The catholicity of the Church demands that we not sacrifice our heritage for a passing trend, that we continually strive to make our tradition ever-vibrant through a deep knowledge of the past. It demands sacrificing our fickle desires on the altar of our Fathers’ wisdom

(Editor’s Note: This is a response to the article “What Kind Of Worship Music Style Does God Like Best?” by Dr. Don Sweeting, President of RTS Orlando)

Despite Reverend Sweeting’s qualifications as church historian and minister, I believe he is mistaken in his conclusion that musical style is relatively unimportant.

Furthermore, the reasoning he uses to reach that conclusion is faulty and the central arguments of his post largely irrelevant to the actual issue at hand which is not one of style as such but one of consistent, systemic philosophy.

That is, the question being asked is the wrong question. What should be asked is “What philosophy of worship does God like best?”

Let me tackle a few of his arguments first before moving forward with my own perspective on the significance of asking the right question.

Pride of place in the debate over church music often goes to the issue of style. Many writers, Sweeting included, present the debate as though there were one monolithic style to which traditionalists adhere and advocates of contemporary music are simply trying to break the stranglehold of this style (it could almost be capitalized- Style).

Contemporary music, they say, is simply a progression in the stream of aesthetic development. Why concern ourselves over what are merely less familiar, and newer, musical forms when there are souls to be won? Can’t we just let the drums and guitars express for today what the organ expressed for the past? This oversimplification is not helpful. Neither is it historically accurate.

The Western musical tradition is not monolithic stylistically though it is foundationally. What I mean is this: Western church music as we see it today is made up of various styles of music from various time periods and various geographical locations. It is catholic, just as the Church herself is catholic. On any given Sunday, a congregation may sing music from thirteenth century Italy, fifteenth century France, sixteenth century Germany, eighteenth century England, and twentieth century America.

These separate pieces will, when well-chosen by a minister, not by a “worship leader,” (that’s an issue for another essay), blend together harmoniously. Despite their origin in different times and places, hymns following the Western tradition of church music will sound good together and create an appropriately worshipful atmosphere. What I have just described could be labelled the “traditional” worship service.

What is typically called a “contemporary” worship service may utilize some of the same texts sung in the other service but they will be set to new tunes. The music will be largely twentieth or twenty-first century American. It will fail to reflect the catholicity of the Church.

To say that Western church music is unified, even though not monolithic, is to posit a set of rules governing its production and use. A musicologist could do a far better job than I explaining this point but it is clear to anyone with a sensitive ear that there is an organic development from early chant through Renaissance polyphony into the Baroque and beyond. There is a familial resemblance between the chant and the metrical Psalm though one is more free than the other. German chorales are surprisingly well-paired with many nineteenth century hymns of the revivalist type. One might even say that Jesus Priceless Treasure and Though Your Sins Be As Scarlet are distant cousins.

What is called “contemporary” music, on the other hand, bears little resemblance to anything in the Western tradition as described above. Its rhythms are different, its required accompaniment a divergence from custom. Content aside, it is a very different thing and draws its inspiration, not from the Western church music tradition, but from secular folk music-forms that had long been rejected as inappropriate for use in worship by the universal Church.

Even when secular folk tunes entered public worship, as they often did during the Renaissance, they never entered unchanged; their form was adjusted and sometimes completely obscured. The famous Missa ‘Entre Vous Filles’ used a rather lewd popular folk melody as its foundation and succeeded at sounding quite dignified despite causing great embarrassment to Vatican officials when they realized what had been the starting melody for the polyphonic Mass written by Orlando di Lasso.

The entrance into worship of music that sounds almost identical to its secular counterparts is an innovation unheard of in the history of the Church. This innovation may be the strongest argument against contemporary music and I’ll speak to that in a moment but, before I tackle the relationship of innovation to Christian worship, something must be said about the word “contemporary.”

I find myself continually frustrated when people describe their service music as “contemporary” because, typically, it isn’t any more contemporary than the music used in traditional services. Is music truly contemporary when its roots go back to the 1960s? Doesn’t that make it vintage at best?

It becomes clear pretty quickly when talking to supporters of contemporary worship that they don’t have in mind actual contemporary church music, but music of a certain style that might be variously described as rock, pop, alternative, and, for those with a sense of humor, muzak. In reality, what they describe as “contemporary” is yet another period style, albeit tweaked every now and then to seem more current. Their music represents an alternative tradition, separate from and unrelated to the Western church music tradition that, I observe with force, STILL EXISTS TODAY.

Yes, there is genuinely contemporary church music being written right now all over the world. Most of this music is choral rather than congregational but it forms a seed from which new congregational music may spring as it has been typical for congregational music to follow the lead of choral music. Egil Hovland in Norway, Arvo Pärt in Estonia, Rihards Dubra in Latvia, John Tavener and John Rutter in England, Morten Lauridsen here in the United States- all of these composers have written and continue to write music for the Church in a genuinely contemporary idiom that is reflective of the two thousand year tradition of the Church catholic.

There is no need to shrink our vision to only one place or time, to one style as the contemporary advocates, not the traditionalists, do.

The issue of innovation is largely related to Sweeting’s proposition that “the Bible simply does not commend one worship style. It doesn’t even commend one set liturgy for how we should construct our services.”

On a purely factual level this is absolutely true but, as Bard Thompson observes in his Liturgies of the Western Church the Reformers “resisted the notion that, tradition having been cast down, a liturgy could be evolved out of the Bible. Scripture was the norm of worship, but no rubric-book, no new Leviticus.”

