger don’t realize Black churches had some justification to be unnerved by “rock & roll.” (It wasn’t all old white people.)
Sure maybe in principle I should think Mary Lou Williams, Hillbilly Thomists, and the people who won music awards at the Vatican recently are “awful.” But I’m kind of deciding to accept that actually I don’t. Or at least not in a sweeping way. Sometimes this stuff is awful but sometimes not. Although I do think if you’re just trying to ape popular music it can be a problem.
Personally, I think there’s some amazing Christian music. It covers all genres. I’ve heard some amazing metal. I’ve heard some blues. I’ve heard pop. I’ve heard soul hearing artists like Nicole C. Mullen, Matthew West, and the newsboys to say nothing of Todd Agnew. I think worship music gets a bad rap and the music that’s played in. Churches doesn’t begin to tap into the options that are out there.
I think you are not clear on listening to liturgical music versus listening outside of Church. Sacred music is composed for the liturgy and has rules of content and style. “All Are Welcome” is subversive and excluded from even USCCB approval. Yet our local Novus Ordo choir team spews that out frequently with guitar and ratty voices. They are the ones sending us fleeing (thank be to God) to our local Latin Mass.
There should be a clear dividing line between “praise” music and liturgical music. I”m OK with different musical styles as a general principle but at mass our minds and souls should be lifted to God by that which has a well established sacred pedigree; primarily Gregorian chant and polyphony. Please save Marty Haugen and the St. Louis Jesuits et al. for another setting. Not the holy mass.
There is an issue that the writer failed to address, namely, the congregational accessibility of songs, whether it be contemporary or traditional. For all this talk about how beautiful sacred music is (chant and polyphony), very very few parishes make the concerted effort to present the sacred music in such a manner that draws the wandering-off-the-street-congregant into fully engaging with the melodies at hand, not just fully taking to heart the non-translated-to-vernacular Latin texts, but also singing these very songs outright. Such a notion is outlandish to the entire traditional community, (except, I suppose, at those national schola conferences where they cannot fit all congregants in the balcony, and they all sing from the pew, because they can).
I happen to believe there is a way where congregations can sing new-to-them melodies in real time. Interdenominational megachurch worship teams–despite the instruments used–have mastered how to take new-to-congregants’ complex melodies (today’s praise and worship songs are a far cry from their simplistic forms in the 80s and 90s), and render them singable in real time, so that, by song’s end, the entire congregation is singing along. Now. Imagine if today’s schola choirs learned how to present such songs in a manner that congregations could fully learn such songs the same way, regardless of the instruments used, wouldn’t that be the most ideal?
Thank you. I thought I was the only curmudgeon about “praise music”.
As a coda, my worst experiences in this regard have been when the youth group had an outdoor meeting, and ended by holding hands around a campfire singing “Kumbaya”. I would look around to see if Peter, Paul, and Mary were nearby. (The “folk” singers, not the people in the New Testament.”)
Modern musicians embrace and are embraced by poetic license / sentimentalism at the expense theological truthfulness….at my parish most mumble along with the soprano until they play a more traditional Catholic song from our youth.
Father Dwight is right. It’s not just lyrics or sentiment that make a good Christian hymn. Some tunes are simply inappropriate for worship by their very nature.
I lack the musical knowledge to describe precisely why, whether it’s because of the tempo, chords, or whatever. But some things just don’t create the right response in the listener.
Example: No matter how gifted the poet, no one could write worshipful lyrics to the tune of Boots Randolph’s “Yakety Sax”.
Drinking songs? Possible, but doubtful. I’ve heard folks make this suggestion before. I think the reason people make this mistake is they misunderstand the term “bar form.” Bar form is symbolized AAB or AABA. Two examples would be Amazing Grace or Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee. “Bar form” has nothing to do with a drinking song.
Fr. Dwight Longenecker makes valid points about the blandness and vacuity of most Christian pop music, but he seems never to have heard a black gospel choir.
The Psalms were written for liturgical use.
The Song of Songs is full of erotic allegory, and the Holy Spirit doesn’t seem to have a problem with it being in the Bible.
Some of the hymns and doxologies of the early church are preserved as passages in the Word of God, and they aren’t Gregorian chant.
Beethoven’s 9th Symphony was popular music of its time.
It’s a logical fallacy to argue that because much contemporary music is dreck or morally degenerate it must all be of no use in worship. Test everything, retain what is good.
There’s a line between conservatism and narrow-mindedness.
