Today’s Questions

• How different are hymns and choruses really?
• How contemporary is contemporary worship music?

In Significant Ways the 2 Bodies of Song are Similar

• The constancy of Evangelical piety
• A key example: a lingering irrelevance of the Father and the Holy Spirit in worship song content; corresponding focus upon Jesus Christ
• Another example: the propensity of the songs, old and new, to talk about human activity more often and with a wider range of verbs than God’s activity

But they are different, too.

• Some teaser words that show key differences: heaven, above, death, thee, thou, ye, you

Method: What Songs are Being Considered?

• 70 hymns that appeared in at least 1/3 of the evangelical hymnals in America from 1737-1860
• 100 contemporary worship songs that have appeared in the twice-a-year top-25 CCLI lists from 1989 through February 2013

Here are the lists of songs

Early Evangelical Hymnody

Contemporary Christian Songs

What You Shouldn’t Pull from My Study

• A condemnation of either body of song
• Absolute characterizations about every song in both types of song
• Absolute decisions about any one songwriter or any one congregation or any one service
• The idea that the meaning of a song is only in its lyrics

A Key Theological Similarity

• A weak Trinitarian quality out of sync with either classic Christian worship materials or apostolic naming practices for God found in the New Testament

The Specifics

• Relatively little referencing of God as being Triune
• Virtually no worshiping of God for being Triune
• Only infrequently is there a naming of more than one divine Person at a time
• Many uses of more general names for deity: God, Lord, King
• When there is explicit naming of a divine Person, it is much more likely to be Jesus Christ.

Why such naming practices?

• The influence of the Psalms on evangelical songwriting
• Evangelicals really (and I mean really) emphasizing an ancient practice to direct worship to Christ and not just through Christ
• Evangelical affections/emotions are stimulated by salvation and thus are drawn to the Savior
  • Reinforced by portrayals of Jesus Christ as the main (solitary?) actor in the dynamics of salvation
  • Reinforced by Jesus’ Incarnation giving him an “advantage” over God the Father and the Holy Spirit in affect-driven worship

A 2nd Key Similarity: Who Acts?

• Humans get more actions and a wider range of actions than does God

Related Points on Action

• When a divine Person is mentioned as acting, who is it likely to be? Jesus Christ
• Do the Triune Persons work together? Generally, no. It’s one at a time with little sense of the Three working through, in, on, and with each other. (The songs need many fewer prepositions than does the New Testament.)
• A balance in how the death of Jesus is portrayed as accomplishing salvation
• Little historical sensibility in God’s activity, especially from the Old Testament and from the life and ministry of Jesus (with 2 exceptions)

Where are the Differences?

Significant Difference:
Direct Address of Deity

• In CWS (Contemporary Worship Songs): great frequency and manner of directness
• CWS comes through the front door of worship, boldly, aggressively, repeatedly without knocking, whereas EH tends to slip in through the back door by praising in indirect ways

Indirect vs. Direct Praise

Significant Difference:
The Loss of Multiple Forms of “You”

• EH (Evangelical Hymnody): Thee/Thou = human and God interaction;
  Ye/you = human to human interaction

Significant Difference:
Direct worship and exhortation

• EH: greater likelihood of human to human exhortation, invitation, etc., for which ye/you is a handy marker of greater consciousness of other people
• CWS: tends to emphasize the activity of human worship more, i.e., verbs like “worship” and “praise” much more likely

Significant Difference:
Verbs of journeying and failure

• Much more likely in EH
• Very different underlying doctrines of ultimate or last things
  • Fulfillment delayed: EH
  • Fulfillment achieved: CWS
  • Reinforced by the typical structures of the song
  • Seen in how the words “heaven” and “above” are used

Heaven Later and Heaven Now

Nothing But Sin...

• From “Jesus, My All, to Heaven is Gone” by John Cennick
  7. Lo glad I come, and thou blest Lamb,
  Shalt take me to thee, as I am;
  Nothing but sin I thee can give;
  Nothing but love would I receive.

The Prospect of Death

• ... by Isaac Watts
  Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound,
  My ears, attend the cry,
  “Ye living men come view the ground
  Where you must shortly lie.”

Accounting for the Differences

• Context shapes piety
  • Rise of modern medicine has undercut the sense of human mortality, the constant fear of human frailty, and thus a dread for the coming wrath of God.
  • Rise of consumerist culture reinforces sense of possibility of immediate fulfillment: We don’t sojourn, we arrive. We now flee from meaningless, not an impending judgment. CPR and superstores have changed everything.
  • Many of the early contemporary songs were written by new Christians in the Jesus People movement. That movement had a strong expectation of the immediate return of Christ. Thus there was no need for long-term patience.

Accounting for the Differences

• The loss of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress as the organizing, go-to book to shape evangelical piety

Accounting for the Differences

• The evolution of the English language
• The loss of a common version of the Bible for all English-speaking Protestants (the KJV)

And so?

• A pastoral perspective: respect the inner grammar and vocabulary of each body of song if one is trying to get worshipers to become “bilingual” in worship music.
• Song composition: we need a songwriter’s study New Testament to point out apostolic practices of naming the Triune Persons and of relating the Three by means of key verbs and prepositions
• Theological: unless the worshiper’s heart is captured by the love of God as Triune — unless we love God for being Triune and know the love of God in Trinitarian ways, not much will change.