Here Thompson is speaking specifically of Martin Luther though I feel justified in applying the statement to all the Reformers. Never in the history of the Church has it been commonly held that Scripture was intended to tell us in detail how to worship. Scripture provides the fundamental principles, tradition provides the communal wisdom necessary to properly order our worship. This is why, as Rev. Terry Johnson recently publicly observed, the form of the Mass can be discerned in the Reformed liturgies.

Innovation was anathema to the Reformers. Indeed, in their view it was Rome that had innovated, departing from the order and ceremonial simplicity of the early Church. For this reason, when local liturgies developed during the sixteenth century, there was always an observable link with what had gone before. Every one of the Continental Reformed liturgies, as well as the Lutheran and Anglican liturgies, looks like a reduced form of the Mass. Even Calvin’s liturgy, while more austere in comparison with some of the others, recalls not only the Mass but the monastic office of Compline.

The Reformers knew that, in ridding the liturgy of the Church catholic of the ceremonial encumbrances that had accrued over many centuries, they were returning to a consistently Patristic form of worship while adding to it their own deepened understanding of certain essential doctrines.

What was true for the structure of the liturgy was true for the music that accompanied it. Music for the Mass had been largely the purview of trained choirs but the Reformers were keen on returning to the congregation the joy of singing during the worship service and not just at extra-liturgical occasions such as processions and festivals.

Fortunately, having written within the existing tradition of choral music enabled many composers to write easily for congregational singing, taking the essence of their complex polyphonic works and distilling them into much simpler hymn form. The Reformers took advantage of the best musical talents of the day. Michael Praetorius wrote for the Lutherans and Claude Goudimel was commissioned by Calvin himself to write new congregational Psalm settings. Not once was there a felt need to look beyond the existing musical tradition to find music appropriate for worship.

The opposition to innovation that characterized the Reformers should be equally characteristic of us today. In seeking to depart from a living tradition unique to the Church, supporters of contemporary music are saying that the patrimony of the Church universal isn’t good enough. They are abandoning the conservative carefulness of the Reformed spirit and embracing a foundationless, liberal philosophy that equates constant change with progress. What will come of always worrying about being contemporary, current, or (one of the most abused words in the Church today) relevant?

There will be continual dissatisfaction, constant striving to one-up the last performance, and an urgent sense that if things aren’t ever-new they won’t be effective ministry tools. These worries are in opposition to the spirit that simply acknowledges the existence of a distinctly churchly culture, one that has a long and proven pedigree and abounds with raw material for fresh expression. Tradition need not be static and it should not be if it is to fulfill its function of equipping the present for better service. That was what the Reformers believed and it is demonstrated in their liturgies and their musical choices.

Having dealt with the issue of style, the contemporary philosophy, and the relationship of Reformed worship to innovation, I feel it is necessary to address Sweeting’s use of John 4. Simply put, I think the story of the Samaritan woman at the well has nothing to do with liturgical questions. Jesus’ point is that the fullness of worship is in the Holy Spirit through Christ Himself and so localization of worship is no longer necessary at all because, as Augustine observes in his discourse on Psalm 126, Christ is the new temple.

The Church, His very body, is spread all over the world- as Simeon says, “a light to lighten the Gentiles”- and so the need for a specific geographical location for worship is nullified. This is a very different thing than a passage such as I Corinthians 14 where Paul addresses very clearly order in public worship. Scripture is rarely prescriptive when it comes to public worship so we must be attentive when it is and use our God-given wisdom when it is not.

This brings to the fore what I posited at the beginning of this post- that Sweeting is asking the wrong question when he asks, “What Kind Of Worship Music Style Does God Like Best?” The idea that we can apply our own aesthetic categories to God’s mind is obviously preposterous and not even the most rabid traditionalist would suggest that we can know God’s preferences.

However, a reductio ad absurdum approach to the debate is in itself rather ridiculous since it neglects the two most important factors in Reformed thinking after Scripture itself- tradition and wisdom.

The debate over musical style is part of a much larger debate that isn’t- but should be- happening. That debate centers on the question, ” “What philosophy of worship does God like best?” It is the difference between a myopic perspective that sees worship as music and a proper perspective which sees music as but one component of the liturgy- the public service of the Church catholic to God in the Holy Spirit through Christ.

A Reformed philosophy of worship addresses the question of history and organic development and should look askance at innovation no matter how well-intended. Here is the place of wisdom in standing up and saying that the past should indeed dictate the present. Wisdom hears Paul’s words in II Thessalonians, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” and treasures them.

The catholicity of the Church demands that we not sacrifice our heritage for a passing trend, that we continually strive to make our tradition ever-vibrant through a deep knowledge of the past. It demands sacrificing our fickle desires on the altar of our Fathers’ wisdom. Tradition is respect above all things- for that which has been found beneficial through all generations and has united, rather than divided, the Church in service to her Lord. For it is pleasing to God that, as our Lord Jesus prayed, we all be one.

Evan McWilliams is the son of PCA Teaching Elder David McWilliams, long-time pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church in Lakeland, Florida. Evan is working on a PhD in architectural history with a focus on church design and the practical implications of liturgy on planning and decoration. He blogs at Inscrutable Being where this article first appeared and it is used with his permission.

[Editor’s note: the link to the author’s blog is broken and has been removed.]