Perhaps one of the most myopic and biased commentaries on Christian music. Not only is it all wrong, it neglects to understand the influences that even modern Christian music has had on secular music.
There are so many stunning, beautiful songs, worship writers and communities.
I personally don’t feel that hymns add much to Mass. Too much text and imagery to think about that has no direct bearing on the liturgy at hand. I am in favor of replacing hymns with the old Mass Proper texts (Introit, Communion, etc.) which for the Novus Ordo can be rendered in a simple English-language chant. These texts have been around for centuries. Why should they gather dust?
Coming back to these comments after a few days, I am, well, amused, that so many people do not understand the difference between liturgical music and entertainment music.
Black gospel music is liturgical — IN CONTEXT! — as are many Protestant hymns. But pop “Praise” music and C&W “Gospel” music are for amusement, heard over the radio as you drive about. They are designed to evoke emotion, not worship.
I will stand with Padre Dwight on this one.
There is no dividing line between liturgical music and entertainment music. That’s overly simplistic – an ahistorical and false dichotomy. They have overlapped and influenced each other through the millenia.
I fully agree that vapid and inane music is counterproductive to good liturgy, but Fr. Dwight goes well beyond that in implying that the highest and purest form of liturgical music is Gregorian chant, and that lesser forms of liturgical music are only a stopgap for those insufficiently holy and enlightened to share his opinion. That’s elitism, and that also has no place in liturgy.
The idea that liturgical music ideally should not inspire emotion is puritanical extremism, and contrary to Scriptural example.
Metric Hymns (and Protestant hymns in particular) are probably best described as the pop music of another era, so they lack the timelessness that makes Gregorian chant so apt for the Roman liturgy. The Church, being a good mother, has made concessions on this front because the people have lost so much of their liturgical culture. But the best that can and should be done in the liturgy remains Gregorian chant.
“The people” have never had much of a “liturgical culture”. Mother Church wanted people to participate, not listen disinterestedly to music they could neither understand nor accompany. Mythologizing the past as some sort of ideal is unhelpful.
Oh, I think the people were able to sing the kyriale in the western rites, before the Renaissance. They were also able to listen interestedly to good polyphony in early modernity. With the liturgical movement starting with Dom Gueranger, a surprising number able to song the Kyriale again, where Pope Pius X reforms were taken seriously.Novus Ordo music seems to be a desperate flailing around for anything that might distract the people. Forme, Pius X was the way. It’s Gregorian chant. Polyphony can be lovely but by definition the people are excluded from participating. They may only listen to it.
Gonna be the odd-man out here but while I really can’t be bothered with CCW I love Christian metal. There’s more genuine outpourings of lamentation, praise, and liturgical meaning in the songs of bands like HolyName, Demon Hunter, Bloodlines, Convictions, War of Ages, and the like than you’ll ever find in what pervades the airwaves on most Christian radio stations.
Thanks FDL for calling out and dissecting Christian Rock. I’ve tried to listen to various groups perform this type of music and have always found it lacking, uninspiring and just plain boring. The timelessness of the dulcet tones of Bach, Mozart etc…never fails to rouse the spirit to the coming together of heaven and earth and paves the way for humble yet exuberant worship of God!
What music and/or what performers would be examples of good christian music?
Well, that was quite a snappy song by Sonseed! It would be a great one for Larry and Bob to sing as one of their Silly Songs in a VeggieTales video!! ;^)
I agree wholeheartedly, except for the restriction to chant and polyphony. Those were musical forms that developed during specific times, and sacred music did not end with those forms. Think of Schutz or Bach. As musical forms change, the writers of sacred music do as well. Even in the 70s, people were setting portions of the Psalms to lovely music that expressed their meaning. But CCM developed in conjunction with the seeker sensitive movement, which posited that Christianity should adapt to contemporary secular culture in order to appeal to young people. That was the death knell for sacred music, as you so ably explained. I can’t speak to the wretched Catholic hymns from the 70s because I am not a Catholic. How they emerged I do not know.
K-LOVE radio plays music written and performed by many younger generation musicians. Many of them come from Christian backgrounds, fathers were ministers, etc. but many have found their faith through personal turmoil that led them to their faith. They sing about their faith with fervor, the style of which may not be what some of us are used to in sacred music, but they speak to a generation seeking something beyond the secular. Their lyrics tell powerful stories in many cases. The energy of their music is powerful, even to some of us of a much later vintage. I feel connected to these young people through their music. I suspect many of them can still appreciate Gregorian chant and “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”
Dear Sir
God is the composer /author of all music whether you agree with a certain style or not. Our place is to bring as many folks to heaven with us even if we dont like that particular genres. We would be a pretty boring lot if we all looked the same and only liked on style of music
“Addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart” ~ Ephesians 5:1 Pretty sure God can handle it . after all He designed us and is the head music instructor
I was disappointed by Father Longenecker’s decision to disparage Christian music. An article like this, starting with the title, gets people defensive and upset. Not a great way to build Christan unity!
Also, Father Longenecker is wrong: Christian music is not “bad” or “awful”. Much of it ranges from very good to excellent and does much good. Yes, there is a lot of poor quality stuff as well – that’s inevitable when you are dealing with a large body of creative work (the same applies to movies, literature, etc.)
The Christian music discussed here is generally not intended for liturgical worship or “entertainment” but to build up and give expression to our life of faith. And for all of its imperfections, it seems to be succeeding. Many people are moved and encouraged by it (including myself and others I know).
Music has a strong subjective component. Better not to disparage something that may be drawing many closer to God.
On a simplistic level, does it matter what type of music it is or what the history of that music is? The type of music draws people in, whether it’s gospel, or rock, or pop, or jazz, or whatever it may be. Music at its core draws people into an emotional experience. But it’s also the words that draw people into that experience even more. Who’s to say that the style of any music genre eliminates Christian substance. And why is there a divide between a genre of music and the Christian words, meaning, message that goes along with it. If all Christian music was restricted to the “gospel” genre, how would those in the secular world ever hear about Gods love, and grace, and forgiveness, and the sacrifice He made to save everyone He created.
I’m not Catholic, but that was well said. I’ve wondered why “Christian rock” sets my teeth on edge.
Another article lamenting bad Christian music, but immediately diverting from what matters to a discussion on style. “Rock and roll is bad, classical is good”. Understand I LOVE classical — but let me tell you as a classical lover that it is FAR from the epitome of morality!
I am, in fact, a lover of music. Good music. Blame it on my mother who is a professional musician (an amazing Christian woman who fled secular music after after finding a the life-changing relationship with Christ or Lord and Savior). Throughout her career she refused to follow the path to fame an fortune, instead focusing on ministry). I toured with her for years growing up. So yea, you could say this rings close to my heart…and I know a fair amount about it.
Bad Christian music these days is not about style — be it ancient tunes we no longer realize came from popular drinking songs of the day, Western, Jazz, Country, or yes even Rock-and-role.
God created music! And He did not make one style holy with another style satanic! Want to challenge me on that, be sure you have your Bible verses to back it up.
The real problem with modern Christian music is:
1) it is no longer about Christ or God, rather it is about I and me! We dare sing and call “worship” music that elevates our own selves while making God common. We distort the truth of the Gospel to this crazy idea that it’s all about us, and without us God would really not have much meaning anyway. “You came down because you didn’t want to be in Heaven alone” nonsense! Then we dare to call this worship. Sure, worshiping ourselves.
2) People singing and playing are AWFUL! Even in churches that have talented musicians, we select the mediocre…and literally drive the musicians away. My mother, a concert pianist and trained musician, has sat in churches that WILL NOT USE HER because they don’t want to offend the terrible “pianist” who is just such a sweet person. Funny thing is, get to know that “sweet person” and you just might discover less sweet and more “me, me, me…and nobody is going to take my spot no matter what”. Did God give out these talents so the church can refuse to use the gifts He bestowed? Image in a great preacher sat in a church, willing to serve, but that church would not use him because the mediocre (or worse) preacher might be offended. Oh wait..but that happens. “Nobody is going to share my pulpit.”.
Yet I digress, this is supposed to be about music. It is time to move ourselves out of the center, our preferences out of the center, our self worship out of the center. We need to worship God with the message of the Bible (not our new gospel). And we need to recognize and use those who God has poured in musical talent, and who have embraced that gift and shown the discipline to learn, practice, and be good.
I would agree. Some of the music is so emotional these days in worship music. Some manipulate people on purpose for money and others may have good intentions but go to false churches (like Hillsong worship members did).
In my opinion it isn’t the style that is the issue but the lyrics and perhaps with heavy rock music whether the voice shows that reflection as deep “demonic” voices likely indicate they’re doing it for the money and misunderstood lyrics may indicate it too. Btw there are likely some Christian metal bands that really live it as well as some for rap country and folk. Not all rappers live it either as some will let fame get tot their heads and others start it for money cause they couldn’t succeed in secular rap. Same goes with Christian rock and even pop.